Tomra Systems ASA

OSE:TOM

Earnings Call Transcript 2020-Q2

[Unknown Executive]

Good morning and welcome to our Second Quarter Results Presentation. My name is [ Georgina Redullesco ]. I am responsible for the Investor Relations in TOMRA. And with me today, I have Stefan Ranstrand, CEO; and Espen Gundersen, CFO. Thank you for joining us today. You can ask us questions via the Q&A link on the web page, and we will answer them towards the end of the presentation.Because there is a small time lag to the webstream, we encourage you to ask the questions as we go along or as soon as possible at the end of the presentation, just to make sure we get everything in time. Those being said, I wish you welcome, and I will pass on the word to Stefan.

[Stefan Ranstrand, President & CEO]

Dear all, thank you for dialing in. What a quarter we had, I would label it a challenging crisis and in many ways, a totally new situation. In TOMRA, we have some 4,500 employees at the peak, 2,800 of them were working from their home offices.We have had, due to the pandemic, total 15 people infected. 11 are recovered. 4 are still active, but no severe conditions. I have seen highest dedication and commitment from our people, more than could have been expected. We have extreme cases where people have chosen to go and live at the customer site in order to serve the customer because it was not possible for them to travel between their home and the customer on a daily basis. They have stayed there for months. I dare to say, our culture and our people is a differentiator, making TOMRA more resilient and strong and, for me, definitely a reason to be proud of.We have also seen an extraordinary customer loyalty. The customers have understood that it's been difficult to operate, and they have worked with us here on that. We have not been able, with our salespeople in some instances, to meet customers. And we have, therefore, turned over to remote communications like telephone or video, and that has worked well. We have even had customers who have -- we have never met before, who have bought equipment from us. We have even installed remotely equipment together with customers. These are extraordinary conditions, but they have been mastered very well.We have advanced now from a period with very many new dimensions and I would say a big uncertainty to a situation where I feel that we are now having good control and much more certainty. In the second quarter, and here, in particular, in April and May, we saw the most challenging period. But already in June and in most parts of our business, we see stabilization and I dare to say, in some cases, even return to normal. We are now having a state return of our employees to offices. Our operations and supply chain is fully up to speed. And this is partly also thanks to our footprint that we are in different parts of the world, both from a production point of view and also service point of view. We don't need to ship people across countries. We have them locally so that we can operate. And we have, for instance, been able to capitalize on our manufacturing capabilities in China, whilst we had lockdowns in New Zealand. So actually, we have in -- under all times, been able to deliver on all our commitments. And today, we are fully normal again.We still have some service challenges, and that relates to some regional restrictions when it comes to travel or, in some cases, even our customers, especially in the food sector, saying they don't accept any visitors due to hygiene conditions. And we respect that, of course. But apart from that, we are operating also with a service as normal. I also dare to say if there will be further pandemic waves, we are well prepared. When we entered this crisis, everything was new to us. We put up a crisis team and worked through a lot of different methods and ways to handle the situation. Now we have learned a lot. So we will be better prepared if there will be a second wave. So what we can control, we feel that we will be able to handle well. But certainly, the uncertainty around the market conditions as a result of any new potential countermeasures will remain.With that, I choose to turn page and go into the result numbers. We saw a decline in revenues of 11%. The currency played a strong gain here in the quarter. So if you were to ignore the currency effects, you would actually have the same top line result as last year. But in reality, to be prudent, revenues were down 11%. And the biggest reduction came from Collection Solutions. And that is very much thanks to our throughput lease or volume-related models. And I will talk more about that. But that was, for us, unavoidable, clearly a result of governmental or local regulators restrictions put in place.Sorting Solutions showed strong resilience. And you will see that when we look at the totality of the figures. But also then, they were down 8% in revenues.The gross margin was reduced from 44% to 42.9% -- 44.9% to 42.9%, and that was all related to the lower volumes in Collection Solutions. Again, here, Sorting Solutions showed strong resilience.We have acted, I dare to say, with speed, to address cost situation and to make sure TOMRA as a company remains strong in this period. So all unnecessary costs have been avoided or cut, and we have been able to reduce our operating expenses on a quarter-by-quarter basis compared with Q2 last year by 8%.We have, however, not altered our strategic direction. So we have continued to invest in that we think is important for our future, and that are -- as example is circular economy but also on product and technology development, and we will show you some exciting new technologies today, in fact. So we see that our strategy -- strategic direction remains intact. We believe in it. We are committed to it. And we are convinced about that the world will move in the way we are heading in circular economy and food. Therefore, we continue to invest, but we have been active in reducing all these costs we could to safeguard the maximum result in the quarter. But however, also important is, we are having made this in a way that we are ready to ramp up if the market conditions improve and we are ready then to capitalize on the opportunities. So this has been the balance for us. We could have done more, but we have done it this way in order to be able to ring-fence the strategic initiatives and to be able to come back quickly if the market calls for that.Our earnings, EBITA, are down, ending at NOK 288 million from NOK 352 million. Cash flow from operations ended at NOK 123 million, up from NOK 45 million of last year. We had a reduced order intake in Sorting Solutions, slightly down by 5% and order backlog is down 2%. From a business point of view, the biggest impact we had on the results as a result of COVID was on the North America impact on TOMRA Collection Solutions and the order intake, which was taken down 5% in Sorting Solutions.With that, I ask to turn to next page. This page illustrates some of the highlights of the Collection Solutions business. I start on the left-hand here. Here, you see a graph. You see a dark blue line. You hopefully see a pink line and a light blue line. What is unique in our Collection Solutions business is that not only are we a global leader, we have also, by now, connected most of the machines to our central. So they are connected on the web, and we have direct access to the machines, seeing what's happening. That means we will instantly see how many bottles are going through every machine placed out there. In the time of a crisis like this, it's an extreme advantage because if there would be any changes, we would be able to respond much quicker. So if you look at the graph here again, I will use as to illustrate, that represents the status of volumes going through the RVMs out in the different regions.We can see from the dark blue line, which represents Europe, that we have seen no disturbance, no ups and downs. It's been a very stable operation. So Europe RVM operations have shown very strong resilience during this period. If you look at the pink line, that illustrates the situation in Australia. And here, we are talking about the installations we have in New South Wales and in Queensland. Here, we could see that in early April and May, we had a volume dip. But you can see that recovered fairly quickly. And it was all due to the lockdowns by the regulators. And we are back to normal in Australia. And in fact, it's a little bit higher than last year because we have continued to expand, and we see that these 2 markets, Queensland and New South Wales, still are growth markets. So we expect that market to continue to grow slightly going forward.The light blue line then indicates North America. And here is where we saw the biggest effect with volume decrease of -- in the magnitude of 50% for also a more extended period of time. But then gradually, starting in May, we -- end of May and into June, we saw recovery of the operations. And we are now back to normal. So we can say Collection Solutions, as we operate now in all 3 main regions, are back to normal. You can also see on this light blue line that we have a certain recovery. People have probably stored a lot of beverages during this period in the garages or in their cellars. And once the locations open up, they have utilized the opportunity to return more than normal. We don't expect this to continue. It will be flattened out. But again, we consider the Collection business more or less back to normal.If we look at the market, we see that -- I don't have global evidence, but I can talk for Norway figures right now. We see that people actually are consuming more than before. And the latest figures indicate that people buy 20% more bottles than before. So if that is the remaining effect, we will certainly also see more volumes going through our machines going forward. But again, these are early indicators. The positive is that they are not showing a decline in consumption. They are showing an increase in consumption, positive for our operations here, but we will have to observe how that goes forward and how it looks on a grander scale than Norway.If I then go to the right page here, one question we have asked ourselves, would this COVID situation now lead to delays in legislative processes around deposits. And I'm pleased to tell you we have not seen that effect. Western Australia have now announced the commencement date. And that is October 2020. And in fact, that is ahead of the original plan. So they were struggling a little bit in determining the date due to the situation, and they were playing around with either November or June next year. They now decided they will go live October. We see that as positive. This is not a big market for us. We will have about 5 locations or precisely 5 locations with some 10 RVMs. There will be more high-volume locations than we see in many stores in Europe. It's more mirroring what we see in Queensland. And we're excited to go live there. And we are prepared in all ways to do that, both from a technical and an operations point of view. So we look forward to the start in Western Australia in October this year.Netherlands have for quite some time been debating whether to extend the DRS system or not. They have now, on April 24, decided to extend their DRS system. So they already had a system, but the new system will also include small bottles and more types, and they have set the deposit value for the small bottles to EUR 0.15 and for larger bottles to EUR 0.25. And the targeted return rate of 90% as of January 2022. And we have -- had no new information since April. So this is the latest what we've got from the authorities.And finally, Scotland. Also here, moving ahead, on May 13, the Scottish parliament approved the deposit and return scheme for Scotland Regulations 2020. And they are committed to start the system 1st of July 2022. And that has been passed into law. So on the question whether legislation has altered their view on deposit as a result of the corona, we dare to say they have been staying put. They have continued with a strategic approach. And that's good news for a cleaner world.With that, I will turn to next page and talk about the Food business. And in essence, food is not even less during these times. What happens is that people have less opportunity to eat at restaurants. There would be less -- since there are less people working, the whole catering sector is also reduced, less conferences, less office supplies of food. And of course, a lot of hotels have been shut down. And this whole hotel, restaurant and catering sector is quite significant, especially for the processed food sector. We rely on numbers, official numbers here, telling that in United States, about 50% of the food value generation is coming from the HORECA sector. And in Europe, about 40%. These sectors are down now, and they are significantly affecting the processed food suppliers. They now live under big uncertainty.If we want to make it even more complex, we also have to remember that there is a trade war going on between China and United States. And we have reported before that, that affected U.S. exports from round numbers of $20 billion of food was exported to China 2, 3 years back. And in last year, that was down to estimated $11 billion, so a $9 billion reduction in a rather short period of time. We have no evidence for that, that has been resolved. So that still remains as an uncertainty over this sector. So you have -- for the U.S. food processing industry, you have 2 really big effects affecting them here in a short period of time. The China-U.S. trade war, and you have the -- a big reduction in volumes in the HORECA. Therefore, that sector in U.S. and the HORECA effect impact in Europe has made this sector of processed food really pressed.We are still not seeing evidence for recovery here. So we actually remain cautious also going forward about the processed food sector. It makes in our Food business, about 60%, where 40% is the fresh sector. So it is not insignificant. And we just want to be prudent and say, here, we still see an uncertainty. On the fresh side, however, we have seen very good momentum. Most of the food is sold over retail. There has been an uptick here. We have seen good activity levels in many new capacities being installed in both the berries and the fruit sector, and we have seen strong orders growth in that sector. So to date, good momentum in fresh, low momentum in processed food. Going forward, certain uncertainty around the food sector, given the big impacts of the pandemic. I hope that is clear the way I communicate it here.I'm pleased that we, in TOMRA, have now due to our strategic development established ourselves in both sectors, both in processed and fresh, making us more resilient to such swings. This is the first time we really experienced this, and I'm pleased to see. So that makes our food organization much robuster. I'm also very impressed with how the team has been working here really very active with the customer contacts. We have made more than 1,000 interviews in last month alone in the processed food sector. So we really stay close to the customers and try to serve them so that we are at least here to support them. And that they feel that TOMRA is a good partner when times returns. Because that, I can assure you, this is a temporary situation. It will return, it will recover. Food is such an essential service of society. So a recovery is guaranteed. It's only a matter of how long this challenge will remain for the industry.We have also good evidence that we have maintained our market shares. So we see rather delays in investments. And here, one delay of a couple of months can actually lead to a delay in a year because of the seasonality effect in food. So I hope this is enough to explain it. I do not want to send too strong negative messages, but I also want to be prudent and say, we are a bit cautious about the outlook here.Looking at the right side, here, you have some numbers really supporting what I said. Look at the fresh potato sales over the retail channel. We have strong underlying drivers. We have continued -- waste services need to be performed. We have waste volume increases. We don't generate less waste because we eat at home or consume at home. Probably on the contrary, we will see the numbers later. But at least for us, that has shown to be good momentum in these 2 markets. So in general waste management, household waste, waste management facilities and the sector of plastic upgrading, which is really mostly in the rPET sector where we are turning old bottles into new bottles, very much also connected to our Collection business, just downstream of that path. People today actually are paying significant premium prices rPET over virgin. So that again, shows their commitment to using sustainable packaging material, and that is continuing to be strong.And here, TOMRA definitely has a leading position, and it also supports our business during these times. We have seen less good momentum in the metals side. Metal recycling, where you have metal scrap yards, which are very much competing with virgin metals. For instance, production of cars or construction where we see a strong decline in automobile production, leading to much less demand for the material, and it's got integrated deep learning technologies. And it's got extended resolution for fine sorting. And if you think of that, this is precisely the technology we now need for making circular economy reality. Because when you do circular economy, you really need to close the loop, meaning that you can take recycled content into new products, to building new products. And for doing that, you need high-precision in the material so that you can meet very stringent specifications. And this technology is very critical for meeting exactly that evolution of the technology and economy.On top of that, we had AUTOSORT SPEEDAIR. And you can ask, what is that? Well, actually, what we're doing is that we are -- with this SPEEDAIR in combination on AUTOSORT, we are pressing air on the belt so that light materials, if you think of films like for food packaging films, when the belt moves too quickly, the air will make them start lifting and being unstable on the belt, reducing our ability to increase the speed of the belt. Now by pressing air on top, we are basically, with a fan, pressing these objects to the belt, enabling us to increase the speed significantly. And by that, the capacity. So the capacity of sorters is depending on the width of the belt, the speed of the belt and the density you can have on the objects of the belt. The speed of the belt here can be increased with help of this SPEEDAIR module. So this really a revolution for the industry. And again, a step towards higher productivity of our installations. So really a very exciting innovation by our team here.Then we had the CYBOT. And this is -- you can really call it a robot. It will be used to pick objects at the end of the sorting line. So it's a final quality control. And it's a robot not in a normal sense, because this is a robot with advanced multi-sensor system. So also here using artificial intelligence and sensors, we are able to do things we could not do before. And again, this final product quality control is so critical for enabling of circular economies. You can say, these new launches are very fit for our attempt to be a leader in the circular economy area. So I'm really excited about this. In addition, I tell you, we had 1,000 participants on this launch event and the feedback was overwhelming.But before I talk more, let's turn page, look at the video, and I hope you will like it as much as I try to make you enthusiastic about here.[Presentation]

[Stefan Ranstrand, President & CEO]

So as you could see, this was aimed for customers. But it was a snapshot of the live streaming event. We had just compressed it in short time. But it's truly exciting. And I'm convinced that with these new launches, and our strong team and our deep knowledge and our global presence, we will be able to continue to compete on the top ladder of the recycling industry. And I would not be surprised if we can continue to gain market share in a market where we already have some 50% to 60% market position.Now my last piece in my presentation is about the circular economy. As I said before, we are committed to this. I see TOMRA as an obliged partner for the collaboration we are doing and for the evolution of the society from a linear to circular economy. We are pristine positioned. We have leading position in collection and sorting, and they are essential technologies for making this happen. We have invested significantly in creating and positioning ourselves in this collaborative platform. For instance, we are members of Alliance To End Plastic Waste, we are a strategic partner with Ellen MacArthur Foundation, et cetera, et cetera, and we are working among many, many different dimensions on the technology side, but also in enabling this. Because many big corporations, brand owners today have committed to sustainable packaging and some very high ambitions. But they really need to know how to do it. And here, I think TOMRA and our collaboration partners can play a vital role, and that's our ambition. And with that, of course, we intend to create more demand for our collection and sorting technologies as we want to process much more products in the future.I will not go too deep into that. But the legislation again and the authorities are staying put. They are focusing on this transition. We have the European deal as a part for a resilient recovery after COVID-19, where Ursula von der Leyen really talk about scaling up investment in the fields of sustainable mobility and the circular economy. So it's a commitment for European Union. We see the Green Deal as a green recovery. We are seeing short term now the economical situation creating challenges for many of our customers, especially in the metals and general plastic waste, as I mentioned before. We see the brand commitments. We are in dialogue with many companies, I can assure you that, many leading global brands, we are in close contact and cooperation with. And we see that they are not altering their agenda. They are committed, and they know that they have to do this and that they know that the topic will not disappear because of the pandemic. It will be there, and they just really need to show and demonstrate how they become more sustainable in the way they package and promote their products.And we see that the legislation continues to be a major driver for implementation of circular economy. So this is one of the strategic highlights of TOMRA, as you know from before, and we are totally committed to it. We are continuing to invest in the technology, in the collaboration, in test centers and in different ways to make this happen.And with that, I will actually stop here and pass over to Espen to present the numbers for you. Thank you for listening.

[Espen Gundersen, Deputy CEO & CFO]

Thanks, Stefan. If we move to Slide 10, as always, quick look at currencies. As you know, Norwegian krone depreciated significantly during first quarter of this year and continued to be weak compared to all major currencies, and we are 16% down versus dollars and almost about 13.4% down versus euro, second quarter '20 versus second quarter '19. And this, of course, influence the figures, as we will see.Moving to the next page. You see, as Stefan said, we are in nominal figures, flat versus last year. But it made more sense to look at the currency-adjusted figures on the right columns. And consequently, we are down 11% on the group, 13% down on Collection and on Sorting.Gross margin is down 2 percentage points due to the lower margins in Collection. Operating expenses is down 8% due to strong cost control in the quarter. Travel cost is down for obvious reasons. Salaries is down due to furlough, the German [ kurzarbeit ], some government guidelines and then very limited use of consultants, marketing is cut and so on.At the same time, as Stefan said, we have increased costs on retrenchments related to the circular economy this year, in particular, and the gross savings are consequently are more than 10%. But since the margin is down, the EBITA is also down, Q2 NOK 288 million compared to NOK 352 million last year.Moving to Collection Solutions on Page 12. There are significant different performance between the regions. Europe is not impacted really. Retail is open and people can return. We have service techs living close to the machines. So we usually get access to the machines. And then in total, Europe is actually up at 5% currency adjusted. So we can know material impact in that region. North America, as we touched upon, down 38%, the lock down, particularly in New York, but also in the other states like Michigan and the New England region has been hitting us significantly as in North America, we also have manual machines on throughput leases and near redemption center. So our revenue is a direct consequence of the volumes hitting our infrastructures and also mature recovery part of our business where we take responsibility of the bottles and cans after they go through the machines. It's also new activities linked to return rate. So we have done, and that's the main reason why we see a lower revenue in total for the quarter.Rest of the world is mainly Australia. And as Stefan said, we had a small dip in April, but also early going into May, we're back at the normal levels in Australia. So with lower volumes, the gross margin is also going down, even though we have had significant layoffs for a period in North America. We also have fixed costs -- undercosts due to rent lease, depreciations and so on. So that's the reason why margins temporary has gone down in Collection in this quarter. Operating expenses is down 9% and then EBITA NOK 118 million.Moving to Sorting Solutions at Page 13. Revenues are down 8% currency adjusted. Food was similar or slightly down on top line, but recycling has had a stronger decline. And this is partly because of higher configures in the recycling business stream. In total, this is marginally above the 60% to 65% backlog conversion ratio indicated at the end of first quarter. So overall, we have managed to keep activity up, but it's still hard to get machines out, parts from people across borders. Some of our customers do experience challenges. Therefore, installations has been postponed and some service has been -- not been executed according to original schedule.We are happy to see gross margin maintained at 46%, unchanged despite the more challenging environment when it comes to transportation. That's an increased cost for us. And there are some obstacles in that respect, but we have managed to compensate and still report 46% on the margin side. Operating expenses is almost down 10%. So bottom line, we are actually nominal figure up compared to '19, but slightly below the current business figures, when we get NOK 206 million.Moving to the order situation on Page 14. As we said under the first quarter presentation, we assumed that the second quarter order intake would go down. And it is with 5%. So the pandemic has made it more challenging to meet customers, in particular new customers as travel is restricted and fares are closed. So the intake could have been higher if it wasn't for the COVID situation. As results are down, we only reduced the backlog with -- sorry, asset revenue results are down with 8%. The backlog is only down with 2 percentage points from the end of the first quarter.Therefore, going into the third quarter, we have a higher backlog, or a rather high backlog. And with an estimated conversion ratio of 70%, we see a rather decent quarter coming up. As we also said, this estimated backlog conversion ratio is not a guiding. It is just an indication for those of you who want a more [indiscernible] on a quarterly basis.Moving to Page 15, balance sheet. There is, of course, always currencies in here. And regardless if you look 6 or 12 months back, we had a higher balance sheet because of the depreciation of Norwegian krone. Due to seasonality, it usually makes more sense to go 12 months back. And if you do, the balance sheet has currency invested increased with 1%. So most line items are rather similar when you look what we had -- look against what we had 12 months ago.Working capital is slightly down compared to 12 months ago, despite the inventory, which has increased also currency adjusted. And the inventory increase is because of the current disruptions. We are more cautious. We are building some buffers, and it's not strictly just-in-time, ship-to-line anymore because of the uncertainties. One comment on intangibles also in turbulent times, you have an obligation to revisit your impairment every quarter. And we have done, and we just confirmed that we know from before also that there's significant headroom when it comes to impairment testing on -- [ of our tangible ], meaning the assumed net present value of the cash flow generating from those investments is more than sufficient to cover the burden of these assets. So it's good now.Page 16, solid financial position. Maybe slightly short debt maturity on 2 years on average. So we consequently work on what we'll start after summer to refinance some of the short-term debt. We have learned that access to financing is easy. We are very privileged in that respect. So we see that it will be easy to get sufficient funding at a very attractive rate. So then we are confident that, that would not be a problem at all. And we also feel comfortable with unused committed credit lines of NOK 850 million that we currently have available.Moving to Page 17, and now it's about looking forward. Yes, in Collection. After a setback in second quarter, Collections now, in many ways, is business as usual. RVMs are operational. We get access to the machines, volumes of the redeemed containers going to our infrastructure is stable. So all the exceptions worth mentioning, of course, new lockdowns, new outbreaks of COVID, which is -- we are now controlled. This could have a negative impact. But if not, we see a stable quarter coming up for Collection.Food, we feel the underlying momentum in Food is good. But at the same time, the short-term challenges experienced during the second quarter will also continue into third quarter. There are regional outbreaks of COVID-19, which still makes it harder to meet and interact with customers. As I mentioned, cancelation of fares is a problem building pipeline of new opportunities. Closed work borders make access to seasonal workers harder. And this has and will continue to have a negative impact on the order intake in processed foods.In CRM, as Stefan said, a more majority of the business is going good in the waste recycling. Some segments, which is dependent on commodity prices, has a setback. This, however, accounts for only minor part of the TOMAR recycling mining business. So if you look at Sorting division combined, due to the challenges, the short-term challenges within Food, the order intake, we assume to be down versus third quarter '19. In third quarter '20, it will be down versus third quarter '19. It will probably also be down versus second quarter '20. So this is assumed to have a negative impact on the P&L performance in fourth quarter '20 as we might move into fourth quarter with some of the lower order backlog.On operating expenses, we will [ look at ] the future and we invest to build up our organization to prepare for this. And we're already carrying significant costs related to this. And again, as we said, we want to ring-fence these activities, because they're very important for us for executing upon the future opportunities and our strategy. At the same time, we are more cautious on spending and nonessential costs is kept at a low level. So cost currently is a balancing act, very -- without both push accelerator and the brake at the same time simultaneously. But very round figures, we believe to be flat on operating expenses, third quarter '20 versus third quarter '19, currency adjusted, meaning increased costs in group functions related to circular economy will be compensated with somewhat lower cost in the business units.And as always, currency will play a role, and we will continue to have a tailwind from the Norwegian krone if the regime that we have today will stay out through the third quarter.That concludes the presentation and we'll be opening up questions from the web.

[Stefan Ranstrand, President & CEO]

So [ Georgina ], could I only say a few final words?

[Unknown Executive]

Yes, please.

[Stefan Ranstrand, President & CEO]

So dear all, we might have some customers and employees listening in here. And I just want to express gratitude to you all for your commitment, your dedication and your passion during this period. TOMRA could not be successful without your support. And we are here for you today, we are here for you tomorrow, and we will return to normal conditions, and we are ready for it, as you have seen. And I hope that you see that most of our business is back on a normal situation right now, and we are committed to serve you going forward. And thank you very much all employees for your commitment during this difficult period. Thank you.

[Unknown Executive]

Thank you, Stefan. With that, we can start on the Q&A section. We have a first question from Knut Erik Løvstad from Kepler Cheuvreux. Do you have an indication of the size of the market in Scotland?

[Espen Gundersen, Deputy CEO & CFO]

Okay. Maybe I should take that. Scotland has communicated their targets and the setup is now pretty clear. They have high ambitions, meaning developed formal modern system using evolving use of RVMs, collection targets increasing to 90% by 2025. All material types is included, PET, can, glass, and all drink types is included. And it's a high deposit driving 20p. So we believe that needs to be a good system. And in many ways, looks like the Nordic systems that we know from before. In, say, modern systems using automated solutions, you usually see between 2,000 and 6,000 citizens per machine and with ambitions we see in Scotland, we will record closer to 2,000 and 6,000 is our guess for the time being. And it's 5.5 million citizens in Scotland. So then here you have the figures needed for the estimates based upon what we know today.

[Unknown Executive]

Okay. The next question is from Mikkel Nyholtt from Carnegie. What is TOMRA's stake on chemical recycling with, for example, pyrolysis getting more and more attention as a way or at least an attempt to recycle plastics, could it ever be a possible path for TOMRA to either collaborate with or acquire such companies?

[Stefan Ranstrand, President & CEO]

This will be a Stefan question. So yes, you can say, in general, thank you for the question, Mikkel. In general, you have 2 main ways to do the recycling. You can have a mechanical recycling or you can have chemical recycling. Mechanical recycling is what we see to a largest degree today, and chemical recycling is innovation. Chemical recycling, I hope, will evolve to become good and effective, and it is complementary to the mechanical recycling. It is most likely more intense in capital investments and in use of energy and process equipment. So it will, again, be complementary. We are working with already -- we're in close contact with the main companies doing and aiming for doing chemical recycling. And not the least, thanks to our participation and membership of The Alliance To End Plastic Waste, so you have many of the chemical and chemical recycling companies in there. So we are definitely working on that.For us, as TOMRA, it will not alter anything. Because for recycling, either mechanical or chemical, you will need to collect the material and you will need to sort it. So it's not that you just dump general waste into a bin, and then you make chemical recycling. No, you make a presort of it and then you can use more contaminated plastic, can be through chemical recycling created to much higher degrees, where you could actually not recover it in a mechanical recycling or if you have multi-layer type of material in chemical recycling would hopefully be the answer to that. But for us, it will actually only be more opportunities because it would be more recycling made if chemical recycling is successful, but you will still need a collection technology, you will need a sorting technology and the chemical recycling takes place after that. So either if it's mechanical or chemical it will be both our customers. And I hope I was clear, we are in deep collaboration with these partners, not the least thanks to Alliance to End Plastic Waste.

[Unknown Executive]

The next question. There are actually 2 questions from Daniel Haugland at ABG. The first question. OpEx was lower. Could you comment how this was split between Collection Sorting and what drives it? For example, lower travel expenses. Should one expect OpEx to increase again when revenues come back or is the OpEx reduction more permanent?

[Espen Gundersen, Deputy CEO & CFO]

Yes. I think I saw this question came in, but I think we answered good on it after the question came in. If you go back to what we said both on the units presentation and on the outlook, it was pretty clear there. And you can read the split between out of the figures also. So I don't think we need to elaborate more on that one.

[Unknown Executive]

The second question, also from Daniel Haugland is, order intake lower in sorting. Could you please comment on the decrease and whether it was driven by food or recycling or metal?

[Espen Gundersen, Deputy CEO & CFO]

Yes. I think we -- it's rather evenly split between the units, but those units we mentioned that, that has experienced most challenges due to the situation are also the one that is somewhat lower order intake, we talk processed food and we talk metal recycling in general.

[Unknown Executive]

The next question. Also 2 questions from [ Fredrik Casa ]. Any update on the 2019 dividend payout?

[Espen Gundersen, Deputy CEO & CFO]

Yes. I think what's agreed at the AGM was that the Board looked a proxy to decide dividend. And it's really a question for the Board and not for management. So I assume that they look at the development in general and both for TOMRA and what other companies in similar situation do because many companies has postponed their dividend. So let's wait and see. I know that they monitor the situation closely, and we'll come back to this at a later stage. But there's nothing more to communicate at this stage.

[Unknown Executive]

And a follow-up question, any news on Canada and New Zealand? Also from [ Fredrik Casa ].

[Espen Gundersen, Deputy CEO & CFO]

Canada is territories. And they, like U.S. they do this territory to territory and order state by state. So there are some news from British Columbia that they want to modernize their system. And the same is going for Québec, where they also want -- where in January, government announced a plan to modernize and expand, but the details in these systems or initiatives is not known, but that's worth mentioning from Canada.In New Zealand, the government have sent signals that they want to introduce the deposit by 2020, but they're working on the SKU data and what that might lead to. It's too early to say. But yes, there is activities in New Zealand, where deposit is planned, and they're looking into this, no doubt about that.

[Unknown Executive]

The next question is from Giacomo Fumagalli. Could you please clarify what you mean by slowdown of growth of ramp up expenses in Collection Solutions. Was the original forecast plus NOK 100 million? Where do you go from there? Will the saved cost be pushed out to 2021?

[Espen Gundersen, Deputy CEO & CFO]

Round figures, we used NOK 100 million additional OpEx in 2019 related to ramp-up in Collection. And currently, we have the same run rate on, say, ramp-up related costs, which is future-oriented, all what we have done in the kind of a steady state situation. So we will not add significant on top of this now. We will maintain this cost, which is very much related to us being present in markets where deposit is about the materials. But currently, it doesn't seem that we will add additional cost on top of the current run rate. On circular economy, we continue to invest year-over-year, and we will, for that reason, continue to see the good tractions. We only report higher cost in both third and fourth quarter compared to the same quarter last year, and this is stemming from a circular economy.

[Unknown Executive]

Thank you, Espen. We have no further questions. So I think we conclude the Q&A section here. Thank you for listening in, and I wish you a nice summer.