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Nexam Chemical Holding AB
STO:NEXAM

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Nexam Chemical Holding AB
STO:NEXAM
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Price: 3.99 SEK -1.72%
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Earnings Call Analysis

Summary
Q2-2024

Nexam Chemical Reports Strong Recovery and Profitability Outlook

In its second quarter, Nexam Chemical achieved significant milestones, reporting an EBITDA of SEK 2.62 million, the highest in its history, and a gross margin increase to 46%. Sales rose to SEK 53.6 million, returning to pre-2023 levels. With an ongoing focus on clean tech and recycling, revenues in segments like high-temperature applications are expanding, supported by new orders and steady volume increases. Management projects continued growth, aiming to enhance profitability further while maintaining a cash positive status thanks to implemented cost-saving measures.

Earnings Call Transcript

Earnings Call Transcript
2024-Q2

from 0
M
Mattias Vahlne

Clean tech Company Nexam have reported for the second quarter of 2024. Joining me in the virtual studio today, I have CEO, Ronnie Tornqvist; and CFO, Marcus Nyberg. Please welcome, gentlemen.

R
Ronnie Tornqvist
executive

Thank you, Mattias.

M
Mattias Vahlne

So Ronnie, before you present, how would you describe the quarter in brief?

R
Ronnie Tornqvist
executive

It's been a very intensive quarter, a lot of activities everywhere. It has been some difficulties, but mainly quite a positive energy and drive in the company. And we feel that we are moving forward according to the plan that we set out a year ago.

M
Mattias Vahlne

Okay. Thank you. So I'll be back for the Q&A. So please go ahead with your presentation.

R
Ronnie Tornqvist
executive

All right. Thank you, Mattias. Okay. Welcome to the presentation of the second quarter for Nexam Chemical. As Mattias mentioned, it's me Ronnie, CEO; and my colleague, Marcus. First off -- next slide, please. Want to start off with mentioning that this quarter was quite a significant milestone for us in our journey to become a growing and profitable company. We are back to the volumes for the second quarter in a row on the 2022 volume levels that we had, quite a drop in '23. But now we're back on track with the volumes.

We have reached the highest EBITDA level that we have ever had in the company, and we're still not satisfied, of course. I'll come back to that a little bit later. So Nexam Chemical is a small innovative clean tech company with really big visions. We produce additives for plastics to make plastics better and more sustainable.

We're very dedicated to a more circular use of plastic materials. And we have products, patents, core competencies that can really make a difference to our customers.

Next slide, please. Based on the same or similar ideas around chemical modification of plastics and reactive chemistry and other additives, we have a product portfolio which is in its chemical structure, fairly similar, but finds very broad application areas.

So we're working in segments such as lightweighting, miniaturization, technical performance, products and so on, that are then better because of the additives that we do. On the other end of, let's say, advanced applications. We make plastic materials that are extremely temperature resistant, for example, used in jet engines for airplanes.

And then we have 2 areas that are driven by very strong global megatrends. One is activities in renewable energy and the other one is a big focus on waste recycling, upgrading of recycled materials, et cetera. So that's our range of products.

Next slide, please. When I started as CEO about 1 year ago, we set out a new strategy, a new direction for the company. And what we came to was that we want to focus on building global business around making plastics better and more sustainable.

We want to produce additives that enhance performance of plastics, especially for circular use and that bring additional value for our customers. We want to deliver a solid profit and growth over the years to come. So a long-range initiative, you could say. And we become -- we wanted to become and have become much, much more market-oriented, thoroughly understanding our various markets.

And together with our core competencies, we laid a foundation for this growth and global success. So that was the foundations going into this a year ago. We have now done an accelerated cost savings program that has been implemented over that year and is in full effect in the second quarter.

We have done a sharpened commercial strategy and a very strong market orientation of the company, and we have reached the ability to fund our operations with our own generated cash.

Next slide, please. The sharpened commercial strategy has been directed towards how to, so to say, dive into each of our market areas and improve our products and offering in order to be a stronger partner for our customers in each of these areas.

The areas are lightweighting where we work a lot with foam materials from plastics. The biggest running market on this is PET foams that are used mainly in wind energy, but also many other applications such as transportation and marine technologies.

We work in the area of high temperature. It's a classical Nexam set of patents and materials that were developed quite a long time ago where we have been able to reinforce our position in creating composite materials that are extremely temperature resistant. The highest temperature systems that you can reach with polymer materials. And the same type of technology is also used as varnish in microprocessors, where we have had also some success recently.

We grew our activities, working with additives for color, durability and other properties of plastics under aesthetics. So we're working on the looks of plastics, which is also tightly related to our activities in the field of recycling, where we have a set of unique chemicals that can improve and upscale recycled plastics and that can also be combined then with the product portfolio and aesthetics to create the novel solutions.

Next slide, please. In the wind PET foams that we make additives for is used to a large extent in the wind energy market. It's really superb material to use as a core material inside the wind blades. However, it's challenging to make this. You have to have an optimum material structure of the foam to get the right properties. And there is an increasing willingness in this business or this business segment to go towards much more recycled raw materials.

And our additives provide opportunity to make much better foams than you would do otherwise. There is an underlying growth in the wind energy market. It's predicted to be almost 50% to 100% higher in 10 years' time. We do participate very actively in this market, developing new products, new additives, new combinations to make the foams even better and more cost efficient. And we see that this segment will grow.

Right now, we're in a situation where the PET foam market is a little bit weak for some of the manufacturers, but we see that on the longer term, this market will be very important for us also in the future.

Next slide, please. In the area of high temperature, you can say that the additives from, Nexam increases the service temperature by 50 degrees C or something like that, which enables to replace metal components in really high temperature environments such as jet engines, providing a lot of weight saving.

And weight saving is the one key technological factor to reduce fuel consumptions in jet engines or increased performance. So a rule of thumb is that if you reduce the weight by about 1%, you reduce fuel consumption by 0.7% to 5% in the moving parts in the jet engines.

There are also numerous other application areas in high temperature field. We are starting to get into more electrification. As electrification of society increases, the performance of those systems are continuously developed, and that almost always means higher temperatures. So our solutions for high temperature, varnishes and so on become more and more relevant for that industry.

Next slide, please. In the area of aesthetics, which is basically then the product segment that we refer to as Performance Masterbatch, which is then colors and other additives for plastic producers. We are market leaders where we are present, which is in the Nordic countries and Eastern Europe.

We are quite unique in that we offer a lot of advanced solutions to bring in recycled materials into technically performant applications. Here is an example of a picture here of its child seat and some automotive components and so on. So we are contributing on the forefront, together with our customers to bring in more recycled materials also into more technical advanced applications.

And this is thanks to our decades of color matching experience, finding the right colors and also the right recipes otherwise in the plastics combined with our patented additives for recycling.

Next slide, please. In the area of recycling, we have put a lot of energy into this over the last couple of years. It's almost like an internal startup, you can say. We are seeing a few customers that buy regularly for their production needs, and we have a handful or a bit more of new customers that are in the stage going from validation testing into preproduction and starting up the use of our additives.

And in almost every case, it's driven both by, let's say, environmental aspects that you want to have a higher content of recycled material or you want to make a product which is more advanced with recycled material. But almost always also kind of an economical advantage for the customer that the total cost for the application goes down.

I will go in a little bit more on the recycling market and how it looks like on the next slide. If you change, please. Thank you. The global plastics production is -- one back, please- approximately 400 million tons of plastic materials per year. About 10% of this is recycled or made from bioplastics and the rest is novel plastic materials.

In order for -- the whole industry has a huge ambition to increase the amount of recycled material and biomaterials. Legislation is pushing this but also a lot of initiatives from end customers and would say, other actors in society. And in order to really meet this challenge and take a bigger portion of this 400 million tons of material into more -- higher recycled fraction, they must become better. The recycled materials and the bioplastic have to become more technically advanced and be able to meet the properties of, you could say, new materials.

If we look at the next slide, please. Next -- yes, that one. We have patented solutions for polyolefins and PET. They 2 material classes. Polyolefins are materials such as in ice cream packages or plastic bags; and PET is like PET drinking bottle, for example, just to understand what it is. That's approximately 50% of all plastic materials that are produced.

So we are targeting with our technologies, the huge large material classes here. And we think that's the right way to go forward. So if we could move to the next slide, please.

Now coming to more of, let's say, quarterly reporting on the -- how it's been going. So financially, our sales amounted to SEK 53.6 million. It's much more than the poor second quarter of last year, but also a slight growth compared to last quarters.

Both -- all segments in the company are actually growing. The gross margin has increased a lot. We are on a long-term trend here, 6 quarters in a row with increasing gross margin. It was 46% this quarter and 43% a year ago. The EBITDA was SEK 2.62 million, and this was the highest number that we have achieved so far in the company history, and we're quite proud and happy about that, but we're not satisfied because we want it to be much higher than this.

The savings program that we have been talking about for the last year has been totally -- completely implemented and is in full effect already now in the second quarter that just passed. So that one is, so to say, done now.

The cash flow from the operations was SEK 4.47 million, and it is an indicator that our plan to generate cash for our operations actually work. And in addition to this, we have a credit facility, which is unutilized.

And a little bit on what has happened on the market side. During the quarter, we had 2 significant orders that direct us to the future in high temperature field. One was together with Sumitomo Bakelite in Japan that currently buy at a rate of about SEK 2 million per year.

They have now increased their usage of our additives into microelectronics varnishes and we go up to a pace of about SEK 6 million per year. And we also have our first order for high-temperature varnishes for electric motor applications, which can become quite significant in next year and the years after.

In recycling, we have a really increasing traction with many customers. It's still fairly small sales volume this quarter, but it's growing all the time, and we have quite many customers right now that are moving from preproduction, validation testing into early-stage serial production. So we expect much more from this in the months to come. But to give you a deeper view on the numbers, I will let Marcus take over the position here.

M
Marcus Nyberg
executive

Thanks, Ronnie. I will try to get some more details regarding the numbers. First of all, I'd like to add is when it comes to the cash flow, it has really been a focus area for us during last year to reduce working capital, to put all the savings in place and all kind of things.

We are actually cash flow positive for the first 6 months, meaning that we've really been focusing on stabilizing our financial situation. We're really pleased with the result and with all the different activities that every employee really has put in place. So that's something that is really nice for beginning of this year.

We would like to share to get some more details regarding the sales. And as Ronnie mentioned before, we're now back on the levers that we had 2 years ago. And we can also see that our -- the red here in the presentation is the Masterbatch like the ReColor and a functional additives like a little bit not so complicated additives maybe. They are picking up again, and that means more or less that the industry is picking up together with our -- all the work that our sales force put into this has really been -- good to see the result in this. And so that's really nice. And then we also see the gray areas what we call Performance Chemical. It is also now coming back.

A year ago, we had some -- we were a bit struggling last spring, but now we see that it is picking up. And also that -- and once again, this is not by coincidence. That is all the work that the sales force has really put into this and our development team and so on. So -- and we see this. So it's rewarding.

Please, the next slide. And as Ronnie mentioned, we have been able to increase our margin for I think it's 6 quarters now in a row. I know that the question is, of course, will you continue like this. And of course, it's getting harder for every single quarter to go even further, But at least stay on its level.

Go to next slide. Here is something that we normally don't show. We haven't at least showed it before, it's a little bit the split of our sales. A few things to add here is that the lightweight, that is the smallest PET foam.

If you look at this 2 years ago, then we only had 3 customers that were -- that are placing orders to us on a regular basis. Now 2 years later, we actually have 9. And then, of course, the question can be, why hasn't this share increased? And this is due to the wind industry that is actually dropped during these 2 years.

We can also see that our team in Eastern Europe, mainly in outside of Budapest are doing a great job when it comes to our Color Masterbatch. And we can also see that we are growing our high performance. That is mainly what you -- what we were presenting a year ago for this big order that end up in the [ jet engines ].

And we can see that we actually give more customers even in this area. And then we have recycling. We have invested quite a lot during the last 3 or 4 years in recycling. And now we also see that it started to pick up. We have a lot of tests since our is a lot of different collaboration with several potential customers. But now we also see that it starts to generate revenue.

Okay, next slide. Here, you have lots of details. And I think that the message here is mostly that we have been stabilizing our cash situation and that we also have another SEK 20 million in credit facility. That is the main point here. And also that we have -- we can also see that on the levels that we are for the moment, we are actually making some money on EBITDA level -- we've not done bottom line yet, but that's our plan to get there close.

Okay. Can we move on to next slide. Here is something that we internally see is really, really interesting. That is where we that is -- we really had a potential to more or less double our business without any additional investments or any significant increases in overhead. And so we -- and this is -- this is something that we have been working on for the last 2 or 3 years. We've invested in new equipment. We have invested in our organization and what kind of things. And we actually also see this in a single month.

In June, we actually saw this. So that means that we are -- we know that it's actually working. That we can more than double our volume without additional costs. And that's, of course, something that's -- that we are really proud of. And it's also a very good sign for the future. We can also see that roughly 90% of our sales is from recurring customers and orders. Okay. Go to the next slide. And then I hand over to Ronnie again.

R
Ronnie Tornqvist
executive

Okay. we see that the wind is continuing to turn. We're in the middle of a clear turnaround, and we have a really positive outlook for the second half of this year and next year. So growing obviously from 2023, which was a bit of a short [ year ] for us. And also going forward, we intend to continue to grow. But this time with increasing profitability, making use of what Marcus said that we have a functioning organization and capacities to sell far more than we are doing today.

The cost-saving programs, we're quite happy and proud about that. We announced it and we did exactly that and even a little bit more. And it's given us this lower breakeven where we can also have a poor quarter and still be okay with our cash flow. The internal focus on market orientation is really changing the culture of the company, I would say, more proud employees and happier customers.

It resonates really well with the customers. We have seen a substantial market recovery in the wind industry, which is still a little bit weak for us. But in terms of orders on, so to say, wind mills and wind parks, et cetera, has been picking up. And eventually, in the not too far future, we should also see increases in our sales in this area because our situation in that market is much, much better today than it was a couple of years ago with many more customers and very many more, let's say, customized additive solutions for these various customers.

The product innovation and recycling focus in the Masterbatch business has been really fruitful, I would say. We see a lot of strong positive response from our customers. It's quite a competitive market, but we are really good. And one happy thing that happened this quarter was that Hungary had all-time high sales in June.

We have good order levels coming into the next year in the high temperature segment and continue to develop that. We have done one recruitment. It's a third business manager. We have 2 business managers already. The third one has been hired. He will focus a lot on Central Europe and recycling. That's 2 areas where we both feel that we have so much going on in the market that we need to respond to it.

And then we see now finally some growing customers and more customers that are moving in from these extremely long validation testing, development phases into more preproduction and closing up into more production runs in the year to come.

May be one thing to add on that, it's probably been visible in our various communications also is that this is a very international business. We're selling to various countries we are selling to and are working on these kind of industrialization projects in all parts of the world, it is Australia, several countries in India, including -- in Asia, India and other countries. It's in South, Central America, it's in North America, and it's all over Europe. So it's a very international business. So this is moving forward and we're happy to see it. Next slide, please.

So we feel that we have a strong case here. We have good growth in 2 of our -- in the coming years in 2 of our main segments on a global base, but we're also working, say, smart and customer-oriented in all areas. So I think we have a huge opportunity for Nexam in the months and years to come.

Okay. Next slide, please. So a summary of why should one invest in Nexam Chemical. First of all, because we have very high ambitions and plans for all financial KPIs for this year and next year. We're in a stable situation that we can fund our own operations with our own money. We have proven over 6 consecutive quarters that we can improve our efficiency and thereby the gross margin and we should be able to keep at least this level for the coming quarters.

We have a growing portfolio of patented clean tech solutions that are driven then by these mega trends. There's actually a lot of R&D work for the future ongoing all the time. It's always the case with Nexam, but it's even more focused on, let's say, business opportunity and there's a lot of things coming in the pipeline.

We have done our major investments in production capacity. We can grow with 100% without really investing anything and with very limited additional overhead costs. And the organization is really -- it's a bit leaner now than it was a year ago, but we -- it's well functioning. It's a well-functioning machinery, you can say, in the company. And we have a business model with future potential then for potential external growth and similar initiatives, of course.

Okay. Next slide, please. That was it for us today. I hope you got a view of what we are up to. You can feel that there is a lot of positive energy in the company. And we really believe in this that we can make a difference for the customers and for the planet. Thank you.

M
Mattias Vahlne

Thank you so much, Ronnie and Marcus, and we will move on to the Q&A, and I am happy to present equity analyst, Henric Hintze from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead with your questions.

H
Henric Hintze
analyst

Thank you. So this was the first quarter where we saw the full impact of the cost savings program, and you've now almost reached breakeven level on EBIT. So looking forward, could you just expand a bit on what is needed to now bring you to real profitability now that the cost savings program is done basically?

R
Ronnie Tornqvist
executive

Yes. The road to get there is by increasing sales volumes and maintaining this more lean cost structure in doing so. And I feel that it's exactly what we're doing. We've been doing all the time right working on this. It's a little -- it's been a bit of a slow market this last year, but we managed to grow anyways, and we continue to do that. Just -- and we're not expecting a free ride from general economy recovery. We're really ready to fight for it to get out there into our markets. So initiatives on the sales side is the key for us and maintaining current business by being -- come with smart solution, being cost efficient and an innovative partner to our customers and so on. So that's how we see that we can do it.

With the current cost structure, we need a few more millions per quarter, and then we will be breakeven at -- also on the EBIT level. And we want to go way beyond that, of course.

H
Henric Hintze
analyst

Of course. So maybe digging into that a bit more, looking at the coming 12 months or so, do you expect new customer contracts or underlying end market improvements to be the main driver of sales growth? Or will it be an even mix?

R
Ronnie Tornqvist
executive

I think we are only counting on, let's say, new business, new additional products, customers and projects. That's where we see the driver. The underlying markets, yes, that would be nice. And lucky if that also comes with us. We see some tendencies that the general technical industry in Europe is coming back a little bit. That's definitely visible in the Masterbatch. We were complaining a year ago that the Masterbatch customers were ordering the same amount of orders, but at lower volumes in each order and they are now coming back a little bit into higher volumes. Maybe not all the way back, but it's still a little bit positive. So that would help, but we're not counting on it.

H
Henric Hintze
analyst

Yes. So if we look at the new customer contracts and things like that, do you expect that to mostly come from entirely new customers or that your current business with your current customers keeps growing?

R
Ronnie Tornqvist
executive

Both, I would say, because we do have a lot of activities with our customers. It's often driven by, let's say, their cost structure to find additives that enable them to use lower-cost raw materials and so on. And there is an increasing initiative at our current cost base to try to introduce much more recycled materials, and they know that we can help with that. And so there's a lot of activities with existing customers, but there are also new customers, especially in the recycling field, there's a lot of new customers that we need to work together with.

H
Henric Hintze
analyst

Okay. So one specific example is the new high-temperature customer that you announced in the quarter within wire coating, which is a bit of a new application for you, I believe. The initial order was quite small, but you highlighted that there was a relatively short development timeline here. Could you maybe just comment a bit on the potential here and also more generally on how your new customer pipeline is looking?

R
Ronnie Tornqvist
executive

Yes. Okay. That particular case, it's an automotive application or automotive related application in the background on this one. And the production start is set out to be in, I believe, first or second quarter next year. I don't remember the exact date. And the business potential for us is quite significant in several tens of tons, so to say, on a yearly basis, that one. There are other similar wire coating enamels that are being developed. And as I mentioned, I think there is a strong trend in electrification that the temperatures tend to go up with higher powers. So -- and more compact designs.

So that leads to higher temperatures.

So the interest -- general interest in the electronics market or electricity market is growing for, let's say, higher temperature solutions. So we believe that in a vague manner, that there is a lot of potential there. And we have this one concrete example there. I think it's similar. The volume increase with Sumitomo in Japan is also driven by higher temperatures in electronics. So they need to cover more microprocessors with the highest temperature material. So -- and yes, our customer pipeline, you can say is -- yes, it's a mix of 50-50, you could say, by working together with the existing customers and develop the business there and be a good partner for them and come with new solutions, 50% trying to reach out to new customers that should have a good business case by working together with us. And we are doing this, and we have a sales force, of course, that is employed. And business managers for the specialty fields and the salespeople out in the markets in Eastern Europe and the Nordics. And we have a lot of agents and distributors around the world to work on these projects.

H
Henric Hintze
analyst

Yes. And since you highlighted the relatively short development time line on this specific order, maybe you could just give a general comment on how the development time lines usually look like.

R
Ronnie Tornqvist
executive

Yes. It's very different, right? If you look at the case of Sumitomo, I think we've been working together for generations, working on this. And now eventually, we're coming into a significant business on that. So it took you 10 or 15 years. And we have other initiatives we've been speaking about, we are participant in the TAPE Ex project for use of high-temperature composite into civil aviation. That is also something that will take a decade or something before it really blooms up into large volumes.

So that is on the one extreme. And then on other extremes, it could be something like almost functioning, but a little bit malfunctioning current industrial process that you go in and solve it and then you sell your product in a few weeks' time because you fix something that didn't work. And you have everything between it.

And I say that this -- the wire enamel was kind of already developed before we came into it, right? And then they need -- they saw the need for an additive, which we had in this material mix, and then we came in fairly rapidly on that. If we would have developed that from the start, it would have been 4-5 years and not 1 year.

H
Henric Hintze
analyst

All right. Thank you very much for that. That's all for me.

R
Ronnie Tornqvist
executive

All right. Thank you, Henric.

M
Mattias Vahlne

Thank you Henric Hintze of ABG Sundal Collier. And if we move on and I have a few questions regarding PET, you mentioned that your technology have refined the additive and making it better and more cost efficient. Could you elaborate a bit on this?

R
Ronnie Tornqvist
executive

Yes. For the -- PET foam market is developing. It's not only wind energy, right? It's also transportation, marine and so on. And every time we go into a new technology area, other properties might become important and that needs to then be reflected by product development, changing the foam in this case, for bigger or smaller cells or all sizes and so on. So let's say, to fine-tune, we really have found several ways to fine-tune the material in order to respond to various things like this. It's also -- when we work with the recycling of PET, we have, you could say, a standard solution, but we see that that's often not enough because then you have problems with acidity levels, for example, or something like this, which is a problem in recycling and we have to complement our, let's say, additive to become more complex and better functioning. That's more or less what I meant with that.

M
Mattias Vahlne

Okay. And within the PET foam, where do you see other large-scale usage for that product?

R
Ronnie Tornqvist
executive

Yes. Looking at what our customers are up to in that business, there is a lot of interest for construction material, for example, in transportation to have it as an isolated material in cooler trucks, for example, because there is a lower cost material use today, most of the time, polyurethane, but it has a lot of technical drawbacks with water absorption and similar, which can then resolve with PET foam. But then the PET foam needs to be developed so that it can match into those applications, you could say, that's why we try to be a partner with our customers to be able to develop the foams to meet new markets.

M
Mattias Vahlne

Okay. Yes. And if we move to the Sumitomo Bakelite deal. It's, of course, a good deal in itself and with that client, but does it also open doors for similar clients?

R
Ronnie Tornqvist
executive

You can say our end cappers for polyimides, which is this product group are quite well known by everybody that are active in that field. So when they see a need for that type of modification, they will know that they need to call us. We do have ongoing contracts with them. But no one is buying material for $1,000 per kilo. If they're not -- if they don't have a significant economic advantage, so to say. It is a high-tech material and a niche material that is used only when it's really necessary. But I think it's a small world with a few customers globally. And they see this maybe it is likely that when Sumitomo is so successful with their product, that their competitors will also try to find something similar, of course, and that if the application of, let's say, very high temperature varnishes becomes more and more necessary because of increasing temperature in electronics, we have a good situation for it.

M
Mattias Vahlne

Okay. And if we move to Masterbatch and reactive recycling, you have previously mentioned that you're having around 50 ongoing projects with the possibility of commercialization. How would you describe the situation here? Are there many that are getting closer?

R
Ronnie Tornqvist
executive

Yes. It's -- there is a fair amount of such projects that are getting closer and in pre-industrialization and so on, things that we have been working for 1 year, 2 years or 3 years are now closer to getting into use. So indeed, and there is a lot of projects. Some are small and some are big and there are -- but we maintain our intention that we said a year ago already.

We do R&D on things that have a reasonable time to market. And if the time to market is much longer than a few years, then we need to have the R&D efforts financed somehow. We have -- we received an order yesterday, actually for a development project in the area of recycling, but it's a long-term project. So it's -- for us, it's engineering sales this year.

M
Mattias Vahlne

Okay. Thank you. And if I were to put myself, step out of my professional role and more as my private person, I would like to ask, when according to you, can we expect authorities and governments to really regulate and demand recycling of plastic in a way that actually would make a difference for the environment?

R
Ronnie Tornqvist
executive

Great question, Mattias. I often think about that when I'm not at the job. And it's for sure that the governmental regulations and so on are really strong drivers in this. There is obviously a question of practicality in that, that you cannot force legislation on something that there is no industrial solution and capacity for.

I feel that in many parts of the world, not everywhere, but in many parts of the world, for example, in the EU here at home, so to say, but also a lot in regions in Asia and the Americas, there is a lot of senseful first steps and putting into place of structure. We have the PPWR, I think, is the name of a lower cluster that is regulating recycled materials into packaging and so on. We see that it's moving in the right direction. A few years ago, only we were sorting plastics in our homes in Sweden, and they were all incinerated. Now they're all recycled, right? So it's going in the right direction, but it's going too slow to my taste. But I think maybe I hope 5, 10 years, I hope.

M
Mattias Vahlne

I'll join you in that hope. That was all for me for today. So what remains to me is to say thank you to the viewers that have been watching and to you, Ronnie, and Marcus. Thank you.

R
Ronnie Tornqvist
executive

Thank you, too, and thank you all the viewers.

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