AMAG Austria Metall AG

VSE:AMAG

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Operator]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the AMAG Austria Metall AG Q1 results 2024. My name is Francis, the Chorus Call operator. [Operator Instructions] and the conference will be recorded. [Operator Instructions]The forecasts, budgets and forward-looking assessments and statements contained in this presentation were compiled on the basis of all information available to AMAG as of April 12, 2024. In the event that the assumptions underlying these forecasts prove to be incorrect, targets are missed or risks materialize, actual results may depart from those currently anticipated. We are not obligated to revise these forecasts in the light of new information or future events.The presentation was prepared and the data contained in it verified with greatest possible care. Nevertheless, misprints as well as rounding and transmission errors cannot be entirely ruled out. In particular, AMAG and its representatives do not assume any responsibility for the completeness and correctness of information included in this presentation. This presentation is also available in German. In cases of doubt, the German-language version takes precedence.This presentation does not comprise either a recommendation or a solicitation to either purchase or sell securities of AMAG.At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the conference over to Christoph Gabriel, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

[Christoph Gabriel, executive]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to our conference call for the first quarter of 2024 of AMAG. Today, Helmut Kaufmann, CEO of AMAG; and Claudia Trampitsch, CFO, will present the development and results of the first 3 months of this year. As usual, the presentation as well as the press release has been published this morning on our home page under Investor Relations. After the presentation, you'll have the opportunity to ask questions during the Q&A session. Helmut, please start the presentation. Thank you.

[Helmut Kaufmann, executive]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, also from my side. And let me start this presentation with Slide #3, the highlights. Our quarterly performance was influenced mostly by lower aluminium prices and lower shipment volumes, which come from weaker order intake in the fourth quarter of last year. And due to our lead time is still influences the first quarter of '24.The revenue summed up to EUR 335.8 million and is therefore below last year's level, which was in the range of EUR 404 million. EBITDA came out with EUR 42.4 million, which I think is worth mentioning is above Q4 of 2023. So it's an improvement compared to the last quarter. But in comparison with the year before, first quarter '23 is of course quite a bit lower. This summed up EUR 60.8 million.Net income after tax was at EUR 13.3 million compared to EUR 26.8 million last year. Cash flow from operating activities is at about the same level of last year's in EUR 35.6 million. More details about these financial results will be given by my colleague Claudia Trampitsch very soon. And let us have a brief outlook for '24 results that when we consider similar condition, no real drawback, a significant drawback anymore in the economic situation, then we expect the full year EBITDA in the range of EUR 150 million to EUR 180 million.Let us look at the market and shipments indices. The current situation is pretty well reflected in the purchasing manager's index that is shown on Slide #5. And unfortunately, you can see that the Eurozone is red and our main market -- well, one very important market, Germany, is stark red. But there are some other areas, especially outside Europe, the United States, but also in Asia, slight improvements are shown.And there already some green color is visible. And while the general -- the world economy is improving, the forecast for GDP in Germany and Austria is still pretty weak, actually reduced. And at the moment, we expect to see only 0.2% growth for 2024.When you look at Slide #6, the shipments in bonds for all of our products in Q1 2024 was at a level of 104,000 tonnes, 5.6% below last year's result. And I look at the segments in more detail, shows that metal plus 400 tonnes is pretty much unchanged. This is a very stable production and stable consumption.So our Alouette smelter in Canada [indiscernible]. AMAG Casting, this is where we produce the recycling foundry alloys, is slightly below previous year's level, but the general situation in this area is still stable and positive. AMAG Rolling, however, is 4,700 tonnes below last year's level. And as already mentioned, this reflects mostly the situation of the Q4 in 2023.And when we look at a little bit more detail to the different product areas, then we can say that industrial applications as well as the sports sector still not back to where they were before. Also packaging industry is below last year's shipments.However, and this is positive for AMAG transportation industry, is stable and still looks good. And as you know, aircraft business is still on the recovery path after COVID.This is reflected in the percentage of the total tonnage shown on Page #7 or Slide #7. Here, you can see that, for example, the aircraft business increased by 2% to 15%, automotive stable at about 20% and other transport 5%. So this means roughly speaking, 40% go into the transportation industry. Partly, of course, also heat exchanger business, but this goes also in several other applications.So it's a little bit difficult to say how many percent of this go into transportation. Sports and architecture sum up to 6%. But as you can see, this is below last year's volume and also packaging is below.Let us have a look at Slide #8. Looking at our current order backlog. And this is a positive signal because we are back to the intended levels. This means somewhere in the range of 60,000 tonnes is kind of a target corridor. And as you can see here, over the last couple of quarters starting from Q3, Q4, Q1 that were up Q1 this year as the order backlog improved.As we can observe at the moment, the order development for industrial applications improves outside of Europe. So we can see improvement in the United States, also in Asia. But generally, the volume in Asia is lower. However, as we already said, especially in Germany, it's still a weak market for this type of product. And in sports sectors, we're told by our customers that they are still in the destocking phase. They have so much material on stock after COVID. And this has not yet been reduced so that they reorder.And with this information, I would like to hand over to Claudia Trampitsch for more details on the financial results.

[Claudia Trampitsch, executive]

Good morning from my side as well. So first of all, I want to give some information on the 2 most important market prices we are influenced by. So first of all, the aluminium price trend lower in a quarter-on-quarter comparison. So compared to average aluminium price at the quarter 2023 to quarter 1 2024 is about USD 190 below. So that will help influence our revenues as well as our working capital. Further, we see -- we saw a decrease also in the [ Midwest ] premiums, which was also in a quarter-to-quarter comparison lower.At the graph, you can see that in April 2024, there was an increase in aluminium price, but this was not -- did not influence the first quarter 2024. A opposite trend we could see in the alumina price, which has a significant increase last year, so that the relation between the aluminium price and the alumina price increases and that influences the margin of the Metal segment.So when we now look at the AMAG Group revenue, you can see that the group revenue for Q1 2024, as mentioned before, with the EUR 335 million is about 17% less than in Q1 2023. So where does that come from? It's the major impact in this is the -- apart from the aluminium price, we see reductions because of price and premiums influence and the volume and mix influence.As we heard before, on the developments in the Rolling segment, we see that the major effects are there as we have lower volumes. It's around 7,000 tonnes lower -- 5,000 tonnes, sorry, lower in the Rolling segment than in the first quarter 2023, but also because of the mix, a lower price and premium.When we move over to the EBITDA, we also see that the EBITDA of 2024 is around 30% lower than the EBITDA quarter 1 2023. And that has all its results, as we said before, it's not only the influences on the revenue I mentioned before, but also we saw influences on -- yes, price and premium, aluminium price.And we saw some positive effects on prices of raw materials, where we also saw the influence on the aluminium price. But in the other side, the influence of the alumina price. But as a positive side, we have less energy costs, which you also can see in the graph there we have a positive impact of EUR 20 million, resulting out of raw material and energy costs compared to the first quarter 2024.Perhaps we have a short look at it divided in the divisions because there are different effects in all these divisions. In the Metal division, I think I already mentioned the main impacts are due to lower aluminium prices and premiums and higher alumina costs. In the Casting segment, we saw a stable order intake in the high productivity, but there is also a lower price level and higher structural costs. So in total, there was also a reduction compared to the first quarter 2023.And the main deviation was in the Rolling division. And for comparison, I also want to mention that in the first quarter 2023, we had a positive impact due to evaluation effects out of EUR 9 million and that also increases this picture of a deviation or a lower EBITDA in the segment of EUR 17.5 million, adding to the information we gave you before on lower shipments. Yes. And the Service division, I think it's this EUR 2 million is due to adjustments in transfer prices.Then when we move on to the net income after taxes, which is at EUR 13.3 million ending Q1 2024, which is around half of the net income last year. The only thing that is now to mention additionally to what we -- what I already told you before is that there is a lower income taxes because of the lower EBITDA, but at the end, it's all more or less influenced by our operating results. So there's nothing additional to mention for the income after tax.When we now move on to our ESG figures, which we also want to report quarterly to give you some indication how these are developing over the time, we can tell you that we have -- the scrap utilization rate, which is constantly on a high level, even -- well, it's influenced by the product mix, but we are able to keep it on that high level and even increase it this quarter compared to last year's quarter.And also for a specific CO2 emission, which is also always influenced by the production mix, we also saw an increase -- a decrease, sorry, it's a better figure, but it's a decrease in emissions and all the other figures are more or less the same or have to develop over the year.Now I want to give you some information on the AMAG Group cash flow. As you know, our cash flow figures are always influenced by the aluminium price, which influenced our working capital. And of course, operating results and in this we can tell you that the operating cash flow in Q1 2024 was more or less the same amount as last year that comes because of last year was influenced by increased -- negatively impacted by increased working capital.And this year, we have a positive effect of our working capital measurements. The investing activities in this year so far were about EUR 26 million compared to EUR 23.5 million last quarter and that all sums up to a free cash flow of EUR 9.6 million for the first quarter 2024.When we look at our balance sheet figures, we can see that the key figures remain at the stable level or even increases or show a better result. The net financial debt decreases this quarter as well. So we had a decrease compared to last quarter, but as well a decrease compared to the fourth quarter 2024.And if you look at the ratio, net debt-to-EBITDA, we have a small deviation to last year. But at the end, this is influenced by the EBITDA and not by our debt. And that is also to say about equity and cash where we have a consistently stable level for both key indicators as the equity increase over the quarters and also the cash is higher than at the year-end.And now I will hand over to Helmut Kaufmann again to give you some information on the outlook for 2024.

[Helmut Kaufmann, executive]

Yes. Generally speaking, as I already mentioned, we see a slight improvement in the market compared to the last quarter of 2023. Certain industries, however, are still difficult.I mentioned industrial applications as well as sports and transportation being rather positive. The overall order intake that we observe at the moment is about at the expected level. So no big surprises. And the general trend for the future given by CRU also basically remains constantly positive. So aluminium demand for our products will grow in the near future.As we said, Germany, Austria will grow only slightly this year. So this influences our business since Germany is a strong market for us, especially in the industrial applications area. We tend to strengthen further our specialty strategy, focus on more difficult products with a high sustainability impact with high recycled content to differentiate ourselves from our competitors.With all our flexible equipment and the knowledge of our people, we see that flexibility will be key to success in this vulnerable environment. And we observe quick market changes and we are mostly able to respond quickly to this as well. So this means that cautiously optimistic view of the rest of 2024. I must say, however, that we expect that Q2 still will not recover that strongly. We see a better second half of the year coming up.So this leads us to the outlook for 2024. I already mentioned, if there is no significant impact anymore in addition to what we already see, then the full year EBITDA will be somewhere between EUR 150 million and EUR 180 million.Thank you. We are now ready for your questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And our first question today comes from Wolfgang Matejka from Matejka & Partner.

[Wolfgang Matejka, analyst]

I have 1 or 2 questions regarding the actual situation. I'm wondering about, let's say, your, let's say, a little bit conservative outlook regarding the fact that you currently have a aluminium price that is about the same level as it was in the peak of '22, where you had excellent earnings after that. And you have mentioned that the situation currently with alumina and aluminium prices just is a bit liberating.So it's not that stressed as it has been before. So you can expect that the margin on that product is improving due to the current price situation. So it would be my first question, if this is the case that you can expect in the second half really, let's say, improving market?The other question is regarding the premiums. Having in mind that after the last U.S. election with Donald Trump and after all that with the sanctions involved, you did have a massive increase in premium. Everybody wants to be delivered and it was not that easy to do. So the question is, do you see some kind of preordering currently for some kind of case like this related to the current polls in the U.S. that say that Trump is really challenging Joe Biden, that the sanction situation will come in place again?And the third question on that respect, do you have anything regarding your, let's say, research and development baby cross alloy?

[Claudia Trampitsch, executive]

So I'll take the first question regarding the aluminium price development and how it is sitting in our outlook. Well, it's right that the aluminium price during April, it has a big increase and that was on the one hand, related to better construction demand in U.S. and China, but also on tax sanction in U.K. and U.S. on Russian premium.But what we also see is not that only that increase, but we see it in some months above already the expectations. So we are not sure if that price will be stable on that level, if it's really demand-driven or just a reaction on the sanction. So therefore, it's not -- we do not take then the peak that we see at the moment, but also reflecting our budget, the situation, the upcoming situation. So no, we do not have the peak we see now. That's not the figure that we are relating because we do not -- we are not quite sure. It's just 3 weeks that it's quite high if that will reflect the last 9 months must say.And I also can perhaps add there the questions regarding U.S. market and [ Midwest ] premiums and so on. We see at the moment a little increase in the U.S. premium. It could be demand-driven. But all the research we hear is not about elections, but more about the Fed and their policy.So if interest rates go down, it could perhaps has an impact and there also nobody knows when it will happen in the election time November. So that's something we do not price now because we don't know. And if the market has not so much demand, I'm not sure if there will be so much preordering. So that time state of the years or the time in the year, we do not think it should reflect on that.

[Wolfgang Matejka, analyst]

Okay. So no pre-action being visible currently on that...

[Claudia Trampitsch, executive]

Yes, because I think it precisely at the moment, we do not know, so. And with that interest rates, I'm not sure if that only the possibility of Trump winning elections will lead to a run on the market. So in our research, we do not think that.

[Wolfgang Matejka, analyst]

No, it would be at first the case on the aluminium price because it will be the earliest mover on a buyer's change on the election side, on the poll side, yes.

[Claudia Trampitsch, executive]

Yes.

[Wolfgang Matejka, analyst]

Okay. And the last question...

[Helmut Kaufmann, executive]

Yes. Concerning your third question on cross alloy. Actually, there is something new and this is very new. As for all the others who might not be that familiar, this is a new material development that AMAG has been performing over a couple of years now, really starting from the fundamental research going into industrial research and approaching, let me say, industrialization stage.And what I can tell you is that a couple of days ago, we actually received the first order from an international customer for trials. So this is the first money inflow, so to say, from the research area. But this is, of course, not yet a real industrial order. It's a trial order, but this is still positive.

[Wolfgang Matejka, analyst]

Okay. Yes, yes. Excellent. But it sounds promising. Okay.

[Helmut Kaufmann, executive]

Yes.

[Wolfgang Matejka, analyst]

I don't want to dig in further because you know what I mean. Nevertheless, okay.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Duarte Murta from Kepler.

[Duarte Liquito Murta, analyst]

Congratulations on the new quarter. I have also a question on the aluminium price jump following the sanctions. And I would like to understand if -- I know it's only been 2-3 weeks, but if we see this price level based on sanctions, not on demand, for the next month to month, I want to understand if your upstream division will see this impact? Or if there are hedges and we could not take this into account for the first half? And, yes, that's the first question. Maybe you could, yes, shed some light on that.

[Claudia Trampitsch, executive]

Yes. It's always difficult to predict how the aluminium price develops. But we normally -- yes, we have hedges in place, but we normally do not hedge everything so that we are able to participate in aluminium price increases for sure. And that could influence our debt will positively -- if it's stable, it will influence our Metal division.But what we do not know at the moment, we do not see, but it could also be the case that the alumina price rises as well, if there is more demand and then it gets deteriorated. So it's quite difficult to predict at the moment. So I would not add it up that way in the moment.

[Duarte Liquito Murta, analyst]

Okay. Perfect. And another question, you highlighted a good Q1 order backlog above 60,000 tonnes. Well, firstly, I would like to understand, I believe there's some seasonal effect in Q1 in general. But anyway, it's a good development. I want to understand what sector is supporting this. And on industrial applications, we saw a 2% increase. I just want to make sure this is an increase, yes, but on lower margins than what we've seen in previous years, correct?

[Helmut Kaufmann, executive]

This last part I did not really hear properly and didn't understand. But your question was what is contributing to this order backlog? And as I already mentioned, especially the Transportation segment is developing positive. Automotive for us is still good.It's actually improving for us in general, but we have to see how stable this will be in the future, seeing, for example, that the purchasing numbers in Europe are not so positive. Luckily, we are also delivering the non-European OEMs and outside Europe. And there, we see some positive development and this adds up to this generally positive transportation situation.In addition, of course, our focus area, aircraft. As you know, Airbus is developing positively. Boeing is, of course, still in the news with some difficulties, but also there, AMAG will supply in the near future again. And so this is all reflected in the order backlog. The industrial application orders from outside Europe improved, within Europe weak as we experienced in the second half of last year.

[Duarte Liquito Murta, analyst]

The part of my question I think you could not hear was regarding margins. So pricing on industrial applications...

[Helmut Kaufmann, executive]

I understand. Okay. Now clear. Especially in the area of industrial applications, where there is weak demand, of course, there is also pressure and we have to react to this. This is clear.

[Duarte Liquito Murta, analyst]

Okay. Perfect. And just quickly, inventories actually increased very slightly from Q4. You mentioned destocking especially in sports applications. Yes, could you shed some light on whether you expect further destocking, so year-over-year inventory levels to decrease by the end of 2024?

[Helmut Kaufmann, executive]

I think this is a misunderstanding. I was talking about the destocking at our customers' side, the impact -- they have full storage [indiscernible]. And the demand, for example, for sprockets in the bicycle industry, after a peak during the COVID period where all the suppliers to this industry bought a significant amount of materials are now confronted with full stock and the demand significantly reduced. And therefore, their destocking goes very slowly and therefore, the reordering, which would be done on order for AMAG is postponed.

[Duarte Liquito Murta, analyst]

Understood. And congratulations on another quarter.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Christian Obst from Baader Bank.

[Christian Obst, analyst]

After talking a lot about demand on the price side, I have 2 questions concerning the cost side for the internal development of cost. So what do you expect this year maybe on wage increases and you're still looking for additional employees? Or are you currently well-staffed?And second one is about electricity. Of course, this was a major topic over the last 2022, '23. What is the current situation there? And what kind of cost development do you expect for this year?

[Helmut Kaufmann, executive]

Concerning the employee situation, I can tell you, of course, we have this very high, what is the steep increase by the end of last year, which influences our labor cost significantly. And unfortunately, they already fixed the next coming increase with about 1% above inflation for the next year.So labor cost is a significant factor. However, we, of course, watch carefully and manage this as well as we can. We do expect nonetheless a slight increase in the overall number of employees by the end of this year. So this means there is no plastic cup to be expected to make it clear because what we expect is that we have to prepare our team for the upcoming year for an increase in volume.And as you know, we have to train new people, I would say, minimum 6 months. And so looking forward and I mentioned already the slightly positive outlook that we have for the second half as well as CRU's comments for the upcoming years, we have to prepare ourselves and where we are carefully, carefully growing with a constant look at our costs.

[Claudia Trampitsch, executive]

On the electrical, I want to divide it between the 2 divisions, the Metal segment and the Rolling and Casting division. For the Metal division, we have [indiscernible] power contract so that that's linked to how the aluminium price develops. On our Austrian 2 divisions, Casting and Rolling, we can say that we saw the decrease of the energy prices as well for power as also for gas this year.But when we look at the forward curves, we do not see that margin decrease coming up. So it could be the same or it will perhaps come with the -- dependent on how it will develop at the last 2 quarters perhaps. So we do not expect that this will be lower than now.And what we do is that we not only -- for power, for example, not only look at if we have -- should do some measures, but also look at diversify the source of our power so that we have also the possibilities too. For example, we're now building another photovoltaic at our plant and so on. So that's what we are doing to help to diversify various Rolling source.

[Christian Obst, analyst]

So it's -- on electricity side, it's almost stable. What do you expect more or less going in this year?

[Claudia Trampitsch, executive]

At least, I do not expect a decrease additional. Just now we have seen [indiscernible] for second quarter and I do not think that now it -- if there is no disruption in the market, I do not think it will get much slow. But of course, it has an impact if you compare the prices at the market at the beginning at last year to this year, there was a decrease.

[Christian Obst, analyst]

Yes. Coming back to the employee and their wages. So you're largely expecting some kind of an increase of demand going forward and you are preparing your company for that. So what is the main CapEx program underlying? Or what is the main program where you expect the investment to go in '24 and '25? Or is everything fine now and the entire structure is set and you're only working for demand?

[Helmut Kaufmann, executive]

To give you an indication, we are planning to invest somewhere in the range of the depreciation which is somewhere in the range of, let me say, EUR 85 million, EUR 90 million, maybe a little more depending on how the projects move further. We have, of course, we don't only have to look at [indiscernible], but also to counterpart, there is refurbishment of major and baking furnace.This is maybe the biggest single investment position in this year. But there are other investments going into automation, like other refurbishing activities, renewal of different [indiscernible]. There are first steps also in electrifying furnaces from previous or current natural gas burners into electricity. So these are first steps of the decarbonization program that we are in it. So there are still a lot of...

[Christian Obst, analyst]

Yes, always a lot to do to keep things running, of course, but nevertheless, not the major CapEx program to improve volumes or capacity going forward.

[Helmut Kaufmann, executive]

Yes. The only thing that I might add is the biggest project in the recent past was what we call the [ Bancfa Iderlong ]. So kind of a bit in line. This project was finished in time and slightly below budget even. So this was a really good project.And we are here now in the startup phase. So the current plan is for this year, we will have a parallel action of the old and new equipment because we have to qualify our products at our customers. And -- but then we can say this was, as you know, around EUR 50 million project and I would say, again, a project success.

[Christian Obst, analyst]

Again, a good project management, congratulations. All the best.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Michael Marschallinger from Erste Group.

[Michael Marschallinger, analyst]

I have 2 on the guidance range. Firstly, just a verification. As I understood it, the recent increase in the aluminium price is not in any way reflected in the guidance. This would be then some additional earnings supplies if we would stay higher. That's correct?

[Claudia Trampitsch, executive]

Well, we did not -- it's in a way reflected, but that's not with the peak price. Let's put it that way because, for sure, we looked at forward prices and where we took something into it, but also with the liquidation we see in the market and the uncertainty is it's still 9 months, let's say to go, we also had felt some decrease on it. So it's not the peak, but we took some part of it. So you -- we will not add up everything. So that's not...

[Michael Marschallinger, analyst]

Yes. Okay. Understood. And maybe on this guidance range, could you maybe walk us through your main assumptions for this range? And if it is somehow is on a cautiously optimistic order intake this quarter past last year [indiscernible] being electricity cost stable. So what are your main drivers in the direction at the moment?

[Claudia Trampitsch, executive]

As you heard in our presentation, there are always main market prices that inflect or impact our range, our results. And therefore, we have -- we take assumptions for aluminium price. As you already said it, we have assumptions for [ Midwest ] premium, Rotterdam premium, alumina price for sure for currency rates and energy costs.But we would also affect the ranges what we heard before from Helmut Kaufmann, how the order intake looks like, how we see the demand in various business sectors. So it's always -- that all -- it's a quite detailed process, let's put it that way, where we have a -- where we also do these different scenarios and that all then comes up to what looks like those numbers, but we have a detailed process behind it to come up with that numbers in this year. But as we have proved in the past, we're always quite good with our range that we published. So that's the range we are comfortable with.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] And our next question comes from Markus Remis from RBI.

[Markus Remis, analyst]

Actually, just a few minor clarifications left. Firstly, I would be interested to get a sense of the normal seasonality of the order intake. I mean, in recent years, there were so many factors that have distorted the normal seasonality. So if you could run us through what -- how we should think about the trends over the quarters in the Rolling segment?

[Helmut Kaufmann, executive]

Honestly speaking, I have difficulties now in dividing into [indiscernible] there. Of course, we have some things that have, for example, longer-term contracts and then we have products that have more the spot type of business. And the spot type of business is mostly in the industrial applications areas while, let me say, aircraft or automotive business is usually a minimum annual contracts, but rather longer contracts.And this also means that let me say there are no real like surprising increases or surprising drops in the standard OEM businesses outside of the industrial application. So basically, may reflect there, as we said before, the order intakes are in the expected area because this is the case, because we know the relationship with our customers. And therefore, this is expected. And so it's basically the industrial applications area that can breathe throughout the year.

[Markus Remis, analyst]

Okay. Okay. Got it. And maybe I missed that one. But can you maybe shed some light on the pricing in the Rolling and your expectations going forward? Or do you think that now with this inflection point on the order side, this means also that prices are bottoming out leaving now the mix aspect aside, which I think should rather work in favor of AMAG, but is that something where you think the worst is behind in terms of price pressures [indiscernible] Q2 eventually?

[Helmut Kaufmann, executive]

Well, honestly speaking, I do not -- I cannot say that this was already at the lowest level. And please be aware we supply to maybe 1,000 customers and several thousand products. And so it differentiates from product to product. But when I try to sum up something, as I mentioned already before, then I have to say that in the area of industrial application, there is the biggest pressure.And this is because of the weak market demand and also the capacity that our competitors have in the market. And so this limited demand is, of course, of big interest for everybody and therefore, there is the price pressure.

[Markus Remis, analyst]

And...

[Helmut Kaufmann, executive]

But the rest, as I already said, there are longer-term contracts in place. And so this has no immediate impact at the moment.

[Markus Remis, analyst]

Yes. Last question would be asking quite specifically about the targeted shipment range for Rolling in the year. I mean, would you agree that maybe 210,000 tonnes plus/minus is a reasonable assumption?

[Helmut Kaufmann, executive]

Let me say, I do not expect that it is below last year.

[Markus Remis, analyst]

Right. Okay. Good. And we agree on that.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question and I will turn back to Christoph Gabriel for closing comments.

[Christoph Gabriel, executive]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for joining this call. As always, I'm happy and invite you to give me a call should there be any questions left. Otherwise, I wish you a great Wednesday and see you soon. Thank you. Bye.

[Helmut Kaufmann, executive]

Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

[Claudia Trampitsch, executive]

Thank you. Goodbye.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded and you may disconnect. Thank you very much for joining and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.