Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget SCA (publ) (SCA_A) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning and welcome to this presentation of SCA's 2026 half-year and second quarter report. With me here today I have President and CEO Ulf Larsson and CFO Andreas Evertz to go through the results and take your questions. Over to you Ulf. Thank you Anders. Good morning and also from my side a warm welcome to the presentation of our results for the second quarter. During the second quarter, SCA's market conditions were mixed between the segments. Pulp and solid wood products faced a continued challenging market with weak demand, while renewable energy delivered a record result. During the quarter, we saw improvements in both demand and pricing for the container boat segment. Price increases will impact our results for Q3 and Q4. High fuel prices driven by the conflict in the Middle East affected the result within the forest and industry segments negatively, while the liquid biofuels business within segment renewable energy benefited in terms of increased margins. SCA reached 1.3 billion SEK on EBITDA level and by that an EBITDA margin of 25% for the second quarter. Turning over to some financial KPIs for the second quarter. As already said, our EBITDA reached 1.3 billion SEK, which corresponds to 25% EBITDA margin. Our industrial return on capital employed came out close to zero, counted for the last 12 months, and the leverage was at 2.1, while our net debt to equity reached 10.7%. I will now make some comments for each segment, starting with forest. During the quarter, SCA continued to process wind-filled volumes for forest owners in the areas affected by the storm at the end of last year. Harvesting levels of our own forest were stable, but at a slightly lower level compared to the same period last year. Harvesting of our own forest has contributed to a balanc...