Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget SCA (publ) (SCA_A) Q3 2023 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning and welcome to this presentation of SEA's interim report presentation for the third quarter of 2023. With me here today, I have CEO and President Ulf Larsson and CFO Andreas Everts. Now over to you, Ulf. Thank you, Anders. And also from my side, a good morning and welcome to the presentation of SEA's result for the third quarter 2023. So when I summarize the quarter, I can state that we have delivered a stable result with a strong cash flow, not the least driven by a profitable growth in renewable energy, a stable performance in forest, but also resilience against cost inflation. And the latter, that is, of course, partly due to our high degree of self-sufficiency in our wood and energy supply, but also in logistics. We see a stabilizing demand in the market for our products. Prices for solid wood products decrease as expected during the third quarter, but will as an average remain on current level also in the fourth quarter. Container board prices have been flat since May this year, while prices for pulp have bottomed and started to increase also as expected. EBITDA decreased in comparison with the third quarter last year but reached 1.4 billion SEK and by that a healthy EBITDA margin of 33%. So when I compare the third quarter this year with the third quarter last year I can note that sales decreased by 14% and the EBITDA by 43% and that is mainly due to lower prices. On the positive side, we have seen a high result in forest, a high result in energy, and that is combined with high delivery volumes due to commission strategic investments and also positive currency effect. Finally, I can remind you that we recently have announced an acquisition of a wind park. Fasikan and the total cost is estimated to 1.7 billion SEK and the yearly production will be a...