Upm Kymmene Corp (UPMKF) Q2 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

My name is Massimo Reinaudo. I'm the CEO of UPM, and I am here today with Tapio Corpain and the CFO. Over the next half an hour or so, we will share the main facts of the second quarter and then open up for your questions. Three months ago, we reported a good start of the year, but the promising start took a negative turn during the second quarter. In quarter two, in fact, our sales decreased by 6% from last year to 2.4 billion euros, mainly due to lower sales prices and unfavorable changes in currency exchange rates. Our comparable EBIT decreased by 31% to 126 million euros. The EBIT margin was 5.2%. The tariff announcements caused uncertainty in the global trade. which weakened the demand for our products and weakened the U.S. dollar. These had negative impact, particularly on our fibers and communication paper businesses. On the other hand, our advanced materials businesses showed more resilience. To secure performance, we took a number of decisive actions to safeguard the competitiveness across all our businesses. In parallel, we also made good progress in the refinery in Loina, successfully starting up the first of the refinery's three core processes. This represents a key milestone in the development of a new biochemical business. Quarter two. was characterized by the widespread introduction of tariffs by the U.S., followed by several changes in the scale and date of applications. Also, and connected with that, there has been significant weakening of the U.S. dollar. This has certainly affected the business activity, not just in the U.S., but in many geographies. I'll give you a brief overview now on the market development during the quarter, and then we'll come back later to the actions we planned in the different businesses. Let's start with fibers. In China,...