Upm Kymmene Corp (UPMKF) Q3 2025 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Hello, everyone. Welcome to UPM Quarters Free 2025 results webcast. I'm Massimo Reinaudo. I'm the CEO of UPM, and here with me today is Tapio Corpainan, the CFO. The third quarter brought some temporary clarity to the terms of the international trade, but significant uncertainty remained and the consumer demand stayed subdued. Our businesses in advanced materials and in the decarbonization solution segment improved their third quarter performance compared to the previous year. On the other hand, the renewable fibers and communication paper businesses were impacted by the unusual volatility in their operating environments. In quarter three, comparable EBIT was 153 millions, up 21% compared to the previous quarter, but down 47% compared to the last year's corresponding period. The EBIT margin was 6.7%. During the quarter, we continued to take decisive actions to further strengthen our competitiveness. Our focus has been and is on improving performance, cash flow generation, and the strength of our balance sheet. I will come back and tell you more about these actions during the presentation. But first, let's look at the macroeconomic environment. We operated it in quarter three. And let's look at renewable fibers to start with. As you may remember, the pulp market prices decreased during the peak of the trade uncertainty in quarter two, and starting from China. In quarter three, pulp sales prices remained low, impacting our quarter three earnings. As a positive sign, though, during the quarter, the pulp demand normalized in China and hardwood pulp prices increased somewhat from the bottom. In Finland, wood cost reached their highest level in quarter three, when then wood market prices started eventually to show the first signs of decline. Communication paper markets rem...