Gränges AB (publ) (GRNG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this third quarter -- presentation for Gränges' 2025 third quarter Results. My name is Jorgen Rosengren. I'm Gränges' CEO, and I'm here with Oskar Hellstrom, our CFO; and Sara Lander Hyléen, who is the Vice President for Communications and Investor Relations. For those of you who are only listening in, we will be referring throughout this presentation to our PowerPoint [Technical Difficulty] on our website. And we're going to start off on Page 2 of it. Q&A will be at the end of the session. In the third quarter of 2025, we had continued market share gains, and those drove a really, really strong volume growth. We also had good cash flow. In fact, our total sales volume measured in tonnes increased by 25% in the quarter. And the result -- and the main reason for that were the large market share gains, which in a very gratifying manner were distributed fairly evenly across our regions and our different customer markets. And these market share gains much more than offset the weak demand that we were seeing in several sectors, notably HVAC and automotive. As a result of this strong growth, we also had a good operating profit. We logged SEK 398 million operating profit as compared to SEK 420 million in the third quarter of last year. And this development was due to the fact that the volume that I just spoke about, but also price increases and productivity gains. Those factors together offset various negative factors in the market, the most important of which was the higher cost that we're experiencing for aluminium scrap, not at least in Europe, but also in the Americas. And this, in turn, is due to the high volatility in the metals markets that has ensued after the tariffs mostly in the U.S. that were announced in the second quarter of this year. All of this together yielded then an operating profit gain by 5%, growth by 5% if we measure it in constant currency. On top of which, however, there was a minus SEK 43 million negative currency effect, most of which was translation, which then, as I said, resulted in approximately a 5% decline of the reported operating profit. In the quarter, we had good cash flow also, and that comes despite our very strong growth, which, of course, ties up some working capital, but also despite the increasing metal prices that we saw on average and most of all saw in the U.S., where, again, the tariffs have influenced the metal prices up quite significantly. And this good cash flow was the result of good working capital control, but also modest CapEx. And we do see this new higher rate of cash flow as a very promising sign that we're entering a phase of better cash generation following a multiyear expansion program that was -- that was concluded quite recently. And finally, we have good sustainability results. I'll talk a little bit more about the details of them in a minute. Focusing then on the volume, and I will here speak about our different segments one by one, starting with Gränges Americas. In Gränges Americas, we had good market share gains overall, perhaps most noticeably in HVAC, where there was a very abrupt negative development of market demand and therefore, also HVAC production in the Americas, which we, however, managed to offset to a very large degree with market share gains but ending up still with a slight decline of our market share sales of our HVAC sales in the Americas. In total, the volume in Americas was compensated partly with gains in Specialty Packaging, ending up at a flattish volume for the whole year. Gränges Asia saw very strong growth, both in automotive and in other niches. And this growth was enabled, of course, by the acquisition of our Shandong facility, which we completed in the fourth quarter of last year. And the total growth of volume in Gränges Asia was plus 95% which is, of course, quite impressive. And we'll speak a little bit more about the integration of Shandong later in the presentation to explain how this has been possible to achieve. But also and very nice to see also is that we had a very good growth also in Gränges Europe, both, in fact, in automotive and in some other niches, yielding a total growth for Gränges Europe of 17% for volume. Now there are many things on this page, big and small, but the two biggest things are the growth that we have generated in other niches in Gränges Asia, about 15,000, 20,000 or so tonnes and the very good growth that we've seen in automotive, both in Asia and in Europe, about 10,000 tonnes. And then the other smaller pieces amount for the balance then of 5,000 tonnes or so, yielding a total growth of 30,000 tonnes in the quarter or approximately 25% relative to last year. I think it's also so that this growth illustrates well the strength that we're experiencing now as a result of our regionalization strategy. And on this picture, you can see that the volume that we sell in Europe is 100% also manufactured in Europe. And the volume that we sell in Asia is 100% manufactured there. And maybe right now, most importantly, the volume that we sell in the Americas is to approximately 90% manufactured in the Americas. These are numbers from last year that we're looking at. And this makes it possible, of course, to ride out such differences in trade policies as we've seen this year, but also it is a very good protection against, let's say, supply chain disruptions that we saw a couple of years ago. And in fact, increasingly also is a very good sales argument when we go to our customers that we are able to serve them with high quality and the right products and so on in all of these three regions with regional production. The effects of the tariffs then and more specifically in the Americas have been that we have seen an increase of the market price for both primary aluminium and for scrap, but most noticeably for primary aluminium but also that we believe that we now have a situation where the domestic production of flat-rolled products, which is our business then has gained, of course, pricing power to the extent that it's inside of the tariff walls. On the other hand, more negatively, tariffs could over time drive inflation and/or lower demand, which, of course, would not be as nice. In Europe, the biggest effect of the tariffs this year so far have been tariff -- have been increased scrap prices, which is negative for Gränges. And the scrap prices have increased both in absolute terms, but also relatively to the price of virgin metal. And that, of course, makes our business that deals with recycling less profitable. For the whole group in the third quarter, the most noticeable effect of the tariffs is the increase in the working capital and then some margin pressure related to the factors I mentioned above. But as we've always said, those factors have been offset by sales volume, by price and by productivity. Turning then to the biggest growth driver in this particular quarter and its enabler, that, of course, has a lot to do with the factory in the Shandong province in Northeast China that we acquired in the fourth quarter of last year. And as we've already said that, that factory has enabled approximately 90% of volume growth in Asia in the third quarter of 2025. It -- the new factory operates in line with the ambition that we set out, and that translates to approximately 90,000 tonnes annual volume and the profitability is gradually increasing during the year. As you know, we've set out an ambition to -- that this acquisition would be EPS accretive during the full year. And right now, so far, it has developed well, let's put it like that. Just one example of the integration work that is going on. We have had a very successful IT integration carried out between Shandong and Shanghai in the third quarter of this year but also generally during the year and also going into Q4 and also into 2026, we will keep up very hard work on people matters, on the culture of the new combined entity on upskilling of various people, in fact, both in Shandong and in Shanghai and on operational efficiency. And we continue to focus on trying to retain this volume that we built up so very quickly in the fourth quarter of last year, while optimizing price and mix and cost for greater profitability. And then turning to sustainability. We had a good quarter also for sustainability, which is one of many quarters of a very long positive trend for our sustainability results. We did reduce our carbon emissions intensity further in the quarter. For recycling, the volumes that we did recycle were stable. But of course, as a percentage of our total volumes, that percentage was down a bit. And part of that is due to the tightness in the scrap market that I described earlier. The carbon emissions intensity was positively influenced by an increased use of low-carbon primary aluminium, but also by the strength and long-term partnerships that we're now forging both with upstream manufacturers of aluminium, but also with various processors and also customers for recycling aluminium back in the value chain. I just want to note also that these numbers are like-for-like numbers. We will start integrating the Shandong unit and its business into this reporting by the first -- by the next quarterly report for the full year of 2025. Turning then to CapEx, which was strong in the quarter. And part of the reason for that is that we have concluded, as already alluded to, a multiyear expansion program. And during the years of that program starting roughly in 2018 and going forward until at least last year and a bit of the payments for the equipment that we've acquired during this program also leak into 2025. But after that, we envisage a phase of utilization and optimization, and we're now guiding then, therefore, for a capacity expansion CapEx for the next 2 years, 2026 and 2027, of what we call approximately 0. And we hope, of course, then that, that will lead to higher operating cash flow conversion during those years, but also higher free cash flow during those coming years, which we hope will be appreciated, of course, by our investor base. That does not mean that we don't intend to grow because we do have a lot of room to grow inside of the envelope that we have created with the capacity expansion phase that I just mentioned. And with that, that concludes our initial remarks for this. And I would like to turn over now to Oskar, who will comment on the financial results more in detail. Go ahead, Oskar.

Yes. Thank you, Jorgen. As we just heard from Jorgen and as you can also see on this slide, I think Q3 was, in many ways, a really good quarter for Gränges, but at the same time, also a challenging one. We continue to see the strong sales growth despite the continually generally weak market and the drop in the U.S. HVAC demand. Thanks to new business and share gains, sales volume grew 25% year-on-year to 153,000 tonnes or 594,000 tonnes on a rolling 12-month basis, as you can see also on the left-hand side here. About 22,000 tonnes or just below 3/4 of the growth was enabled by the new facility in Shandong. On the earnings side, we saw a positive year-over-year development in local currencies, but the significant strengthening of the SEK against primarily the U.S. dollar and the Chinese Yuan led to a negative year-on-year currency effect of SEK 43 million. So weighed down by the unfavorable currency, the adjusted operating profit decreased by 5% or SEK 22 million to SEK 398 million. In constant currency, the adjusted operating profit increased by 5% year-on-year. If we look at the adjusted operating profit per tonne, this decreased by SEK 800 from SEK 3,400 in Q3 2024 to SEK 2,600 in Q3 this year. If we exclude the new business in Shandong that is currently operating at a lower-than-average margin and the currency effect, the operating profit per tonne would have been SEK 3,200 per tonne on a like-for-like basis, so about SEK 200 per tonne lower than last year. And then what is driving that then? Well, if we look at the remaining earnings drivers in Q3, they are in generally very similar to what we saw in Q2. And the key driver behind the lower margin is that we continue to have higher input costs for recycled aluminium, which impacted earnings with a little bit more than SEK 40 million in the quarter. And this is an indirect result of the increased U.S. import tariffs on aluminium that creates imbalances in the aluminium market. We should note, however, that we, as in Q2, in absolute terms, managed to fully offset this with volume growth, price increases and continued productivity improvements. Now let's look at some details for the group financials for the third quarter. Starting with the sales volume. We saw that on the previous slide, but it increased 25% to 153,000 tonnes, while net sales increased by 20.6% to SEK 6.9 billion. And the lower increase in net sales and sales volume is primarily explained by currency effects and lower average fabrication price for the new business in Shandong. Looking at the earnings, we had the adjusted operating profit that reached SEK 398 million, and there, I've highlighted the quite significant currency effect of negative SEK 43 million. The profit for the period reached SEK 253 million for the quarter, while the earnings per share attributable to Gränges parent company shareholders was SEK 2.27. The operating cash flow was quite good at SEK 317 million in quarter 3 despite significant negative impact from increasing metal prices in North America. The return on capital employed decreased to 10.8% by the end of the third quarter, and the decrease in ROCE is primarily attributable to the additional capital that we've added in Asia through the acquisition and ramp-up of the facility in Shandong. Now moving on to the cash flow and looking at the SEK 317 million of operating cash flow in a little bit more detail. As a consequence of the seasonality of our business, we typically see a release of net working capital in the third quarter. This year, though, the seasonal effect -- they are less noticeable, and we actually saw a buildup of working capital in Q3, but this is fully driven by the increased aluminium price in the U.S. then on the back of the increased tariffs on aluminium. And that added SEK 200 million -- more than SEK 200 million to our working capital in the third quarter. In terms of operational working capital efficiency, we continue to deliver on a good level, and this contributed to limited increase to SEK 118 million. During the quarter, we continued to invest in developing the business and the capital expenditure amounted to SEK 170 million in Q3. Of this, SEK 29 million is related to the completion of the expansion projects. So the expansion CapEx is gradually coming down, as Jorgen just talked about. Including taxes and interest paid as well as changes in currency exchange rates, this led to that the financial net debt decreased by SEK 180 million to SEK 3.8 billion during the third quarter. So at 1.6x EBITDA, this means that the net debt-to-EBITDA ratio remains well within our target range of between 1 to 2x. Now leaving the cash flow and balance sheet and continuing on to the operating segments, and let's start with Gränges Americas. As you heard earlier, the sales volume in Americas increased by 1% year-over-year despite the continued weak automotive market and the significant drop in the HVAC demand. The key growth driver here was share gains in basically all market segments. And in total, the sales volume in Americas came in just short of 60,000 tonnes in the quarter. In terms of the earnings, we managed to more than offset the external pressures from continued wage inflation and increasing market price for aluminium scrap with increased average fabrication price and improved cost productivity. Net changes in foreign exchange rates were negative SEK 23 million in the quarter, but we managed to compensate for this as well. And as a consequence, the adjusted operating profit increased ever so slightly also in Swedish Krona to SEK 284 million. And this, I think, is very well done by our Americas team. Leaving Gränges Americas, moving on to Gränges Asia. And you heard quite a lot about this already. We continue to see a significant sales volume growth, and that's then primarily driven by the successful ramp-up of the Shandong facility. In total, we saw the 88% sales volume growth, just short of 50,000 tonnes. And as I mentioned earlier, about 22,000 tonnes of these or some 94 percentage points of the growth were enabled by the Shandong ramp-up. In terms of individual markets, the main growth came from standard products in relatively low market segments, but we also saw positive development for battery materials and for the automotive business, where we continue to gain share and increase sales to both new EV and traditional ICE platforms. In terms of earnings, we continue to improve profitability in both the existing Shanghai plant and in the new Shandong plant in the quarter despite a slightly negative currency effects compared with last year. I think a very positive thing here is that we see a sequentially increasing operating profit coming from Shandong, even though we have a stable utilization there of about 55%. In total, the adjusted operating profit increased by 34% to SEK 94 million. Higher sales volume and improved productivity offset lower average fabrication price, wage inflation and increased depreciation. The adjusted operating profit per tonne decreased from SEK 2,600 to SEK 1,900 as an effect of the new volume in Shandong and a slightly negative currency. But if we exclude this, the adjusted operating profit per tonne remained flat on a like-for-like basis. Finally then, Gränges Europe. And here, we continued to experience weak demand in most markets. We did, however, successfully compensate for this with our strong sales focus that resulted in market share gains, especially within Automotive and Specialty Packaging. We also got a little bit of help, you could say, from a reduction of the order backlog from the second quarter. The operational performance in Europe improved during the quarter, which is, of course, very positive, but further improvement is still needed to reach the level where we should be. In total, the sales volume in Europe increased by 17% to 49,000 tonnes in Q3. The adjusted operating profit did, however, decline by SEK 31 million to SEK 65 million, and this decline is primarily driven by increased costs for aluminium scrap and negative effects from foreign exchange rates that was negative SEK 17 million compared to last year. On the positive side, we continue to improve pricing and productivity in Europe in the quarter. With that, I hand over back to Jorgen, who will give you an outlook for the fourth quarter.

Thank you, Oskar. So all predictions are difficult, especially, of course, when they concern the future. And of all predictions, the fourth quarter predictions in Gränges are the most difficult ones to make. And against that background, though, we believe that we will be able to continue to compensate with market share gains for what we believe will be a continued weakness of the HVAC and automotive market into Q4. In fact, we believe that we will more than compensate for those weaknesses because we believe in rather strong volume growth also in the fourth quarter. Firstly, we believe that Gränges Asia empowered, of course, by this new acquisition in Shandong, will continue at or maybe above the current run rate, which is approximately 50,000 tonnes per quarter then. And for the rest of the group, we predict that we will log in high single-digit sales volume growth in the first -- in the fourth quarter relative to the fourth quarter of 2024. Then when it comes to profitability, our ambition is to offset the negative currency effects that can be expected, but also other negative external effects. For instance, the cost of -- the higher cost of scrap and cost inflation, salary inflation and so on. We intend to offset those negative effects with volume growth, with price and with productivity improvements in the fourth quarter year-on-year. And then by way of summary, we regard this last quarter, and also, in fact, the year-to-date results as rather good performance, especially when we consider the volatility of the environment in which we've had to operate. We have these long-term trends of regionalization, sustainability and electrification, and we believe it's visible in the third quarter results and also in the year-to-date results, how those trends can help us drive our growth. For instance, as one example, a lot of the growth that we're seeing in automotive right now has to do with electrification in different ways. There has been a lot of volatility, as we've mentioned a couple of times with the tariffs, most noticeably perhaps, but also the effects of them on the metal pricing. We have demand shift. We have budding inflation in some places. But of course, that's part of our business, and we need to compensate for that over time. And we believe that we've done a fair job of doing so in the third quarter. Our multi-niche strategy also is -- turns out to be a good thing because when one niche is down, as in this quarter, HVAC was quite noticeably, then it's good to have some other niches to rely on where you then can have growth instead. This is good both to balance demand and volume, but also to be able to optimize mix. We have built up a very large capacity for continued growth, where we state our total capacity at 800,000 tonnes and our last 12 months, volume was something like 600,000 tonnes or so. So there's a lot of capacity for further growth. And being aware, of course, that this will be so, we've worked now for approximately 2 years on what we call hunting to try to find new market -- new businesses and/or share increases that are possible with existing customers. And that drive is clearly bringing results in the -- in all regions, in fact, and most customer markets as well in this quarter and in the year-to-date number. We've started to see some strength in cash generation, and we hope that, that will be possible to continue, especially now that we foresee much lower expansion CapEx in the next few years than in the past few years. And finally, it's in the nature of things that such a quarterly report as this focuses on the short term, but our work internally does not only focus on the short term, but also focuses on the long term. And we have many initiatives underway to increase our competitiveness, I guess, you could say, over time under the umbrella of leadership and work is continuing on that in all of our regions according to our strategic plan, which we call Navigate. And that concludes our prepared comments for this quarter. And therefore, I would like to ask the operator to turn us over to Q&A. Please post your questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Gustaf Schwerin from Handelsbanken. The next question comes from Kaleb Solomon from SEB.

Yes. Maybe if I start off with Europe, correct me if I'm wrong, but there is no mention of how the Konin ramp-up is going. So could you maybe provide some color on that? And sort of related to that, is there any sort of negative working capital effect related to that ramp-up? Or is all of that the negative SEK 200 million related to higher aluminium prices you kind of guided for? And could you, in that case, maybe comment on what the working capital effect or what sort of working capital effect you expect from Konin in Q4?

Let me first comment on the operational issues, and I'll ask you, Oskar to comment on the working capital question. We -- the ramp-up of the new rolling mill that was commissioned in the first quarter of this year is going more or less according to plan. And the plan, however, contains many things that need to be fixed, and it's always so with new equipment that you have a period of slow growth with it. But in the third quarter, we solved some of those issues and some are still remaining and our volume ramp-up is going more or less according to plan. That's also visible in some reduction of our backlog, which we built up during -- especially during Q2 during this third quarter. Regarding the working capital, Oskar, maybe you'd like comment.

Yes. Yes, absolutely. The SEK 200 million negative effects on working capital, that was fully connected to the increasing metal prices and the effect of those in North America in the third quarter. When it comes to the ramp-up -- of generally ramp-up of sales in Konin, but also in other locations, of course, we still have growth in many places. Those are things that work against us a little bit on the working capital side. But those are, of course, included in the -- when we say we have a buildup of SEK 118 million of working capital in Q3, that is including the growth effect. Looking ahead a little bit, we typically have a seasonality effect in the working capital, where, as we said earlier, we typically release working capital in both Q3 and Q4. Now Q4 is yet to come, right? We know we will have some negative impacts on metal pricing in the U.S. also in Q4, if it remains the same. And the continued growth that we do expect, if you refer to Jorgen's outlook earlier, will, of course, lead to that, the seasonality effects that we typically see will be also weaker in Q4 compared to a normal year if there are such a thing nowadays. But we expect to have a working capital release in Q4 if things doesn't change too much, which they could, of course.

Okay. That's very clear. And also on Europe, could you comment on the EV-related part of the automotive growth? Is that fully related to your sort of ability to take market share? Or did you see any underlying improvement in demand as well?

Well, first, the EV was a general comment for the whole group. But in Europe, we're taking market share in many segments. For instance, we're taking market share in packaging with new customers and that we didn't have before as part of this general hunting thing, right? When it comes to automotive in Europe, specifically, there is an element there also this backlog reduction in that number, of course. But also, there are various new platforms and products that we've taken that we didn't have before and that are now ramping up, right? And some of them indeed are related to electric vehicles.

Okay. That's clear. And the volumes in U.S. HVAC was quite impressive as well considering the circumstances. Could you provide some color on how inventory levels or how the inventory situation has kind of developed in the U.S. in the past few months? And if it's fairly unchanged, is it fair to assume a bigger drop in Q4 within HVAC given that comps are tougher? And sort of as a follow-up to that, if you just kind of expect to grow in the high single digits in the U.S. despite that, which is even better than this quarter, is it reasonable to assume that all of that will be within Specialty Packaging and other niches? Or have you seen any sort of sequential change in automotive as well?

Okay. Let's start off with HVAC then. We would really like to know what the HVAC market will do going forward. But as we've talked about also before, even the HVAC companies themselves don't have a lot of visibility to that as evidenced by their optimism in their Q2 reports and then the market completely collapsing one month later or something like that, right? So -- so it's hard to predict that market, let's put it like that. And it's especially hard to predict it in the off-season, which is now. That said, we are not optimistic about the HVAC market going forward, which we also stated in the report, right, that we expect a continued weakness. And that weakness, of course, is weighed into our overall volume guidance. The overall volume guidance of high single-digit growth does not relate to Gränges Americas. It relates to Gränges Americas and Europe taken together. And therefore, it also does not relate to HVAC specifically, which is a portion of Gränges Americas, right? And there are going to be many pluses and minuses, and we think the HVAC part is going to be a minus. But taking all those things into account, we're still guiding for those 2 segments together for a high single-digit volume growth. And Oskar, if you want to add something to that. Sorry, about the inventory situation downstream then. Yes, it is so that there appears to have been a large inventory buildup during this year in the HVAC accounting downstream from us then, right? So the manufacturers and the distributors and some of the retailers also. But we have no new information about the state of that other than to say that the production of HVAC equipment in the third quarter was quite a bit lower than in the third quarter of last year and also quite a bit lower, in fact, than our sales, which is, of course, due to the fact that we took market share. Did you want to add something, Oskar, to that?

I think you covered that exceptionally well, Jorgen. So nothing to add from my side.

Okay. And just on Shandong briefly, you mentioned it contributed with a sort of increasingly positive result. Is it -- or could you provide us with a figure of what that was on an EBIT level?

We're running this as a system, right? So it's really relevant to look at Gränges Asia because we see benefits in Shanghai coming out of the fact that we also have the Shandong plant now. But order of magnitude, it's around SEK 25 million or so in the quarter, SEK 20 million to SEK 25 million.

Okay. That's clear. And just one last question. Correct me if I'm wrong here, Jorgen, but your forward-looking statement seems -- at least I think it seems slightly more positive this quarter. I mean, last quarter, you talked about the same sort of offsetting measures, but that you still expect a negative currency effect. And now it sounds more like you expect to sort of offset that as well. Can you -- if that interpretation is correct, can you maybe give a bit more color on why that is? Is it increased confidence in your sort of ability to gain market share, cut costs, some change in underlying demand or something else?

I think it's a bit of all of the above. It is slightly more positive. Of course, you have to also take into account what the reference quarter was. But it is slightly more positive. And in that forecast, which is, as I said, very difficult to make, there are many moving parts up and down, right? And then you also have these kind of cutoff effects at the end of the year, what do the customers do with their inventory then and so on, right? But we are rather bullish on the volume, and that leads us together with the factors that you mentioned, net to expect such a development, right? We are not able to give individual forecast for all those different moving parts. It is, let's say, an overall -- overall estimate that we're giving for the whole group in the fourth quarter.

The next question comes from Adrian Gilani from ABG Sundal Collier.

I'd like to start off on Asia, where you expect volumes to remain around approximately 50,000 tonnes run rate, and that's been a fairly stable rate now for some quarters. So can you expand a bit on when you might be able to start ramping up the utilization further in Shandong from the current levels?

Adrian, thanks for the question. Jorgen speaking. We -- it's a little bit by design that we're doing it like this, right? You will recall no doubt that in the fourth quarter of last year, we had a very abrupt and strong growth in Gränges Asia, which was -- which we were happy about and which enabled us to get into [indiscernible] figures there or breakeven, say. And -- but now what we've tried to do this year is to kind of keep that run rate and optimize instead the cost and the mix and the pricing and all the other factors, the productivity also of the whole system, as Oskar mentioned a moment ago, in order to gradually improve our profitability because, of course, our ambition for this year is to be significantly above breakeven for the combined system then as a result of this acquisition. We could definitely take more volume, but it's a question of volume at what price and also at what cost. And right now, we think we have more to gain by keeping this volume for the near-term future at least and give or take, at least, and then work on those other factors that I mentioned. What we will do next year, we haven't thought yet. We will make those plans as we go into the fourth quarter, and then we will be able to also give better guidance, I guess, on the volume going forward, right? But it depends not only on us, as you can imagine, but also on, for instance, our customers and our competitors.

Okay. That's very clear. And also, I'm sure you've seen the news that there was a fire at Novelis factory in New York. And as I understand, they mainly serve automotive customers. So to me, it sounds like it's not going to have any clear direct impact on the market for your product areas in the U.S. But can you just tell me if that's correct or if there actually will be some direct impact on the market balance from this?

Well, the -- firstly, we're happy that nobody was hurt or worse killed in that very dramatic fire. And the main impact it has in Gränges in the short term is that we, of course, turn to our business and try to see what we can learn from this and what we can do to further decrease the risk that is inherent in any industrial business, right? As you say, the biggest impact in the short term is probably going to be on the automotive segment, mainly in the Continental U.S., so to speak, because of the -- partly because of the product mix that is manufactured in the factory, but also partly because of the long times that it takes usually to qualify to be able to supply that type of product to those types of customers. But in fact, the effects are hard to oversee and will probably be more far-reaching because this unit also in Novelis' system connects to other units in Novelis' system, which compete with -- in various other segments, right? Overall, the effect is going to be at least as long as that unit is offline, a further decrease of the flat rolling capacity, generally speaking, inside the tariff wall in the U.S., which is, of course, negative for supply and kind of neutral-ish for demand, right? So it is not commercially a negative thing for Gränges, if I put it like that.

Okay. Understood. And then also, are you able to quantify the impact on earnings from the scrap cost headwinds in the quarter? And also, if I'm remembering correctly, did these headwinds start in Q2? So essentially, we should expect them until Q2 next year, if we're thinking in year-on-year terms, so to say?

Yes. So good question, Adrian. We did see them in Q2. We had a little bit of this in the first quarter as well, but not as much as in Q2 and Q3. In Q2, it was about SEK 50 million. It's slightly north of SEK 40 million in Q3. So you could say that sequentially, you have a little bit of an improvement for us there, but it's year-over-year still a substantial negative effect. We do -- I mean, again, this is connected to the tariff situation. And currently, it seems to remain as it is, right? And as a consequence, we also believe that the scrap spreads will continue to be pressured for the time being and also, of course, going into the fourth quarter. So maybe we see a little bit of sequential ease. I mean we are gradually becoming -- I mean, we are adjusting to this. We are gradually becoming better, working smarter with recycling and so forth to compensate. But substantial negative effect is expected also for the fourth quarter, maybe a little bit better sequentially.

Of course -- it's also so that this is entirely tied to trade policy, right, not only in the U.S. but also in Europe. which is, as you know, 100% unpredictable. So it's really, really hard to say what that is going to be, for instance, going into next year.

The next question comes from Oskar Lindstrom from Danske Bank.

Two questions from my side. The first one is on sort of the composition of your forecast volume -- continued forecast volume growth in Q4. I mean it seems to be rather -- that you're expecting it to be rather sort of uneven between the regions and segments. And given that you have quite different EBIT contributions per region and segment, should we expect the volume growth to sort of drive margin or not? What should be the earnings effect of this volume growth? That's my first question.

It's really a question for [indiscernible] I think, Oskar, too. Look, yes, we expect volume growth to drive earnings, absolutely, all things equal. All things not being equal, I will let Oskar comment on the rest of this question.

Yes. I think you can sort of dig down a little bit in the wording of the guidance there and look at things a little bit separately, right? I think one key element, as Jorgen mentioned earlier also is that we expect about the same performance in terms of sales volume and earnings in Asia in Q4 as we did in Q3. And consequently, more or less the same margin level as well, I think there is a fair assumption. Then, of course, things can happen, but that's what it looks like right now to us. Then we guide for a high single-digit volume growth for Europe and Americas combined. There are many different market segments included here, of course. And we don't know exactly how each of them will develop. But you're absolutely right in saying that there are, of course, also different contribution levels for the different margin segments. We talked about high comparables in the U.S. connected to HVAC and so forth and generally maybe a tougher year-over-year comparison in the U.S. in Q4 than in Europe. So I think it's fair to assume that we will be able to grow more in Europe percentage-wise year-over-year than in the U.S. And of course, if you look at average contribution, we have a slightly lower average contribution in Europe than in -- in the U.S. And of course, looking it from that perspective, that will have a negative mix effect -- geographical mix effect then. But that being said, we still believe that, that growth will be the absolute #1 earnings driver in absolute terms for the fourth quarter.

Wonderful. My second question is -- I'll give it a try and ask you about 2026. Now so far this year, and it seems also to be the case that you're expecting it for Q4, you have been able to sort of -- you've been able to drive volume growth by taking market share. And do you expect to be able to continue to take market share also next year?

Was that the question?

Yes, that was the question, sorry.

Okay. So for 2026, firstly, we're bullish that we will be able to dramatically reduce our capital expenditure for capacity expansion. So we are quite bullish about our ability to convert profit into cash for 2026. I just thought I'd mention this in this context. Regarding market shares, I think it's easier to answer it and -- answer that question in 2 parts, Asia and Europe and Americas together. So for Asia, yes, it is possible to take market share because it's a very large market, also fast growing. But there, our policy will be to try to do our best to improve the profitability of Gränges Asia. And that may mean that we don't take every share opportunity that we get, but only some of them but for sure, we will have the ability to take further market share in Gränges Asia. When it comes to -- but of course, that will result in a much slower growth, I guess I should be very clear about that, a much slower growth than we've experienced this year, which is an exceptional year for Gränges Asia. When it comes to Europe and Americas, it is definitely so that we see opportunities to continue to take market share. And of course, it's also so that not all of the market share that we -- that, for instance, influenced us positively in the third quarter was already there in the first quarter, for instance. So some of those effects will leak into 2026 just by -- on a year-over-year basis, right? And it's also so that we have the ambition to take market share but it's on the third hand also so that it's better to praise your achievements when you've made them rather than beforehand. So the ambition is there to continue to take market share. We have actions to achieve it. But as you know, we also have customers and competitors that get to make decisions about these things.

The next question comes from Mats Liss from Kepler Cheuvreux.

A couple of questions. You mentioned the 800,000 capacity you currently have to produce and you're just having -- well, using 600,000. What kind of level is sort of the optimal level there? Is it 90% of the 800,000? And also maybe if you could sort of give some more flavor regarding what kind of measures you are going to use to reach that 90% or so? Is it market share gains or is it a market that you see growing in certain segments?

Well, the optimal level is the level that we reached last year in Gränges Asia, which was 101% utilization. That's what we're shooting for. That's a very difficult level to achieve, though. Well, it's not entirely impossible apparently because we did last year in Gränges Asia. And that has to do, of course, with the fact that this capacity number that we're dealing with is a proxy for the actual capacity. The actual capacity, for instance, depends very much on what mix you put in, right? Thinner products you can only make less of and thicker products you can make more of, just one example. So it's a proxy. We would, however, be quite happy if we at some point are able to say to on a call like this that we reached a 90% capacity utilization. So let's celebrate when we get there, so to speak. That means that we have I don't know, 100,000 tonnes plus or so to go to that celebration. And how we will get there? Well, it's, of course, possible to hope for some market strengthening from at least in automotive, several years of very low growth, right? And it's also possible to hope for some increased consumer confidence. You can also believe in the opposite. What we focus the most on inside Gränges is not to think so much about what the market will do, but rather to try to take market share. And with reference to the previous question and answer, we now certainly have an ambition to continue to take market share, in fact, in all three regions, but most of all, outside Gränges Asia in the first instance in 2026. And if we do, the market will be plus or minus relative to that, and that will then help us move at least all things equal, towards this celebration of a 90% utilization that we have beckoning us somewhere in the future.

Very convinced. And well, going into the U.S. again, I think previously you mentioned that a lot of these supply contracts are priced on a yearly basis there. And should we expect a hike there or some impact going into '26 with the negotiations that you have maybe implemented already or you can say something there?

You're breaking up a bit audio-wise, but I understood it to mean, can we comment on the contract structure and how that affects pricing or something like that?

Yes. I mean you have the yearly contracts to a large extent. And will there be any price changes going into next year [indiscernible].

I understand. Yes. So we have indeed some contracts -- some business that is entirely transactional, some business that is governed by multiyear price contracts, right? And what we try to do, of course, as a general rule is to make sure that not all contracts and price negotiations become due at the same time, just to get a little bit of stability into our business, right? Sometimes that's negative because then it means we cannot adjust prices up when we like to and could otherwise do that right. But sometimes it's positive because we don't get the full price pressure of some event at one single instance. So we believe that's a good policy to have. As Oskar commented before, we have very positive effects of price increases in, for instance, the third quarter of 2025. And it's definitely our ambition to compensate for any adverse effects by, for instance, price or volume or productivity so that we can maintain a good contribution level of the additional business that we intend to take in the market share department. So I guess that's what we can say about that. We don't expect the full volume somehow to either move up or down by the year-end. That's not the structure of that portfolio.

Good. And then -- well, just coming back to Asia also, I mean, you mentioned the profit per tonne that come down from 1.9 from 2.6 year-over-year. Is it sort of a trough there? Or are there seasonal reasons why the fourth quarter also are a bit soft and then -- yes, you indicate that you are trying to sort of focus on, well, more -- getting more bucks for the tonne in the Shandong capacity, for instance.

Yes. That's a good question, Mats. And if you look at the margin in Asia or the EBIT per tonne in Asia, it has come down year-over-year. That is -- there's a tiny bit of currency in there, but primarily the reason for that is, of course, that the business we've added in Shandong now initially, a large part of that is lower-margin business. If you would exclude that, you would have very stable year-over-year margin development in Asia. But as Jorgen alluded to earlier also here, I mean, the task in hand and what we have in front of us, of course, is to work diligently to improve the mix, improve the productivity and so forth and really optimize our new Asia footprint here with a combination of Shanghai and Shandong facilities to drive that margin up gradually going forward.

Great. And finally, just about -- I mean, you mentioned that there is larger competition there in the U.S. of recycled aluminium and then again, you have this 500,000 target for 2030. Is it sort of impacted by this increased competition of these volumes?

It's not a positive, but we are firmly committed to this 500,000 tonnes targets and also rather or I can only say quite positive that we will reach it. So because in that target, the 500,000 tonnes, of course, we will also count recycling that we gradually will make possible with our acquisition or in our acquired plant in China, right? So we're quite confident that we'll reach the 0.5 million tonne target for 2030 that you referred to.

And then coming back to Europe there regarding recycling capacity. As I understand it, the European Union is involved in supporting some of these recycling ventures going on in Europe. Are you sort of involved in some of those.

Yes, it's true. What you're referring to is, of course, this -- I understand then is this leakage of aluminium scrap that has been occurring from Europe to other geographies, for instance, into the U.S., the U.S. not having an import tariffs on scrap, right? So it's more profitable right now to recycle aluminium scrap that is in the U.S. than it is to recycle it in Europe, right? And of course, the efficient market then moves the scrap to the Americas, which creates a shortage of scrap in the European region. And that is negative for people who work with scrap recycling, including us, as we've alluded to, but also, of course, other people who are more focused on recycling itself. And there is some initiative ongoing to see if perhaps a measure to alleviate this would be some kind of export measure, export control measure of scrap. And my understanding was it was promised to be communicated in the third quarter, but that didn't happen. So we'll see where that goes. We influence such matters indirectly through the position of the European Aluminium Association, where we're an active member. And the European Aluminium Association, of course, is strongly in favor of such a measure.

The next question comes from Gustaf Schwerin from Handelsbanken. Gustaf Schwerin, Handelsbanken your line is now unmuted.

Okay. Yes, I'm not sure what's going on. I was thrown out earlier. Anyway, I'm sorry if this was answered since I was off for a few minutes, but I want to come back to the very, very good growth you're showing versus light vehicle production, something we have discussed a lot previously, but I want to come back to it. I mean, essentially, you're outgrowing the market by 30%. It's a trend we saw in Q1, Q2 as well. Can you try in any way to help us how much of this is an effect of, say, BEV and plug-in hybrids expected to grow plus 20% this year? And how much is an effect of your own market share gains and perhaps timing of certain models ramping up production? That's the first one.

It's not a super easy question to answer, but we'll give some qualitative guidance and then see if you're happy with that or if you come back with a follow-up. So qualitatively then, firstly, this volume growth that we have in this segment is split rather evenly between Europe and Asia, right? And the mechanisms behind are different because in Asia, it's so that we have been able to take significant market share on the back of having now the capacity to produce it, produce that material, right, because of this Shandong acquisition. And as you know, in Asia, the rate of electric vehicle or the proportion of electric vehicle production or hybrid vehicle production to the total automotive production is much higher. So of course, a significant part of that growth relates to such things, right? And also to products that can sometimes be used in both kinds of vehicles, both ICE vehicles and new energy vehicles. But we're also in Asia seeing good growth in new products and new platforms that are exclusively related to hybrid and electric vehicles, for instance, in the area of battery cooling plate and battery casing and so on. In Europe, the dynamics are a little bit different because part of the growth that we're seeing in the quarter also relates to a recovery of some backlog from before. But in automotive, also, as we said before, we see good growth both in what we call traditional HEX, but also in some volumes that relate specifically to electric vehicles, right? So there, the total effect, if you look at the whole of Gränges' volume is moderate, I guess, I would say, both in Europe and in as a total. But it's definitely so that we believe that the electrification trend that we've been talking about for a long time will -- is and will be a contributor -- a significant contributor to Gränges' growth both this year, 2025 and the next.

Okay. I'll try to ask in this way then. If we disregard Asia and we just look at Europe, if we take your battery cooling plate, which will be a 100% BEV product, how much has that grown in Q3 and perhaps year-to-date as well?

See, if we start giving you segment information on that level, we'll live to regret it, I believe, because it's going to be very, very detailed. And also, it's so that these -- if you go down to that level, you get to individual SKUs, individual models, then it also becomes very volatile quarter-on-quarter, both sequentially and year-on-year. So I think it is unlikely that we're going to be able to provide you with the number you're asking for simply put.

Okay. Last one on the same topic. If I look at the [ LVP ] expectations next year, they're essentially flat. Let's see if that's right or not. But the BEV and plug-in hybrid growth is quite similar to this year. So I think it's touching 20%. I guess you are expecting or planning to see significantly higher volumes versus LVP, no matter your market share gains for next year. Is that a fair assumption?

I think it's -- these are really good questions, Gustaf, but they're also quite complex, right? In Europe, the growth in EV and hybrid vehicles sometimes is tied to platforms that are old platforms and that are now converted into hybrid drive, right? And then it's not always possible for us to distinguish where does an individual product from our side go? Does it go into a chiller in a hybrid vehicle? Or does it go into a chiller in an ICE vehicle, right? We -- I don't think we're going to be able to say. We don't know simply put, Gustaf. We think and believe that we can commit to generating significant growth from the electrification trend, both in the full year of 2025. And we think that, that growth will continue to be a very strong driver also in 2026. But it's going to be difficult for us to provide more granularity on that in the forecast. It's worth a try as to say. Sorry also for having this technical glitch, Gustaf, but it's good to hear your voice, as Oskar said.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Linus Alentun from Nordea.

Just a quick couple of questions here from me. I know you talked a little bit on the HVAC here in Americas earlier, but I just wondered if you could give some more flavor on the destocking. I mean, based on your customer conversations, when do you or they expect this to bottom out?

Okay. So operator, after this question, we will not be able to take any more questions because we are up against a hard stop here. But thank you for your question. HVAC destocking we -- we really don't know, but it doesn't look very positive for the fourth quarter, and that's why we're guiding for a negative climate there also. And usually, if it is negative in the fourth quarter, that is not a good signal for the first quarter either, I guess, we can -- I guess that's fair to say, so to speak. Then it depends a little bit on what they -- what the manufacturers believe about the stock levels and about the season in 2026. And they make those decisions typically, I don't know, in February or something like that, right, based on the information that is available to them then. And given their recent position of being able to make good predictions, we cannot hazard a guess for what the HVAC season will look like in the first half of 2026.

Okay. Super. Did you have time for one more question? Or should we end.

Go ahead. Go ahead.

Okay. Okay. Yes. Just one last question here. You mentioned domestic production has gained pricing power here inside the tariff wall, I think mainly in Americas. This seems to have enabled market share gains despite higher scrap costs. So I'm just wondering here if tariffs normalize, do you lose that pricing umbrella, meaning that you had to give back share?

No, I don't -- yes, it's correct to say that a tariff wall is generally positive for the manufacturing that happens inside it, right? And that is also our situation in the U.S. There is, of course, a level of import of flat-rolled products into the U.S. into the market there. And of course, relative to such imports, our domestic production in the U.S. has become more competitive. That's what we're referring to there. But the market share gains that more operationally, so to speak, we took and that we managed to land in the third quarter of this year really have nothing to do with that, but had more to do with the work that we have done before to establish ourselves as a credible supplier and to work on the customer relations and to offer business and so on, right? The comment that we made about the pricing power had more to do with the outlook for, call it, strategically then if these tariffs would remain in place. The tariff on aluminium itself is, as we said, a negative for us financially because it builds up our working capital. But the tariffs on finished flat-rolled products of aluminium, of course, is a positive for our production in the U.S. I hope that helps clarify matters. And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we will then conclude this telephone conference, and we're very happy that you called in. So thank you for your attention to Gränges' third quarter 2025 results, and have a good day. Bye.