Luotea Oyj (LUOTEA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to Lassila & Tikanoja Q3 2025 Interim Report Webcast. I have here today with me our CFO, Joni Sorsanen, and he will go deeper into the financials, but I will first go through how did we performed in our businesses. First, a few highlights for first 9 months of 2025. Overall, profitability in Facility Services improved significantly. And I'd say the big news for this Q3 report is that Sweden returned to black figures in Q3. In Circular Economy businesses, we had a solid performance despite the quite challenging market environment. And in Q3, our net sales overall grew by 3.8%. And speaking of net sales, when we look at by the segment in Circular Economy business, we also saw a 5% growth over comparison period. And year-to-date, we are still slightly behind but catching up now towards the end of the year. In Facility Services Finland, still slightly below last year's net sales, but the decrease was less in Q3 than what it has been for the first half of 2025. In Sweden, solid growth. Net sales growth continued even though it was aided by a stronger Swedish krona, still there is a very healthy underlying growth in our Swedish Facility Services business. Adjusted operating profit on par compared to the previous year in Q3. And first 9 months, we are exactly EUR 5 million ahead of last year's levels. In Circular Economy business, we were a little over EUR 1 million behind. And in Facility Services Finland, at the same level as previous year. But as I said, in Facility Services Sweden, we saw EUR 100,000 positive adjusted operating profit in Q3. Overall, I'm quite pleased with the performance of all of our businesses in Q3. If we look at our performance through kind of Circular Economy business and Facility Services business lens, we can see that very stable and solid performance continued in Circular Economy business. And adjusted EBITDA was at the same level as it was a year before, and this is year-to-date figures now, EUR 86 million and adjusted EBIT was slightly below EUR 41 million, but still on a very good level. We tied up a little more net working capital in our Circular Economy business this year than we did last year, and Joni will go into the reasons later in the presentation. In Facility Services businesses, the profitability overall has improved. Adjusted EBITDA percent is now almost 6% and adjusted EBIT percent 2.7%. And obviously, this is due to the good improvement in Sweden, but the solid performance in Finland as well. Then let's go a little deeper into the Circular Economy business. Relative profitability remained stable, and this is due to the successful efficiency improvement measures that we have continued overall in the group, but especially in the Circular Economy businesses. Very solid quarter again in process cleaning business. Staffing was successful and demand for our services was on a very good level. In hazardous waste business, we saw a very steady demand for our services and profitability remained on a very good level. In environmental construction, there is a lot of demand. Overall, there is a good demand for infrastructure projects, and we have a special niche where we work and our order book is full. So we are working with maximum capacity now in environmental construction business, which is obviously a very positive sign. In waste management, net sales and profitability are a little bit under pressure. And there are sort of overall macroeconomic reasons for this because as we all know, construction has still not recovered. And right now, it looks like it won't recover this year, maybe towards summer '26, we will see an improvement in construction sector. But also an interesting piece of information is I saw recently some statistics that in retail in general, even though the euros are stable, the volumes under these euros are pretty much at the same level as they were 7 years ago, 2018. So overall activity in Finnish society is on very low level. And this is reflected especially in the waste management part of our business. Also, a more positive thing is that, that we have completed our rollout of our ERP system. This project has been ongoing for 6 to 7 years. So it's been a very big undertaking. And I'm pleased to say that the last rollout wave went very well. And overall, the project has been very successful, and we will be seeing the benefits of this state-of-the-art cloud-based system in the coming quarters and years, once we have sort of fine-tuned the operations to get everything out of this new system. But our people have done really good work in this very comprehensive project. In Facility Services Finland, the good performance continued and adjusted operating profit percent was 6.5%, which is overall on really good level. So the efficiency measures that we have done for a few years now are now finally visible in our numbers as well. And obviously, now the next thing is then to focus more on growth once we have the operations in order. And operations are in order, not only in terms of profitability, but also the quality overall has improved quite a bit in our operations and also KPIs like work safety and personal satisfaction, eNPS have improved and that sort of is a sort of positive spiral that hopefully will yield even better results in coming years. In Sweden, we are behind Finland, but we are doing similar efficiency measures as we have been successfully done in Finland. And now we can see that they are working. There's still a lot of work ahead of us because 1 quarter doesn't make it where it should be, but it is a very positive sign that we have and are able to report a positive adjusted operating profit for Q3. Also, adjusted EBITDA for the first 9 months of 2025 is positive in Sweden, another good indication that the turnaround is happening. But as I said, a lot of systematic work needs to be done for the rest of this year, but also next year to get the profitability in Sweden also to the same levels as the Finnish profitabilities, but I have full confidence on our management and team that we will see that improvement in the coming quarters. I already referred to these efficiency measures, and they are and have been across the board and when we compare '24 to '23, we can see that there was about EUR 5 million improvement. Now in '25, so far in the first 9 months, we have been able to improve by EUR 2 million, but this is affected by this rollout of our ERP system. And we have estimated that the negative impact for this rollout is about EUR 800,000. So kind of on a comparable basis, we have improved about EUR 1 million per quarter still in '25, our efficiency. From sustainability front, a lot of positive development here, but maybe one highlight is that our Scope 1 and 2 carbon footprint has decreased by 19%, and this is not by accident, but it is because of the systematic persistent work that we have done for several years now. And we are gradually replacing our old fleet with a new fleet that is much more environmentally friendly. And also, we consistently use more and more biodiesel or HVO diesel, and this obviously has an impact to our own carbon footprint. In this spring, we, for the last time, measured our NPS and it was on record high level, 41. We obviously will have results of the fall period then once we release our full year results of 2025. Then a few words about the demerger. Everything is progressing according to the plan. It's been a lot of work, but I'm happy to say that things are very much on track. And as a result of this demerger, we would have 2nd of January 2026 Lassila & Tikanoja or new Lassila & Tikanoja and Luotea listed in the Helsinki Stock Exchange. Obviously, this still requires the approval of extraordinary shareholders' meeting, and that is planned to take place on 4th of December. Before that, we will release the listing prospectus on November 20, so about 3 weeks from now. And then right after that, we will host a Capital Markets Day where we will open more the sort of business logic and also the future plans for both Lassila & Tikanoja, new Lassila & Tikanoja and Luotea. And obviously, you are very welcome to participate that event either live or through the webcast that we will have from that event. Good. But now I'm handing over to Joni, and he will dive deeper into the financials.

Thank you, Eero, and good morning, everyone. As usual, I will start this section by highlighting some of the key events during the review period. And first of all, we can see a strong earnings per share growth in January, September. So in the review period, earnings per share was EUR 0.63 compared to EUR 0.51 in the comparison period, and this means EPS growth of 23%. Also at the reporting date, so the last day of September, we can see a solid financial position and a decreasing interest-bearing liabilities year-on-year. And as part of the partial demerger preparations, we initiated in the beginning of August, a written procedure for our outstanding bond, and we can report that the process was successful, which means that this bond will be exclusively transferred to new L&T, which will become the new issuer of the notes in the event of partial demerger. As Eero already mentioned, our net working capital development was not as strong as in the comparison period. So at the end of the reporting period, net working capital minus EUR 15 million compared to minus EUR 30 million, which means that working capital has been tied up by EUR 14 million, and this solely comes from the circular economy business, where we have 3 specific reasons for the development. And in the order of significance, the first one is project-driven business mix in environmental construction. So in terms of net working capital, it is more favorable to the company to receive material in the treatment centers compared to project business. And as Eero mentioned, we have had strong demand for environmental construction businesses, and this is partially now impacting our net working capital development. Secondly, we saw an active Q3 in process cleaning business. And this year, the invoicing of annual maintenance breaks took place at the end of the quarter, which means that much of this revenue generated in Q3 was tied up in receivables at the time of reporting. Obviously, we expect this to be released then towards the end of the year. And finally, as Eero also noted, we have had a successful ICT or ERP renewal. However, we still need to do fine-tuning and performance enhancements to reap all the efficiency benefits we have targeted ourselves, and this has also impacted our invoicing. And that's why we have had some invoicing delays, which we also expect to sort out in the coming months. In the Facility Services businesses, the net working capital development has been fairly stable year-on-year. And also looking at the graphs, we can see that seasonally, Q3 or end of Q3 is the worst quarter end during the financial year, which means that we also expect to see the similar type of net working capital release towards the end of the financial year. Capital expenditure was below previous year, so EUR 26 million in the first 9 months compared to EUR 30 million, which is a decrease of approximately 12% year-on-year. Here, you can see that the acquisition of Stena Recycling's pallet business was completed during Q2, and this amounted to approximately EUR 8 million. If we look at the organic capital expenditure, we can see a decrease of approximately EUR 10 million. However, this is basically attributable to ICT-related investments. So CapEx in machinery and equipment has been almost in line with previous year. Then as a final comment, if you look at in P&L depreciation and amortization, we can see an increase of EUR 1 million, which is almost totally attributable to new ERP amortization that was commenced in the second quarter of this year. Then looking at cash flow, we have here illustrated the rolling 12-month cash flow. Obviously, the net working capital development is negatively impacting the operating cash flow development. However, improvement in cash flow from investments results in almost stable free cash flow development in the first 9 months. And One comparison point when analyzing this operating cash flow is to compare it to EBITDA development, and we can see that the cash conversion rate has been 72% in the last 12 months. And normally, L&T has posted cash conversion rates between 80% and 90%, and this highlights the timing issues in net working capital in the review period. As I already said, financial position at the end of the quarter remains strong. Gearing almost 79% compared to EUR 0.77 -- sorry, 77% in the comparison period and also stable development in equity ratio in the Q3. Liquid funds amounted to EUR 36 million at the end of Q3 and all the committed credit facilities were unused at the end of the period. Then if we look at the maturity structure of our interest-bearing debt, we can see that at the end of the September, we had EUR 10 million of commercial papers. These no longer exist in the balance sheet. These were repaid in the beginning of October. So at the moment, we have outstanding notes, which are due in 2028. And then we have a bank loan of EUR 55 million, which is set to mature in '28, but with assuming 2-year extension option utilized to the full, the due date is in summer 2030. So no major refinancing that taking place in the coming years. And then if we already look at the coming partial demerger, these interest-bearing liabilities will be split between the 2 companies as follows. So the bank loan of EUR 55 million will be divided so that EUR 5 million of the loan will be carried by Luotea and EUR 50 million will be carried by new L&T. And as I already mentioned, we successfully solicitated consents from bondholders in August, which means that new L&T will become the new issuer of the bond and the bond will be, therefore, exclusively transferred to new L&T in the demerger. And here, I would like to again thank our bondholders for unwavering support in the process in August, supporting our demerger proposal. Then moving on to return on capital. And if you look at the reported return on capital figures, we can see that at the end of September on a rolling 12-month basis, 4.4%, burdened by one-off items, especially booked at the end of '24. On an adjusted basis, 11.4% return on capital compared to 11.1% at the end of financial year '24. In circular economy, return on capital improved to 13.5%. And in Facility Services Finland, we continue to report strong -- very strong return on capital, almost 75% compared to 34% in the comparison period. However, return on capital was negatively impacted by our joint venture, Laania and the share of profit from joint venture in January-September was EUR 1 million compared to EUR 2.3 million in the comparison period. And the reason for the decline in profits is for the most part, due to weakened demand for energy wood as a result of the exceptionally warm spring. Then finally, and as already mentioned, strong EPS growth in the first 9 months, so EUR 0.63 compared to EUR 0.51. And then looking at free cash flow per share, almost at the level of previous year, EUR 0.30 compared to EUR 0.32, negatively impacted by tied up capital, but on the other hand, positively impacted by strengthening operating profitability. Then as you most likely have noticed, we specified our outlook 2 weeks ago, so on October 15. And now we estimate that net sales in this financial year will be at the same level as in previous year, while adjusted operating profit is estimated to be in the range of EUR 44 million to EUR 48 million. And this concludes the financial section. And we are ready for your questions, and I will ask Eero to join me for the Q&A session.

The next question comes from Nikko Ruokangas from SEB.

This is Nikko Ruokangas from SEB. I have a couple of questions, and I'll go one by one. I'm starting with Facility Services feed where you showed flat numbers and clear improvement. And then you also mentioned that there is still work to be done. But was there something extraordinary? Or did the Q3 development reflect your current phase in the turnaround?

There wasn't anything extraordinary in Q3. So it sort of reflects normally seasonally good quarter Q3, but also the improved profitability.

Okay. That's good to hear. Great. Then Facility Services moving to Finland. You mentioned that you have now fixed the profitability there and the next phase is growth. So what are the key tools to generate growth while maintaining still the high profitability?

We will go deeper into this in the Capital Markets Day, but maybe with a few words. We have worked a lot on development of our sort of spearhead services, one of which is our Smartti energy efficiency system, and that is sort of provided or that has provided very good results for our customers in terms of sort of their energy savings. Then we have data-driven cleaning. And then we have sustainability consulting or advisory services. But also one factor is that, as I mentioned already during the presentation, the overall quality of our services has improved. And hopefully, once the sort of economic situation gets better or improves, we will see a higher demand for additional services in facility services. But this sort of spearhead services is a very important factor in getting the growth and new customers but also keeping the existing customers.

Okay. I understand. Then on the guidance, which you narrowed a couple of weeks back. So now looking at the Q3 year-to-date numbers. So you are EUR 5 million ahead of last year in adjusted EBIT, as you mentioned, but the guidance now indicates flat or declining adjusted EBIT in Q4. So can you a bit kind of open that process for the updated guidance and how it reflects the year-to-date numbers?

Yes. There are a couple of factors that affect our outlook for, in a way, Q4 because, obviously, we have now published first 3 quarters of the year. And first thing is the fact that I mentioned when I spoke about the circular economy business, still the demand for our services is at a low level. And there are market-driven things that are behind this low demand, construction, retail, restaurants, hotels, overall activity in Finnish economy is on very low level, and that sort of impacts the demand for waste management services. Then second thing is the timing of these planned maintenance breaks. Now we have seen most of the maintenance breaks in Q2 and Q3, and that will have an impact to the demand of process cleaning services. And then a third thing is also something I already went through in this presentation, and that is the ERP rollout. We still need to have some extra staff to sort of get through the impact of this rollout and get sort of our invoicing and all of the tickets handled and sort of at normal level, and that will burden a little bit the Q4 performance in circular economy. In Facility Services, obviously, the comparison period was already pretty good in last year. So we don't think we can see a huge improvement compared to our '24 numbers in Facility Services Finland, obviously, in Sweden, we expect improvement.

All right. I understand. So that you despite kind of guiding flat EBIT at best. So you have not kind of seen underlying weakening there, but this is just explained by those factors.

Yes.

There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the speakers.

Okay. There were no more questions. So...

I think there is...

There is. Okay, sorry. Good.

Online questions. Rauli Juva from Inderes. You have earlier indicated that the waste law changes will have a negative impact for your circular economy business in 2026. Can you specify does that impact hit from the beginning of '26? Or what is the specific timing by quarter?

Yes, it is a relevant question, and I understand the reason for asking that question, but we will not give outlook for 2026 at this stage, but we will return back to that once we release our numbers for full year 2025.

Yes. Another question from Rauli Juva in Inderes. Your guidance indicates Q4 adjusted EBIT to be flat or down. Given the turnaround in Sweden, what would drive the group EBIT down in Q4?

I think I answered to that question, which is also a very relevant question when I answered Nikko's question a few minutes ago. So I have nothing to add to what I just said.

Okay. There is Sergi Suades from Aguja Capital. Regarding the circular economy business, could electronics and battery waste management be a growth opportunity for L&T? Are there other areas where you see growth potential?

Good question. Thank you. We have investigated the sort of recycling of batteries, and it requires quite a bit of scale and pretty big investments. And Finnish market is a pretty limited market in general. And at this point, we don't think recycling of batteries is something we would invest into in the near future. However, we have a number of growth areas that we are planning to invest in. And for the sake of time, I will not go deeper into these right now, but I welcome you to participate our Capital Markets Day on 26th of November, where we will go deeper in our sort of growth plans overall.

And again, Sergi Suades from Aguja Capital. How do you see the competitive landscape in the circular economy business? How difficult is it currently to get permits in Finland for new incineration plants or recycling facilities?

Yes. Good question. The competition is tough, but I think every company is saying the same thing. So overall, I'm sort of confident that we are -- we have strengths, and we will be able to handle the competition. When it comes to the incinerators, there is currently quite significant overcapacity of incineration in Finland and most of the incinerators in Finland are owned by municipal district heating companies. And there are estimates that the overcapacity is in the range of 30% to 40% in the coming years. And this is due to the fact that there has been too many incinerators that have been built too late, too big. And when the recycling gets further and once we get the materials cleaner from our customers, there is less and less demand for incineration. So I would be very surprised if there was new incinerators built in Finland ever, I would say, in the future. When it comes to the permits of other sort of handling centers, it depends very much on what kind of material you're planning to handle. When it comes to the hazardous waste, the permits are very hard to come by, and it requires sort of proven track record of ability or capabilities of handling such materials. When it comes to sort of small capacity sort of regional areas, then it's easier to get the permits from the municipalities. But in scale of like our operations, we have a sufficient number of treatment centers and facilities for all kinds of materials, and we are in good shape. And from that perspective, I think we have a competitive advantage.

No more questions online.

Thank you. Very good questions. And as I said, we welcome you all to participate the Capital Markets Day and wish you a very nice continuation of the day and the week. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Thank you. Bye.