Raute Oyj (RAUTE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everybody, welcome to this Raute Q4 Financial Statement Release Info call. My name is Mika Saariaho. I will go through the highlights from our Q4 results release, which was released today earlier. And we have also our CFO, Ville Halttunen, who will go through some of the numbers in a little bit more details. We'll conduct this info session in English, but at the end, there are possibilities for questions and answers also in Finnish. So that's the protocol for today. Okay. Hey, very good. So let's get started. Looking at the -- some of the highlights for Raute for Q4 and full year actually. I think we had a strong quarter. We had a strong year overall 2024. The profitability was developing in a very positive way. Again, this is true both for the full year, but also Q4 was, in our view, was a strong finish of the year, in line with our guidance for the full year, which we actually increased the guidance during last year -- during the year. I could say that this whole year was very much about year of execution and delivery for Raute. You may well remember that we got a high order intake in 2023, and it was all about executing and delivering this high order intake in 2024. And I can say that we were successful in that, and that can be seen both in the topline growth of our net sales and then on the profitability. In fact, the net sales for 2024 was all-time highest net sales in Raute's history, 116 years. So of course, we can be very happy about that. On the profitability, if we look at really then the net profit of the year, really the bottom line of the profit and loss statement, that was also the all-time highest. EBITDA was good. EBITDA is the -- comparable EBITDA is the measure we are guiding and what we are communicating to our stakeholders, shareholders, and that was also on a very good level for the full year, approaching 10% of the net sales. We were especially happy with the development we had in the Wood Processing business unit. That's the biggest unit we have, which is very much responsible for these big projects and the delivery of those. And there was also then very good progress in services business. Service has been growing now a number of years in a row, and we had a very strong year in Services, good profitability, good double-digit growth in our business in Services. In services, we also were introducing some new concepts last year, and I think these are gaining traction in the market. This is both on the digital services side and then on new performance type of contracts and services we are able to provide. And then this was a little bit more challenging year for Analyzers. We actually had some drop in the topline of Analyzers business. It was a challenging market environment for those particular offerings. Nevertheless, we finished with the profitable numbers for that business as well with a reduced topline, however. We should remember that when we offer something as Raute, it's a combination of all these 3 business units, Wood Processing, Services and Analyzers and Analyzers are a very important role of our offering also in Wood Processing and Services. So one shouldn't really just look at the Analyzers numbers, but this is actually the competitive edge we have in many of our areas. We are putting actually roughly half or even more than half of our R&D efforts going to Analyzers side, even if it's the biggest -- smallest of our 3 business units. And Q4, as I said, comparable EBITDA good level, EUR 5.1 million. Margin was 9.1%. Full year was this 9.7% of comparable EBITDA. So roughly on the level of the full year results as well. And then I think that one of the highlights in this market environment was also that we were able to get quite -- we consider healthy order intake of EUR 50 million in the fourth quarter, which we can consider as a good achievement. When we consider in particular that there were no mill-sized orders included in this order intake. So this was coming from a smaller streams of orders. Services was very strong in terms of order intake. Services had been strong for the full year in '24, but also then Analyzers and Wood Processing, we were getting quite good orders in Q4. However, we need to recognize that the market is still very volatile. There are these concerns in the market, which everybody can read from the newspaper, and we even have some of these elevated concerns related to global free trade and tariffs and things that are discussed now frequently on the global arena. So we need to still a little bit wait to be able to confirm that now the full recovery has started for us as a technology provider. But Q4, very positive, encouraging and good order intake. So we have a good order backlog also starting 2025, EUR 184 million of order backlog. So this provides good basis for 2025. And of course, we are in a strong position when the market recovers to capture new opportunities with our customers, very long-term relations and discussions with customers when the market really starts to pick up again, which is the assumption that at some point in 2025, this would happen. But of course, uncertainties are there as we all know. But it looks good. And when I go back to our guidance for the full year, we can see that this is also what we are guiding as a finance guidance for 2025 as well. And our Board of Directors is proposing a dividend of EUR 0.55 per share. Some of the key figures in a bit more detail, we can see on this page, net sales 56.5 million in Q4. Full year, as I said, already all-time high, EUR 204.6 million and comparable EBITDA close to EUR 20 million. So I think we are happy with this. The full year order intake was EUR 121 million, which shows that this was a little bit challenging year overall for new order intake, talking about 2024. But as I already said, Q4 was a very positive exception from that, and it's encouraging in that sense for us looking forward. Personnel, no big changes there, some increase from a year ago, weaker equity ratio on a strong level and order book, as I said, this is a good starting order book for Raute. Looking historically, this is actually quite high order book to start the year. Here, we can see the order intake a bit more in details. We, of course, see the 2023, which was totally exceptional year for order intake, all-time highest order intake and now '24 is a bit lowish, as I have concluded already, but you can see the quarterly changes and Q4 is there a good figure. Big part of the orders coming from -- new orders coming from Europe, but then South America, North America playing an important role as well. And overall, as I said, Services, which is an area where we want to grow and we've been growing, that has actually been gaining good profit -- good order intake also in the last quarter of the year. Order book, EUR 184 million, as I already mentioned, this is exceptionally high, still looking at 5 years back as a starting backlog following the very high order intake we had in '23. So it's a good starting point for '25. We still have these big mill-sized orders there in the backlog. None of them have been fully delivered, and they are still in the delivery and revenue recognition phase in 2025 mostly. So that is what we are delivering in a big way. And then, of course, any new orders coming in. And net sales, here, we can see the development of the different quarters, and this was similar quarter to Q2 last year and also the profitability was pretty similar to Q2. Q3 was a little bit lower net sales, but the profitability was higher. There was a little bit of this kind of variations. Some timing and product mix and things are impacting that as well. But overall, the year, very good net sales generation. Comparable EBITDA. Here, you can see the different quarters. Of course, compared to 2023, during which we were profitable already after some years of more challenging times. But compared to that, of course, the significant increase now on the profitability level, and this starts to be already for our type of a business, relatively good profitability. Not on the level where we want to be, but taking the history that we have, we have been developing it quite nicely, and we have a couple of percentage points to go up while we grow the business. And that's what is our strategic target as well for 2028, by that time at the latest. And operating profit, we can see here the -- even more clearly the challenging years on comparable EBITDA, there were some items affecting comparability. So some of these past years looked more positive than on this picture, but there were a lot of exceptional times and special things happening in 2021, '22. As we all know, there was COVID, there was inflation, there was war in Ukraine and all this impacting us. But then from '23 to '24, now we see the development in a good way in the right direction. And on the personnel, no big changes there. A little bit more than a year ago, we've been hiring this year -- sorry, last year, '24, we've been hiring some new people, mostly related to our big projects that we are now delivering to our customers. So we need more Rauteans, and that has been happening. Okay. A couple of more words about the different segments. Wood Processing, very happy with the development that we've seen in Wood Processing. It's been specifically challenging times a couple of years ago for Wood Processing. But now with these new orders that we got in and the good success in the execution of the delivery for those projects, it's been generating nice net sales, clear increase from last year in Q4 and profitability also on already, I would say, reasonable level, not where we want to be. Also, there's another couple of percentage points potential to go up clearly on Wood Processing, but 8% starts to be there where we don't need to be concerned of these numbers at present. And Services, good growth. There has been good growth in Services over the last years, and this continued also in 2024. Very happy about that. In Q4, on the profitability, there were some development costs related to our strategy and future growth that actually a little bit took down Q4 profitability, but it's -- I would still consider it's okay profitability and very understandable for us internally that we need to invest into some things because we want to keep on growing the Services business also in the future. And then Analyzers, that was, as I already said, we had more challenging times. The sales declined compared to comparison period quite clearly. It has been more impacted by the market uncertainty. Nevertheless, I would say it's good that we ended up having a positive, clearly okay, positive result for comparable EBITDA, not on the level clearly where we want to be for Analyzers. But at this point of time, this was okay achievement. We did some savings also and did some efficiency improvements so that we can also secure the profitability side. Again, I would emphasize that these Analyzers shouldn't really be looked in isolation from the other businesses. So part of this success is reflected on the -- in Services and Wood Processing side as well because it's integrated part of our offering for those businesses as well. And I would maybe highlight that for Analyzers, very important development now. I was indicating myself also earlier last year that we will be coming out with the next generation of analyzer solutions, and we really did that now during Q4. So we have announced our new AI, artificial intelligence-driven analyzer solutions, and there are also -- we have even published some customer success cases where customers are really seeing really material and significant improvements in their operations. So I believe in '25 and now when we start going out more with these solutions, this will generate good business for Raute as well, and it will be very good value for our customers as well when we move forward. Okay. So that was some of the highlights, some of the segment performance highlights. And I will hand it over to Ville to say some words about the financials in a bit more detail. I'll be back myself soon.

Okay. Hello, everybody, from my side as well. My name is Ville Halttunen, and I'm CFO for Raute. So I'll go through some financials for Raute in a bit more detail now. So starting from the bottom line, earnings per share. Our improved performance is now also reflected on the bottom line and our earnings per share increased to EUR 0.54 during the fourth quarter. For the full year, we made EUR 1.96 of earnings per share. Obviously, operating profit being the main driver of increased EPS, but then also we have had increased interest income on the liquidity that we have in our balance sheet. The tax rate -- effective tax rate for the full year was 20%. And that we also -- maybe one comment on the EPS figure. We have this convertible junior loan for which the interest is being calculated also as part of the EPS number. Then looking into the cash flow numbers. In our business, the cash flow is -- can be quite volatile. Now in the fourth quarter, the cash flow was rather normal, EUR 3.7 million, close to the EBITDA that we made during the quarter, EUR 4.8 million EBITDA. We had some negative impact coming from the net working capital now during the fourth quarter. For the full year, our operating cash flow was EUR 14.1 million. And there we had some negative impact coming from the net working capital. Looking into the net working capital, there, we were able to maintain it in a negative territory, minus EUR 31 million at the end of the year. During the quarter, EUR 1 million net working capital was tight. And then for the full year, EUR 5.6 million net working capital was tight. But anyway, in a historical perspective, we are in a -- well positioned here in the net working capital. Then looking into the balance sheet structure and KPIs. We are having a strong balance sheet, balance sheet strengthened further. Equity ratio improved to 55% at the end of the year. And our net liquidity now at the end of the year was EUR 57.5 million, so which our improved operating cash flow and profit generation is reflected in our balance sheet position. And this is basically enabling us to execute our growth strategy, pay dividends and also as a new element now, our Board of Directors decided on share buyback program as well. Investment level during the last year was somewhat decreased, EUR 2.8 million in total for the full year, coming down from EUR 4.5 million in the last year. As a reminder, we have had an ERP program ongoing in Raute, and that was the main investment area in the '21 and '22 years when the investments were on a high level. And that is now something that we are in a more lower investment phase. We are still rolling that program globally, but the investment levels definitely are now coming down. But then the investment level from the past is also now reflected in the higher depreciations compared to last year. Still on the R&D developments, there the cost overall was EUR 5.3 million at the level of '23. So all in all, we are maintaining a healthy, strong financial position, and this is a good starting point for '25. And I'll hand over back to Mika to go through our outlook.

Okay. Thanks, Ville. So let's look at the outlook for '25. some kind of a summary. We know and we have seen that the demand for our customers' end products has been low during 2024 due to the downturn we see in the construction markets. And this has particularly affected the softwood plywood market. Also, we have recognized, of course, the declining interest rates in the world. They have not yet impacted the housing market in such a way that there would have been another boost or recovery in the housing market. We see some of the uncertainties still there. And of course, the recent news on the new tariffs and possible trade wars or whatever will happen, this is causing some unrest in the market. But despite of these things, I would say that the demand for hardwood plywood and LVL has remained stable. And this is important for us, of course, as a technology provider that our customers have been experiencing good market on those areas. And there are always these niche markets like for birch plywood in LNG vessels, for example, as a special example. And these are such examples where actually it becomes more and more relevant that there's a high level of technology involved in these operations. So this actually supports Raute type of a company, which is the high-end technology provider for our customers. And then I would say as a positive thing, of course, we saw the whole 2024 of good demand for our Services business. So that has been on a good level. It's been growing. And service for us is very much this type of book and bill type of a business. So the orders come in and then we deliver those quite fast. And we see that this has been happening in '24. So '24 success in Services was not based on high orders we received in '23, but it was because of the good orders we received in '24 mostly and because we've been then immediately delivering. So we've seen this good development. And that's positive for us. We want to grow that business also in the future. It's a good profitable business for us. But then I would say, despite of this and despite the fact that Q4 was a good order intake for Raute, I can't conclude today that all the global worries are over. We clearly see that there are still uncertainties, and we still expect to see the more sustained market recovery. But starting 2025 with this order backlog is a very comfortable good position for Raute, and we have good things to deliver from our backlog now and Q4 was very good from that point of view. And then important, good that Ville mentioned that our board also decided on the share buyback program. So we are proposing -- the board of directors is proposing a dividend of EUR 0.55 per share. And in addition, we actually have this share buyback program of the size of maximum EUR 1.35 million or 100,000 shares, which one can see in a sense, also a way to share the financial benefits and the gains that we have achieved as a company to our shareholders. So it's, in a sense, similar type of a tool, and that program is now starting, and we are following so-called safe harbor rules there. So we have an external partner conducting these share purchases during the next 6 months. And then our financial guidance for '25. Overall, one can say that we -- the message is that 2024 was a good year for us, and we believe '25 has all the elements to be a good year for Raute as well. So we are guiding net sales between EUR 190 million to EUR 220 million. As a reminder, it was EUR 205 million in 2024 and then EBITDA between EUR 17 million and EUR 24 million, whereas last year was EUR 19.8 million. So in the same range from that point of view. I think that's -- those are the key conclusions. Overall, I'm happy as a CEO, what we have been able to accomplish in this quite challenging market environment. And I want to thank all Rauteans for the excellent work and our customers for trusting us in 2024, and we are in a good position to start year 2025. Thank you very much.