Good morning and welcome to the Q3 earnings call. I'm here joined by Roland, our CFO, and we walk through the main events and results for Q3. You might see the slightly updated visuals on the first slide. Myself and Roland have been busy here in the head office. We indicated in the beginning of the year that the service market is stable. In our terms, it means that typically order intake would be between DKK 2.6 billion and DKK 2.8 billion. Last month was on the high side. This is on the low end of the range. Year-to-date average DKK 2.7 billion. We are actually happy with that one. At the same time, the profitability journey in service continues so that all that order intake is high profitability.
Positive of the execution is that we implemented a new ERP system in our largest production facility in Arizona related to the pumps and cyclones. And that has been successfully completed. And the order execution is back on track in pumps and cyclones. So that was a good achievement from our organization. Then I would like to highlight the strategic cooperation agreement that we signed in Uzbekistan in October. And if you look at the value of that one, estimated value, it is one of the largest, if not the largest, agreement we signed as an FLSmidth. And it is a clean supply of products and services, which means that there is no third-party content. And that is exactly what we want. And we are supplying 80% of the MOF flow sheet in Uzbekistan. We like the country. We are established in Uzbekistan.
If I look at the prospects in the country, we are and we will be a fairly significant player in the country for all mining investments going there. Capital market is still on the slow side. The activity will remain subdued until I would say maybe end of 2025. I've visited quite a few EPCM companies around the world, the engineering companies. Everybody's busy with the study work. They are full-on doing study work. Study work typically is the preface of the order and then for them order and then project execution. So we expect that all the study work that EPCMs are doing in all the mining hubs will result in significant CapEx investment probably in the end of 2025, 2026. Mining will be very cyclical.
It will be like a ketchup bottle opening, that once it starts, it will start at a fairly significant pace. In the cement business, we are preparing cement for sale, and we've been selling over the last year or so two product lines already, and that has an impact for the comparison numbers, so that order intake comparison year on year is difficult to do because of the divestments. We continued the de-risking of the asset, meaning that we have declined any risky order for the capital business because we don't want to bring risk in that would actually slow down or make the sale of the asset more difficult. The service business is progressing in cement. It's a little bit on the low side for the quarter, but we expect some pickup in the fourth quarter. In sustainability, we continue progressing in all our science-based targets.
More focus is needed for the safety. We are investing at the same time as we are doing cost out in the company. We are investing in the front end. And in the future, we are pushing more and more resources to the customer interface and less in the back end. We continue our business simplification journey, which means that we will have a lean, small corporate office. And then most of the resources are in businesses, in the product lines close to customer. And then the support functions are largely located in the global business centers where we automate and streamline the activities. Cash flow is positive for the quarter. If I need to pick a point from here where we focus on improvement, it is the safety. We've been improving safety year on year, but it's still not at the level we want safety to be in.
We continue investing in safety in all our operations. That is a point of emphasis for us. If you look at the service order intake for the mining, we indicated in the beginning of the year range 2.6-2.8. And now it's slightly in the low end of that range. But year-to-date 2.7, we are happy with that one. But we expect some more pickup again in the fourth quarter for the orders. You need to also bear in mind that year-on-year comp includes last year's substantial order intake and revenue from basic labor services. We have exited basic labor services and doing spare parts, wear parts, and professional services only going forward and upgrades and retrofits. So there's a small impact to the order intake and revenues from exiting those large labor service contracts.
We expect the market to remain stable for the services for 2025. And then in 2025, we expect capital order intake and capital business to be roughly at the level it is this year. So no big change for that one. As I said earlier, we see a high level of study activity among the EPCMs. And sooner or later, that study activity will result in more CapEx investments, especially brownfield expansions and new lines to existing plants. In revenue, the positive point in revenue is that we did full new ERP implementation in our facility in Tucson, which is the main operation for pumps and cyclones. And it has been successfully executed over the last couple of months. And we had a learning curve, which had a small impact on the revenues. And now we are back up and running with a new ERP system.
So that was extremely good learning. So that is where the revenues are picking up. Year-on-year comparison, still some labor service contracts in revenue as well in the last year. We only have one remaining now. So going forward, you will see very little impact from the business mix. One might say that the highlight of the quarter is the fast improvement in our profitability. Also the gap between Adjusted EBITDA and reported EBITDA is shrinking. If you look at the bottom of the right side of the slide, you can see reported EBITDA improvement from 8.2%-12.4% is very significant. So it means that also the gap between adjusted and non-adjusted EBITDA is shrinking. So this is a big achievement. In our terms, we are well ahead of the transformation of the company almost one year. So the profitability improvement is progressing fast.
Then if you look at the cement, I wouldn't pay too much attention to year-on-year comparison. For the order intake for the quarter, we would expect typically service to be between DKK 650 million and DKK 700 million. And now it's on the low side. There was slowness in a couple of the markets. And we are expecting some pickup in the fourth quarter. So between DKK 650 million, close to DKK 700 million, DKK 700 million is a good level for the service portfolio or for the portfolio we have remaining. We have not taken any risky business in for the capital business, so only clean low-risk product orders. And we continue to be restrained in that area until we find out who will be the owner of the cement asset.
Then, of course, new owner can decide the strategy, whether they want to take more capital business in and what is the risk level that they want to have in the cement business. We are preparing the asset for the sale. We keep it nice and clean, high profit, low risk asset. This is also reflected in the revenues. If you look ahead, still the sale of the service revenues will continue to increase relative to the capital revenues. That will further improve and support the continued profitability journey. The sale of the service will continue to increase if we look ahead. Also very significant achievement in cement is improvement in profitability. If you may recall, last year, we recorded one-off gain of around DKK 100 million from sale of one of the product lines.
So if you look at comparable numbers, it is very significant profitability improvement for cement. And as I said earlier, we have a nice clean asset, service-oriented, low-risk asset to sell now. And we are happy with the recent development of the cement. NCA, we are seeing back end of the NCA, and we are looking to close the segment fully end of the year and having accumulated loss below 1 billion DKK, which was actually our target. It started for 1.2 billion, estimated loss at most. And then we turned it down to about 1 billion. And we will close the segment below that number. And as we discussed before, the speed of getting rid of the backlog has been amazing in starting third quarter 2022 and then ending end of the 2024.
It's amazing speed of the backlog execution, canceling contracts, and getting out of this hugely loss-making and risky business what we had in our books, so very pleased with that one, and then handing over to Roland to go through the numbers in more detail.
Thank you for that, Mikko, so looking at the consolidated picture, a revenue of a bit more than DKK 5 billion for the quarter and adjusted EBITDA of 12.6% and reported EBITDA margin of 11.4%, and then net of everything, a profit and loss for the group of DKK 289 million. If you look at the gross margin, we've had a strong gross margin quarter. It's the best quarter for a long time, both in nominal Danish kroner terms, but also in terms of our margin, and on the right-hand side, we see this driven both by mining.
That is in the higher end of 31%-33% that we have talked about the last two quarters. And also cement had a strong Q3. SG&A cost is coming down. Predominantly, the restructuring efforts we have done in cement and also in NCA is driving it down. And the ongoing simplification efforts and move to operating model in the mining segment, we will see impact as we move forward from here over the next year or so where the next wave of SG&A reductions will come from. All that, as Mikko said, stacks up to a group EBITDA margin that is also many quarters high, both in nominal terms and also in terms of margin, 12.6% adjusted EBITDA margin and 11.4% reported. On the right-hand side, we are in broad strokes illustrating where that comes from.
So same quarter last year, we had a reported group margin of 8%, 2.1% in integration costs related to our integration of ThyssenKrupp Mining Division. So an adjusted group EBITDA of 10.1%. Since then, revenue has come down in NCA cement and also in mining, but gross margins is outweighing that. So adding that plus a few savings in SG&A, our adjusted group EBITDA margin is now 12.6%. And deducting the transformation and separation costs we have spent in Q3, we ended the group's 11.4% reported margin. Our net working capital is up a notch, 10.6% of revenue, predominantly driven by work in progress. All that leads to an EBITDA adjusted of DKK 662 million and adjusting for non-cash items from provisions and also the change in net working capital, cash flow from operations of plus DKK 357 million.
Adjusted for investments and disposals, we end up with a free cash flow of DKK 129 million for the quarter. That means we are reducing our debt a notch, maintaining 0.6x leverage well below our capital structure target. All this has led us to review and update our full year 2024 guidance. If we start with the mining segment, unchanged revenue guidance, we expect to end around DKK 15.5 billion worth of revenue. If we look at the adjusted EBITDA margin previously, we said we would end between 12.5-13% adjusted EBITDA margin, and we will now adjust that to around 13%, so the higher end of that range. Cement, likewise, unchanged revenue guidance of DKK 4-4.5 billion Danish kroner. Instead of 8%-9% adjusted EBITDA margin, we now expect to end around 9% adjusted EBITDA margin, so again, the higher end of that range.
Non-core activities are progressing well. Descoping cancellation means that we won't do as much revenue as we had planned, which is a good thing, so instead of revenue of DKK 200 million-DKK 300 million, we now expect the full year to end around DKK 200 million, and also the loss will be less than expected, so now expected to be around DKK 200 million-DKK 250 million instead of DKK 200 million-DKK 300 million. And that also means that the total loss in our non-core activity segment over the lifetime of that segment will be less than DKK 1 billion when you add the whole thing up. We are content with that. If we look at our strategic transformation roadmap, most of the de-risking is done both in mining and in cement. We are also on track to shut down our non-core activity segment by end of 2024.
What still stands out is our simplification and move to the operating model in mining. And that will happen over the next year, year and a half, where we will bring mainly our support functions in place in our three global business centers around the world. And also a few more adjustments in the business lines. And if we look at the group level, we're basically done with the legal separation of mining and cement and ready to sell cement. And the divestment process is moving forward, as Mikko said, according to plan. And that means that we are able to sign a sales deal at the earliest by end of this year. And if that won't happen, it will be in the beginning of the new year, so fully as expected. And with that, we'll give it over to Q&A. Thank you.
We will now be conducting the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star and then one on your touch-tone phone. You will hear a confirmation tone that you have joined the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question from the queue, you may press star and then two to remove your question from the question queue. For those using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. The first question we have is from Christian Hinderaker of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Morning, Mikko. Morning, Roland. Thanks for the presentation. My first one's on the hesitation you're seeing in terms of the CapEx environment for large brownfield and greenfield projects. Seeing a bit of divergence here, I think, in the messages from the upstream and downstream equipment suppliers.
I realize, hard to quantify maybe, but based on your customer discussions, how much of that do you chalk up to permitting challenges versus perhaps financial considerations like interest rates or customer budget approvals? And how much might even be fatigue with recent price increases post-COVID? I'll start there.
No, no, I think, of course, the underlying issue in the whole industry is permitting, apart from a few countries where it's kind of government support. So, for example, Central Asia permitting is faster because of the government support for the industry. But in many other parts, the permitting causes big delay. But you talked about, or you asked about miners' challenges at the moment.
And of course, if you think about many of the mining assets what our customers are holding, the economic value of the assets is under pressure because the ore grades are going down and hardness is going up. And at the same time, the CapEx and OpEx have seen increase. So it means that if you discount the value of the kind of mining asset and look at it, so I think there's a little bit of economic pressure for the operators to optimize operating the mining asset. And we believe that some investments will be needed to increase economic life of the mine and economic viability. So that is typically more upgrades, retrofits, improvements, debottlenecking, all that sort of thing, so which has an impact on the kind of the mine site. So that will kick off, in my opinion, quite soon when the situation is better.
But I mean that many customers are still looking at the CapEx spend, OpEx spend, and then the whole kind of value of the asset. So I think, but we can help customers to improve the asset value a lot over time. But I mean that, of course, if the commodity prices would go up a notch, for example, in copper, that might trigger some of the kind of nearer-term investments. And of course, nearer-term, which are kicking off soon, is always upgrades, retrofits, improvements, brownfield expansions, because there's less of a permitting delay there. So that will kick off first. And then big new mining projects, greenfield, they live in their own life in many ways. But I'm expecting activity to go up a lot toward end of 2025, early 2026, because it just needs to happen, because there will be a shortage of copper in the world.
Christian, also reminding that our exposure is to best commodities. So copper and gold, they are the kind of really good commodities, and a big part of our exposure is there. So there will be lots of activity there. But I see delay between study activity of the EPCMs and then project starting, and I see maybe being one year out from that. That's really helpful. Thank you, Mikko. Maybe one for Roland and apologies because it's not brief, but just on provisions for the quarter and I guess two parts. Maybe firstly, the cement margin, you had a boost from provision release there on some of the legacy projects completing. Are you able to quantify that? Yeah, so we're releasing what equates 1.5%-2% in the cement business. In the cement business.
Great, thanks. Okay. And then just secondly, on the balance sheet figures, I think if we look back to the fourth quarter of last year, you were splitting these out into the warranty provisions, restructuring provisions, and the other provisions buckets. Looks like the warranty number at around DKK 900 million guided. We're not far off that at DKK 824 million on page 28. And then restructuring has come down again, I think, as you'd suggested back in Q4 of last year. I'm just curious on the other provisions bucket, which was about DKK 1 billion last year, and you'd suggested with half going forward as you run down the non-core activity segment, that's actually gone up closer to DKK 1.28 billion. I'm just curious what's driving that and whether we still expect that to move lower into next year. Thank you.
Yeah, so I think some of the runoffs that could have happened this year have not yet run off. So we have a few bigger projects that have come to a halt, so to speak, that we took over from TK. And then there's been provisions, smaller provision build-up both in the NCA as we prefer to exit that, and a little bit also in cement. So that's a little bit of a mixed bag. It's a little bit unpredictable when that will start to come off. That has to do with how we can progress a few of the bigger tickets that are more or less on hold as we speak.
Thank you.
The next question we have is from Claus Almer of Nordea. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Yeah, also a few questions from my side.
The first is to you, Mikko, this comment about a potential significant uptick in the end of 2025. I guess when you are mentioning this on a conference call, you are pretty certain this will happen, and did you say on the last reply that you expect for you it would be more 2026 effect? So that's a double question.
Yeah. Claus, I was asking this from the ones who know, which is the EPCMs. I met a number of EPCMs who are busy, busy working, not executing projects, but doing study, as I said, and everybody said that we don't know when it's going to happen. Actually, the timing is uncertain, but it will be like a ketchup bottle opening. That is a highly cyclical industry, and it's never smooth riding in the CapEx business. We expect that ketchup bottle to open at some point.
But even the EPCMs who are actually doing the execution work on behalf of the end customers, they said that we don't know the timing. But we are very busy doing study work. So when that will turn into projects, which in turn turns into orders for us, they said that we don't know. But it's just my own thinking. Typically, if there are visible studies, it's a year, year and a half when we start to see the activity in the execution side, which leads into orders on our side. And so it's uncertain, but I know that it will happen. And it's just the nature of the mining business. And between the cycles, you need to just ride on profitability of the service. And then when the business will pick up, then you are riding on the wave.
And I might also say that the slowness in capital business is helping us to clean the house. Because if there's slowness in revenues and we have a strict target to our cost in the support function in the businesses, so it's easier to clean the house when it's not a total upmarket. And when the upmarket will return, then you just control the cost so that it doesn't start to crawl in line with the order intake growth. So it will come. And this kind of slight slowness in the CapEx market and revenues help us to clean the house. It's much easier, as people say, that never miss a kind of small downturn to do something useful for your company. So we are doing exactly that. Sure, it looks like that. So are you more positive compared to one quarter ago as to this uptick in capital order?
Timing is uncertain. So I think we do not have visibility for more than maybe two or three quarters ahead of us. And as I said, I visited a large number of EPCMs. Everybody says they are busy with the study activity. And they told me we don't know yet when this will turn into projects. But still, for the next three quarters, I would say it looks the market like it is today. But then we keep you updated if we see really it kind of picking up sooner or later. It will, but we don't know the timing. Perfect. Okay, so my second question goes to the underlying mining, EPCM margin. So when I do the math and try to strip out the non-recurring like costs, I'm getting at a minimum 15% margin here in Q3. Is that roughly correct?
That depends on what math you did, Claus. So we have the adjusted EBITDA, and that's adjusted by what we spend on transformation and separation cost of about DKK 38 million. And that's what we adjusted for. Underlying, we have also provided for a bit of restructuring costs for the ongoing exercise on the operating model. We're not disclosing that number. But when you try to make that adjustment, do you sort of agree that it could be more than 15% under underlying margin?
It could be more than 13.3%. That's what I agree to.
Thanks a lot, Roland, for that clarification. Thank you. That was all for me. Thanks a lot.
Thanks.
The next question we have is from Khristian Tornøe of SEB. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. And first question is again on this outlook comment on the mining orders.
So if mining product orders are not going to pick up until 2026, and given the lead time of backlog conversion, would that mean that we shouldn't expect mining revenue to sort of materially increase until 2027?
Yeah, thank you for that, Khristian. So as we say, it's somewhat uncertain when this will pick up again and starting to materialize in terms of higher order. So what you should do now is, as we have said, average product intake of DKK 1 billion per quarter. That's what we're currently doing. And plan that as revenue in 2025 and into 2026. That's how you should think about it before that changes significantly.
Understood. And then in this period, considering that your gross margin is already where you say you aim it to be, is the only EBITDA margin driver then reducing the SG&A cost?
I would say it's a main driver until we pick up the volume again and we can achieve all our targets by leaning out the company. We have internal plans how we can take a cost out. As I said, we will have a lean corporate office. Then we are pushing resources to customer front, either technical and sales resources in the business line to have more customer-facing people. We have enough resources, but sometimes they are too much in the backend to lead in the frontend. So we are pushing resources out. And so that is one of the main levers. But of course, in the meanwhile, mix is also getting better so that if we have less revenues for capital, the mix is supporting profitability as well.
So we might see quite significant uptick in the percentage share of the service against the capital, but it's mainly SG&A and mix.
Understood. And then my second question is on the provisioning levels. Again, you mentioned the impact in cement and NCA, but I just want to clarify whether there is any sort of change to the provisioning levels for mining in Q3 and maybe sort of referring to the adjustment in the cash flow statement, which sort of suggests that you would have provisioned more in the quarter than previously. But maybe just help me if there's any impact on the underlying mining.
Yeah, so those provisions are a little bit across the board, but there is a restructuring provision in mining that goes to the reductions in SG&A that Mikko is talking about. So the restructuring part is predominantly mining and a bit in NCA.
The rest is cement, NCA, and mining. Okay. And the restructuring you refer to here, would that go into the restructuring line in your provisioning note?
Yes. Yes. That's the 87 and change. You can see from Q2 to Q3.
Excellent. Great. All for me. Thank you.
The next question we have is from Lars Topholm of Carnegie Investment Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes. Before I start, congrats with impressive job on the margin. Having followed this company for 30 years plus, it's actually quite remarkable. That being said, I also have questions around your comments on the outlook. So it's more simple math. If I look at your backlog by the end of Q3 in mining, it's DKK 11.3 billion. That's a billion down from the beginning of the year, and your book to bill is lower than one.
So the question is, what is the likelihood of a revenue decline in 2025 and 2026? And in that context, since you now have an impressively high gross margin, doesn't that imply your leverage has gone up? And leverage also works on the downside. So in other terms, do you have plans to do more on the cost side if top line dips to protect your margins? Or how should I think about that? Maybe I can start, Lars. Thank you for that. So your logic is right. We're not guiding on 2025 revenues yet, but obviously our order intake is down. We're doing DKK 250 million per quarter. So that would imply roughly where we may end on an average over the next year, year and a half.
And the SG&A exercise that we are currently doing is aiming at adjusting our internal cost level to exactly that. So you're right, operational leverage is also applying downwards. And then I have a question on these 150 salespeople you took on to gain some market share in the pump market. I just wonder if you can put some comments on how that has gone, how many orders have they won, what's the status?
So just not giving any data numbers. So we are happy actually with the investment and return what we are getting for the pumps business. And the capital business is impacted by kind of shortage of large project orders, including pumps.
We have managed to compensate that by converting competitors' pumps out so that if I look at the conversion rate, we have the KPIs like how many new pumps we have kind of orders of new pumps, not only DKK, KEP, but also numbers of pumps. Then we have targets for conversions. That conversions is running double the rate compared to last year. That's an indication that our product is good, technology is good, and then we are getting return for the investment. That has compensated slowness in the capital business related to the projects. In that sense, we are getting return. Of course, pumps is a high-margin business. Highlight of that one is that we are doing well converting competitors' pumps out, replacing them with the Krebs FLSmidth pumps.
And then a related question to that, Mikko, because you guys have also been very clear that one of the differences between you and Metso is sheer size. So to completely close the margin gap to them, you need bigger size. So if we have a situation where demand is subdued for the next year, year and a half, and then picking up, is it now you would do M&As? Is this realistic within a 6-12 month horizon?
So I think the biggest constraint in the large is, let's say that when the market will pick up, the biggest constraint is a large capital equipment. And within that one, the biggest constraint is large castings. And typically that part is outsourced by all of the companies because the largest casting suppliers are supplying castings for multiple different industries, not only mining. And that is typically when the market will turn.
Looking at 2022, that was the kind of large mills, large castings was the kind of the bottleneck for the orders and lead times, so we see that if the market will come back, the same constraint will remain, and of course, we need to be vigilant when we see the market coming back so that we secure the supply early on so that we can win orders by being able to supply kind of heavy capital equipment faster than the competition, but then in smaller products, it's less capacity issue, then our own in-house manufacturing for pumps and cyclones is scalable. Small mills, small crushers is more scalable because there's less constraints in the supply, but you are right that when the market will turn, some of the core products will have a constraint in kind of what the lead time to supply.
One final more household question.
The capitalized R&D, can you comment on the split of that between mining and cement? I would assume it's predominantly mining. Is that fair?
Yeah, it's predominantly mining. Absolutely. It's a lot to do with what we do in our PCM.
Very clear. Thanks for answering my questions.
Thanks very much.
The next question we have is from Tore Fangmann of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for taking my questions. Two from my side. The first one would be, could you please give us a reminder on the reduced labor services and until when this should impact the year-on-year comparison? And then secondly, do you have an SG&A midterm target for the mining as a standalone business post a potential cement disposal? Thank you.
We have only, so we are separate between basic labor services, which are large labor service contracts, 200-300 people at the mining site, cleaning the site, and all sorts of basic stuff, not related to the technology itself. So we have one contract left. And in South America, all the other contracts we are out. And we don't give an exact number, but I don't know, Roland, if you want to indicate anything for that one.
Yeah, I think we indicated that it's about DKK 200 million in OI in 2024. So that has come down significantly.
Okay, thank you.
Then remaining portfolios, just to remind you, remaining portfolios, spare parts, consumables, professional services, which is high-end technical services and technical support, and then upgrades and retrofits. So that's then remaining portfolio what we have.
And second question on the SG&A target, is the midterm target for standalone mining business?
So we're not disclosing an SG&A target, but we're saying we will do an EBITDA of 13%-15% in 2026 reported. But we can say that we are targeting a significant reduction in SG&A. And our internal target is based on conservative volume estimates. So that we want to make sure that even though it's a low part of the cycle in the CapEx business, that we have a kind of lean organization. And the target is that when the market will return, then we keep it under check, under control so that we become kind of scalable in that side of things.
Thank you.
The next question we have is from Chitrita Sinha of J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Morning board both. So my first question is on the mining SG&A cost. So this has obviously come down as a % of sales sequentially.
Do we expect this to come down steadily from here, or will there be some headwinds like further hiring that you're planning to do? No, it will come. So the plan is it will come down from here. It's not super evenly because in bonus quarters and so on, but it'll come down significantly from where we are. And then we are targeting absolute reduction, meaning that absolute DKK, euro, dollar, whatever you want to use. So it's not relative. Our internal target is absolute DKK, not the percentage. So then we know that we can squeeze more of the cost out, making sure that it will come down.
Okay, very helpful. And then my second question is, we've not got too long now till the end of the year. Where do we stand today in terms of the cement divestment process?
Yeah, so what we said on the cement process, it's going according to plan. And we are running the process. There's no change in that. And we can technically sign that deal before year-end at the earliest. And if we won't make that, it will be beginning of the new year. So that's where we stand on that. And that has been the plan all along.
Thank you.
The next question we have is from Peter Sehested of ABG. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you for taking my question. Most have been answered. But just dwelling on the comments that you made about your meetings with the EPCMs, what minerals exactly are we talking about? Because when tapping into what the big miners are saying, I mean, the rhetoric still appears the same that you're optimistic about the transition, etc. But when it comes to investments, the copper price still needs to be relatively high before something material is happening there. So yeah, that's essentially what I have left of the question.
That's why I said that the pickup will be initially in the kind of improving existing assets. And that's because exactly what you said. So the pickup will be soon. That is, rather than greenfield, it will be improving existing operations in South America, debottlenecking, adding a new line, adding a new mill, adding a new crusher, just to kind of increase capacity. Because there, the licensing is less of an issue. And of course, you have existing operations that you are improving. So the first pickup will be there. And then the long-term greenfields will live their own life in terms of timing. And sometimes you cannot even time them for a year.
It might be this year or it might be in five years of time. It's so uncertain. But these expansions, deep bottlenecking, improvements of the existing ones, adding a line, that will happen quite fast. And I think most of the EPCMs were saying that that's what they're looking at at the moment. And of course, big greenfields like it's not really a greenfield, but we announced that strategic agreement for Uzbekistan. It's going to be a massive concentrator for Uzbekistan that we are supplying the 80% of equipment. And why we say that we didn't book it this quarter is that the timing depends on the EPCM progress. So that's how the site construction is progressing. And then we are kind of booking delivering as per that one. So obviously, timing is uncertain. So we want to kind of caution everybody for timing issue.
But kind of brownfield improvements will pick up very fast when the market is better.
And then just perhaps a follow-up. If we just assume that final metal consumption is unchanged at these levels, but as you mentioned, all grades going down and hardness going up, I mean, if you have the same consumption, but with lower grades, harder rock, just means more stuff has to go through the processing plant, i.e., that implies increased wear and tear, etc. Doesn't that suggest that even with stable end metal consumption, that your services business should actually increase?
You're absolutely spot on there. And if you look at global statistics of the ore grade using copper as an example, there's a trend-wise year-on-year decline. And that continues.
It should have a positive impact on our opportunities in the service business because you need to process more to get the same volume of copper concentrate out. So you're spot on. And so what does your technician say or specialist say about this sort of growth impact from this sort of scenario? So I think, yeah, I think we will go back to growth in service. And I think we have certain strategies for that one. We are not talking to the market about them, but we have an idea how we can help miners to kind of improve their assets with our service. So it's, of course, then that will manifest itself for selling more spare wear, parts and upgrades and retrofits. But we will come back to the market then in more specific details about going back to growth.
But we have an idea how to do that one. But we come back to that sometime next year. Roland, is that what we agreed?
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you very much.
The next question we have is from Casper Blom of Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks a lot. Just a couple of quick ones here. Mikko, did I hear correctly that you said that you were more or less a year ahead in the transformation of the company? And I would then just be, if you can confirm that, be interested to hear if we should also think about you reaching your targets one year ahead of time. That's the first one. And the second one on the non-core business, it looks as if there will be some backlog left by year-end. Is there any concerns that we should have about that giving a loss in 2025? Thank you.
If I comment on the transformation that we are year ahead, we are year ahead in some areas like NCA. We are closing the segment this year. Early expectation was end of 2025. We also progressed slightly faster in our profitability improvement despite softness of the capital market, capital business. I think, so in many areas, we are progressing faster. We are not done yet with all the areas. SG&A is too high. Cost level is too high for the volume what we have and that sort of things. We are ahead of the strategy plan, especially in NCA. Then, of course, we have some headwinds from the kind of low volume in capital business.
On your question on NCA, so that backlog will come down further, Casper? Also the provision that we have made is also done in NCA. So once we sort of end that segment, if there's a piece left, the intention is that it is properly provisioned for so there won't be any P&L impact as we move forward.
That is very clear. Thanks to the both of you.
The last question that we have is from Klaus Kehl of Nykredit. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello. You've been working on this new operating model for quite a time, which ultimately should result in a lower tax rate going forward. But it's still kind of high here in 2024, and I guess that's no surprise. But do you have any high-level thoughts how we should think about your tax rate for 2025? That would be my first question.
The way we have said it is that once we come into 2026, going through 2026, our tax rate will start to drop towards the 30% we have talked about in our capital markets day. I think we are well progressed. We are also aware that some of this may be challenged in the countries we are leaving. So we will also accrue for that. So you won't see our ETR drop like a stone until we come towards the end of 2026. So that's how we should think about it.
Okay, great. And then, yeah, you still have some transformation to do in 2025. But on group level, should we expect further transformation costs in 2025?
There will be costs for us to move towards the new operating model, yes. Now, whether the question goes to whether we will call it out as one-offs, that we haven't decided yet. Okay.
And do you have any high-level thoughts about the amount?
No. No. Not yet. We do, but we will come and inform about it once we are a bit more crisp.
Okay. Perfect. Thank you very much. You're welcome.
As my closing comments, we tried to make you fall in love with FLS. I think some of the comments, I think you are starting to kind of feel that we are a high-quality company, but we go further. So if you think about FLS, we will be a pure-play mining services company. We have a high exposure to copper and gold. We have a leading position in most of the portfolio items in flow sheets.
And we have a clear strategy how we are moving to higher-margin, higher-earning, low-risk business. And also that when we are launching next year new ideas for the service growth and business growth, we hope that then that's kind of end of the transformation journey, profitability, transformation, cleaning the house, and then go back for growth. And I think hopefully then that's a kind of last bit of when you fall in love with us. But I see some nice comments already from some of the people following us for a long time. So we do our best to earn your trust. So thanks for the call.