Good day to everyone, and welcome to ROCKWOOL A/S conference call regarding the result for the first quarter of 2024. My name is Kim Andersen. I'm the CFO of ROCKWOOL A/S. Today, I'm pleased to present CEO, Jens Birgersson. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. First, Jens Birgersson will go through our presentation and give an update on the results for the first quarter, 2024. Afterwards, we'll be ready to answer all your good questions. Before I hand over the word to Jens Birgersson, I must ask you to notice slide number 2 , which is the forward-looking statement. Please be aware that this presentation contains uncertainties. Now, we can go to next slide, which is slide 3. Jens Birgersson, I'll hand over the word to you.
Good day. With the microphone on this time. Good day, good morning, everyone. Looking at the numbers for this quarter, we, we started off in January with maybe the first two weeks a little bit, little bit slow. You never know what happens in January, but as the quarter progressed, business picked up and turned quite strong. There was quite a big mix shift. We have very little residential business. We see very little activity still on the residential side, but on the heavy densities, the non-residential, and there we talk flat roofs, sandwich panel, everything going in the industrial segment, that, that started to grow, and I'm very happy with that top line. And considering that last year, we kind of held back on resources, we have trimmed a bit of cost, but not too much.
When that growth came, that together with the price level that was stable, that turned into a nice and profitable quarter. In terms of volume, due to the shift from overweight on the heavy densities, we actually have a double-digit volume growth in there compared to last year. Again, comparing with the relatively easy comparable. Move to slide . . . Take slide 4, please. Higher growth in the insulation business, so we have 9%. Again, bearing in mind that it was quite a hefty winter in some areas, especially Eastern Europe, last year, Q1. On the system business side, we see a decline, but that's picking up.
We believe that the systems will get back into growth territory from now onward, so it's looking better. Especially Rockfon had a very slow start of the year, but it's looking better now. Go to slide 5. Regional sales development. Everything pretty slow in Western Europe. It should be said, though, Germany had quite good growth, and it has recovered a little bit. It's still on a low level, but... It's not a double-digit growth, but it started to grow—but it was so extremely low for us last year, so... But that's a positive. All the other countries are around the zero. No particular good news anywhere, but there is a solid business and possibly a trend of improvement in some of the Western European market.
Eastern Europe, then, there is a broad-based growth, volume, and top line, and, to sum it up, I think there is only one country where we didn't grow. All the others grow, and a lot of countries that grow double digits, so that's, that's, that's good. I think that fits with this. We try to understand why is that happening. It's heavy densities, it's industrial buildings, it's non-residential segments, and I think it has to do with that people that invest in factories, and those type of buildings, they now see the end of the downturn, and they have started to invest again. Nearshoring possibly impact this, and planning to, to be ready by the time, by the time it's turn, the business cycle is improving. So, so that's what drives the business.
In North America and Asia, we have double-digit growth in both places. Japan, where we made the acquisition, I was there in Q1. It's still a very small business, but we had the very significant growth, and we're starting to get some volumes into our factories, so that's nice. It's still a small business, but it's encouraging, the growth numbers we see. Slide 6. Profitability. We had slightly lower prices compared to end of last year, and just slightly below Q1 last year. We're talking, so basically stable prices. We see logistics radius increase slightly, the mix impact our profitability a little bit negative, but materials are lower, and energy are lower, so profitability is up, plus the volume growth, the big volume growth, that also adds to the profit.
We didn't need to add any much resources to produce that growth, so that goes through nicely to the bottom line. In terms of provisions, you know, we declare provisions, most of the time we don't talk about it, but quarter last year and quarter this year is roughly neutral. So it's a margin improvement without the impact of any provision taking or restructuring, anything like that. Slide 7. Nice development in profitability on insulation. You see the margins has improved from a bit above 10% to more than 15%. Nice, and that's driven by the business I mentioned. On the system division, we also had a healthy development.
Last year, we were on 10.4, and now 14.2, which is a more normal margin, so we're happy about that. Q4 2023, I just want to remind you that we had a EUR 60 million restructuring profit that we booked in that quarter, so that's not representative. But the Systems division has improved also, which is nice. Slide 8, investment activities. We just keep investing. There are a couple of things that have happened. One is that we have started up the Flumroc plant. That was probably the main investment there. We also commissioned a new paint line for Rockpanel, and we keep doing that, so that has continued on. And we haven't had any... nothing especially notable in this.
We just keep doing, executing on the plan, and we haven't drawn back. We did also. We see an increase, a couple of factors, our technical insulation business, part of it due to competitors exit from the marine business, but also a general increase in technical insulation demand. We have also invested in Bohumín in increased capacity, and that business is growing nicely. Moving on to slide 9, the electrical melter in Flumroc. Okay, not everyone would know that, but it's in Switzerland, and it's in Flums. That's a EUR 100 million investment. We made this acquisition, and in the business plan, we made it several years back.
It has been tremendously successful, but we made a commitment to secure this location in Switzerland, and this factory is in Switzerland, for Switzerland, which is quite unusual in our sector. We have now completed that investment of EUR 100 million. It started up on the day. It's the largest electrical melter in the world, and there are also another couple of extras in that plant that we have never tried before that has worked out, and it has been a beautiful project. CO2 reductions will be something like 75% with that, and we will have green energy driving that. So that's a really good project. It will also improve our ability to take back old products and do circularity on this electrical melter.
We can put in a higher content of non-virgin products, so that's good. Just to give you a little bit of a feeling for this project, the total shutdown, I mean, we prepared everything, and then we did a total shutdown of five weeks, and to get through that, those weeks and supply the customers, you know, in many markets, we can take in products from neighboring countries. In Switzerland, that is a little bit more difficult due to the nature of the products they prefer in that country. We had built up a strategic stock of 100,000 pallets, and it worked out really well, and we kept the customer supplied. Slide 10, free cash flow, good. As usual, net working capital is not a big issue for us.
It's on a healthy level. Some of the reduction is also caused by the increase in deliveries and that we now have relatively low stocks. We are ramping up capacities. I'm not, I'm not worried about being able to deliver good growth in Q2. We are ahead of the curve, and we should be able to grow more. The share buyback program is progressing as planned, and maybe we are. I wouldn't say we are surprised, but the net. We don't have debt again, so EUR 200, more than EUR 200 million surplus again, net debt free, so very healthy balance sheet position. Over to the outlook, slide 12. We had already pre-announced the outlook.
We didn't change that now, so mid-single digit growth, 50% margin, and we just maintained the CapEx forecast. So that's the outlook, and you had factored that in already in your estimates, I think, when we did the profit warning a few weeks back. Over to questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star and one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speaker phone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star and two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Casper Blom with Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. I have two questions, please. The first goes to pricing. You've successfully, more or less, maintained pricing throughout 2023 and here in Q1, while we see that competitors like Kingspan and Saint-Gobain have been lowering pricing. Can you talk a little bit to the pricing dynamics in the market and any kind of feedback that you are getting from customers on this topic? And secondly, with margins now at a higher level than we have seen historically, do you believe that there could be a situation where this could trend even higher, if and when volumes bounce back to the level seen a year or two ago? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Casper. So let's start with the pricing. First of all, the overall price number is the combination, obviously, of all regions. And we see different things in different regions, and we see different developments in different segments. But underlying, I would like to say inflation is still there. Yes, energy prices have come down to more normal levels, and this and that, but we still have inflation in North America, we have it in Europe, and we have it in Asia. So going forward, to keep profitability to some price increases, that's underlying because the inflation has not disappeared. Net, obviously we have different pricing climate.
So in North America, we have been quite careful on pricing until now, and the reason was that we got completely overwhelmed in orders and ended up with a very long delivery time. So now we have ramped up capacity, and we have started to move through the backlog, get back to proper delivery times, and we have also launched a relatively substantial price increase in North America again, because we don't feel we should raise prices and have lousy service to our customers. So U.S. have a positive pricing climate with also high inflation and high demand, so that goes that way. Asia, a little bit spotty, but again, in the big scheme of things, doesn't impact overall numbers yet.
In five years, I'm sure Asia will impact our numbers, but now it's not a big deal. Then we look at Europe. The tricky segment would be the residential general building insulation , where we kind of walking a tight rope, but we are not dropping a lot, but we kind of adjust pricing a bit, but there it's very competitive. And then you have some markets where you have projects, like mid-sized projects, where we offer stone wool, and there is a complete carnage on the EPS side, with very low pricing, and we lose a bit of projects, and we go down a bit, so. But overall, on the heavy densities and with the demand coming now and regaining ground, then we increase prices.
So the net of that is that I see stable pricing, but there's a lot of work in the different segment. You look at, for example, technical insulation into oil and gas, into marine, healthy demand and we pass on the cost increases. So that's the way we approach it, and our goal was always to kind of get through here, and we have always told our customers that we don't see the inflation go away. So we haven't and it's not going away very quickly, and therefore, I see continued small price increases.
Then on the margins, Kim and I, we have this all 10%, above 10%, and we have never had a problem with being, you know, 16% or 17%, because when we look at the CapEx and the massive investments and the price of the plants with the inflation, we. I would fundamentally say that we should have a higher margin in the business. Again, higher margin is a bit of a dangerous concept because if we end up building, say, 2 jumbo lines, and we switch them on, it's several margin points in depreciation. So I think, again, in future calls, I said that last time, we should talk EBITDA margin.
But I think we need a higher margin, and we should try to maintain a higher margin, because with all these investments that are needed in this business, you have on the one side, the greenification with the CO2 take up. I've mentioned the EUR 100 million in Switzerland. We need to charge for that. You know, we cannot end up in businesses that don't cover themselves. So I think we need an underlying higher profit margin. Then we also have now the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive that was decided on twelfth of April in the EU, with very ambitious targets. And I don't see any impact in 2024, but you have now goals for 2030, you have goals for 2035.
You have aspects in there on solar energy installations, which is a sweet spot for us because of the non-combustibility. You even have some guidance in there on fire safety hazards, because when you install more electrification, heat pumps, PVs batteries, recharging infrastructure, you need to be more fire safe. And then you have all these buildings that are gonna be renovated. So with that, we also see that if that start to realize, we need to invest more, and therefore I would like margins to be higher, okay? So nothing against maintaining the margins to make sure that we have a sustainable business. I hope that also answered your questions, Casper.
Yeah, I suppose it do. If I could sneak in one follow-up, it would be if there would be a margin level where you would say, "Okay, now it's pretty comfortable. Let's try and go for more volume hunt instead of further increasing the margin.
Yeah, I think we go for volume, but you know, volume is super important, but if the volume gets restricted by capacity, it's not smart to sell out your volume at too low margins, right? So we need to build factories to cover the volume. I mean, we definitely wanna grow the volumes, but now we just come out of a period where it was just to navigate, maintaining market shares, and keep profitability of the business, but we have been seeing falling volumes, so now we come into growing volumes, so we have a different scenario. But for sure, for sure, we want the volumes to grow.
Thanks a lot, Thanks a lot, gents.
Our next question comes from Alexander Craeymeersch with Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Hi. Hello, good morning. Alexander from, Kepler speaking here. Congratulations on the, on the nice set of results. Yeah, I was just wondering, on the, on the, on the capacity, because you were already touching on that. In H2 2022, you did some capacity reversal, with unfortunate layoffs, and I think one specific item you mentioned there was a, a deep maintenance in the plant of Germany. Now, that you mentioned that volumes are increasing, and the demand in Eastern Europe and Germany is increasing, have you already made some plans to increase capacity again, restaffing, and or are you comfortable with the current capacity? Thank you.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the installed capacity is there, and we are like in the U.S., we added several shifts, and we are ramping up now in line with the capacity increase. And as I said, when we did that big... When was it? 2022, 2022 in the autumn, we did a big, a relatively big capacity take up. But that's so we struck early, and then we set the volume level for the downturn, and that pretty much worked out. And also, I assume you are based in Germany or no?
Based in Brussels.
Oh, okay. A lot of Kurzarbeit and all the other schemes. Now, we see, for example, in Southern Germany, in Neuburg, with the growth that is back from a low level, it's not healthy in Germany. It's nowhere near where it should be. Neuburg, for example, in Southern Germany, is back up and running again on all lines. So, we are putting in more capacity, but again, it's not from the level we are talking about, it's not a big problem, and we are planning that, and we should be able to grow.
Okay. Thank you. And then, going on, on the capacity, my second question would be, if you could maybe give just an update in terms of budget capacity and timing of the plants in France, Romania, now also the U.S.. Thank you.
I hand that over to Kim.
Yeah, thank you very much. We still have a plan to go ahead to construct the factories in France and Romania, to be online, in the second half of 2026. Cross fingers. And then, of course, the factory in Washington State, in the U.S., has just been approved by the board here lately, and we are in the planning there. We have a piece of land. We're doing due diligence on that, but that will only come online in 2027. So that's the plan right away. So for us, the next new capacity will be most likely France and Romania here in Europe, and then in 2027 in Washington State.
And then India.
And then India is also approved, and, and there will also be a three-year period, so-
That's great.
Maybe, yeah, it's because it's. Yeah, but let's say late 2026 into 2027 in India.
Okay, thank you very much, Jens and Kim. I hand it over to my colleagues. Bye.
Our next question comes from Arnaud Lehmann with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. My first—I have two questions, please. My first question is on the margin. Is there any reason why you are a bit less optimistic for the margin in the second half? Are you just being a bit cautious maybe on pricing? Or is it possible that your 17, 16, 17% margin in the first quarter might be sustainable into Q2 and H2? That's my first question. And staying on the resi and non-resi diverging trends, clearly quite positive trends in non-residential demand. Could you be a bit more specific about which countries and which verticals where you are seeing this strong demand? Thank you very much.
Okay. Okay, thanks. Thanks, Arnaud . So, on the margin, when we did the outlook, we don't have backlog, so we kind- Kim and I, what we do, we factor in what we see into the next quarter, and then we see how the sales forecast build. But we don't have a long backlog, and therefore, we traditionally get this question often when we do a forecast because we factor in what we see, and guess, you know, a couple of months out, and for the rest, we take an assumption so that we don't come back and disappoint and don't deliver on it. Q...
You know, the summer, we have August, for example, where France is down, and we have some other things that the margin in that period would be a bit lower, normally is. On the other hand, you have September, that normally is a super strong month, so sometimes that waves are the... But I would, I would say the following: rather than trying, and I, and I don't see that there would be a dramatic thing on pricing. I haven't factored in anything like that. My intention is to keep, keep pricing, and, and keep working it, and do price increases where, where, where we can and, and, and defend market share where, where we should. So, so I'm not too worried about that.
So I wouldn't put more into in other than to say that we don't have quantitative visibility into those quarters yet. We are getting deeper and deeper into it, but we know, for example, in Q2, we know pretty much that the business continues, it's growing, it's looking good. Then we come on that those segments, I would say overall, the business is driven by the heavy business. For example, solar PV is pretty broad-based, is broad-based, and then you have, for example, North America, it's all types of business, residential, non-residential, and there we have, I would say, less of a. So for example, the flat roof business in North America is not very big for us. So there you have a broad-based uptick.
Eastern Europe is exactly what you would expect, you know, manufacturing, logistics, data centers, all type battery factories, you name it, some electric vehicles factories. It's all those, nearshoring or just expansion, the industrial base. That drives it, and that happens in the whole of Eastern Europe. And then in Western Europe, I would say there is a bit of that coming, but I would say the fastest growing segment is solar PV flat roofs.
That's very helpful. Thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Brijesh Kumar with HSBC. Please go ahead.
Hi, hi, Jens. Hello, Kim. I have two as well. So starting with the first one is on the... Sorry, I lost it. But yeah, I'll start with the cost one then. On cost side, what are you kind of seeing in terms of the dynamics? Can you just give us what you have had in scope in terms of pricing versus Q2 versus Q1? And I guess previously we were talking about cash you had for Q1, as well as electricity to an extent. So if you can just give us a little more update about it, where we are. And then second question is on the margin.
I guess many questions have already been asked for it, but if I recollect, from history, you make a very good margin in your normal residential business versus flat roof. Given the mix has shifted to flat roof in Q1 versus the historical numbers, when the residential business picks up, would you say that margin has kind of legs to go up as the mix improves positively?
Thanks, Brijesh. Before I start, do you remember that question you asked about the CO2 intensity in the last call?
Right. Right.
Yeah, I checked that-
Similar thing, maybe.
I checked that a little bit, and I just want to loop back and comment because we didn't answer it when you answered it. So basically, what happened is that we did improve the intensity, but what we had not done, and that was an omission, we should link that up. There were grid factors changing in Germany and France, those were the main contributors. So, and also China, where we put in electrical melting. We did all the work, but then we had not linked up the RECs, so those countries, especially France and Germany, had a worsening grid factor, and mathematically, that made the CO2 look worse. But when we go back and calculated it again, and we match it with the RECs, actually we did improve.
So we will not—that will not happen this year. It was a mistake from our side, because we did not predict that Germany would move so much to coal as it did.
It was a bit of an oversight with China, where we did do the investment in the conversion-
Yeah.
- but didn't secure
Yeah
- the RECs.
Yeah. So we did. So, for example, China, we put in an electrical melter, and then, then we didn't do the conversion to green energy, and that actually made it worse. But in, in effect, we dropped the CO2 emissions with 70% or something. So, so that, that, that will be corrected. Then if you go back to your questions, you know, we haven't seen residential come up, but I guess theoretically, if you keep, if you keep the margin on, on, on the other business and the volume and there's more residential scope, margin would go up, mix. And the mix effect i- i- is relatively significant because it, it compensated for with other factors. So, so, so that's, that's, a point. I will hand over to Kim soon on energy, but if you look...
When I look at it, generally we see a better material and cost input side, but there are some categories going in, up, and that's logistics, it's wages, and there are certain individual materials that creep up. But on average, it's going down. Maybe, Kim, you can throw some light on that.
I think that I have told you before, that we had this favorable deal on the coke for the first quarter, and that for sure is one of the energy, cost that is going up. I think, gas prices, electricity prices will be more stable, for the remaining part of the year, but coke prices, for us at least, compared to Q1, is going up. And then you have also oil-related prices like binders, plastic wrappings, are also expected to go up in price. And then with Jens also said, logistics and wages.
Okay. Fair enough. Thanks. Thank you for asking, remembering, and answering that question.
Okay, thanks.
Our next question comes from Zaim Beekawa with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Morning, Jens and Kim. Thank you for taking my question. Two, two for me, please. Just one on the strength of the balance sheet. Can you speak about kind of the intention in the midterm between sort of CapEx growing the business and the buybacks? Do you think buybacks could be a norm going forward? And then secondly, just to dive in a little bit on France, what was kind of driving the decline there, and do you see that trend remaining for the full year? Thank you very much.
Yeah. France, I take France, and then I hand over balance sheet to Kim. So in France, we talk a very small single digit small decline. So I would say France has been quite resilient and done much better than Germany. So I think there could be some of the schemes for energy renovation, there could be individual project, but it's nothing dramatic. We are slightly down, so I would give it another quarter to see how the quarter is coming out now. And my prediction would be when France revs up, that we're gonna have growth in France also coming.
A little bit like we saw in the systems division, we had a gradual, a bit of a decline in Q1, but we see that coming back to growth. So that will be my prediction. So I would just defer that one more quarter out and see if it was a bit of a blip.
Yeah, thank you. And Jens, we also had in France, we did the price increase in Q4. So I think there was a little bit of pre-buying into... Anyway, on the balance sheet, the board has decided this year to propose this EUR 160 million share buyback, and they did that obviously looking at our own investment needs. And it's not something they will do on a regular basis, but it's for sure that now is the second time the board is doing it, and also in our time. So it's definitely something that we will propose going forward in case that we can see there is excess cash in the business, to do this mix of a continued, sort of, stable, progressive dividend, then supplement that with one-offs, share buyback.
Thanks, both.
Our next question comes from Christian Tornow with SEB. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Two questions from me. Firstly, just on price action. So in the announcement, when you upgrade your guidance, you sort of reflect that due to inflation, you will take price actions. You've already mentioned that you've raised prices in North America. So just wanna check where else you have recently done price increases?
Yeah. Thanks, Christian. So we have, there are segments also in some countries, you know, if you take technical insulation, sandwich panel, there we have raised prices. But if you—in addition to the countries you mentioned, in the Nordics and the U.K., for example, we have launched price increases. And then we have been a little bit careful in some other markets. But it depends a little bit how it develops now with volumes and what happens with inflation. But our—I'm not talking big price increases in Europe. We're talking inflationary, a couple of %, 1%, and that's the outlook. But also segments where we need to defend the market share, and therefore, the net, at this stage, we don't factor in a price effect this year, basically.
Great, understood. And, and then my second question goes to this investment in Flumroc, which you are highlighting. So obviously, EUR 100 million is quite a large investment. Can you just speak a bit about the financial returns? So how much can you then lift the predicted earnings in the Flumroc business as a consequence of this investment?
Yeah. Without going into numbers, so first of all, you know, to keep it a going concern, and you look how long we have run it without a lot of investments, you know, you need to look at it as an industrialist, and it's a profitable business. And yes, we will improve margins, but the case we have for that is that we make something like 8-year payback on that investment. And we are a little bit more, you know, we accept a longer period for sustainability investment, and therefore, the 8 years.
Okay, and just for my understanding, so how are you then improving profitability? Is it lower cost, or can you charge a premium for the product, or?
It's all of that. We can take more non-virgin material back in, which gives us an advantage. We price, we get more capacity out of this. We can sell more than we could before. We also get lower cost, actually. The variable production cost goes down with the setup.
Okay, fantastic. Excellent.
Maybe final point, the maintenance cost, of course, on the new plant is less also.
Our next question comes from Yassine Touahri with On Field Investment Research. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. I would have three questions. My first question is for you, Jens. Like, over the past 10 years, ROCKWOOL has done quite well. Like, you nearly doubled the margin. The revenue has doubled. I can imagine that the culture has changed. Could you give us a bit of an overview of what you think has changed most over the past decade under your leadership?
I mean-
What are the key challenges is?
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, so when I came in, you actually had a business that grew a little bit, but the costs were increasing faster than the top line. And if you look at the headcount today, we have roughly the same headcount, and we are 65-70% bigger, with 6% CAGR. So getting that fundamentally industrialization of the whole business with this massive productivity improvements, that's one. And then on the margin, you know, when I came, it was 7%. Now, we are clocking 16.5% or 15%, so that's more than twice. I think the profitability was too low to sustain the business.
We have also, you know, the whole U.S., U.S. was a loss maker, small, or North America, we were break even, and now it's a very substantial value driver that can run. Culturally and technically, I think on the technology, we now have an edge on almost every aspect of stone wool making. But, but I think the most, most important thing, and maybe we felt that, but culturally, we are, we are a hands-on organization, a very agile organization, and we have a winning team. You know, I'm not so important anymore. The culture now, it's a team that wins, that believe they can do things, and, and, and that will carry this forward.
It's really nice to see that, for example, this project in Flumroc. It's not, you know, it's not a low-risk investment we did there, and take a shutdown where you're the only supplier in the market, and you take a five-week shutdown, and you do a number of new technologies that we have never done before, and we pull it off. You know, that confidence is really nice on the tech side. So I think those are the main ones. And going forward, I think productivity. We work a lot on AI, machine learning. I think now the productivity improvement will have to come from automation and AI, and these things, and we already have a number of technologies developed, and we are rolling out a program where we have significant productivity improvements coming.
So I think that's winning, winning culture in the company, and a belief that really we are a tech company that can achieve a lot, that's really fantastic.
Then the second question on the strategy. We see a lot of your peers and competitor like Saint-Gobain, Etex, Kingspan, or Knauf, focusing on the building envelope, and adding a lot of different products to satisfy the needs of their customer. And even Kingspan, I think, is investing in stone wool. How do you see the strategy of ROCKWOOL? Do you think this is something that could make sense for you in the medium term? And how would you do you feel that those companies could have an edge in the future if they are able to provide a wider array of solutions than ROCKWOOL?
Yeah. So just a correction, 5 weeks shutdown, 5 months shutdown in Flumroc. That's why we needed 100,000 pallets. We don't sell a 100,000 pallets in 5 weeks, just to correct that. Yeah, the building envelope, you know, we have ventilated façade, we have played with kind of add-on products on Etex, and. So we have been an extreme pure play. I think it's. I think that consolidation of the market and having, you know, we call it solutions, but several different product technologies to solve the façade challenge. I think that is a sound strategy. I'm not gonna be here now, but I think it's absolutely a very valid point for ROCKWOOL to look into that. We have had so much work to do.
If I were to run ROCKWOOL another 10 years, it definitely would be an area that I would look at very, very carefully. And we have looked at it in different forms, but it is an important trend you point out, and I think it is a profitable trend and a good trend to hook onto.
The last question, you're commenting on the, the, those CapEx. So I think a new plant is maybe, like, EUR 100-150 million. What kind of revenue can you generate when you're investing EUR 100 million? Is it—I have in mind that it's approximately the same, that when you're investing EUR 100 million, you can generate EUR 100 million sales. But maybe I'm mistaken. If you can give us a bit of color on that, it would be very, very helpful.
Just come again. So you wonder about the CapEx for a plant, right?
If you are investing EUR 100 million in a new plant, what kind of revenue can you generate? Is it 1-to-1, or is it different?
Kim here. You see, with the current price levels, we are getting a bit more than EUR 100 million, I would say closer to EUR 250 million for a EUR 100 million investment.
That's very, very helpful. Thank you so much.
Our next question comes from Marcus Cole with UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is just to be clear, what level of incremental price increases do you think you'll need to hold Q1 margins for the rest of the year? And the second one is just on fire safety. How much share do you think you're gaining as a result of fire safety regulation? Thanks.
Yeah. So on the price, you know, we don't forecast the price, right? We always said that with the current outlook, we need to do price increases to maintain the margin. If costs go down, we need less. But so we don't... But I've said we need a, you know, 1%-2% or something this year, but the cost situation can develop differently. So and then also the volume, of course, if we keep growing like this, that will help us also. So I don't give any more. On the fire regulation, our observation is that it keeps... You have the Valencia fire now, you remember the Grenfell one. We see now that it's kind of increasingly coming in more and more.
The whole PV segment, for example, it shifted quite quickly in our favor, and I think we're gonna see more and more regulation. But then to say how much of that is quantitatively, how much is stone wool gonna gain share in the overall picture? I think it is like this: I think stone wool will gain share overall. You had also the fire now in Poland, in the shopping mall. Stone wool will keep gaining share due to that safety issue, and the threat for that, if the market keeps growing, is that there isn't capacity for stone wool, because stone wool is probably one of the most difficult product to add capacity. That's how I see it, but it keeps increasing the regulation in almost every market we are in.
Can I sneak in a supplementary on that? I just wonder what that does to pricing power. It seems your pricing has been very strong relative to other insulation types. Do you think that's largely driven by fire safety regulation? You have definitely subsidized.
Yeah, yeah, I think it's two different markets. You know, if you are in a market where it has to be stone wool, we are up against stone wool competition, and we need to win it because we are competitive, and we provide the best service. So if you take the Tesla factory, we won it because it was big, it was logistical, it was service, it was also the nature of the product. So we have, of course, a premium to other stone wool players, but regulation, where we compete with other stone wool supplier, they also have fire safe product.
And then when you have these borderline products, it could help because immediately the plastic foam are not involved, it goes into a more stone wool pricing segment where we compete, but it's a different type of competition, and they also have high cost level. And we are competitive as a company. We have very high productivity, so their cost level is such that they also need to price high, and we have a premium. So it doesn't play directly super clearly in our hands, but it definitely help with more fire regulation for our pricing power.
Okay, thank you very much.
Our next question comes from Peter Sehested with ABG. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you for taking my questions, and pardon my voice here. I have two, if I may, maybe, three. On the margin side, I think that historically, you needed a 13% margin in order to sort of keep the business model going and keep sort of, you know, debt out of the picture. The 16% that you are now aiming, which you justify in terms of growth ambitions, is that due to mainly a higher need for capacity, or that the cost of building has increased? This 100 million, for 100 million tons has been around for quite some time, but we also know that some of the building costs in the U.S. have gone up pretty dramatically. So that's the first question. Thank you.
I don't think we ever said that 13%. My view on it is that you should have a healthy margin when you build the expensive plants we have. And this EUR 100 million for 100 capacity, that metric hasn't been in place for many years because we see... obviously, the relation to revenue is different because of the inflation, but to the tons, that metric was many, many years back. You cannot match that. And in the U.S., you are nowhere near it with the construction inflation you have had.
I think one should be careful with saying, "Yeah, because we are building those many plants, we need that price." I think this type of product business with this type of growth, we need to be up here, and the more inflation you have, and the more inflation you have on plants, the more we need. But we don't sit and calculate the one or the other. We wanna be on the healthy side of that, so that there is some room also for things going against us.
On top, another argument, and that's what we tell customers, is that this whole greenification and offering this low CO2, in many places, now we had, we mentioned a case in Flumroc, where we get more capacity, but in many cases, we just replace the melting, we put filters, we do all sorts of things. It doesn't give us more capacity. It's just pure cost to meet, to make a greener product, and that needs to be covered with pricing. So yes, we need higher margins, but we don't calculate... It's not a cost-plus approach. We wanna know, Kim and I, that we have a very healthy business model, so that also, if we get into a hyper investment phase, that we know that we have the firepower to do it.
Okay, thank you. It was also just to get a sense of whether your planned capacity for the next five years, sort of, would that be higher than what you've seen for the previous five years, but we can take that another time. My second question is on these heavy density products. Do you have a figure for how much what percentage does stone wool comprise of the total building cost for a typical whatever that is for?
You mean for a normal building, how much is the stone wool?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Like, like near, almost invisible. I mean, you're talking-
I think about 1.1.
1% plus, minus, you know, very little.
Unfortunately.
Yeah.
I guess that also helps in terms of price, increases, et cetera. That is sort of a relatively small part of the overall building cost.
Yeah. But again, I wouldn't mind if it was 10% of the cost, but it's not. It's a small portion. I mean, all, all the rest of the house costs more, and the labor, and all the rest. But around 1%, maybe a fraction above.
Okay, thank you. Then you made a decision to invest on the West Coast of the U.S., and last time we spoke, I think we had a discussion between the East and West . Is that sort of the strategy that we're going for here? Less populated area, but potential to have a larger market share as a potential first mover?
No, yeah, yeah, I would say it like this. When we sat... You know, we have the Toronto factories supplying south, obviously up in Canada, too, supplying south to New York. Then we had the factory in the south, in Mississippi. There was a hole on the Eastern Seaboard , so I didn't enjoy this at all, to sit with such a sweet spot open. I like to have overlap between the factories, so if we sell out on one, the optimal, we can still put in product from another one. So I like that footprint. On the Canadian side, we already have a West Coast factory, and Washington State is a huge economy with a lot of growth. So it's yes, the factory is in a non-urban area.
Seattle.
Yeah, but Seattle and to Vancouver and down, there's a lot of economic activity, enough, over time, to fill that factory, yeah? But from there, it's much cheaper to ship south than shipping north. There's the return freights of all the goods going to Canada. So actually, it's quite logistically clever to put the factory there also to work into California. And then later on, one could question, should we then put one further south to cover California? But California is not a super big market for us yet. We need to develop it. Remember, we are down on this 1-2% of all insulation share for stone wool, so there is a bit of work to do. But my thinking is always create overlapping service areas between factories. It's a bit like an elevator model.
Certain times, you know, the elevator companies don't earn much money on the elevator itself, but they need to have a density, so they have excellent service, and that sustains the business, and that's how I like to see it. We love working, you know, with quick delivery times and having the capacity in the zone so that we are really, really easy to work with. I think that answered your question, Peter, or?
Mr. Schecter, your line is open.
Can you hear me?
Yeah. Yeah, we can. Is that Manish or?
No, this is Peter Stein.
It's Peter, huh?
No, I just confirmed. Thank you for the... You answered my questions. I am, I'm okay. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Peter. Bye.
We have one more question from the line of Manish Beria with Bernstein. Please go ahead. Oh, you take it.
So, yes, hi there. So you have mentioned that the CapEx to build the, the plant has gone up. So I think in my model, I had to build 100,000-ton plant. It cost, like, EUR 130 million, EUR 120 million previously. So going forward, because of the inflation, how much does it cost to build a 100,000-ton plant today? So how much more? Like, 20%, 30%, or 50% more?
Yeah, Manish-
That's the question there.
Manish-
I just have one question, sir.
Yeah, Manish, it's a super good question, and I would love to answer it, but I don't wanna fiddle in, Kim's spreadsheet, and we have never answered that, so I hand over that to Kim. Kim, what do you answer on?
Yeah, thank you. There is days, of course, on our side, on the cost of building a mega factory, and I see it ranges depending on where in the world you build it, between EUR 100 million. So, that's maybe a more updated figure for you, Manish, to work with.
So, so basically, it's fair to say, like in U.S., it will be the higher side, and Europe maybe, maybe on the lower side of the range that you provided, right?
Eastern Europe will be on the lower side. Now, you know, and then, then, of course, the more Western Europe you get, it's also higher. And for sure, the U.S. is the highest.
Okay, thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this was our last question. Back over to the management for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much, Jens and I, thank you very much for the call today and all your questions. We appreciate your interest in Rockwool. If you have further questions, you're, of course, always welcome to reach out to the top professional investor relationship department we have. That is me. Have a very nice day.