Good day to everyone. Welcome to Rockwool AS conference call regarding the result for the first nine months of 2025. My name is Kim Junge Andersen. I'm the CFO of Rockwool AS. Today, I'm pleased to present CEO Jes Munk Hansen. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in listening-only mode. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. First, Jes will go through our presentation and give you an update of the results for the first nine months and third quarter of 2025. Afterwards, we'll be ready to answer all your questions. Before I hand over the word to Jes, I must ask you to notice slide number two, which is the forward-looking statement. Please be aware that this presentation contains uncertainties. Now, we can go to the next slide, which is slide number three. Jes, I now hand over the word to you.
Good morning, everyone. I start on slide number three. As you all know, the construction industry is still challenged in the macro context, owing to uncertainty, geopolitical turmoil, and continued hesitations in the market. We do not expect this to change in the near term. Revenue in the first nine months increased 1% in local currencies. Acquisitions we made in October 2024 contributed with a 2% increase in local currencies. Excluding acquisitions, group revenue decreased slightly. Pricing had a 1% impact in the first nine months. An impact from inflation was thus offset by the sales price increases. The EBIT margin declined 2.1 percentage points. Overall, we think the result is acceptable given the very difficult market circumstances. Next slide is our Q3 highlights. Revenue in Q3 increased 2% in local currencies. Excluding acquisitions, group revenue growth was flat.
In Q3, sales and earnings were negatively affected by a short-term sales decrease in the U.K., where large flat roof projects were canceled or postponed. In addition, a longer-than-planned production stop reduced available capacity in the U.K. market. At the beginning of Q4, U.K. sales were back to normal levels. In Canada, which has been hard hit by the tariff situation, the construction market is in a challenging period. Here, we do not foresee any quick recovery. On the EBIT margin, the Q3 result was affected by three main factors: the lower performance in the important and profitable U.K. market, reduced efficiency in several factors, as well as a decline in operating cost leverage, and last but not least, a continued decline in the Russian business. All in all, and in short, it was a challenging environment in Q3, but I believe we navigated it well.
I will jump to slide five and go directly to Q3 revenue. Slide six. The continued decrease in Russia had a negative impact of 2 percentage points in Q3. Excluding Russia and acquisitions, the group revenue increased 2 percentage points in the quarter, hence 2% organic growth ex-Russia. On the insulation segment, revenue increased 3% in local currency, with strong sales performance notably in Poland, in Romania, in Spain, in Italy, and importantly, also in France. Excluding Russia, the insulation segment revenue increased 5%. Just to repeat, acquisitions contributed with a 2% revenue growth. In the systems segment, the 1% revenue decrease in the quarter was driven primarily by challenges in the GroDan business. Slide seven, where we'll talk about our regional revenue for the quarter. In Western Europe, there was a double-digit growth in Italy, a double-digit growth in Spain in the quarter.
On the negative side, Germany declined, as did the U.K., as I just noted on the previous slide. In France, importantly, the revenue is back to a growth, a slight growth, but a growth after several quarters with declines. In Eastern Europe, many countries are back to real growth, including Poland and Romania. Russia continues with double-digit revenue decrease. Year-to-date Q3, Russia accounted for around 7% of the total group revenue in reported figures. In the United States, we are also back to good growth, while, as I said before, the Canadian market is facing headwinds from the trade tensions ongoing. In Asia, revenue, excluding the 2024 acquisition, increased slightly. However, sales in China decreased double-digit. Slide number eight, a few comments to our Q3 profitability. In short, EBITDA is down 11% from EUR 241 million to EUR 215 million.
This results in a 2.9 percentage point lower EBITDA margin due to unfavorable country and product mix. Reduced efficiency in several factories, as well as a decline in operating cost leverage, also contributed to the lower EBITDA margin. The longer-than-planned shutdown of our factory in Wales and the slowdown in the market had a EUR 5 million impact in the quarter compared to the previous forecast. The lower sales in Canada obviously also reduced earnings. The continued decrease in Russia had around a 1 percentage point impact on the group EBIT margin. EBIT margins are at 15.5%, down 2.6 percentage points. Considering the global situation, again, we believe these results are acceptable, although from a very mixed performance in very different market situations. Slide number nine, a little bit about the profitability by business segments. Talk about the insulation segment first.
Looking at profitability here, EBIT margin in the insulation segment was down 2.2 percentage points compared to last year. In the systems segment, EBIT margin decreased 1 percentage point from lower earnings in GroDan. And the GroDan business is challenged by lower volumes in the medical cannabis market and an unfavorable product mix coming from the lower-margin vegetable business. Slide number 10 on our investment activities. In short, our biggest investments in Q3 related to the electrification of production lines in the Netherlands and in France, and what we previously have talked about, the capacity expansion in Romania, as well as the large factory project in the United States. A few comments to our cash flow on slide 11. On net cash position, we landed at EUR 100 million, of which EUR 230 million was restricted cash in Russia.
Net book value of the investment in the Russian business as per the third quarter was EUR 425 million. Free cash flow decreased EUR 92 million compared to the same quarter last year, mainly from the lower earnings, a less favorable working capital development, and higher investments. The negative development in working capital was mainly due to softer demand and therefore higher inventory, including in the U.K. and Russia, as well as in Germany and Canada. Now let's turn our attention to the outlook for the remaining of the year. Slide number 13. Q4 started as expected with a small sales growth in October. Based on that and on the performance in the first nine months of 2025, we maintain our full-year revenue outlook that will be at level with last year in local currencies.
The production-related incident in the factory in Flums, Switzerland, in October will have a reported impact on EBIT of around EUR 15 million in quarter four. As we see it now, we expect production to be up and running again in the beginning of the first quarter, which is important to us because we need to be ready for the important spring season. In the U.K., pipeline and quoting activities now suggest that we'll be back on track from the start of 2026. In Canada, however, we anticipate that both the insulation and GroDan businesses will continue to be challenged. As previously announced, we forecast an EBIT margin between 14% and 15% due to the incidents in Flums and the softness, especially in Canada and Russia. Our large investment projects are on track, and the investment level around EUR 415 million, excluding acquisitions for the year, is maintained.
We believe in the long-term demand for our products, and we remain optimistic about the future. In Europe, we continue to work at the member state level on implementation of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. I must also note that so far, we have only seen limited impact on sales from the renovation wave and also do not expect much from it in the near term. We will continue investing in capacity build-up, marketing, public affairs, and digitalization, supporting the anticipated growth driven by the energy efficiency agenda in Europe and our expansion in the United States. These were my introduction comments, and we will now go into the Q&A session.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Kristen Tornøe with SEB. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Two questions from my side. First of all, on your North American business, if we sort of go back to before the summer, you were talking about good demand, capacity constraints, potential imports from Europe. You have made it very clear that demand in Canada is down, but you also state that demand in the U.S. is actually up and running and good. I assume that you now have sort of available capacity, I guess, on your Toronto factory. How easy is it to use that capacity in the U.S. market, and how fast can you sort of compensate for that? Should we really think about your North American business or the slowdown in your North American business as temporary?
I'm not even sure if that was one or two questions, but I'll answer the North American question. Correct, the U.S. is back to the growth levels that we saw before the summer and Canada being down. We have capacity available in our large Canadian factories that we can use in the U.S. market. That is a model we have had for years and used for years. The products have the certificates and everything they need to be used in the U.S. market. That is our biggest capacity, you can say, potential. In the midterm, we do see that we need to import certain products from Europe until our new factory in Valula is up and running. Also there, we are ready, both with capacity and what it takes to import these products.
Okay, but maybe just to be more specific on my questions, obviously, we see revenue down 7%, I think it was in Q3 in North America. I guess what I'm after is, can the US compensate for the lack of revenue in Canada and hence North America as a region return to growth again on the short term?
In Q4 already, we see that effect, that the U.S., because of its size now, can compensate at least to a certain degree for the down in Canada. If it continues this way, yes, then we will see a growth in totality in North America again.
Okay, that's very clear. My second question is just your comment on reduced efficiency in certain factories. Can you elaborate what has driven this and whether this is temporary or something we should be worried about?
No, it is temporary. We have a lot of projects going on and also some maintenance projects we've decided to pull forward, and they have affected our factory efficiencies. Of course, there are some factories where we have lower capacity utilization, so the absorption degree is lower, but it's mainly from the first factor.
Okay, but when is efficiency back to normal then?
That's too specific. I have to go down on factory level because they are really projects by projects. Also, some of our conversion projects are affecting efficiencies because we have to take the factories offline when we install the equipment. It becomes very detailed. My colleague was just calculating the North American, trying to come with an estimate, and we do see a single-digit growth in North America in quarter four already.
Okay, thank you. That was all for me.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to ensure that the management is able to address questions from everyone in the conference, we request you to limit yourselves to two questions each. If you have any further questions, please rejoin the queue. Our next question comes from the line of Anna Schumacher with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hi all. I'm taking my questions today. I have two. Firstly, on margins, if I take the midpoint of the new guide and add back the EUR 15 million expense expected in Q4 for the Switzerland incident, if my math is correct, it suggests that Q4 either margins are climbing of over 4 percentage points, which is quite a step down versus what we've seen in Q3 and Q2. Does this mean that your new full-year guide is on the conservative side, or are you expecting a worsening of conditions in Q4? Secondly, on Eastern and Southern Europe, while you mentioned pockets of good growth, what's driving this? Is it new builds, renovation, new channels, and how repeatable is this in 2026?
It's slow. Just to the fourth quarter, the fourth quarter is always, particularly December, our absolute slowest quarter and month. That is more a year-to-year effect we see again and again. East Europe, it's right. We have some very strong market developments in Poland, in Romania. What drives that? Poland is really the flat roof business has come back for us. We did small tactical price adjustments in the Polish market and now see a very positive volume effect from that. In Romania, it's the story that we've talked about for a long time now, that Romania has adopted a new, and it is a new fire regulation on buildings, but also there's new EPBD programs. Romania is one of the first countries really to put that into action.
Thanks. On the first question, I understand that the margin is typically lower in Q4, but if my math is correct, it suggests that the year-on-year change in Q4 is bigger, like the step down is bigger in Q4 versus the step down that we've seen in Q2 and Q3. Is that because markets are worsening, or just like the conservative guidance?
Yeah, it's a very realistic guidance. We have most of the Flums one-off expenses will be in Q4 and also continued, as I said, slow down in Canada, and Russia will impact the Q4 earnings. There is nothing really unusual in our understanding of the market dynamics itself. They are unchanged compared to Q3.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Claus Almer with Nordea. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Yeah, also a few questions from my side. More to this Q4 implicit guidance. I've tried to make an implicit Q4 EBIT guidance, and if you try to adjust for Russia and Canada, as you mentioned in the report, and obviously also the issues in Flums, I'm still getting to an EBIT decline year over year around 10% if you are at the midpoint of the guidance. This maybe looks a bit strange given that the U.S. is growing and you have Eastern Europe and so on. Maybe a little bit more color to why you see a lower, let's call it underlying EBIT things. That would be the first one.
Thank you, Claus. As mentioned here, besides the, you can say the one-off that they've already mentioned in the report, I see this as a normal Q4. There's nothing dramatic changes in neither our pricing points or inflation. We do have a few, as always at the end, a few reviews of what else is happening around the group, and I guess we are just taking precautions that we don't end up outside the range that we have specified.
Okay, so meaning that we should, everything equal, you will be in the upper end of the range. Is that the normal way we should understand?
We have not specified or qualified the range.
Okay. All good. My second question is about the CapEx. We have been talking about CapEx for a long time with these ongoing new factories being built. Giving, yes, your comments about an uncertain end market, especially in some parts of the world, are you considering planning to delay some of this CapEx or maybe even reducing the CapEx spend? That would be my second question.
We monitor it all the time. When we talk capacity, it has to be a discussion country by country or region by region because, as you know, we are sold out in South Europe. We need capacity in South Europe. We're sold out more or less in North America. We're sold out more or less in India. All these places, it's fairly easy and very robust to make CapEx decisions. Of course, we then look at other places, both on capacity but also on our energy transition, how fast we want to do it and if timing should be changed slightly. Overall, we keep the very high CapEx level and investment programs because when we model these things, we are convinced, as I said before, about the long-term demand for our products, both in Europe and North America.
Already now, I can foreshadow that next year's CapEx will be higher than this year.
Okay. That was all from me. Thank you so much.
Thank you. The next question comes from Chase Koghlen with Camping. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning all, and thank you for taking my questions. Maybe on the topic of CapEx, of course, you maintained the EUR 450 million guidance for this year. I heard you just say that next year should be even higher than that. Can you provide maybe, yeah, how much higher exactly, or could you provide maybe a normalized % of sales, CapEx bigger just for the midterm, just almost from a modeling standpoint? That would be very useful.
I will come back with that in February, more guidance on those numbers.
All right. Fine. Then a second question. I know it's quite difficult to talk about the Russian business, and you mentioned in the press release it's down double-digit from a revenue perspective, and you don't feel there's much, let's say, improvement in the near term there. Can you share any of the insights that you're hearing from the local management? Is that expected to even worsen maybe in Q4, or any kind of color would be extremely helpful?
No, unfortunately not, because I don't talk to the Russian management. I have, in my tenure as CEO, never had a conversation with them. So I have no further insights than you have into what's happening in Russia.
Okay. Thank you anyway.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Yassine Touahri with On field Investment Research. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much for taking my question. Two questions. The first is on the margin guidance that you're suggesting for Q4. I think in order to achieve the margin of 14%-15% for the year, it suggests that you're expecting a margin in Q4 of between 9%-13%. I understand that there could be a negative impact of margin of maybe 1.5% from one-off. It suggests that the margin excluding one-off that you're guiding for in Q4 is 11%-15% approximately. My question is, this 11%-15% that you're expecting in Q4, is it the new normal for Rockwool? Should we think about this range when we're trying to forecast 2026? My second question is, when we look at Russia, I think you're giving a number for Russia, the margin excluding Russia, and Russia as a percentage of sales.
When I do the math, it suggests that Russia was approximately 14% of your EBIT with a bit more than EUR 60 million of contribution in the nine months and with a margin of 30%. Is it correct?
Yes, hello, Yassine . We do not want to, right now, put more color to the Q4 than we have already done. As I said, the market development or trends are more or less the same as in Q3, and we serve sort of a little bit of the margin outlook. We serve that for other things we are looking at right now and have to make decisions on before year-end. There is nothing really dramatic, and I do not want to say a new normal because, as I said, some of them are one-off, some of them are adverse market developments, and they can happen all the time. There is nothing dramatic in Q4, but we are looking at a few things that might impact as a one-off in Q4. On the Russian, I think your calculations are correct.
Question on that. I think just on the margin, it's like you're guiding on margin of 11%-15% excluding one-off in the Q4, but I think the market is expecting margin closer to 16% in 2026. That is a big, big difference. It seems dramatic when you look at it.
As I said, Yassine , we have other things that we are looking at that we have not yet completed the analysis and decision points on. That means there is a little bit of space reserved for eventualities that are coming here in Q4, also kind of a non-recurrent one-off things.
That would be great if at some point we could get more detail.
In February.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Anders Kristiansen with Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello, Jes and Kim, and thank you for taking my questions as well. I also have two. The first one is on the Canadian business where you mentioned the expected impact of EUR 15-20 million on EBIT from the continued slowdown in the Canadian business for Q4. I mean, that's a quite significant number considering the size of the Canadian business. Is it fair to assume that you expect a mid to low single-digit EBIT margin in Canada for Q4, or how should we read this? That's my first question. My second one is regarding the incident in Switzerland. How much revenue here are you able to recuperate from shipping product into Germany? I know we've before talked about your Swiss customers appreciating the made-in-Switzerland label, so I suppose you might miss some of that revenue. Those are my two questions. Thank you.
Let me take the last one. As it looks now, we can cater for approximately half of the volume into the Swiss market. We did believe it was more when it just happened. As you maybe know, the Swiss operations has an own brand and an own product portfolio. Very unfortunate situation. Lucky and glad that nobody got hurt. I do want to put some flavor to it. I think it's important for everyone to know that it was, even though somewhat dramatic, a very banal mechanical error. It has nothing to do with our novel melting technologies or any of our other proprietary technologies. Unfortunate, and of course, an impact on the Swiss market and approximately 50% of the volumes that we can cater for through other factories.
On the margin in Canada, they are still double-digit, but we had an expectation of a fantastic Q4. The impact was small compared to our original estimate, but it's still a double-digit margin business, Anders.
Thank you very much. That was all from me.
Thank you. The next question comes from Julian Radlinger with UBS Group. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks very much, guys. I wanted to ask about the Q4 as well, but I'm going to leave that since it's been asked so many times. Instead, I want to ask about North America. Can you just quickly remind us of the revenue split there between Canada and the U.S.? Obviously, the U.S. is a lot bigger. More importantly, what are your key end markets in Canada and the U.S. in terms of verticals? I remember at the H-bond results, you mentioned it was predominantly non-residential warehouses, industrial, that kind of thing. Is your split of verticals in the U.S., excuse me, the same as in Canada? Is demand there just better, or is it something different that's driving better demand in the U.S. versus what's going on in Canada? Thank you.
Let me try to add some flavor to it. The U.S. is now slightly larger than the Canadian business, but only slightly. As you maybe know, for historic reasons, we started in Canada and grew our business there, and only first really have gotten growth momentum the last few years in the U.S. A slightly bigger U.S. business than Canadian business. From a structural perspective, it is similar, Canada and the U.S., slightly bigger commercial industrial than residential business. What drives growth in the U.S. is a combination of both investments into commercial industrial, mainly warehouses, distribution, and industry. Those were the ones we saw put on hold during the summer. I do not know if you were in the call we had in August, but we saw a sudden delay of large projects in the U.S. They were not canceled. They were just delayed.
We heard from many of our distributors and end customers that one were waiting for both consumer sentiment, but also where the interest rates would be heading. We have seen many of these projects, although not all of them, being released. On the residential side, we are increasingly accelerating our efforts on what we call the box business. It is the Home Depot and Lowe's channel, where we have also, together with both of those two players, set up increasingly point of sales. I know we do not report on that yet, but maybe one day we should open up that a little bit about how many points of sales we have with the two large players into that market. If you follow that market, then you will see that a lot of Home Depot and also Lowe's, but Home Depot as a leader, their sales go to commercial business also.
When we call it big box and residential, it is actually also to smaller contractors that that channel caters for. There we are right now accelerating. We are setting up more points of sales, but we're also growing in comparable same store numbers. Both of these channels, commercial, industrial, and residential, are driving growth. The last comment on it, because the U.S. is of great interest to us, as you know, as a growth driver, is our West Coast efforts, where we still are in very, very, you can say, early days of developing that market, and where we are currently setting up more and more distribution, getting ready for getting our Velula factory in the state of Washington online. Those are the three main factors in the U.S. market.
Okay, if I can just quickly follow up on that. You're saying that even in residential in the U.S., you're growing, both, of course, driven by your point of sale expansion, but even on a same-store sales basis. That's quite an outperformance versus what the underlying market seems to be doing in residential in the U.S. right now. Anything specific you would attribute that to? Is that just penetration growth? Is it because you're still so small? Of course, the smaller you are, the more disconnected your volumes can be from the overall market. How would you explain that?
No, but it is a category shift. You had a different word for it, but we're shifting to categories. If you look at Canada, we have stone wool, and we have a market share, I think, between 13%-14% of total insulation. If you look at the U.S., stone wool is 3%-4%. In general, but now it becomes a longer explanation. In general, this is a market shift from other insulation products, you know, foam and glass, into stone wool. We are the only real stone wool manufacturer in the U.S. Regardless, because that is a correct observation, regardless of, at least to a certain degree, regardless of macros, we have great opportunities to grow our business. That's also why we keep on investing in capacity.
Got it. Thank you very much. Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to everyone, if you have a question, please press star and then one. The next question comes from Zaim Beekawa with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Morning, Jes. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is just on the higher CapEx comment. Appreciate you won't give a range now, but how do you think this may weigh on ambition or ability to do further share buybacks in the coming years? Secondly, on Switzerland, how long, once you get the equipment, will it take for you to run back to your previous capacity? Thank you.
I will not get more detail to the CapEx, nor of course share buyback programs. I simply can't. I can add a little bit of flavor on what drives our CapEx. It's not just capacity requirements. It is also new legislations in mainly Europe that require us to upgrade various of our factories to reduce our emissions, also notable emissions, non-CO2 related. It is both regulations and market demands that are driving it in that direction. It is also, we see it, of course, as a great opportunity, but also something that needs to be done timely in order to meet the demands of the more regulatory side of our demand side. When we say we are back online in Flums early next year, then it is including getting all spare parts and testing, et cetera, et cetera.
All these, what was needed from a spare part perspective and what was needed from a cleaning perspective have already been started a few weeks ago. We are optimistic that we get up and running early in the next year.
All right, thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Catherine Haigh with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi, morning. Thanks for taking our questions. Just wondering if you could provide any early color on your thoughts around pricing and cost inflation, particularly on the energy side for 2026. I appreciate you can't give too much color on the Russian business, but just wondering if the EBIT contribution reduces significantly there, does that change how you're thinking about ownership of the business going forward? Thank you.
Let me start the first point. Our pricing, we sometimes articulate as a drumbeat. After some years with very high inflation and very high price increases, we are back to a normalized drumbeat and foresee and plan a 1%-3% price increase next year. As I said earlier, the price increases we put in this year with approximately 1% effect this year are sticking, and we expect this more normalized drumbeat of 1%-3% also to stick next year because it is a more normalized level. On the input cost, it is fairly flattish. Our forecasts on the various most important, both on cox and gas, electricity. All in all, it is a fairly balanced picture between the price increases and the larger input cost groups. Flattish. I missed a little bit of your second question, but I think you asked about Russia and ownership.
There's no change in strategy there. We are sticking to the statements that we already have made. We are keeping the assets in a passive ownership, as you could notice before. We don't have any operational insights or influence on the business, but I've chosen simply to keep it in a passive ownership.
Great. Thanks very much.
Thank you. The next follow-up question comes from Julian Radlinger with UBS Group. Please go ahead.
Yeah, sorry, guys. Just a quick follow-up. You said earlier in the call that at the moment you can cater for about half the volume in the Swiss market from Germany, and earlier you thought it was more. Can I just double-check? Does that mean that we should think about the entire kind of Swiss plant outage-related one-off costs in Q4 as actually more than EUR 15 million because of that? Or is that already included in that number?
The 15 million includes everything. Maybe I should have been more specific about approximately 50%. What I meant was 50% of our sales we can handle. We're seeing 50% of our sales maintained in this period. You know, of course, there are some customers who are.
In Switzerland?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, the customers know it's a temporary situation, so it's really hard to say what is simply people not stocking and waiting until the products are available again and what is other effects. EUR 15 million includes more or less the whole thing.
Okay, thank you. Is there a possibility then that you might actually have some catch-up in Q1 once the plant comes back online because people waited for the product?
That is very, very plausible, but for the group numbers, it is not material at all.
Sure. Okay, thanks a lot.
Thank you. The next question comes from Aman Saxena with Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi everyone. This is Aman from Bernstein. Thanks for taking my question. I think every question has been answered. Just one smaller one regarding the Flums plant disruption. I know you've shown, have you told the root cause. How do you want to prevent this in the future with the other plants? Just one question.
We have a standard operating procedure for when we have incidences in the group. Basically what you do is, of course, first of all, make sure everyone is safe. You make sure that you start planning for restart and testing, et cetera, et cetera. You in parallel, of course, also look at if there are other plants who have similar equipment and if that needs to be upgraded. In this case, I do not want to get into great detail about it because it is about technology, but it was a fairly banal mechanical error on a single piece. That can be handled both with redundancies in mechanics, but also ensured that no other factories encounter something similar.
Thank you. Thank you. The last follow-up question comes from the line of Yassine Touahri with On field Investment Research. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you very much. Maybe more question on strategy and the long term. I think a lot of your competitors, such as Saint-Gobain, Knauf, FedEx, and Kingspan, are adopting a system selling strategy where insulation is only part of the building of the system, such as a roofing system or external insulation system or interior solution system. Do you see a risk of being sidelined from projects if you only offer stone wool and your competitor are offering a full system? I've seen that you've done a small acquisition in ETICS. I'd like to understand how do you think about the group long term?
It is of course something we've looked at ongoingly in our strategy work, but we're convinced that the most valuable play for us is to stick to stone wool. We are arguably the best manufacturer of stone wool in the world, both quality-wise, productivity, efficiency, and of course also sustainable. We are not concerned about being marginalized or becoming irrelevant. There is so much for us to do in maintaining a pure player, both in Europe and in North America. There is so much more growth to capture. We have benefits as stone wool over glass and foam that leaves ample space for growth. We are sticking to our very pure focused strategy of staying in stone wool. We are also, of course, having a system division where we have the logic that as long as it is stone wool, all the lion's share is stone wool, i.e.
We're moving stone wool with these activities, so GroDan or panels or the ETICS market. Yeah, it is relevant for us to be in. The underlying logic is that we want to be and maintain being the most relevant and highest performer in stone wool.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. This concludes our Question and Answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to the management for any closing remarks.
Thank you very much. Yes, thank you for today's earning call. We would like to thank you for all the questions and the audience for listening in on today's call and appreciate your interest in Rockwool AS. If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to me. You may find the contact details in the investor sections on our corporate website. Have a very nice day. Thank you.