Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Aurubis AG conference call on the occasion of the publication of the third quarter results. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to your host Elke Brinkmann. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, also from my side. As you heard before, the report and the presentation are already available on our website since early this morning. We are here together with our CEO, Roland Harings, our CFO, Rainer Verhoeven, and Heiko Arnold, our COO. After the presentation, our gentlemen will be available for Q&A. Now I hand over to Roland Harings.
Okay, thanks, Elke. Also from me, welcome to our call today, and I'm very pleased to present to you, together with my colleagues, the very good nine months figures of Aurubis this afternoon. As you can see, and you have the slides in front of you, and the presentation, we continue to navigate well through the pandemic, and we are also able to leverage and benefit from the overall very good market conditions in which we operate. This, combined with stable operating performance and the strong demand that we see for all our products, leads to, from our perspective, very satisfying results. Let me start with a brief overview of the very strong nine-month figures of our fiscal year 2021. With an operating EBT of EUR 268 million, we more than doubled our results compared to the previous year's period.
Again, market and stable operating performance were the key factors here. The corresponding ROCE, one of our key leading indicators of 13.5%, shows also the strong development compared to last year's result, where ROCE was at 8.5%. Despite the fact, and you know that we have some major shutdown in our plant in Pirdop, we had to build up higher stock level. Nevertheless, our ROCE significantly improved at the end of last quarter. Market conditions in Q3 remained positive. You heard this in our last call. We still benefit from very strong good RCs. We will come in more detail to this later. Good availability of recycling material, in general, high metal prices, and I stated it already, a very strong demand for all our Aurubis products.
If there is one negative impact on our results, it are the increasing energy prices that we are seeing compared to last year. Regarding net cash flow, it nearly doubled, or exactly doubled, to be precise, which is a key result of very strong earnings and also of the increased sales of our various metals, especially lead, nickel, tin, and also zinc. With this performance after nine months, we are here to confirm our expectation that the operating EBT for the total fiscal year will be within the range of EUR 270- EUR 330 million, and that ROCE will be in the range of 9%-12%. In order to preempt, certainly the questions, as you probably can imagine, also referring to our call last time, we will be at the higher part of this range given the good performance that we have achieved after nine months.
Aurubis is benefiting and also leveraging the integration of Beerse and Berango in our smelter network. We will today talk also about our new recycling capabilities, the new plant, ASPA, as we call it, Advanced Sludge Processing by Aurubis, which Heiko Arnold will talk more about at the second part of this presentation to give you more insight what this is all about. Also, reconfirming what we stated last time, our PIP, our Performance Improvement Program, is well on track. We do confirm that the contribution for this fiscal year of EUR 70 million will be reached. In the news, you saw the tremendous tragic flooding event we had in our FRP plant in Stolberg, which was a shock to us and to all of us.
Fortunately, we were able, with the early evacuation of the plant, that none of our employees or business partners was hurt or suffered from any incident. The plant has been massively damaged, and the cleaning and investigation work is ongoing. Given the size of this operation and of the FRP segment, we do not expect any financial impact, also given that the damage is insured, any financial impact on the group level for this fiscal year. If we go to the next slide, you see a quick overview of the year-to-date figures, clearly revenue is quite impressive increase by 37% for the first nine months compared to the period before. Clearly, metal prices are here the main driver. Also, gross profit increased by 25%.
Strong development in markets, you heard me say this already, stable operating performance and a very successful integration of Beerse/Berango delivering synergies and also increased throughput are the key drivers for this very good performance. Overall, EBT at EUR 268, it doubled compared to the last year underpinning, underscoring the strong performance and the very robust, solid business model of Aurubis. If we go to the next page, just a quick snapshot on the CO2 and the energy. On the left side, you can find a breakdown of the various type of energy that we require for our production process. Clearly highlighting that we have electrified our production process already to a large extent, that electricity represents today already 82% of our energy source.
Having said this, compared to last year, energy prices in total increased by about EUR 27 million, resulting now in total energy cost of about EUR 166 million versus EUR 139 million in the last year. The significant increase, mainly coming from the electricity price, is driven by higher prices for CO2 certificates and also for coal price. On average, the CO2 prices for Q3 were about around EUR 50 per ton, versus only EUR 21 in the respective period last year. Also on the coal, which is an element in our pricing formula, the coal, which was at $43 per ton last year, was at the same quarter, Q3, at $89 per ton. Over here we have a significant increase of energy cost. On the right side of the slide, you see an update of the CO2 emissions of the calendar year 2020.
As I stated already, the Aurubis production process is already mainly electrified. 2/3 of our CO2 emissions are scope 2 emissions and come from the electricity production. We are with this clearly on track to further reduce our CO2 footprint by replacing today fossil-based or coal-based electric energy by renewable energies going forward, which is a clear, and we talk about this later in the sustainability part of our presentation, it's a clear focus in our decarbonization efforts, and we will have a deeper look on this later. Coming to the market conditions on the next slide. The market conditions kept a very positive momentum. The graph quite impressively show product demand remained strong and price levels are expected to stay at very good levels also in the actual quarter. Overall, we had for concentrates a very good supply situation.
Mines are running, and we have all the qualities and quantities of concentrates available to operate our smelters. With some maintenance shutdowns and some adjustments in the smelter industry, mainly in Asia, we see a slowing concentrate demand, and CRU estimates that the Chinese demand for concentrate will decrease by around 800,000 tons of demand in this calendar year. A significant relief on the concentrate side, also supported by strong mine production. Clearly, high copper prices additionally incentivize mines to fully ramp up their production and even accelerate new mine projects. Again, CRU confirmed that the global concentrate supply will increase by around 4% in 2021, and this is exactly what we see in our daily business, concentrates are available.
On the spot, on the TCRC spot level and the buying floor that the Chinese smelter purchase team announced for the last quarter, no, sorry, for the running quarter. We see that the lows that we have seen in the first half of this calendar year are behind us and numbers are going up, and the floor which has been communicated is now at 55/5.5 for TCRCs for the concentrates. Hence, what we stated in our calls, in our discussions, that we have seen the bottom of TCRCs and there is a strong rationale for better TCRCs for the smelting side going forward has been confirmed by these last developments. Again, I want to underline that we are hardly active in the spot markets. Our business model is long-term relationships and contract for the supply of concentrates.
We are more observing the spot market than being active there. Talking now after concentrates about the scrap RCs. Also here, scrap markets kept the positive momentum during Q3. High metal prices overall, and also a good availability of scrap number two and other recycling materials remained stable in this last quarter, and in total, we see also a positive outlook. CRU, again, to give you a reference point, estimates that the average RC for the Q2 2021, so that's our Q3 fiscal year, is at $655 per ton. This is 118% higher than what was the level that CRU reported in the same quarter last year. For the rest of our fiscal year until end of September, we are completely supplied with input materials and with quantities, qualities, and also with a very good price level.
The outlook for this remaining two months of the fiscal year are very positive, and this momentum continues into the beginning quarter of the next fiscal year. Positive news regarding sulfuric acid. Demand is very strong, price level has increased significantly, and levels in spot Chile are now at $170-175, and European spot prices increased to levels up to EUR 71-EUR 78 FOB. Levels which are significantly higher than what we have seen in the periods in the year before. ACP, talking about our Aurubis Copper Premium, which was set for this calendar year at $96. This reflects and is supported by the market, given strong demand in products and for the metals we produce, specifically copper, in the current market circumstances. Numbers you referred also in our last quarterly call.
We have a long position for U.S. dollars of about EUR 500 million in our fiscal year. We have hedged for this fiscal year 83% at a rate of 1.13, and we have already secured 54% of our long position at a rate of 1.14 for the next fiscal year. Given this, we are benefiting and we expect positive earnings contribution from our existing U.S. dollar hedges. Going to the next slide and talking about multi-metal. Also here, you see, and you are well aware, multi-metal and the different key metals for us remained very positive due to Q3 of our fiscal year. If I just pick on gold, demand is strong in Germany and in Europe. There's a strong demand from producers of investment bars, but also from electronic industries. We don't see any indication that this trend or this demand is going to change going forward.
CRU reconfirms a stable, a bit bearish, but still on a very high level, stable outlook going forward. What I stated for gold is also true for silver. We see here for silver, a strong demand very much from the industrial economic recovery, from electronics, from all kind of application. The demand for our metals, just picking only two, remains very strong. With this, I would like to hand over to Rainer, who will talk about specific numbers then.
Thanks a lot, Roland, and good afternoon also from my side. Let's talk a bit or let's have a look at the key performance indicators, the key figures of the Aurubis Group. Our balance sheet remains, again, very solid. We have an equity ratio of around 44%, a bit lower than in the last year, but given the high metal prices and a huge increase, of course, in inventory, that's just a given here. The very good earnings ratio also contributed in a significant reduction in our debt, which means when we purchased Metallo last year, we had a net financial debt of roughly EUR 560 million, which was completely replenished within this 1 year. We are currently, the 30th of June, standing at EUR 17 million positive here.
This good financial position also provides significant room for the implementation of our strategy, of which you will hear more in the coming month, in December during our Capital Markets Day. All in all, the key figures shown here remain very robust. The equity ratio decreased, already explained. Despite the fact that the equity has increased, we have, of course, built up in our working capital due to the standstill that we would see in Pirdop. We started that on Sunday, and it will last for, I think, 44 days, if I'm not mistaken. ROCE improved to 13.5%, also quite a significant increase. We have a lower capital employed here at EUR 2.7 billion only, which fosters a better ROCE.
The net cash flow at EUR 332 million is exactly, as already mentioned, doubled from last year, and also the free cash flow with EUR 122 million, quite significant. Looking to the segments, starting with MRP, here are a couple of factors, such as market drivers and so forth, have already been explained, so let me be quite brief here again. On the operating EBT, we are at EUR 304 million, thus 63% above the previous year, mainly influenced, of course, by the significant higher refining charges for the copper scrap. Of course, substantially higher metal gains based on the metal prices that we have seen over the past month, and a strong demand in all our products on all product sites. 15% ROCE target clearly exceeded, we are at 17.3% ROCE in this segment. Very positive.
A look at our production figures also shows a very positive development in the first nine months here. Throughput of scrap and other recycling materials increased significantly. Key factor, of course, here is that the recycling feedstock of Beerse and Berango is also added now to the total figures. The concentrate throughput was slightly above previous year. Smaller repair shutdowns had an impact on the throughput in Q3 and, of course, the additional planned shutdown of the anode furnace here at our site in Hamburg. The cathode production increased significantly compared to previous year. Last year was, of course, influenced still by the crane damage in Olen. This year, we have a lower cathode production in Lünen, due to the ongoing refurbishment in the tank house there, which will also last for still the coming years.
Sulfuric acid production increased in line with the concentrate, nothing special here to mention. Important is the product lines, all copper products showed strong demands, compared to prior year, but also in general. We have rod production that increased by 17% year-over-year, shapes even by 21% year-over-year. Very strong demands here. Of course, the contributions already mentioned by Roland from the Performance Improvement Program also contributed to the positive results. The CapEx is more or less in line with previous year. We are a bit behind schedule, there will be quite some expenses, also some investments coming now in the last quarter on our RDE, also on the standstill Pirdop. I would say nothing special to mention here.
We could, however, postpone our maintenance shutdown in Lünen that was originally planned for September 21, now to the first quarter of the next year, which will have a positive impact for our last quarter, so for the current quarter, for roughly EUR 6 million effect here. Looking to FRP. Here, the operating EBT of EUR 10 million year-to-date in the segment is clear improved compared to the last fiscal year. Of course, that also comes from significant increases in the product sales volumes on the one side, but also very good scrap rates and scrap prices on the other. The ROCE is at roughly 5%, 4.9%, significantly above the prior year, of course, where we still had the one-time influence on the impairment. All in all, for the segment FRP, quite a decent number, which we see here. CapEx, nothing special to mention.
EUR 7 million, so more or less in line with the figures that you know from the last year, a bit below that. In principle, nothing special to mention. Roland Harings has been mentioning the flooding in Stolberg, and on the next slide, I would like to show you some of the pictures of the current status of the cleanup works that we are doing here on the site. We had to evacuate the site, and we are very relieved that no employees, nor family members of our employees were harmed at that point in time. We were quite lucky on that one. Of course, we are doing the utmost to clean up and repair, and to try and restart the production as fast as possible.
For sure it will take several months as we have severe damages in pretty much all the production lines that we are having here, all the electronics and so forth are destroyed here. Aurubis Stolberg is an essential part of the FRP segment, only of marginal significance for the Aurubis Group. The result in the total, Stolberg contributed roughly with 2% to the consolidated sales figures in the past year. As we assume that the damages are fully covered by insurance, including the business interruption insurance, we don't see that there will be any impact on our current financial year results. Coming to the next page, where we have a look at the market outlook. All in all, pretty much nothing to add to what Roland already said.
Just to reiterate once again, CRU and WoodMac expect the global mine production to further increase, driven by the high incentive from the metal prices that we are seeing in the markets. Combined with the mentioned smelter maintenance measures, we expect a further recovery of the concentrate prices in the second half in the coming months of this year. We are, and we have been already able to completely supply our plants with the necessary concentrate volumes. Therefore, we do not participate here in the spot markets, and we are fully supplied definitely until the end of this fiscal year and even a bit above or beyond that.
Scrap RCs, our core markets here in Europe and the U.S. remain well supplied with material, but we foresee a normalization of the oversupply, which means the RCs are, let's say, plateauing at a higher level, and copper scrap and recycling materials will remain available, but again, at not further increasing prices. The prices will stay at that level or go slightly below that. Production plants are also here well supplied, so we don't have scarcity for this fiscal year for sure, and also beyond that, currently we see good supply. Sulfuric acid, the global spot market shows ongoing strong demand with very limited spot availability, which leads to further price increases. Here we see some positive effects for the next quarter, and the acid markets remain, of course, as you know, that's a general disclaimer, as they are pretty much spot-driven, very difficult to forecast.
The Copper Premium, currently at 96, will continue with that. It reflects simply the very good product demand that we see for pretty much all our products. We have been talking about rod and shapes here. We have a continuous strong demand on pretty much all products, as I said, rod and shapes and the FRP business, all of them are pretty much fully booked, which of course, causes another issue with regards to our Stolberg topic. Probably we will hear more about it in the Q&A session. Going to the next page. We confirm our forecast here between EUR 270 million and EUR 330 million. As already mentioned, clearly at the upper end of the guidance, also with regards to the ROCE that already has been mentioned. Please bear in mind that we have our big standstill now in our Pirdop plant. The consensus is at EUR 324 million.
We feel quite confident with this consensus. Let me have a look. Anything else to mention here? I would say no. We just mentioned the standstill in Pirdop. For sure, we still continue to have impacts of higher electricity and energy prices. We have smaller scale maintenance work to be done here and there, but in total, an impact of EUR 30 million to our, let's say, normalized quarterly results to be expected for the Q4. Ladies and gentlemen, with that, I would like to hand over back to Roland.
Okay. Thanks, Rainer. Coming to the next page, talking about sustainability and our commitment to the science-based targets. You see in this graph that we have set ourselves ambitious targets in line with the Paris Agreement. You know this initiative, it intends to map companies' contribution to the goal of limiting global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius in the future. We have discussed it with the initiative, with the Science Based Targets initiative, and our targets, as we have laid them out here, have now been approved and confirmed by this initiative. We are really committed, and we will reduce our absolute scope 1 and scope 2 greenhouse emissions by 50% until 2030, compared to the starting or the base year 2018.
On top, and we are in intense dialogue with all our business partners, we also committed to reduce our Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions by 24% per ton of copper until the year 2030. Again, base year 2018. Clearly, this is not an easy journey, but we are very committed, and we will achieve this goal, and we will take extraordinary and very clear project steps in order to achieve this target. One project I just want to highlight, as we have just announced this a couple of weeks ago, is the construction of a PV plant in Pirdop in Bulgaria. You see some pictures on the next slide. It's the largest in-house PV plant and represents a major milestone in Bulgaria, but also for us as a company to reduce our CO2 footprint going forward.
This is a plant with a peak performance or peak power of 10 MW, and it will contribute about 11,000 MWh annually to our electricity consumption. If we look at the Bulgarian energy mix, which is very much, I would say, 50% based on coal-fired power plant, this PV asset will reduce the CO2 emissions by around 15,000 tons of CO2 per year, just in this size of a PV plant. We are very, very proud and we see this as a starting point in Bulgaria, and we have the ambition to further increase the amount of renewable energy, in-house produced renewable energy in our Pirdop site, which has the space, which has the location to really benefit on solar-produced electricity. If I go to the next slide, I think also here, significant and impressive, specifically compared to the worldwide CO2 emissions per ton of copper.
Aurubis was already one of the leading, if not the leading company in 2013, which is the reference year we took, with only 2.3 tons of CO2 emitted per ton of copper. We have, with all the activities to decarbonize, electrify, and optimize our production, we have further reduced our CO2 footprint now to 1.69 tons per ton of copper. Significant step towards reducing CO2 emissions and, in our last quarterly calls, we talked about the different measures. It's industrial heat, it's gas cleaning systems, it's the PV, it's many, many small and larger projects which we have implemented already in the past. We have a very, very active agenda to further reduce this footprint towards climate neutrality in the future for our products. Coming to a different subject, also in the context of ESG.
We are proud and happy to announce that Union Investment Corporate Governance Study ranked Aurubis as the number one in the MDAX with next to Commerzbank in the area of corporate governance. Important to mention, and you can read this also in detail in the text, is that we moved up four spots compared to the last study, which was conducted by Union Investment, and it shows that we are improving although towards or in comparison to our peers, to the other market participants. I think it shows that besides strong performance financially, focusing very strong on improving our environmental footprint even further, we are also very active and these studies confirm that we're here on the right track also to significantly move towards improving the governance structure even further.
With this, I think, regarding sustainability and moving the company forward, I would like to hand over to Heiko Arnold, who will talk about an investment project in Beerse.
Thanks, Roland. Here with this project, we will present to you the first example of a growth synergy of the Metallo acquisition. Metal recycling is the core of our business here in Aurubis, and with this project, we will contribute significantly to the circular economy. Last week, we announced ASPA, the construction of a state-of-the-art recycling facility at our Beerse site in Belgium. ASPA stands for Advanced Sludge Processing by Aurubis, and is the next step towards the goal of becoming the most efficient and sustainable integrated smelter network worldwide. With ASPA, a newly developed hydrometallurgical process, our production in Beerse will extract more valuable metals, such as gold, silver, and tin from the anode sludge, and that in a more efficient and faster way.
The new facility is a prime example of the synergies created by the acquisition of Metallo, and how the whole company now benefits in developing new innovative solutions together. ASPA uses the in-house recycling knowhow of the Beerse plant and grafts it into the process of other Aurubis plants. Coming to the financials of this investment, we aim at spending a total CapEx of roughly EUR 27 million, which is solidly financed by operating cash flow. The expected EBITDA contribution is a high single-digit million amount once we are in full operation. The production is scheduled to start in the financial year 2024, 2025. In total, the capacity is around 2,500 tons of anode sludge produced from complex multi-metal recycling material at the Beerse and Lünen site. ASPA is taking metal recycling to the next level. We combine efficiency and speed to get even more out of it.
It's a complex process, however, recycling as many components as possible and harnessing the potential of urban mining for scrap metal is crucial to closing the waste loop and catering to the increased demand for metals in a resource-efficient way. ASPA is Aurubis' contribution. Let me talk about the shutdown in Bulgaria. We would like to remind you that in the financial year 2021, we now are in a shutdown of our Pirdop site in Bulgaria for boiler repairs, as well as the replacement of absorption towers and heat exchangers in the sulfuric acid plant. The shutdown that started last Sunday will take place in August, September and will last a total of 44 days.
The shutdown will be used to carry out all necessary regulatory inspections, but at the same time, we are preparing for forward-looking investments that will further enhance our capability for highly profitable feedstock. We are investing a total of EUR 45 million in this shutdown, which, as mentioned earlier, is scheduled to last 44 days. With this 44 days shutdown, the throughput effect will be 166,000 tons of concentrate, corresponding to an EBT effect in the area of EUR 23 million. With that, I would like to hand over back to our CEO, Roland Harings.
Yeah. Thanks, Heiko. I think also important with the project that Heiko presented, I think it clearly, again, underlines how well the integration of Beerse and Berango into our smelter network has progressed, and that we are already today announcing a significant, or we announced this already and explaining today the significant investment and improving further the flow sheet of our company. Talking about, which is leading to the discussion of our strategy. Let's have a look into this group strategy process. We have informed you that we are working on a holistic update of our strategy fact base and also conclusions. With this, we will give you a clear answer. We give our all stakeholders a clear answer, how we will shape the future and how we will develop ourselves, Aurubis, going forward.
One thing is clear, what has been confirmed, the world needs more of the metals that we produce and our determination, and just as 1 additional step, is to become the most efficient and sustainable multi-metal producer worldwide. This efficient smelter network is the strong core of our business. We see strong growth drivers in the circular economy and in the recycling in the future. Given the financials of our company and the performance, we act from a position of strength. Looking at the balance sheet, looking at our financial position, we can really make bold moves. We have decided that we will host our Capital Markets Day in December, on the sixth and seventh of December. Some of you might ask, why only in December? We were contemplating in our last calls that this might be in the summer timeframe.
Really what we are actually reviewing is the segmentation of our company, because feedback from many market participants and analysts was that we should review how we report, how transparent we inform you about our company. Hence, we will announce our strategy, details of our strategy, combined with an adopted segmentation potentially, and then also with the results of our full fiscal year 2021. We believe that this is the best foundation in order to really put in all detail our strategy and our way forward into the discussion. We also hope, and in the moment, we are optimistic that vaccination and pandemic will not limit any meetings in person. We are really looking forward to welcome you, and meet you in person in-
Beerse
in Beerse. Also, the opportunity to see the site in Belgium in December sixth or seventh. More details will certainly come from our IR team in due course. With this, I would like to thank for your attention, and looking forward to your questions.
Roland, Heiko, and Rainer. We will now open the Q&A session. If you would like to ask questions, please press nine star on your phone. Thank you.
All right, we have a first question here. The question comes from Ioannis Masvoulas. Please go ahead.
Hello, good afternoon. Thanks for the presentation. I've got three questions, and I'll take them one at a time. The first one is on MRP and looking at the EBT bridge for Q3 relative to Q2. EBT was down around EUR 50 million quarter-over-quarter, despite the strength that you know that the recycling acid prices and copper products. Surely there has been some impact from rising energy costs and maintenance, but I still cannot explain around EUR 30 million of sequential earnings decline. Could you perhaps elaborate on the reasons for any underlying costs or other one-off elements that we should take into account for MRP? Thank you.
This is Rainer. Johannes, thanks for your question. Sure. We have changed here quarter-over-quarter, and the main impact comes really from the energy. You don't have fully linearized costs month-on-month. It's not always the same. We see an increase there, and we also see some non-linear cost development here, especially in the last quarter. Also on the other side, the input materials have been increasing, so therefore, the gross profit is, in Q3, a little bit below the gross profit of the quarter before.
Thanks for that. Sorry, could you perhaps elaborate? If I look at energy, you show about a EUR 5 million sequential headwind at the group level. Also on input materials, could you elaborate what are the main elements there?
Again, it is the energy, that's for sure. It's mainly the electricity. I can't go into further details here. It is as said, we do have non-linearized effects here, that is not seen in the Q2, that is seen now in Q3. It is also hopefully, not too much an effect that we will see going forward. That's the only answer that I can give to that.
Okay. Thank you. A related question on the full year guidance. Again, if I look at MRP guidance for the year, even the top end suggests lower earnings in fiscal Q4 relative to Q3. Again, the underlying dynamics around the scrap RCs, asset prices would suggest that earnings should be at least stable, even with energy costs that you indicated. Again, is there any incremental headwind in fiscal Q4 beyond energy and the maintenance?
Again, as you all know us, we are on a very conservative level here. We already said that we are at the upper end, so that's all that we can say here. One thing is for sure, we do have the standstill in Pirdop, which will have a significant impact to our Q4 results, and that's the story here for the moment.
Okay. Thank you. One last question from me on the Stolberg plant and the recent impact from the floods. It is a small asset in the Aurubis portfolio, but it is a major and profitable asset for the FRP business that you're looking to divest as a package. What do you see as a potential impact to the timeline? Do you need to get this plant up and running before you're able to sell? Or are you confident of completing the divestment while the plant gets rebuilt?
Johannes, sure. Clearly, the plant is an important asset in the FRP portfolio, and it's also very important for certain customers. We are going to rebuild. At this point in time, we are not at the position to make any statements regarding restart timing because the cleanup has been more or less finished or is in well progressed. The experts are now assessing what really happened to the equipment and the machinery. It would be not correct to make any anticipation what's going to happen, when it's going to restart. Clearly, the plant will be rebuilt and restarted. That's the clear commitment that we have made.
Understood. There is no change to the divestment strategy for the asset.
Regarding the FRP sales process, as we stated in the last calls, we are well advanced, and we will finally announce the situation and how we are going forward with FRP in the coming weeks. We are now at the final decision point, and due to confidentiality with the business partners we are finalizing, I cannot disclose today anything, but it will take place very soon. That's what I can promise. Then everybody has clarity what's going to happen with FRP. Our intention with FRP doesn't change. With the impact on Stolberg, it's not core business of Aurubis, and that's the statement we made in the past, and it's just to reconfirm.
Okay. Thanks again for the clarification. Thank you.
The next question comes from Jatinder Goel. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon. A couple of questions from my side. Just on buyback, you've got about five to six weeks remaining for the initially approved timeline. How are you thinking? Because you haven't been in the market, share price obviously is a lot higher from where you announced it. How are you thinking about the buyback from here? Would you keep the shares that you bought back into treasury? How do you plan to use those?
No, Jatinder. Thanks. A valid question. As we said for this question in the past, we are reviewing how we best invest. As we are finalizing our strategy and going to announce, we see significant investment potential. Hence, we have not yet decided. We are reviewing this regularly. We have not decided to restart our share buyback program.
We are reviewing this regularly, but no decision at this point in time to be announced.
Shares in stock?
The shares in stock. Shares are in stock. We are, let's say, a happy shareholder of our shares.
Okay. Just to be clear, the timeline for buyback is, I think, 17th of September. You'll announce your strategy probably at Capital Markets Day, not before. Does it mean the buyback itself just gets canceled?
It's just, as we have the authorization by the General Assembly, which is valid until the end of this fiscal year, then it will just expire. We are reviewing this regularly. If we take a decision on this in the remaining period, the decision has not been taken, but if we are going to announce this, obviously.
Understood. Second question on treatment and refining charges. Contract negotiations for 2022, we saw some early settlements from Antofagasta which were lower than current year's benchmark. Obviously, benchmark has gone down for six years in a row. Your commentary continues to suggest that we probably have found a bottom. What gives you confidence that next year will be a higher settlement level versus this year's benchmark when an early settlement has been done lower year-on-year?
The fundamentals, as I pointed some of the key factors out. Availability of concentrate is very good. Mine production is increasing by 4%. A lot of new projects are in the pipeline going forward, and we see a slowdown or certainly no increase in concentrate demand from the largest market in China. All these fundamentals are there. I don't want to speculate or comment what was done with Antofagasta and the Chinese smelter. I think it's also quite interesting that they locked in a deal at this point in time, because Antofagasta were typically the mine company who was the last to sign something. Therefore, I think it underpins that the fundamentals are going in the right direction, and we should expect that this trend, and it has bottomed out, and the strength based on the facts, will show higher TCRCs in the future.
Understood. Just to expand it a little bit further, I know you won't give any guidance for FY 2022 until December. If TCRCs don't improve year-on-year, can the business still hold its current EBT level that we might see in FY 2021, which could be at top end or higher than top current year's guidance? Can FY 2022 maintain that level without getting help from TCRCs?
I think also this year, it shows that Aurubis has many strong earning pillars, and TCRC is one of them. We have products, we have sulfuric acid, we have metals, we have recycling. As we saw this year, even with low TCRCs, you see the performance. You have to put it in perspective.
Okay. Thank you so much.
The next question comes from Bastian Synagowitz. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions as well here. I've got a first quick one and follow-up on Stolberg. You mentioned that the plant is quite important also for a couple of your customer groups. Could you please just share with us maybe what is the market share broadly in the market which the plant is operating in? Does the plant have a rather high market share? Is there any color you could provide us on that front?
Happy to do so, Bastian Synagowitz. Typically in automotive, they have multi-supplier strategies. There are only very few customers, and it's tier 2, tier 3s. We are not supplying directly to any direct automotive producer. Typically, these customers have various sources of supply. However, for some, the Stolberg plant is quite important. What we see today is a very high solidarity in the, let's say, FRP community with all producers, and we have been able already to discuss with other market participants some reloading, some joint production efforts, and so on. We do, as an industry, not just as Aurubis, we do the utmost to keep all customers up. At this point, it's too early if we are successful to achieve this.
Again, as I mentioned, we are not in the position to state the restart of assets or even the whole plant as the analysis is still ongoing. Again, discussion with customers, with all market participants, with direct competitors, are very constructive, and we try to solve this jointly in order to keep the industry going.
Thanks for the information. Sorry if I follow up once again. On the market share side, obviously, we've seen in the past that market share obviously was a constraint also in your M&A talks. I guess at least there is a chance, obviously, the market share is at least slightly elevated. What is roughly a number, and I appreciate it's a very small business of your overall company, but do we have to think about this as a 30% market share of total operation, or is it less than that? Is there any color you could give us on that side as well?
This is quite a difficult question because, however you segment the market and FRP and, or say all downstream products go to so different markets, we are supplying all kind of industries and sometimes, and this was one of the challenges in the M&A or in the antitrust discussion, it's sometimes even difficult to trace products where they are finally going to. I beg your pardon that I'm not here giving any general statements about market shares because they would be wrong given different views on segmentation.
Okay. No problem. That's absolutely fair enough. Moving on to your decarbonization project in Pirdop. Could you give us the CapEx number for the PV project? What is the rough magnitude we should expect for that?
We are not disclosing detailed project CapEx here for these internal projects, or let's say this project which has been done within the budget level of the plant. I would put it like this, we decided and sourced the project at the right point in time. We bought all the modules, they were already on stock, at the bottom of the market when demand was very low. Without disclosing the number, it's not double digit. That what I can tell you. Let's say, nicely below a double digit euro number, and it was a very good purchase price that we achieved for this whole installation.
Okay. Perfect. Well done then. I've got one last question maybe for Rainer Verhoeven. The cash flow has been very strong so far, and I guess it's been pretty much hitting the lower end of your guidance of EUR 350 -EUR 400 million net cash flow already. Yeah, I'm wondering, are you still hanging on to this guidance despite the fact that the IFRS results are pretty strong? Also maybe do you still expect to spend the full EUR 250 million CapEx budget? I guess similar to your earnings target, the bar to hit your cash flow guidance here seems to sit pretty low at this point, but maybe you can give us a quick update here as well. Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks. Very simple. We will for sure have some positive effects on the winding down of our net working capital. We will now, during the standstill, use all our annual stocks pretty much, and drive this down to the normal stock levels of Aurubis at year-end. This will provide considerable cash. On the other side, we will also see quite considerable cash outs on the CapEx side. We will stick to the EUR 200, let's say EUR 240, EUR 250 million for the full year. As already said, we have the standstill. We have some cash outs on the RDE project and on other smaller projects, so we'll stick to that. I wouldn't say it's a wash. We will see a bit more positive cash flow here towards the end of the year.
In total, the net financial debt position should be around zero or a bit better than that. It must be better than that.
Mm-hmm. Okay. Very clear. Thanks so much.
The next question comes from Christian Obst. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you. Maybe this question that I have is a little bit more special, something like that. When I compare this year and your guidance, the high end is EUR 330 million on an EBT level. Winding back the clock three years, you already achieved that kind of EBT level during that time. In between, there was a tremendous effort to reduce costs and at least your Performance Improvement Program added another EUR 70 million this year. You acquired Metallo. We have much higher average metal prices. Despite this fact, the EBT will not come out higher than we had in 2017-2018. Of course, TCRC declined, maybe EUR 100 million or a little bit more, and energy increased. Is there something I forgot here in this very rough comparison to the best year or to one of the best years in the past?
Is there something special on the higher cost side or less income side compared to this year?
Yeah. Mr. Obst, thanks for the question. Quite a good one. The equation, I think there is one point missing, which is standstill or not standstill. That's the question. I think, and I'm pretty sure, that in 2017-2018, there was one year where we didn't have a standstill in the primary smelter, which of course, contributes easily by EUR 25 million roughly, or even more depending on where the standstill is. I think that is one thing that you need to put into the equation. On the other side, the energy is driving our costs currently in the fiscal year. We do see that quite strongly. You have seen the slide that was presented by Roland Harings early on. That for sure has an impact, and all prices pretty much are going on.
If we talk about wood, if we talk about steel, whatever, you take it, all the consumables and so forth. We do see here price increases, and of course, we are trying to fight them with our Performance Improvement Program, and we are doing so, and I would say we are quite successful there. Also, if you look to the administrative stuff and the FTE numbers of our company. I think what you're missing in your equation is, in principle, the standstill that didn't happen in 2017-2018.
That's right. Okay. Thank you very much for this. Another one on the cost side there, you have this line, others, of course. There is then included also this part of standstill. Will all of these costs then allocated to new segments, which we'll present in December? Will this remain some kind of the others line? Is there any chance to reduce that, which is approximately between EUR 70 million and EUR 80 million, I would say, if we include for some kind of a normalized standstill. Will you keep it at that level?
We already have removed some of the energy costs now from the others into the MRP segment. That has happened already, because it belongs pretty much there for I would say, on the other side. The segmentation, we will always have a corporate other segment. That's for sure, and we will try to keep it as small as possible. On the other segments, you can expect a more equal and more balanced approach and, definitely more transparency on that end. That's what I could answer to that question.
I have a last one. Thank you. I have a last one. It's going towards intermediate product, so to say. There was an idea with integration of Metallo to selling less, low margin intermediate products and to improve that to higher margin products. Do you need these investments you are currently announcing to go towards that step, or do you have already something in place where you are selling higher margin products than before?
Yeah, Christian. Thanks for the question. Heiko here.
Yeah.
Of course, this is one of the first projects, where we leverage the synergies and where we extract more values from our intermediates.
The ASPA.
The ASPA project.
Oh, yeah.
The Advanced Sludge Processing by Aurubis.
So then-
That's just to add to what Heiko said, but other things have been already with the synergies, which we announced, that we have achieved ahead of our schedule already this fiscal year. They are also partly coming from reintegrating intermediate products, which were sold either by Aurubis or by Metallo in the past, which we are now able to keep within the group.
The anodes.
For example, anodes.
Thank you. Maybe, in the future, you can give some of these examples, what has happened there with the integration then. Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Ioannis Masvoulas. Please go ahead.
Yes, hello. Just a quick follow-up question from me. You announced the very ambitious decarbonization targets by 2030. Is there any preliminary view on associated CapEx? Within that, do you expect any government support to implement all of those initiatives, or is it too early to give us any flavor on that? Thank you.
Yeah. The decarbonization agenda or roadmap is laid out until 2030 and also with ideas beyond there, and clearly different to other industry, and here perhaps, specifically mentioning the steel industry. For us, we have already made significant steps to electrify our production, if you look at the split of energy consumption that we have. What we have on our agenda, in Scope 1, which is where we have to invest, is relatively, let's call it, in the total context of Aurubis, modest. That's something that we can invest and will invest in the framework of our CapEx guidance going forward. The big challenge, but I'm very confident that we will find solutions there with the energy providers, is on Scope 2, that we can switch from fossil based or coal based, or partly coal based energy supply to renewable energies.
There is a lot of movement in these markets in renewable energies, and PPAs are now more and more available at reasonable conditions. Therefore, high level of confidence that we are going to achieve this Scope 2 reduction in the timeframe, and this will not require any investments from our side.
Understood. Thank you.
We have a follow-up question from Rochus Brauneiser. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thanks for taking the question. My first question is, referring to electricity cost again. Can you give us a bit of a sense how the progressive cost inflation was for your electricity cost bill between the second half and the first half of the fiscal? What do you think about next year in terms of magnitude of cost increase? Hello?
Yeah, we're just elaborating on it. We don't have the figures.
Okay.
Just we have no fingertips. Yeah.
We have is, of course, the slide that has been presented year-over-year by Roland. For sure, in the next year, there will be another, let's say, two-digit million increase again in prices for electricity and energy.
There's one thing you have to also to take into consideration, that we have been successful in maintaining the eligibility of the copper sector for CO2 compensation. This compensation comes always with a two years delay. That means today, in this fiscal year, we received the compensation for two years ago, where CO2 certificate prices had been significantly lower. That means there's a bit of a, let's say, rolling forward effect. We see a timing effect. We see now in this fiscal year, higher numbers for electricity, but they will be partly, let's say, compensated at a later point in time.
Okay, understood. Let me come back to an earlier question on profitability. I think I still maybe didn't get the point yet on the sequential changes or drop in profitability. When you look at your gross profit, which was down about EUR 40 million quarter-on-quarter, despite higher realized RCs and higher sulfuric acid prices. There is in some way kind of a EUR 50 million drop-off quarter-on-quarter, which I'm not sure whether this can be explained by electricity cost increases. Is it possible to help us to what extent metal gains dropped off in the quarter? What are other meaningful contributors? I think I still couldn't really allocate where I should see those profitability slump.
Yeah, Mr. Brauneiser, Rainer Verhoeven here once again. I just can reiterate on the answer that I have given earlier. You have a not necessarily linear approach with regards to energy prices between Q2 and Q3. That is something I said. That also means, or implicitly means, that it's not necessarily going forward to be considered in the same extent. There is an effect from energy, and there is an effect from the input materials that we were having in Q3 that led to that reduced gross profit situation in Q3 compared to an increase in overall revenue. Unfortunately, we are, as you know, not disclosing anything with regards to our metal results. That's something that we would keep confident here.
Okay. Yeah, it's just the kind of big swings which are possible by this kind of effect, which is quite difficult to build that into a model. The other question is on the postponed maintenance shutdown in Lünen. You decided to postpone that by a quarter. What was the driver for that? Usually my experience or my perception was that you usually stick to your original maintenance schedules.
Yeah. Maybe I take that question. You can measure your refractory consumption, and we have done so, and we found out that we feel very comfortable extending the shutdown period beyond the originally scheduled date. That is a normal development in operational excellence.
If I may add, it shows that we are now much precise on our condition-based maintenance, so that we are able to analyze the assets, and we saw that it would be too early to take this asset into maintenance, and that it's well suited to continue another quarter with the expected performance before we take this into maintenance. That's probably something with the sophistication in our maintenance work that we will see, not the very big shutdowns, but on smaller shutdowns, we certainly will use more flexibility when we are starting these revamps.
Okay. Right. Finally, on the comments you made on the outlook for a less ample copper scrap supply, the kind of signals you send, is that more triggered by the last slight move down in the European copper RC? Is this more kind of high level based on what you expect in terms of Chinese scrap imports or other things?
Important here is to mention that scrap number two, which the officially, let's say, discussed category, is only one category in our overall portfolio. Also with the integration of Beerse and Berango, we even strengthened our portfolio of less metal containing, more complicated, more RC-carrying materials, for which we have also mostly longer term supply contracts in place. Therefore, sure, scrap number two and the RCs is not unimportant, but it's only one part in our portfolio going forward. Availability, also given the metal prices and also the strong trend everywhere to recycling, to circular economy, we see a continued very good supply of all kind of scrap qualities. Within our smelter network, we have the ability to optimize the input mix, depending also on pricing and availability of different qualities.
Okay. That's it. Thank you very much.
At the moment, there seem to be no further questions. If you would like to state another question, please press nine and the star key on your telephone again. Let's just wait a couple more seconds. We have no further questions. Let me hand back over to your host for some closing remarks.
Yes. Thank you. It remains to say that our analyst call on our fiscal year results will take place on December 3rd. Until then, enjoy the last days of summer, and please stay healthy, and thanks for your participation, and bye-bye.
Yep. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Bye.