Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the SGL Carbon conference call, 9M results 2021. Throughout today's recorded presentation, all participants will be in listen-only mode. The presentation will be followed by a question- and- answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you may press the star key followed by one on your telephone keypad. Press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. I now would like to turn the conference over to Claudia Kellert. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Thank you. Welcome to our conference call about the first nine months 2021. First, some technical remarks. You can follow the presentation also on our webpage. Let's start right now. Following the publication of our nine-month report, the board of SGL Carbon will provide you with further details about the first nine months of our business year. On behalf of SGL Carbon, our CEO, Dr. Torsten Derr, and our CFO, Thomas Dippold, will join the call. Now I hand over to our CEO, Dr. Torsten Derr.
Yes. Thanks, Claudia. Good afternoon. This is Torsten Derr. I would like to start the presentation directly on page four, where we give you some highlights of the first nine months, 2021. We have good figures to report. Our group sales are up by 8.8%, and I'm very proud to say that our EBITDA increased by almost 60%. Our equity ratio is up from 70.5% to 22.7, and we were also able to reduce our net financial debt to EUR 191, which is 33% down. On the business side, we have our restructuring program running, which runs pretty successful. We have encouraging market developments in almost all areas of our business, and I want to highlight the LED and semiconductors, which are performing best.
We initiated price increases in all business units to compensate the challenges from raw materials, energy, and transport. There's also a challenge from the chip shortage in automotive, which is currently on a very, very low level, but I want to mention the risk. Our outlook is also good despite the increasing challenges, which is energy, logistics, and raw materials. We are going to confirm our earnings and sales forecast. Our guidance remains unchanged. EBITDApre between EUR 130 million-EUR 140 million for the full year, and sales on a level of approximately EUR 1 billion. With this, I would like to hand over to our CFO, Thomas Dippold.
Thank you, Torsten. Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon also from my side. This is Thomas Dippold, and it's my pleasure and honor to guide you through the financials of this presentation. On slide number six, you can see our top line and our bottom line. As Torsten already mentioned, our sales for the first nine months of the year went up by almost 9%, reaching EUR 743.5 million, compared to EUR 683.5 million in the first nine months of last year. This means an increase of EUR 60 million. Q3 was fully in line with the two strong quarters we had beforehand.
Q1 had EUR 241 million, Q2 had EUR 255 million, and Q3 now in line with EUR 246 million, another 8.7% up versus Q3 last year. Our EBITDApre rose, as Torsten already mentioned, by almost 60%, totaling EUR 108.5 million, compared to some EUR 68.2 million in the first nine months of last year. This means an increase of EUR 40.3 million on a like for like basis. Also, Q3 itself was very strong. We have reached EUR 36.8 million in the Q3 , which is only a little bit below the Q2 , which was the best so far in this year, reaching EUR 38.7 million. Who contributed the most to the sales development?
Composite Solutions is the first one we have to mention because they really grew by more than 50%, and they could increase their sales by EUR 31.3 million. Next in line is Graphite Solutions with almost EUR 25 million and to come with Carbon Fibers business unit with EUR 21.4 million. On the next slide, you can see a look at our markets and how they develop. The market for Graphite Solutions, the best one or the best market for Graphite Solutions business so far in this year is the semiconductor business, which is not surprising. Due to the high demand we see there and the strong growth of our sales there, we also see a decline in our solar activities.
Both products go more or less the same. At the moment, we focus the semiconductor business much more because it's growing stronger, and therefore we decline our solar business. Automotive also remains very strong so far. We have seen a lot of growth in the first nine months so far. At the moment, we see some minor cancellations and delays due to production shortages and the shutdowns as a consequence of the chip shortages. The battery market remains very vivid and dynamic. We see a lot of potential in the midterm basis, but this won't be realizable in short term. Industry remains late cyclical.
We see some order intakes all over the place, but they hopefully can be turned into sales beginning of next year. For Process Technology, we see some slightly increasing sales, especially in the Q3 , and there's more to come in Q4. Still, it's a late cyclical recovery that we see, and it all depends on the chemical or petrochemical industry. We do see some booming order intake in Europe, or Asia, but North America remains weak. Carbon fiber is very strong in automotive, even much stronger than we probably expected it to be, as we wanted to offset a lot of the automotive sales, especially in 2022, with some wind businesses.
You know that BMW i3 contract is about to expire mid-next year, and we already plan to have some stronger sales in wind at the moment. As automotive is very strong and we do have to respect the contract, automotive is booming until the very last day of this car model. Textile and industrial applications are on a regular level that we expected. Last but not least in this slide, Composite Solutions. They're highly dependent on the automotive business. This is where all the dynamic growth comes from. We see a lot of large- scale solutions. It means really serious production with new projects out of the automotive business. Aerospace and industrial applications are on a much lower level there.
I'm coming to look at the individual business units starting from slide eight onwards. Graphite Solutions grew by 8% for almost EUR 25 million to EUR 332.7 million compared to EUR 308 million in the first nine months of last year. Semiconductor sales boosted the sales growth and battery material sales increased on the level as it has been last year. There's a lot of potential once the European battery market really established and is set up. Industrial business remains weak. However, we see some order intakes and the recovery is about to come, especially in 2022. The profitability of Graphite Solutions really developed very, very positively.
In the first nine months of last year, we were slightly below EUR 50 million in EBITDApre, and we are now up at EUR 67.5 million in the first nine months of this year. This means an increase of 36.4% or EUR 18 million, which is marvelous, that we achieved out of EUR 25 million sales growth, an improvement in the bottom line of EUR 18 million. This is a margin that we have reached again of 20.3%, EBITDApre compared to sales. This is a very strong growth compared to 16.1% we had at the same time last year. Where do the profitability increase come from? Mainly from the saving of our restructuring and transformation program. Together with the sales growth, we see some higher utilization of our assets and therefore also some economies of scale.
We do have some slight negative effects so far in this year due to higher labor costs, which we needed in order to fill the capacities completely and are on a full shift model in many sites. We also see some increasing raw material prices for pitch and coke. The next business unit, Process Technology on slide number nine, declined by almost 5% to EUR 62.1 million in sales compared to 65.3 in the first three quarters last year. What has happened there? We do see some COVID related sales decline all over the year. We see a recovery, especially in the Q3 .
We saw some promising sales development, and we also expect a stronger Q4 compared to last year, so that we are catching up in the sales development. We're still highly dependent from the demand in the chemical industry, and it still remains on a low level compared to the highs we've seen in previous years. We do see a strong order intake, mainly in Europe but also Asia, but this can't compensate the decline that we see so far also still in North America. At the moment, we see some partial delays in our project, especially due to the availability and supply mainly in steel. The EBITDA pre, the bottom line recovered compared to the development we had at half year.
However, we are still 400,000 short compared to the first nine months of last year, reaching EUR 1.4 million as EBITDA pre in the first nine months of this year, which means 22.2% lower than the previous time frame. This is a fact, despite all the savings that we have initiated and all the improvements, we lack of the utilization of our assets, and we have to face also some raw material prices which go up mainly in steel. For Carbon Fibers, we have a sales growth of almost 10%, reaching EUR 21.3 million. With that, our sales in the first nine months of the year reached EUR 244.7 million.
We see a strong top line due to the high demand in automotive, which is a high margin business for us. We also see a potential risk of some production slowdowns due to the chip shortage, as I mentioned before. We also see a rising demand, especially from the wind industry, but we can't serve it the way we want it because we reached our capacity levels so far, and they are filled with Siemens wind, and all the remaining capacities are filled with automotive. Coming to the bottom line, there we see also a strong development. We reached EUR 43.8 million as an EBITDApre figure for the first nine months of this year.
This is an increase of over 50% or EUR 15.4 million compared to the EUR 28.4 million we saw for the same time frame last year. Out of the increase of EUR 15.4 million, roughly half of that comes as a contribution from our joint venture, BSCCB, where we sell together with our joint venture partner, Brembo, our carbon brake discs. With the bottom line, we have to see that we are really a high energy business, so we need a lot of energy and gas to convert our acrylonitrile into acrylic and carbon fibers. With that, we suffer, especially in the late months of the Q3 , but especially now start going into the Q4 from the really booming energy costs.
The spot market for gas, for example, has quadrupled at the moment, and it still remains on this high level. We have to work on that we on the one hand side can well get the gas prices at a lower level. But also, in order we have to work on passing the costs through to our customers in order to keep our margins where they are. Last but not least, Composite Solutions. In Composite Solutions, our sales went up by more than 50%, reaching EUR 92.1 million in the first nine months of this year. This is an increase by over EUR 30 million compared to EUR 60.7 million we saw for the first nine months of last year. This is all due to automotive business.
We see a strong demand in leaf springs, but also new projects for battery cases for automotive. These are mainly the booming sales developments we see there. This is all project business, so it's not what we had some small series business. This is really large-scale business, where we really have some new platforms, and we serve those customers for many over years as long as the models run in the market. Our profitability developed very positively. We saw an increase of EUR 14.1 million coming from EUR -5 million last year to EUR 9.1 million in the first nine months of this year.
This is really a huge turnaround we saw there, and this is a very good development, which is due to the high- capacity utilization we see there with the automation of our production lines, especially when it comes to the large-scale business projects, but also the cost savings we initiated there boosted also the bottom line. Last but not least, another look at our corporate, where we consolidate all the corporate functions and also do the business other businesses which are not directly related to the mentioned business units. The sales declined by EUR 14 million in our corporate business units. What does it mean? We reached EUR 26.1 million in the first nine months of last year, and in this year, we couldn't even reach EUR 12 million so far.
This is due to the fact that in the last year, we have received some monies from our former tenant, Showa Denko, in our Meitingen site, because they left the plant prematurely, and which was not in line with the contracts we previously had. They had to pay a termination fee to offset the missing rental payments and also some restructuring costs. This is what we accumulated into the sales last year, and this is missing in this year. Once a tenant in our Meitingen site has left, then we also cannot charge our services to them. This is also why we have some lower service sales to divested businesses.
Last but not least, we have sold some no longer used land and buildings in our operations. The more we sell, the less we can charge for rental income and all the three effects come together. Our sales is down to EUR 12 million. In fact this is not operational. This is just where we well got some sales without having a real operational business out of our business units beforehand. You just have to bear in mind that we lost for the total top line 1.5 percentage points just with the reduction of our corporate sales, which in fact are non-core. Our profitability developed negatively, you can say now.
We lost another almost EUR 7 million compared to the same time of the previous year. We have now reached minus EUR 13.3 million of EBITDA pre, and now you can say that terrible development. You have to take into consideration that we lost EUR 14 million in our top line, which is 100% profit the same money. This could only be offset by 7.4% savings in the transformation in our corporate functions, respectively. In fact, we saw some huge savings, especially in the corporate function and corporate services with EUR 7 million, but this could not offset the shortfall in our top line.
Last but not least, from my side, a look at our net results, free cash flow and net financial debt on slide 13. For the first time in many years, we have reached a positive net result after nine months of the business year. We have reached quite a high number of EUR 42.6 million. We still consider that as slightly positive as described in our guidance because our operative net result is EUR 21 million that we have reached. Still a strong increase compared to EUR -4 million as we had for the first nine months of last year. The other EUR 21 million are one-offs which affect our net result, and this mainly comes from land sales, land and buildings in the U.S., but also our Meitingen site.
In total, we see an increase of our net result of EUR 46.5 million. This is a strong development. Maybe also, as we described in our report for the first nine months of the year, we do expect another increase in net result due to the introduction of a capital option in our pension schemes. This addition of this capital option will also, well, in fact, it's accounting or technical effect of another low double-digit amount that comes with it, just as a remark that we are trying to implement that, and we are quite sure that we can do that until the end of this business year.
The free cash flow went up by roughly EUR 60 million from 62.4 last year to 122.5 this year. This is a very strong development. Where does it come from? Our operative cash flow went up by almost EUR 14 million compared to the same time last year. Our investing cash flow, this is maybe something I need to explain a little bit, is positive. You normally expect a negative investing cash flow. Ours is positive compared to the same time last year. Where does it come from? We do have some land sales, some cash in for land sales. We do have our dividend from our joint venture, BSCCB. Last but not least, our CapEx compared to last year for the first nine months, respectively, is lower compared to last year.
All three effects make it happen that our investing cash flow is positive, EUR 21.2 million, EUR 46.3 million up versus last year. Especially the strong cash flow has contributed to bring down our net financial debt by almost EUR 95 million, coming from EUR 286.5 million, down to EUR 191.6 million. This is also something we consider a very good development. With that, our equity ratio increased by five full percentage points, from 17 point something to 22.7% after the first nine months of the year. Our ROCE developed quite positively, now reaching 6.4%, significantly improved from 0.9% in the same period last year.
With that, I hand over to Torsten again for the outlook of 2021.
Yes. Thanks, Thomas. To bring our company back on track, we have started one year ago a restructuring program. I can say right now the transformation program after one year is fully on track and will be continued. The transformation program consisted out of business measures, cost measures, and also cultural initiatives. You can see on this slide how we are tracking our transformation program. First, the transformation program consists out of 700 or more than 700 individual measures. Every measure has a dedicated responsible person, and we have weekly steering committees to track the full project. Out of the 700 initiatives, we have realized 75% and are fully on track. We intended to have savings of more than EUR 100 million, and we have already reached our target.
We are at EUR 100 million, and we increased the target by 15%. This shows that we are continued the transformation process. A big part was a headcount reduction program. We wanted to reduce 500 permanent positions, and we have realized 93% of this. More headcount reduction is already initiated. All in all, we are very good on track. There are also some challenges to tackle because our input costs are rising strongly. I have collected here three examples. On the left side, you can see the coke and the pitch price. You are going to mix coke and pitch to produce artificial graphite. These are for our business unit GS, the two most important raw materials.
You can see over the years which are depicted here, this is a little bit more than five years. The price trend is going up, but you can see on the right side of the curve how sharply the prices for pitch and coke increased in the last six months. Here we benefit from quite some long-term contracts, which had to mitigate this price effect, but we have to approach our customers here with price increases. In the middle, you can see a global container freight index, where the price for a container increased from $2,000 per container two years ago to almost $10,000 right now. I can tell you it's not only a question of price, it's more a question of availability.
Our procurement department and our logistics department are doing an excellent job right now. All of our plants are running at full capacity, and we hadn't to reduce capacity due to a shortage of freights or raw material. Last, I want to talk about natural gas price, and Thomas already mentioned it a little bit. Please look at the right-hand side. This is a natural gas price index for Europe, the TTF curve. You can see it increased from 10 two years ago to 80. Eighty is not even the peak level we saw. Four weeks ago, we have seen a peak level of EUR 120 per MWh for gas. You know, this is due to Russia, due to the high Chinese demand.
We are very confident that these high prices will go down by Q2 of next year. I also depicted here in gray our the U.S. curve for natural gas, which is much below the European prices. This is important because one of our most energy-intensive plants is running in Moses Lake in the U.S., where we get green power for electricity, but also very, very beneficial natural gas prices. This also helps to mitigate our natural gas exposure. On the next slide, you can see that we have a lot of countermeasures to tackle the challenges. On this slide, I summarize the four main challenges I see for the Q4 and also for the next year. First is automotive and the chip shortage. Currently, we are very low affected.
Our utilization went back a little bit, but is still on a pretty high level. This is the case because we produce carbon fiber composites, and they go to the rather high-end side of the automotive market. For example, for our brake disc, which we produce, Lamborghini and Ferrari are on our customer list, and you can imagine that these high-end cars are served preferably. This is why the chip shortage effect is in Q3 very low, but it is worth to mention that there is a risk. Second challenge is raw material prices and availability. Availability for almost all raw materials, which we have, is critical, and our procurement department really has to work to secure the supply of our plants.
I already said it, we had to shut down none of our plants due to a raw material shortage so far. We are facing price increases in all business units, and this is why we introduce severe price increase measures in all business units. The effect we could compensate most of the price increases with price increase measures at our customers. Energy, this is electricity and gas, is our third challenge. There I can say we are very, very well equipped with energy price hedges in the year 2021. The effect is in most of our plants a very, very small effect. With one exception, this is in Lavradio, where we also produce a precursor for the carbon fiber production.
There, our main energy source is natural gas, and you have seen in the previous slide that the price increased by a factor of 10, and we reacted. First reaction was price increases at our customer. Second was that we idled 50% of our capacity. We are running eight spinning lines there, and we idled four of the spinning lines. Currently, we are only producing the precursor for the carbon fiber production. We are not selling any more acrylic fiber to the low-margin apparel market. You can see we are running a clear margin over volume strategy. Fourth challenge, which I want to mention, this is the expiration of the BMW i3 contract.
This is affecting only the business unit Carbon Fibers, and the contract for the i3 will expire by mid of next year. This is as expected and as planned. I mentioned it several times that we are going to lose this contract. This gives us time to prepare for it. We have three countermeasures. First, currently we are in negotiation for new automotive products to refill the capacities, especially in Wackersdorf. Second will be a restructuring program, which we run in Wackersdorf to bring our costs to a better level. Second is that we are going to replace the carbon fiber which went into the i3 by the lower margin wind energy business. I just want to say we still have eight months' time to introduce countermeasures for the loss of the i3 contract. Yeah.
Having said all this, we are confirming our sales and earnings outlooks for 2020. We increased recently our outlook in sales to a level of approximately EUR 1 billion for 2021, and we are confirming this level. Secondly, we increased the outlook for the EBITDApre, our main KPI, to a range of EUR 130-EUR 140, and our guidance is exactly in this range. Next slide. I come to the summary of the first nine months. Our transformation, which we introduced, is supporting our positive earnings and our EBITDApre increased by almost 60% compared to last year. With a pick- up in demand, especially in the automotive segment, but highest increase comes from semiconductors in our business unit Graphite Solutions.
The higher demand leads to improved capacity utilization and cost regression, and this helps our bottom line. Third, we are seeing higher prices for raw materials, energy, and also for transport, and they impacted Q3 and will impact Q4. We introduced a lot of countermeasures and tried to pass on as much as we can to our customers, and we were pretty successful until now to do this. We are running a clear margin over volume strategy, and you saw in Lavradio, in our acrylic fiber plant, where we could not pass on the prices, the raw material prices. In the apparel segment, we switched down within seven days our capacity and countered the energy and raw material price increase and safeguarded our margin. Last but not least, we improved our liquidity and lowered our financial debt.
Our debt is down by EUR 95 million compared to year-end 2020. With this, I would like to hand back to Claudia.
Yes, thank you. Now you have got the possibility to ask questions. At the moment, I don't see any questions, but don't be shy.
Yes. Thank you. Yes, and we do have a question, and that comes from Andreas Heine with Stifel.
No, actually, I have already four, and then I put myself back to the line. I would like to start with what you said on the automotive industry and looking on what your largest customer has reported in Q3, which showed that the i3 was down 24%, which is about 2,000 cars. In total, the business was down 10% year-on-year in Q3. You haven't seen this according to what you have reported. Is that to come? Is there a risk that BMW, with these lower sales, might cut the orders for the i3? Also on the Carbon Fibers, could you give an update on these battery cases in contract you have?
Have you started with deliveries and what can we expect from this business in 2022? Then on the acrylic fiber plant, what you said. My understanding is where it is right now is kind of worst case, when you close the lines for the textile fiber and concentrate on your precursor production. In this environment, is Lavradio producing losses or is, let's say, the internal earnings contribution from the PAN good enough to keep it at least at break even? The last point, more on group level on CapEx. You reduced the CapEx guidance from EUR 60 million to EUR 50 million. These EUR 10 million, is that something which is just shifted to 2022, or is that what you really need less in CapEx? I stop here. Wait for your question, for answers.
Okay. No, thanks a lot for those questions. I start with the first question, and you ask for the BMW i3, and what you read is absolutely true. As far as we know, the order book of BMW for the i3 is pretty good loaded. They will end the production definitely by end of this year. They have to fulfill all orders for the i3, and we have to deliver the material. As far as we know, they need all the material we produce, and it is unexpectedly high.
We expected a little less volume, and we were surprised about the high order volumes for the BMW i3 because we intended to shift the volume to do pre-marketing in wind energy. Now, we withdraw the volumes from the wind energy segment and deliver it into the BMW i3 market. I know that the figures are right, which you mentioned, but I cannot see any decline from the orders for this car.
Okay, good.
Second, you ask for the battery enclosure, and the battery enclosure is for an SUV or truck type car, an electric vehicle. I'm not allowed to give you the name of that customer, but it's a huge Tesla competitor, I would phrase it. It was launched some weeks ago. The launch of this car was postponed month by month, but now it is finally launched. What I know, the car is already sold out the whole year 2022, and our order books are filled almost at capacity. We expect an increase in volume.
To be a little bit more precise, it's going to be a double-digit increase next year with that, yeah.
Double-digit increase, that is in euro millions? Or what is that in...
Say it again, please. In euro terms, in our top line, yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks.
For Lavradio, it consists out of eight spinning lines. We use two spinning line for precursor production. Another one or one and a half is used for PANOX, which goes into flame retardants, and a little bit produces special grades for acrylic fibers, and they are accretive and we make money with it. The other four lines, we just utilize them with acrylic fibers, and we sell them to the apparel business. This business is a plus, a plus-minus zero. In some months it is accretive, in other months it's around zero. It's just to utilize the plant and to dilute the fixed cost.
In terms of energy costs, natural gas is our main source of energy, which we have there, which went up very sharply within days and in times of very high acrylonitrile costs. We are not able to pass on the cost to the apparel market. They switch to other polymers, for example, polyester. Our answer was, we asked the customers, "Are you willing to accept the higher prices?" They said no. We shut down the capacity. Now, I think this week, we restarted one out of the four idle lines because some customers came back. They were willing to pay higher prices, and everything what we sell is accretive. This plant is the first which follows our margin before volume strategy. If we don't get a margin, we idle the capacity.
I hope this answers your question.
Yeah, very well. Is that Lavradio in these very adverse conditions contributing losses or is that still on-
Yeah.
EBITDA and cash flow level?
We are not reporting profits on a plant level because you have to look at the whole chain.
Mm-hmm.
We start with acrylonitrile and produce a precursor, and then it goes to our own carbon fiber plants, which we have the Muir of Ord, Scotland and Moses Lake, U.S. We look at the whole value chain, of course, is accretive. You have seen it in the figures which Thomas presented. To look at single plants within a chain, you know, it's a thing of transfer prices which we apply. It makes no sense to look at profitability on plant level.
Okay.
I'm coming to your last question, Andreas, regarding the CapEx, and you're completely right. We adjusted our prognosis saying that, in this particular year, we're going to be below our depreciation level and we will reach around EUR 50. We are not going to do any unreasonable or stupid things in the last one and a half months of the year. Wherever we can invest into some additional CapEx, then we do it in the right way. Same as last year, and this was always the message we try to bring across. We try to do no stupid things with our cash flow when it comes to investments.
We try not to do any fancy stuff where we have a new project with a new customer that nobody has ever seen before. No, we rather stay in existing markets. We look at our supply chains, we look at our production lines, and each and every machinery, we try to utilize it to the maximum. Wherever we see some constraints or bottlenecks, we're trying to de-bottleneck. With that, we maximize our output with a minimum of CapEx and investments. With that, we think we are very responsible with our cash flow. This is the reason why we only invest roughly EUR 50 million in this year. Will this be the new normal for SGL?
On the one hand side, Torsten mentioned that, or also in the beginning when we were looking at the markets. Whenever we see chances in the markets that we already are in and we see opportunities to come up which are profitable business cases, of course we will invest, and of course, we will take the chances that we see. We will still, as a kind of a policy, won't over-invest with the current conditions. You know that we're also going into a refinancing phase, to come somewhere in during the course of 2022 or beginning of 2023. We try to stay at a reasonable level with our CapEx, but certainly we won't miss any chances in the markets.
Mm-hmm. Okay, I leave my friendly competitors the chance to ask questions as well.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Benjamin Pfannes-Varrow with Berenberg.
Hi, good afternoon, everyone. A couple from me as well, please. Maybe starting with price increases on your end, just to get a feeling of how that develops. I mean, in terms of the timeline of you increasing prices, I mean, is there a big step up into Q4 next year, or has the bulk been done already? How do you see that developing in order to offset cost inflation?
Yeah. Thanks, Ben, for the question. We started very early with a project which we called raw material pass- on in our company, and we started this already in June, July, this year. Start means we develop tools that we can analyze how raw materials are going into our final product and what the need for price increases is. This was a very good preparation. Then prices started to increase. We are a little bit surprised about energy, electricity, and especially natural gas. Most of the energy costs were not indexed in our prices, while most of the main raw materials are included in our price contracts to our customers.
For example, Carbon Fibers, most of the big contracts contain a clause which directly takes acrylonitrile, which is the main raw material, and when acrylonitrile increases with a certain time gap, we are allowed to increase the price for exactly the same amount. This is kind of a natural hedge we see here. With the other contracts we approach in all business units, almost every customer, and try to forward everything. I'm not sure if the series of price increase is coming to an end, because what we do are also our suppliers doing. Every day new suppliers are knocking on our door and confront us with new price increases, and we start the cycle from new.
I expect in Q4 we will see a next round of price increase. I'm a little bit more optimistic for the energy prices. You know, electricity prices are following natural gas. As soon as Nord Stream 2 will open, gas price will decrease significantly. I saw futures for natural gas, which are below 40 EUR already in Q2 next year. There I expect a midterm price decrease. I hope this answered.
Yes. Yes, that's very helpful. Thanks. I think, yeah, I guess a lot of moving parts into next year, but I mean, net, do you have a feeling on whether you can comfortably pass through the majority of costs, or do you think you have to absorb some of the pressure that's going on?
Benjamin, the first thing I do every day is to look at EEX, which is an energy spot market for electricity and gas. The fluctuation is high currently. There are movements of 10% or more every day. We expect that fluctuation of energy pricing will remain with a decreasing trend.
Okay. Then onto the cost initiatives. I see you're ahead of the EUR 100 million target now. How should we think about next steps in terms of your structuring program with regard to costs?
Benjamin, this is Thomas Dippold. Well, actually, we are reaching our targets, as we said, and we have reached EUR 100 million at the moment. As Torsten already mentioned also in previous calls, we're not leaning back once we have set up an initiative to save some costs, but we are continuing with that. As we have always told you, our restructuring will last at least until end of 2023, and we said that for a good reason. We have to somehow digest and find some new ways, and we are on a good way to do that, to compensate also the loss of the i3 business.
Everybody knows it, that this is going to expire mid of next year, and we need to have the transformation into the wind business that are going to be freed up with that one. With that, our transformation, our restructuring will anyway continue until end of 2023, and there are more initiatives and more savings to come. When we did the initial definition of all the initiatives, in the meantime, more than 20% additional initiatives have been identified and added to the scheme. We just continue working on that. In the end, this needs to be a perpetual development that we're having.
We cannot just say, well, this was a one-time effort, and then everybody leans back, and then we say, well, we just relax and recover because we are through with that. No, we need a permanent development cycle. In the end, it's also a cultural thing that we're trying to establish into the organization. I think we are on a good way to install that.
Benjamin, one good example for an additional initiative which we developed is a BMW i3. We are not delivering carbon fibers into this car. We are delivering textile carbon fiber stacks, and they are produced in Wackersdorf.
As the contract runs out, we first have to dedicate the carbon fiber volumes to the lower margin energy market and secondly, we have to restructure Wackersdorf. This restructuring is an additional initiative which we developed and this will be done by mid of next year. We are finding more and more initiatives as the time comes. In 2022, we have to balance out restructuring and growth again and shift the whole strategy a little bit more to growth. This will be done in the course of 2022.
Okay, thanks. Very last one, just on the business in the graphite side. Could you give an update firstly on the Hyundai GDL business, how that's developing? Secondly, on the anode material.
Yeah. Benjamin, again, that I get it. You ask for GDL and GAM, for both, no?
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Okay. For GDL, this is called the gas diffusion layer. This is a membrane which is a very, very important part in a fuel cell. There are two car companies in the world which sell right now larger amounts of fuel cell cars, which is Toyota and Hyundai. Our GDL is used by every Hyundai car which is sold uses a gas diffusion layer produced by SGL. The main car which makes up 90% of the Hyundai fuel cell cars is the Hyundai NEXO.
The sales of the NEXO stagnated somewhat, and Hyundai is moving from the NEXO One to the NEXO Two in the next two years, and we will see an increase. Our business in GDL is more or less flat compared to last level, but this is a pretty good margin business. Second, GAM. GAM stands for graphite anode material. In a battery for an electric car, you have an anode and a cathode. The anode is produced out of copper coated with graphite. We are one of the two larger producers of graphite for this battery. Thomas and me just granted an investment into our site in Poland.
It's called Nowy Sącz, where we construct a new facility for this graphite anode material. The capacity will be above 1,000 tons. We will have this capacity by the second half of next year. Right now, we have a big graphite and battery laboratory in Meitingen. We are producing samples, and we supply the European battery industry. The feedback is pretty encouraging. Next step will be to open the new facility in Poland and to sample or to give to the potential customers a bigger industrial samples for the battery production. This is the status. Currently, all our strategy is pretty well on track.
Thanks. That's very helpful.
Thank you. We have another question from Andreas Heine with Stifel.
Yeah, I try again. Smaller ones only. Starting with graphite, as it is, you have a long lead time from getting an order to delivery. Maybe you can share with us what your orders are in comparison to sales. Do you have a hint that this growth we see right now is continuing going into 2022? That's first question. Maybe you start with that, and then I ask the smaller one.
Yeah. I mean, normally we don't disclose any order intake figures, but our book-to-bill ratio is certainly above one. This is what we can clearly say.
Yeah.
We expect some further growth, especially on our largest business unit, which is Graphite Solutions. Also in the next year, we do expect a positive development there.
Mm-hmm.
Andreas, it's worthwhile to mention our order entry and also the order backlog. The two graphite business units which we run, which is GS, Graphite Solutions, and PT, Process Technology, is on a very, very well level. Order backlog is high and order entry is on a very, very satisfactory level compared to the last 24 months.
Good to know. Smaller ones. You sold quite some property. Is that all or is there more to come what you will sell in property? Linked to this, as the income from this property is booked in corporate first, would you be able to give, let's say, kind of quarterly run rate with after all these changes in corporate costs, what you expect going forward.
Yeah, that's a question I can answer. So far, there's still some more land left that we can sell, but the most of it already has been done. We rather choose the option, when you look at the prices for real estate at the moment for land and buildings, I think or we think it's a good time to sell. As it's idle land and we're not going to investing in those anymore, then we rather choose to sell it. What we sold was a rented part of our Gardena site in the United States.
This is the most effect that we saw in Q3, what we've done there together with a smaller part of our Meitingen site, which we anyway couldn't use for our plant. This all totaled up to EUR 30 million that we have reached in cash in this year. This helped a lot in order to offset our net debt, and this is why we do that. We still do have some pieces of land that we are trying to sell, and we are in negotiations with that.
We rather choose same with our business we rather choose a reasonable price, and this is far more important than having a quick deal, which we maybe could anyway do. We rather go for a reasonable and attractive price tag rather than a quick solution and do any fire sales. Once we have reached, there's maybe one, maybe two more land pieces of land that we can sell, but we won't reach that amount of money that I've just told you with the outstanding ones, which are yeah maybe to come.
Mm-hmm.
Beginning of next year. So far, we think the big chunk has been sold so far, and this helps a lot in order to support our liquidity. Our run rate in our corporate cost shall be on a monthly basis on a like-for-like without any one-offs below EUR 5 million. This is at least what we target for.
Monthly, you're saying?
No, quarterly. I'm sorry for that. Thanks for asking. Quarterly, I'm sorry.
Quarterly.
Yeah.
Okay. Thanks.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this. I'm sorry?
No. Now I see another question here.
Yes, we do have a question from Richard Phelan with Deutsche Bank AG.
Yes. I'm just picking up on the point you made regarding an upcoming refinancing in 2022 or early 2023. Is it too early to talk about plans on that front in terms of you know how you might look at that?
Yeah, to be honest, it's at the moment still too early. We have a decent level of liquidity. We see how the year end goes, once we have our 2021 figures audited, then we make up our mind also seeing what the course of next year then might be, and also the cash requirements we might have depending also on the chances that we might see in the market. We look for the best option how to move on with our refinancing. At the moment, it's too early. I mean, we have that in mind. We evaluate internally all the options what's possible and feasible.
I think with our figures we see so far in this particular year when we see how our liquidity develops, I'm not worried about a solid refinancing in due course.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I hand the call back to Dr. Torsten Derr for closing comments.
Yes. Thank you very much for your attention and attendance in this call, and I would like to hand over to Claudia Kellert, our Head of Investor Relations.
Yes. Thanks for your participation and interest in SGL from my side as well. If you have further questions, maybe after reading the Q3 report, please call Jürgen Reck or myself, and we are happy to answer your questions. Thanks once more for your attendance, and have a nice afternoon. Thank you. Goodbye.
Goodbye.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now concluded and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for joining and have a pleasant day. Goodbye.