Welcome to the quarter one 2025 reporting of Aspo. I'll start with a bit of background. As we communicated before, profitability generation is a top priority for us in the year 2025. We want to maximize the benefits from the transactions done last year, the completed acquisitions, as well as the investments done in ESL. We're focusing a lot on the organic growth, as well as profitability improvement measures. In parallel, we are, of course, working on the long-term ambition, financial ambition of EUR 1 billion for 2028, and then also the portfolio vision to split Aspo into two separate companies. If we look at the first quarter this year, there's a couple of key highlights. Unfortunately, quite challenging market conditions, low level of industrial activity overall, low demand in Europe, these both factors affecting particularly ESL as well as Telko.
Good to see that Telko and Leipurin achieved very strong growth if you compare to last year's first quarter. Most importantly, all businesses of Aspo were able to improve their profitability quite significantly compared to last year. Positive impact from the strategic decisions done over the past years, the acquisitions of Telko and Leipurin, and also the investments in ESL, specifically into the green coasters, which you already can see in the results now in the first quarter. I'm also glad to say that the initiatives that we've started to improve the profitability in the businesses, they are clearly paying off. As a couple of examples, the supply chain improvement efforts, particularly in Sweden and in Leipurin, are giving us clear benefits.
Synergies are building up when it comes to Telko's acquisitions, and then clear operational efficiency improvement of ESL during this first quarter compared to last year. If we then jump into the numbers, we had 14% growth compared to Q1 last year. We had EUR 8.8 million of EBITA compared to EUR 5.1 million in the first quarter last year. Naturally, also the earnings per share figures clearly improved compared to Q1 2024. If you look at ESG, emission intensity improved. We had during the first quarter 0.25 against 0.30, and that is CO2 emissions divided by net sales. This improvement was behind it was two drivers. One is that ESL's emissions are relatively seen reduced due to the investments we made in new fleet. At the same time, when Aspo is growing, this KPI is also improving.
Unfortunately, on the safety side, our injury frequency increased actually quite significantly compared to last year. We had a total of four safety accidents in ESL and Telko, and we continue to put a lot of efforts and focus onto these to improve performance. At the end of the day, this is a lot about communication as well. If we look then at Aspo level numbers and starting with net sales, as said, 14% growth, we had net sales of EUR 151 million for the first quarter. If we start with ESL, we had a decline in net sales, - 5%, excluding the Supramax vessels. That is driven by the fact that the spot market pricing was very weak. In addition, the expected volumes on the contractual side were lower than expected.
That is specifically related to energy, but then also kind of overall modest industrial activity, for example, in the forest industry, low performance there from ESL's perspective. Telko, close to 50% growth, driven not only by the acquisitions made last year, but also organic growth across all product lines, across all geographical areas, and sales prices slightly higher than the first quarter last year. Leipurin, 8% growth, it was due to the acquisitions in Sweden, namely Kebelco. The Kartagena acquisition did not very much was not evident in the Q1 numbers because it was completed in late February. Also, Leipurin had organic volume growth, and specifically in Sweden, the net sales grew quite a lot. Prices slightly above last year, and we continued the strategy to abandon certain low margin commodities, and that had a negative effect on the volumes.
If we then look at profitability, EUR 8.8 million compared to EUR 5.1 million first quarter last year, now we're close to 6% of EBITA. All businesses improving their profitability. ESL Shipping, EUR 4.1 million. The drivers behind this profitability improvement is basically that we adjusted the capacity compared to demand, getting rid of certain quite expensive time-chartered vessels during the quarter, the first quarter 2025. If we look at Telko, quite significant profitability improvement, EUR 4.4 million, driven really by the acquisitions done, organic growth, and then we did not have any M&A costs during the first quarter this year compared to the first quarter last year, which was close to EUR 1 million of M&A costs. Finally, Leipurin, really good performance, EUR 1.5 million, and that was the improvement of some EUR 300,000, which relates to two things.
One is the acquisitions done in Sweden, basically Kebelco, and secondly, we got good signs of a lot better efficiency in the supply chain in Sweden when we started this program, now implementing it in the, let's say, the Stockholm area, also suggesting good opportunities going forward to improve profitability of Leipurin. Items affecting comparability, so one-time cost of EUR 1.1 million. This relates to a payment fraud of ESL Shipping, an external payment fraud. Good, though, to emphasize that no data breaches when it comes to ESL Shipping or Aspo. Police investigation ongoing, and we expect for the Q2 still some EUR 300,000 of additional costs, specifically legal costs. This can then be compared with last year, EUR 8 million, which was mainly related to the sales of the Supramax vessels and then also the minority investment of PayInfra and Varma.
Looking at cash flow, free cash flow, -EUR 4.4 million. If you look at the operating cash flow, there was a build-up of inventory when it comes to ESL, and the reason is that this is the sixth vessel, the Green Coaster vessel, which will be sold to the pool investors, and that is then reported as part of the working capital. That was actually driving up the working capital with EUR 7.8 million. Between operating cash flow and free cash flow, some smaller investments into ESL and then also acquisition-related investments, both Earnhardt as well as the Kartagena acquisition. From a strategic perspective, the most important event in the first quarter was the extension of the SSAB contract, extremely important for Aspo and ESL. This contract covers, let's say, 6 million-7 million tons annually.
is of extreme importance, and it covers raw material transportation in the Baltic Sea region. There is also ESL offering fossil-free transportation to SSAB going forward. That means that this contract extension is very much linked to our investments into the Green Handies, which we announced in fall last year. Leipurin continued its expansion, actually a continuation on the Kebelko acquisition, this time in Lithuania, Kartagena, also operating in the food industry, giving us approximately close to EUR 2 million of additional sales with good profitability. I think a textbook example of what Leipurin should be doing also going forward. I will welcome Erkka on the stage to go through the business-specific results.
Thank you, Rolf. For ESL, the market continued soft. Our contractual volumes were on the same level than last year.
However, when considering that last year we were affected with the harsh ice conditions and political strikes, it tells that the overall market this year has been softer than what it was last year. Also, the spot prices were on a clearly lower level this year than what they were last year. The comparable net sales was 5% down compared to the last year. From the profitability point of view, ESL profits improved from EUR 2.7 million to EUR 4.1 million. The market, like I said, was comparable from the volume point of view, but from spot prices were lower. The profit improvement is coming from that we have more cost-efficient fleet at our hands, so the cost efficiency is improving our result compared to the last year.
For Telko, 46% sales growth driven mainly by the acquisitions, large acquisitions done last year, but also organic growth was on all of our businesses and on all of our markets in first quarter. That was well done in a challenging market that what we have today. Sales prices were slightly higher this year than what they were last year. We can see the uncertainty in our customers that they are postponing decisions and the uncertainty is still visible, but despite that uncertainty, we were able to grow also organically on the first quarter. Telko's profitability increased to EUR 4.4 million, mainly driven by the impact of the acquisitions and also from the organic sales growth. In the first quarter, we did not have any M&A-related costs in the result, while in last year there were EUR 900,000 M&A-related costs included in the first quarter result.
Telko continues to focus on profit improvement, getting the synergies on the acquisitions and improving otherwise also the profitability, while we are also preparing for the future growth simultaneously. For Leipurin, sales increased by 8%, driven by the acquisition and also from the organic growth in Sweden. Overall, the volumes slightly declined, mainly in the low-margin commodities. In the same way as in Telko, also in Leipurin, the sales prices were slightly higher this year than what they were last year. On profitability, Leipurin had actually a record quarter in the first quarter, EUR 1.5 million, really excellent result on a quite stable market, mainly driven by our cost-efficiency efforts, especially the supply chain optimization in Sweden. The acquisition also had a positive impact on the result.
We are quite positive with Leipurin seeing good possibilities for further profit improvement with the actions that we have ongoing there on Leipurin. On our financing, our liquidity has continued strong. We had EUR 23.9 million cash at the end of the quarter. We have now secured the debt financing for our Green Handy project. We signed a EUR 70 million loan with Svenska Skeppshypotékskassan for Green Handy investment. That loan is expected to be drawn in 2027 and 2028, and the loan has a long 15-year maturity. In April, we also signed a EUR 45 million loan with Nordic Investment Bank for Green Handy investment, and EUR 22.5 million were drawn in May for this loan. That loan is for 10-year maturity. This Nordic Investment Bank loan is for building phase funding for the project.
In addition to this, Aspo participated in the multi-issuer bond guaranteed by Garantia for EUR 15 million loan share. That bond has a five-year maturity. We also today announced a redemption of our EUR 30 million hybrid bond, and the bond is paid back in June this year. After the hybrid bond redemption, we continue to have strong liquidity with this funding that we have now organized. Our net debt to EBITDA increased to 3.3 from 3.2 in the fourth quarter. If considering all the acquisitions we completed last year and then the EBITDA of those, then the net debt to EBITDA ratio would be slightly smaller, 3.2. Our net debt to EBITDA is expected to increase by 0.5 with the impact from the hybrid bond when that is included in our net debt. We remain committed on our 3.0 target for our net debt to EBITDA.
We have very low CapEx for this year, EUR 15 million overall and EUR 25 million for next year. With the improved profitability, we are committed to bring the net debt to EBITDA ratio back to our target level. Equity ratio was 36.6%. Also there, the hybrid bond redemption will have an impact of a bit more than 5% on the equity ratio. The same way as on the net debt to EBITDA, with the low CapEx and improved profitability, we will also strengthen that ratio going forward. I hand over back to Rolf for highlights.
Thank you, Erkka. First quarter highlights: strong net sales growth, strong profitability improvement, both in EBITDA and also in earnings per share. Glad also to say that it looks like the strategy is paying off. The acquisitions done last year are contributing to the profitability.
The full potential program of Leipurin is yielding results, and ESL was able to extend its cooperation with SSAB via a new long-term contract. This year we will focus on profitability generation. Despite this short-term focus, we naturally also look at the longer-term financial profitability and our portfolio vision. Over to the assumptions behind the guidance. When it comes to ESL, we expect the weak overall market to continue during the first half of the year. That means fairly low contractual volumes and low spot market pricing. During the second half of the year, we see the volumes and the demand to revive positively. When it comes to Telko, stable development going forward, and also here we expect demand to slowly pick up. After these for Telko quite major acquisitions, Telko is focusing on synergies and integration this year.
We expect the M&A-related costs to be a lot lower this year compared to last year when they were EUR 3.4 million. For Leipurin, stable market, great opportunities to grow, particularly in the food industry where we are still a small player. Leipurin is in a really good position to continue to improve its profitability. There we have some good signs already when it comes to the supply chain improvements, particularly in Sweden. If we then look at the guidance for this year, EBITDA of EUR 35 million-45 million compared to EUR 29.1 million last year, we expect the market to remain challenging during the first half of the year and gradually improve then moving towards the end of the year. There is a polarized picture with the defense investments and increased infra spending in Europe, which should have a positive impact on the economical development, particularly in Europe.
At the same time, we have trade tensions and high tariffs which are imposed and planned by the U.S., EU, and China, which significantly increases the uncertainty and can have a negative effect on the overall economic development. Still, we see that we are in a good position to improve our profitability, and that is based on the actions that we've taken over the past couple of years. Green Coaster vessels, last year we had two vessels in traffic on average. This year we will have six Green Coaster vessels in traffic. We have made a lot of acquisitions, both Telko as well as Leipurin, which basically did not yield almost any profitability last year. We expect these acquisitions to give us a profit boost this year.
We also have a lot of performance improvement actions and programs going on in each of the businesses, and we see these yielding results. To reach the higher end of the range, we need to be successful in these performance improvement measures, and economical recovery needs to happen during the second half. If the economical recovery is being postponed, we will end up closer to the lower end of the range of this guidance. I would ask Erkka to join me on the stage, and we are ready for some questions. Maybe starting here on the floor and Pasi Väisänen, please.
Thanks. This is Pasi from Nordea. I would like to start with the ESL Shipping segment. When now looking at the tripartite market, it has been very weak, definitely weaker than the beginning of the year.
I would like to actually ask that, are you confident regarding the earnings increase coming from these Green Coasters today, as you already planned at the beginning of this year? Is the outlook for these Green Coasters and the earnings effect on a full-year basis still intact? Secondly, regarding the Telko segment, I mean, we have seen that crude oil price is heavily down, and most likely that will take also down the sales prices in the Telko segment. What could be the possible EBITDA effect on the segment coming from the lower sales prices, or is there any? What's the sensitivity coming from the lower prices for the segment? Maybe lastly, when looking at your kind of investment targets and medium-long-term financial targets, is this EUR 30 million you now paid as some kind of out this hybrid debt?
Is this amount off from your investment capabilities in the future? And respectively, is that off from the kind of the, so is the medium-term financial targets harder to reach without that money available for the investments? Thanks.
Thank you, Pasi. I start, and then Erkka can complement my answers. If we look at ESLs, I think we have some mixed drivers. If we look at what we are doing, I think we've been able to adjust capacity. We have a lot cheaper capacity now compared to what we had in the beginning of the year. If we look at market development, it's very much twofold. We have the overall investments into Europe, defense industry as well as infra giving some positive impact.
We have this vague uncertainty when it comes to geopolitical tensions and tariffs, which we analyzed a lot, both for ESL as well as Telko. At the end of the day, we see the direct impact to be limited. What will happen indirectly is kind of projects being postponed due to uncertainty and also economic development not rolling out as planned. That is basically the uncertainty. Overall, I think the Green Coasters put us in a very good position because that allows us to have very cost-efficient and competitive capacity in thi s type of market. Maybe I continue with Telko. The positive things of Telko are that we made the acquisitions. We can have benefits from synergies. We have benefits from the acquired companies yielding results.
The fact that the oil prices are coming down, at the end of the day, it's a quite short time span which that will impact the result negatively. Once again, if you look at our product portfolio, we are more linked to the specialty products, which are fairly far away from the oil prices development as such.
Maybe we continue with the ESL. I think twofold that we know that the cost efficiency is there. We have already kind of proven that the new fleet is very cost efficient compared to the older fleet. Even though the market is soft, there are still pockets of growth in the soft market. We need to capture those growth with the new fleet that is coming in. Therefore, I think that we are on track there with the Green Coaster investment.
On Telko, in a way, we are all the time pricing in the increases or decreases in the market prices. In the longer term, I think that the market price levels as such should not have an impact to our profitability. Of course, it can have very short-term impacts either way from the stock rotation point of view, but that is very short-term and not really changing the picture in the longer term.
Excellent. Thanks. If I may just kind of conclude, are you kind of midpoint now easier or harder to reach than three months ago? Regarding this EUR 30 million you paid this hybrid debt off, is that now missing from your investment capabilities on a medium-term basis? Thanks.
If I comment the guidance and then if you continue. There has been also positive development during the first quarter of this year.
If I jump back to January, we were expecting strikes having a negative impact on our financial performance. That being considered, I think we are on an equal level compared to when the guidance was given.
For the longer term, our CapEx guidance is still valid as it was communicated and updated at the end of last year. If thinking that the investments in ESL, which are the kind of the committed CapEx that we have, they are very low for this year and next year. That gives us room to improve the balance sheet and then continue investing with the profitability that we are generating.
Excellent. Thanks.
This is Kasper from Inderes. How significant was the profit impact of these time-chartered contracts of negative profitability that ended in Q1?
I could say that these time-chartered vessels were loss-making during the end of last year. When we're gradually able to instead utilize our expanding Green Coaster fleet, there's quite a positive development because looking at last year, actually the Green Coaster traffic, if you look at the coaster segment, was clearly the most profitable segment. There's a shift from loss-making to kind of the best segment, the best vessel type in our fleet.
If you think that our volumes were the same as last year, spot prices are lower and our result was higher. It really means that, of course, both from the new fleet that we have and then expiring the loss-making fleet, those together have made the profit improvement.
Okay. You told us about the payment fraud that ESL experienced in Q1. Could you elaborate a bit what resulted in this?
An external payment fraud. What I can emphasize is that there were no kind of IT breaches when it comes to Aspo's or ESL systems. It was not a kind of cyber attack and no breaches into our systems. The police investigation is going on and nothing more further to report on that.
Okay. Lastly, is there any more room for efficiency improvements from Leipurin's previous acquisitions?
I think there's tremendous opportunities if you look at Leipurin. If you look at the supply chain improvements that we've done, so far it's purely the Stockholm area, which we have in execution. If you look at the synergies between Kebelco and the rest of Leipurin, there's only a fraction which we have captured so far.
I would also add that the Kartagena acquisition, we could see in March, we could see kind of first positive results building up. The acquisition was completed in February, so there is more to come.
Okay. Thank you very much.
This is Matti Kauro from OP. One question about these new vessels and a new fleet. What is kind of the, you said that you are getting quite a significant cost savings there with the new fleet. Could you elaborate a little bit on the kind of the impact there?
On a very high level, if you look at the investment in the 12 Green Coasters and the investment in the four Green Handies, these all taken together, we expect an EBITDA improvement beyond EUR 30 million.
If the cost efficiency, where it is coming from of the new fleet, they are more fuel efficient.
The cargo hull design is such that we can have in certain cases more cargo on the same size of a ship. Typically, also the manning is more efficient than all the ships. There is a clear cost efficiency benefit. Of course, the CO2 emissions are also something that with the increasing regulation also gives competitiveness.
Maybe another question regarding these contractual volumes under ESL. Could you remind us a little bit, like what is actually fixed? Is it the price or the volume which is fixed with these contracts? If we continue to see this low demand from these industrial players around the Baltic Sea, is it coming from the volume-wise or the price-wise under your P&L?
If you look at ESL, approximately 80% of the volumes are contractual and 20% are on the spot market.
If you look at the contracts, the prices are fixed, but they are typically tied to indices. There are certain cost elements which are pushed forward to the client. For example, the fuel. The volume is not fixed, but depending on the agreement, there are different elements impacting that. If you look at our key contracts, at the end of the day, the fluctuations of these contracts from year to year, looking at the handy size and the coaster business, have been fairly small. Quite little volatility when it comes to the volumes on a year-to-year basis.
Thank you. One final question about this hybrid loan payback. Could you a little bit kind of open the financing behind this payback?
Are you getting new funding from, is it this NEB loan, or which is used then to pay back the hybrid, or how is it done?
We have now the liquidity with the arrangements that we have already done for paying it back.
Thank you.
Any questions online?
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Jonas Ilvanen from Evli. Please go ahead.
Hi, it's Jonas from Evli. If I may return to this straightforward tension question you talked about. You mentioned that you're seeing some customer projects being postponed. On the positive side, you also see that there will be an increase in European defense and infrastructure spending.
My question is, have you seen any specific concrete projects that might benefit or help the relevant demand for some key ESL or Telko customers?
If I give one example, if you look at the infra investments in Europe, they use a lot of aggregates, which we are transporting via sea. There we see a demand. I think also when it comes to the steel industry, etc., there are some positive impacts.
Okay, that's clear. What can you tell us about your M&A pipeline at this point? I mean, I guess it's obvious you will not be expecting to close quite that many deals this year. Have these straightforward tensors maybe somehow affected your pipeline or can you talk about it a bit?
I think we realized that we need to keep on screening possible M&A targets on a continuous basis, both when it comes to Telko as well as Leipurin. That being said, I think we have a good pipeline, but profitability improvement is top priority for us this year. We made quite a lot of acquisitions from our perspective last year, adding close to a run rate of EUR 100 million of sales to Aspo. That means that we need to focus on integrating these companies, capturing the synergies, specifically on the kind of cross-sales and utilizing the same suppliers across countries. There are good opportunities there. That is our focus. At the same time, we are looking into acquisitions as well.
Thanks. Maybe a couple of questions related to Telko. This pricing level question and its impact on profitability, I think that is clear.
Can you just maybe clear things up? In Q1, prices were still increasing or rather stable, but are you seeing some price deflation now in Q2?
If you look at Q1 last year, we had a slight price increase overall in Telko. If you compare to Q4 last year, price development was very stable. Forward looking, I would expect fairly stable price development, as said, going forward. Of course, there can be different patterns for more specialty technical products compared to more volume-based products.
All right. Final question related to Telko. I think Telko's amortizations were maybe a bit high in Q1. Was there anything special happening there?
No, nothing special there.
Okay. That's fine. Thanks. That's all from me.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad.
There are no questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Big thank you for joining the Q1 2025 reporting of Aspo. Thank you very much.
Thank you.