Welcome to the Q4 2025 reporting of Aspo. I will start by reviewing the full year 2025 figures and development. We made EBITA of EUR 36.5 million, which is approximately 25% increase versus last year. Net sales growth of some 4%, basically Telko and Leipurin growing and a small decline when it comes to ESL. And if you look at the EBITA percentage, we ended up close to 6%, 5.99% of EBITA of net sales. Operating cash flow around EUR 50 million and free cash flow EUR 26.5 million, and leverage 3.6, coming down from Q3 2025. Then earnings per share EUR 0.51 per share.
If you look at the comparable EPS figure, and then total reported earnings per share, €0.72. If you look at the businesses, ESL Shipping profitability development fairly flat. Positive that the new vessels were very competitive and generated profit throughout the year. Telko significant profitability improvement, close to EUR 18 million, more than EUR 5 million of EBITA improvement, driven by the acquisitions and then also driven by a bigger share of value-added products versus volume products. And then finally, the transformation of Leipurin has successfully continued, particularly in Sweden, both due to the acquisition of Kebelko in Sweden, but also due to organic growth and successful efficiency improvements, particularly in supply chain.
Clear profit improvement like-to-like a bit more than EUR 1 million and reported figures to EUR 2 million of improvement. If we then look at the bridge between comparable EBITA and reported EBITA, we have here a positive trend, so the sales gain of Kallio, one of the handy-sized vessels, generated close to EUR 10 million of sales gain. And then on the other side of the coin, we also have costs, particularly regarding the strategic projects, namely the executing of our portfolio vision and then also some cost related to the sale of Leipurin. So reported EBITA group total EUR 43.1 million.
Then if we look at the quarterly figures, we ended up at EUR 8.9 million for the Aspo Group, close to EUR 1 million of EBITA improvement. ESL Shipping, a decline in profitability to 3.8, particularly due to the weak market of the coaster business, namely the poor demand for the forest industry and low spot market pricing. Telko improving its profitability, namely due to higher sales margin, driven by a higher share of value-added products. And Leipurin, positive development due to the Swedish business and the improvements related to that. Sustainability is close to our hearts, and particularly we follow both emission intensity and then safety frequency.
Emission intensity, we set the goal three years ago, reaching 0.3 emissions, CO2 emissions divided by net sales, and I'm proud to say that we clearly reached this level then in 2025. So 0.23 was the end result for full year 2025. As reported during the year, on the safety side, we have had some challenges, but glad to see that the development picked up during Q4. So if we last quarter, we reported year-to-date figures of some 9.something, now we're down to an accident frequency of 7 for the full year 2025. So despite not reaching the target, the development has been good throughout the year. We got our sustainability targets, short-term targets, approved by the Science Based Targets initiative....
and these relate both to our own emissions, namely the emissions particularly of ESL's vessels, and then also Scope 3 emissions, which we focus particularly on when it comes to Telko. So making sure that the suppliers and principals that we use are also committed to science-based targets. And then finally, we agreed to stop transporting energy coal by latest 2030. It only represents a small share of our traffic currently. And both of our businesses, Telko, namely Telko and ESL Shipping, have a gold rating when it comes to EcoVadis. Then to the transformation that we communicated in November last year. So basically, we're saying that first, what we will do during Q1 2026, we will sell Leipurin to Lantmännen, and this deal was announced already in August last year.
But it takes some time, as anticipated, to get all the kind of local country-specific approvals by the authorities for closing this. But this deal we are aiming to close over the next couple of weeks. Then when it comes to Telko and ESL Shipping, we're either going to have a demerger of Aspo by year-end 2026, or alternatively, we're going to sell ESL Shipping. And we have made progress when it comes to both of these scenarios, and the ambition is, of course, to release untapped value by doing this. We have a very good starting point when it comes to both ESL Shipping and Telko, to have separated... separate companies formed out of these possibly listed companies.
The reason is that we have decentralized a lot of the functions already from Aspo, including IT, HR, and finance. Part of this development, I've taken during January the role also as the Telko CEO in parallel to acting as Aspo's CEO still. This is also a sign of executing this portfolio vision. We will assess further integration of Aspo's activities to with Telko and ESL and assess further opportunities to take out kind of structural cost from the company. I would ask our CFO, Erkka, to go through the financials in more detail.
Thank you, Rolf. First, looking at the rolling 12 months EBITDA development, ESL Shipping has continued fairly stable profitability from rolling 12 months view, about 9% EBITDA percentage, which shows that good resilience of the profitability in a such a weak market that we have had today. Telko and Leipurin have both been improving the profitability, both on absolute terms and on percentage relative terms as well. Telko and Leipurin profit improvement comes from margin management with the pricing actions and then on the mix of on in both businesses. Then on the...
Also on the cost efficiency measures that we have been taking, and acquisitions that have contributed on the increasing profitability trend, leading then on Aspo level that trend of profit improvement. On ESL Shipping, on the Q4 2025, the profitability declined compared to the previous year. The net sales on the handys slightly increased, but clearly decreased in the coasters. The weak spot market pricing continued, and the soft contractual freight volume demand also continued, especially in the forest industry, impacting then primarily the coaster operations. The steel industry activity continued on a healthy level.
The contractual demand reached its lowest level in the early or in early in the quarter and has then improved from there thereafter... And during the quarter, we sold the vessel Kallio with EUR 18 million with the sales gain of about EUR 9.6 million, and then that was reported as a comparable item. In Telko, the profitability increased to EUR 4.4 million compared to EUR 3.9 million the year ago. Then the net sales in Telko declined slightly with the modest demand in the most European markets where we operate.
The organic sales volumes declined, driven mainly by the decline in the commodity products, while the demand in the specialty products remained on the same level than on the previous year. The product prices in Telko in general significantly declined during last year, driven by decline in the oil price. Price levels have stabilized during the Q4. However, the average sales price of Telko was slightly higher compared to the same quarter last year, due to a higher share of the specialty products in our product portfolio.
The profitability improvement compared to last year was driven mainly by the improved sales margin with the increased share of the specialty products and with our own pricing actions, and also with the cost efficiency improvements, especially on the supply chain and then addressing our lower-performing businesses. Leipurin continued improving the net sales with the very strong organic volume growth development in Sweden. Overall, the price development was also positive on the last quarter.
The like-for-like profit improvement in Leipurin was EUR 300 thousand, and in addition to that, as there are no depreciations anymore after our announcement of selling Leipurin business, that impacted EUR 600 thousand to our profits. For the full year, the impact from not having the depreciation was EUR 900 thousand. Then on the Aspo Group-level costs, the rolling 12 months cost level is EUR 5 million on the group level, and we are expecting to reduce that during this year with the Aspo's strategic transformation continuing.
During last year, we have already decentralized the common functions that we had on the Aspo level. They are now being moved to the businesses. The full carve-out of all the common functions is expected to be completed during this year, supporting our transformation. Our net debt decreased to EUR 213 million. That was driven by the sale of Kallio, also decrease in our inventories, and then also decrease on the prepayments related to the Green Coaster vessels that are sold to the investors. The net debt figure includes EUR 56 million of advanced payments of vessels under construction.
So, considering that, the kind of like operative net debt is EUR 157 million, which is related to the assets that we have, kind of operational today. Our net debt EBITDA ratio is 3.6, and then the operational net debt to EBITDA ratio is 2.6 when considering against the operative net debt that we have. Leipurin sale is expected to decrease the net debt by about EUR 60 million in quarter one. After Leipurin divestment, the ESL Shipping net debt is expected to be about EUR 130 million, and then on Telko, about EUR 30 million.
Then these net debt figures represent the kind of net debt level that you can assume on a kind of standalone basis. Liquidity continued strong with EUR 44 million in cash and EUR 40 million on unused credit facilities. We have EUR 92.5 million of committed undrawn loan agreements in place for Green Handy investment. For ESL Shipping the net debt was EUR 123 million, and the operative net debt for the current assets is EUR 57 million.
The net debt to comparable EBITDA ratio was 3.6, and when looking at that from the operative point of view, that was 2.0. For the Green Coaster investments, net for this year will be close to 0, so that has been already kind of paid, the investment. We still have some investment outflows, but they are then netted with the proceeds from the vessel sales that we have when we are selling the Green Coaster vessels to the investors. For the Green Handy investment, the cash outflows are going to be primarily in 2027 and also in 2028. Then handing over back to Rolf for dividend and the guidance.
Thank you, Erkka. The board's proposal to the general annual meeting will be to pay a dividend of EUR 0.25 per share, which generates a yield of close to 4% if you look at the December 31 share price. This represents approximately 50% of the comparable EPS of year 2025. It can also be compared then to the dividend paid last year, EUR 0.19 per share, so a small decrease. If we look at this year, we have a guidance, and now we guide Aspo's profitability, excluding Leipurin. So Aspo Group's comparable EBITA from the continuing operations is expected to increase compared to previous year. That then means that la...
Looking at last year, we did 29.4, EUR 29.4 million, which then includes Telko, ESL Shipping, and Aspo Group. If you look what is behind this guidance, we expect in our core market, we expect economic growth to slowly revive during the year. Still, however, so that during the beginning of year 2026, we still have some challenging market. The picture is, of course, a bit blurred. We still have geopolitical uncertainty. We have tensions when it comes to global trade, and these can impact then economic growth negatively.
The good news is, though, that we feel that we have a lot of actions which we can focus on to improve our profitability, both in ESL and Telko. When it comes to ESL, it's primarily about fleet renewal. We will receive four additional electric hybrid vessels during 2026, and then we also have opportunity to improve fleet utilization, so using the fleet of ESL in a more efficient way. When it comes to Telko, as you know, we have done a lot of acquisitions, and there's still a lot of potential to capture synergies between these acquired companies and Telko. And then what Erkka already mentioned, we have an opportunity to further reduce Aspo Group level costs, which are currently in the magnitude of EUR 5 million.
If we then specifically look at ESL Shipping, we expect demand to slightly improve during 2026, and also we expect the spot market pricing to gradually improve during the year. During the second quarter, we have quite significant dockings, which will impact financial results for Q2 2026. And then looking at Telko, we expect stable market development in 2026, and also we are aiming to do further acquisitions, now leveraging the balance sheet as presented today and leverage the income sales gain from the sale of Leipurin. Then if we summarize the highlights, 2025, 25% growth in EBITA during the year, ending up at EUR 36.5 million.
We communicated a goal to split Aspo basically in three parts by the end of 2026. Basically selling Leipurin to Lantmännen during Q1, and then either selling ESL or having a partial demerger of Aspo by year-end. The dividend proposed by the board is EUR 0.25 per share, will be paid in one tranche after the general meeting in April. And then guidance for the continuing operations of Aspo is that the EBITA is increasing compared to last year, when we had an EBITA of EUR 29.4 million. Then I would ask Erkka to join me on the stage, and we're ready to take any questions that you might have. Pasi, please go ahead.
Thanks. This is Pasi from Nordea. Regarding ESL Shipping, so, are these dockings in the second quarter actually kind of a way to reduce your capacity due to kind of supply-demand problems? And, if you don't have actually now enough customers and cargo for current fleet, where you are going to find the new customers and cargo for new ships you are going to kind of receive in coming years? So have you truly sold the capacity already, which you have ordered in terms of kind of for ESL Shipping? Thanks.
These dockings relate to the handysize vessels. As mentioned today, so we have good demand when it comes to the handysize segments during last year, and also looking into this year. The challenges have been more on the coaster side, which are more dependent on the forest industry. If we look at kind of demand going forward, there are different elements of that. One is market revival, which... For example, when it comes to the forest industry, I think the general take is that the kind of deepest dip in forest industry demand has been passed already, giving kind of positive signs for the outlook there.
And then in addition to that, we still have a lot of investments in Finland, Sweden, which will add to the demand of ESL. One needs to remember that I think we're fairly well-positioned in the market when it comes to this kind of green transformation of the Nordic industry. We're also well-positioned when it comes to the forest industry, where, for example, paper is not a segment which we are transporting. We're more in pulp and raw wood. Hopefully, I was able to answer your question.
Yeah, just to clarify.
The-
Yes, thanks.
The dockings, the... We typically have two dockings every five years, and then they don't equally come on every year. So this year, we have an unusually high amount of dockings, partly related to that, on some of the older vessels, we are extending the lifespan with those dockings of those vessels, so bridging those vessels to a longer lifespan, and then therefore giving us a kind of certainty for the handy-size capacity for the coming years.
Just to understand, these dockings are made for technical reason, not for demand-driven reasons?
Technical reasons, yes.
Okay, yeah. So you can confirm that new vessels will eventually add EUR 30 million on EBITDA on annual basis when you have actually received all the vessels?
We still have the same forecast, which is EUR 30+ million of EBITA, driven by the investments made.
Oh, excellent. Then lastly, regarding shipping, if I saw right, you still have roughly EUR 100 million missing from the financial kind of arrangements for the new vessels. How you are going to finance that missing part of EUR 100 million, or are you going to sell all vessels to the pool or lease those back to the operations?
We already have a committed financing for EUR 92.5 million for the Green Handys. And our plan includes that we are selling one Green Handy vessel for external investors.
So this EUR 92 million was actually for the two latest orders you have made?
Yes.
Okay.
Yes. So, from that point of view, we do not see a concern on the funding.
Okay, excellent. Thanks.
Joonas Ilvonen from Evli. My understanding is that this will be the iciest winter in 15 years around the Baltic Sea coastal regions, and I think a couple of years ago, ESL had like... I think you disclosed some kind of figure or what kind of a headwind this was on EBIT back then. I think it was maybe you or it was pooled with the labor issues back then, but can you comment on this outlook? I mean, I think it will affect at least Q1 and also probably also Q2 efficiency for ESL.
Yeah, the previous time, it was partly the strike, and then it was tough ice conditions combined with very windy climate as well. I would still say that this is the kind of stronghold of ESL Shipping, so this is the core why ESL Shipping exists. So we are able, in these tough ice conditions, to serve the client with a good service quality. Then you are right, depending on the ice conditions, the distances of the transportation will increase. There will be more fuel consumptions and slower operations in the harbors, which will affect negatively our effectiveness.
Okay, but now you're not giving any, like, figure at this point, what, what kind of a-
No. So, so far, the traffic has been functioning well, and I guess one clear reason is that it hasn't been so windy in the area yet. So we have been able to have quite efficient traffic so far during this winter.
All right. And then about this Aspo Group level cost, the reduction of them. Can you elaborate on what kind of a... I mean, do you still. So now it's around EUR 5 million per year. Do you expect to be able to decrease them maybe a third more or 50%, or what kind of a magnitude?
No, no precise figure. It also depends a bit on the scenario which we are taking, but it's very clear that if you have a stock-listed company, that ties up some extra costs. So in a demerger scenario where both ESL Shipping and Telko would be a listed entity, we would have more costs allocated to both companies. But still, in all scenarios, we see some opportunities to decrease the EUR 5 million that you are mentioning.
All right, then my final question: so the sale of ESL is a likely option, but ESL's profitability has been quite low for a while, and it still hasn't improved that much. So how do you think this impacts the possible sale dynamic of ESL at the moment? How are you, like, kind of taking care that you might be able to capture some of the future earnings upside that should be coming in the next, if not this year—I mean, to some extent this year, but maybe more in the, let's say, 2027 or 2028?
The investor looking at ESL Shipping must understand that we're kind of generating value long term. We have a very stable cash flow. We have a very stable EBITDA, and therefore, and good opportunities to leverage also the balance sheet of ESL, and this gives a good return. So if you make a decision today to invest in a vessel, you will receive that vessel 3 years from now, and then you have a lifespan of 25 years for this vessel. So looking only at a quarterly figure or looking at an annual figure doesn't tell you very much because as we tried to explain here today, is that a lot of the net debt tied to ESL today does not generate any profitability today.
So you need to kind of figure out the details of these figures, and then it's a very interesting investment looking at it. So I wouldn't too much look at the single quarter result. We still believe in what we mentioned, this profitability uplift from the new second generation, following generation vessels.
Okay, maybe just another question related to the guidance. So you guide improving EBIT, EBITDA for basically ESL and Telko. Is it more, I, I guess it's more driven by ESL. Maybe Telko too can also improve to some extent, but can you, can you elaborate a bit on, on these, like, how's the earnings outlook like? How steeply you might expect them to improve this year? Or, or are you, are you very confident on ESL improving this year?
I think it's really related to both of the businesses. So we have... On the Telko side, we have untapped synergies. We also have a split between value-added products and volume products; we see organic growth opportunities and also, of course, from acquisitions, particularly in the value-added product segment, which will drive up our gross margin. And on ESL, as mentioned, we will get some new capacity, very cost-efficient, competitive capacity on board. And then it's all about us utilizing the entire fleet.
So it's about fill rates, making sure that when you leave the harbor, your vessel is filled with cargoes to be transported, and then it's also about minimizing the time where you do not have cargo in your transportation system, so that you have kind of get revenue for most of the sea miles that you are running the fleet.
Okay, thanks. That's all from me.
Then we have two more questions from the chat. These are both from Matti Kaurola. So what do you think... What do you consider more likely scenario right now with ESL, sale or demerger?
I think we have basically two good scenarios on the table, and I don't want to speculate at this point in time which one is more likely. We're preparing for both. We have good kind of technical conditions to move ahead with this portfolio vision from the perspective that we have already decentralized a lot of the functions. We have during the past led these companies quite independently. And then also, we have a very good strategic prerequisites for executing the vision. We are going to sell Leipurin over the next couple of weeks, and we have invested a lot in ESL, and we have made a lot of acquisitions when it comes to Telko.
So, the preconditions for both of these scenarios are very good, and time will tell which one we pick.
Okay, and then another one. Could you comment on organic growth outlook of Telko? What are the key drivers increasing the demand of your products?
Last year, which Erkka earlier mentioned, we had a very negative organic development in the volume product, so prices came down. Basically, they followed the oil prices and also volume came down. But on the specialty side, we had more flat development. And then looking forward, it's of course all about the revival of economical development, particularly here in Europe, how that will evolve. And that also is related to paper and pulp. It's related to construction, automotive, a lot of different industrial segments where Telko is in. But I think on a macro level, the overall kind of forecast is that in our core markets, the economical growth will be higher in year 2026 versus 2025. That goes for Finland, Sweden in particular.
So, better outlook than last year.
Great! That's all from the chat.
Big, big thank you for joining our Q4 financial reporting. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thanks.