Welcome to the Q3 Reporting of Aspo. We have had a strong quarter compared to Q2, and basically, we have doubled the operating profit compared to last quarter. But let me start by going through the first nine months of 2023. Net sales basically flat development. We have EUR 19.4 million of operating profit for the first nine months. We have a very solid cash flow, actually, particularly during Q3, EUR 35 million, and the balance sheet has actually even strengthened a bit compared to last quarter. And in addition to that, strategy execution is progressing well. Sustainability, before I jump into the financial numbers, basically two focus areas.
One is emissions, where we're still in target, the emission intensity and safety frequency, then the second one, where we're still lagging a bit behind the targets. But both of these measures, we are working hard to reach targets for this year. And if we think short term, I think basically emissions, that's all about operational efficiency of ESL, and safety, it's all about communication and making sure that our personnel will follow all kind of safety operating models as agreed. But working hard to achieve these targets this year.
Then if I jump into the numbers, and first starting on an Aspo level, I said flat sales development for the first nine months, a decline of 9% during the last quarter, primarily driven by ESL, fairly soft demand, particularly when it comes to the spot market. And of course, declining fuel prices also impact very much ESL's top line. Telko, growth, market share growth, and then also impact of acquisitions, and then Leipurin, extremely strong growth due to Kobia as well as inflation. Then jumping into the operating profit, EUR 7.4 million in the last quarter, some close to 6% of operating rate. And Leipurin, extremely strong profitability, a clear sign of successful transformation.
Telko, approximately the same level as last year, a significant improvement from previous quarter, and ESL also improving significantly from previous quarter, but lagging than the record high profitability of last year. So far, I've been talking about the continuing business of Aspo, and then if we just take a short look at the discontinued operations, basically my message is that we are kind of turning a page in Aspo's history. So you see the figures trending towards zero. This quarter, we did a profit of EUR 500,000, so basically the group total operating profit is then even EUR 7.9 million. But basically, this non-core business, discontinued business, will have a very limited impact on the comparable operating profit of Aspo going forward.
Then, one- off items, basically items affecting comparability. If you look at the first graph here, you see that if you look at the continued businesses, there's basically no one-time costs affecting these. The net result of these are basically a bit positive, so EUR 19.5 million is the reported operating profit of the continuing businesses. If we look at group total figures, we have one -off items of close to EUR 10 million, and these are then all related to the Russian exits and the war in Ukraine. Approximately EUR 10 million for the first nine months of this year.
You recall that last year, we made write-downs of some more than EUR 20 million, basically saying that the total cost of the Russian exits have been so far approximately EUR 30 million. Then, an important comparison, and here on the left-hand side, you have Aspo total figures, including all countries, and you see the historical average as a line, so basically EUR 21.2 million average EBIT, average operating profit from 2014 to 2020. But then, if we exclude the impact of the war in Ukraine, then this figure turns into EUR 14 million. So basically, approximately EUR 7 million drop in operating profit.
Then if we compare that with the specified guidance of this year, which is EUR 25-30 million, you can realize that if we have a like for like comparison, we're doing currently, in this fairly poor market condition, more than EUR 10 million more of operating profit compared to this historical average. And then if we compare with the actual historical average, including Russia, including et cetera, et cetera, even then, we are some at least EUR 4 million above this historical average. I think this is a very strong sign of the fact that the core business of Aspo is doing very well, and we're really improving compared to the history. Naturally, year 2021, 2022, exceptional years for Aspo, strong business environment.
But even in this business environment, we are doing financially very good results. Cash flow EUR 35 million. Free cash flow EUR 27 million. Actually stronger than the Q3 cash flow last year. And maybe two items worthwhile mentioning. Working capital, we reduced inventory levels, particularly in Telko, supporting the cash flow, and then also quite strong impact from selling and leasing back properties, the one in Sweden and then also in Lithuania, over the past couple of months. I'm happy to welcome Erkka Repo and Susanna Kemppinen to the Aspo team. Erkka will start in February as the new CFO of Aspo. He has a background from VR Group for the past three years, approximately, and then I think approximately 25 years of background from UPM.
Susanna will join already in December the Aspo team, and she has a background from Neste and then Stora Enso. Big welcome to both of you. Then if I jump into the business-specific reports and start with ESL. ESL improving profitability from Q2, and what makes this even more exciting is that the summer months typically are fairly weak for ESL, and we can see a very strong trend within the quarter. So September month was clearly the strongest month within the Q3 quarter. A bit of a strategy update or summary when it comes to ESL. We have a very strong belief in that the green transition of the production in Nordic will have a substantially positive impact on the market of ESL.
So we see the market at least doubling over the next, let's say, 10 years or so, and that will give ESL tremendous opportunity in supporting its clients, forest industry, metal industry, to also offer fossil-free or environmentally friendly transportation. So I think this is a really strong example of ESG-driven growth, and we're very excited about this. If we then dig into the numbers, ESL's top line clearly in decline. Market conditions not as good as the previous year, particularly when it comes to the spot market. But then again, we also had less capacity during Q3 compared to the previous quarter, so we were missing out on some Handysize vessels due to dockings.
Then also what is behind this trend is, the fuel price development, which we then, have kind of back-to-back agreements with our customers. So lower fuel price, means also lower net sales for, for ESL. If we then look forward, the good news is that after these kind of production breaks that the industry has had in during the summer months, we clearly see the volumes picking up. That goes for the agriculture industry, for example, grain, it goes for energy, and even in the forest and steel industry, we see kind of the, the current modest, volumes being, stable, going forward. So positive outlook here. If we look at the kind of general market indices, we've experienced in the Baltic Dry Index, a, a great, positive development from beginning of September.
But let's be transparent here. So this is really the Capesize, the really big vessels which impact this index. And then if we look a bit more closer to our business, Handysize Supramax index, then it's been more stable, but still growing since beginning of September. Then profitability. I would say ESL did a fairly strong quarter in Q3, particularly the coaster segment. We had great capacity utilization and also experienced a bit lower prices when it comes to time-chartered vessels. The Supramax vessels still hit by the poor spot market, and then when it comes to the Handysize vessels, as said before, they suffered from the fact that we had two major vessels being docked during the quarter.
If we then look forward, we see demand picking up compared to the summer months, and we have better capacity to serve that demand during Q4. So we're expecting good profitability development, and actually, you can see that from this graph as well. Historically, Q4 has been the strongest quarter, at least for the past two years here. Back to the strategy, we communicated before, that we're looking to accelerate our investments into this green transition. We're looking into forming new pools of vessels to finance the vessels. We're looking for an investor taking a minority share in ESL, and we're also looking to sell the two Supramax vessels.
Overall, this program is progressing according to plan, and we're aiming to communicate first results of this exercise still during this year. Then jumping into Telko, excellent Q3 performance. Basically, the operating profit tripled compared to Q2. And if we take a step back and first look at the strategy, Telko's vision is to be a leading player in Europe in specialty products. It's a very fragmented market. It's a market which has strong underlying growth, and then combining that with Telko's light business model, good return, and tremendous growth opportunities. This is Telko in a nutshell. If you look at the net sales development, 4% growth of Telko compared to last year.
What was positive was clearly kind of stabilizing market prices, which is really important for Telko, very relevant in plastics, in chemicals. Even in volume plastics, the trend was clearly price-wise upwards. In plastics, we were able to capture market share organically. In chemicals, Eltrex, the acquisition in Poland, supported very much the top-line development. In lubricants, it was a bit kind of twofold, the picture. Industrial lubricants, a very strong; automotive, top-line development, a bit negative. Then if we look forward, we expect the demand to continue fairly soft, but the good news is that the price development is stable, which offers us good opportunity to do better gross margins, so overall, kind of positive outlook here as well.
Profitability-wise, EUR 3.1 million, same level as last year, tripled compared to Q2. This was basically driven by the market price development, all the actions to increase cost efficiency that we did, and also positive impact by the successful acquisitions that we've done. Then, if we look a bit forward, during Q4, we will see full impact of the profit improvement initiatives that we have in place. We feel—we will see full impact from the acquisitions that has already been done. We're now our inventories are on the right level, which will also support profitability. And in particular, the market price development will have a positive effect on Telko.
Leipurin, glad to say that this was an all-time high quarter of Leipurin, and I looked at this from a 10-year perspective. So if I disregard Russia from the past five plus years, and then if I disregard kind of sales gains, so basically we did EUR 1.3 million of operating profit, and the reported operating profit was even EUR 2 million. So best quarter ever for Leipurin. Excited also about Leipurin's strategy, very much in our own hands. We're doing a lot of efforts to improve our own performance, commercial supply chain, sourcing. There's still a lot of synergies to capture in the Kobia acquisition. We see good growth opportunities, and then we have now a new management model, which will support us in leveraging all of these opportunities.
First, net sales development, basically, inflation was flattening out during the quarter. Also, the volume development was flattening out, so not actually f airly stable volumes, if you disregard some, let's say, bulk volumes that we have. So basically, the growth came from Kobia acquisition, particularly, and, and then, Finland performed also extremely well. Going forward, more stable price development, even some categories turning into deflation. And, and then, we see good opportunities in food, in the food sector, in ready meals, and in Sweden, in particular, in these industrial bakeries, to create growth. We also see some volatility when it comes to market development, so basically changing from months to months, but overall, we are operating a very stable market. Then profitability trend. Of course, happy to share this slide.
I think, overall excellent performance. Basically, we did EUR 1.3 million during this quarter, which adds up exactly to the sum of the first six bars in this graph. So we did during one quarter as much as we did before in a year and a half. I think this is very strong evidence of that the transition of Leipurin is successful. What are we doing? All the initiatives that I mentioned, Full Profit Potential program, how we're doing it, it's about having very clear responsibilities, country-specific responsibilities, and focusing on customers and value adding. And then the business environment, basically, still, I would say, overall stable development. Inflation clearly weaker than before.
One of the success factors of Leipurin has been focus. So you recall, we've sold the Vulganus business. Over the past couple of months, we worked more on this. We sold one inventory in Lithuania, freed up some capital. We also sold our bakery equipment trading business. This was, to some extent, related to Vulganus, which also was in the equipment business. This was sold to Transmeri for EUR 500,000. And then finally, we're still working on the exit from Russia. We're still waiting for final green light from the governmental ministries of Russia. And looking at the numbers, basically net assets, EUR 2.7 million, and translation differences, if you look at current exchange rate, some net EUR 4.5 million.
Then, over to balance sheet and some summary slides. As said, our balance sheet remained fairly flat, so solid equity ratio and gearing, no big changes. If we look at liquidity and net debt, basically currently some EUR 153 million. Average interest rate, a gigantic increase compared to one year ago, 4.9%. If you recall, from last quarter, I reported 4.7%, so still a small increase compared to that. But good liquidity, EUR 35 million, and then we also have some RCF facilities in addition to that.
Today, our board made the decision to pay the second half of the dividend this year, which then will mean that we will pay, during this year, a total of EUR 0.46 per share of dividend of Aspo, which follows the positive trend of dividend payments. Then, the summary, basically, a very strong performance, Q3. All businesses improving profitability. Telko even tripling the operating profit compared to last quarter. And then looking forward, acquisitions, cost efficiency, and stable market prices should offer Telko good opportunity. ESL also significant improvement, and even more important, now volumes will pick up during Q4, and we also have the capacity in place to serve those volumes. And Leipurin, all-time high profitability, and good position, a lot of levers to develop the profitability further.
I think also these figures show strong resilience operating a fairly difficult market environment. Compared to history, we're clearly above the historical performance of Aspo, even more than EUR 10 million, like for like comparison. The one-time costs do not relate to our core business, and the non-core business is basically the impact of this is diminishing during this year. And maybe finally, strategy. I think we have extremely clear strategies of all three businesses. ESL, ESG-driven growth, Telko consolidating the fragmented European market, and Leipurin making sure that profitability develops in a favorable direction, both via growth and efficiency. And the specified guidance then for this year, EUR 25-30 million of operating profit. Thank you very much, and then we move on to questions and start with the floor here.
Yes, it's Joonas Ilvonen from Evli. I have a question related to ESL's volumes, and specifically, I mean, excluding the Supramax volumes, would you say that in this year you have seen maybe some particular extraordinary softness in volumes within certain industries? I mean, I guess it's a bit hard to draw any volume trends at the moment because the previous years were so strong. But, but could you maybe try to give some kind of color on that? Do you? Are you confident that the overall volumes will improve next year compared to this?
If we look at ESL's kind of core industries that we serve, what is very clear is that if we compare to the summer months, I see a significant volume growth going forward, and that you already can see within the Q3, so very positive development coming out from the summer. I think we have had fairly significant kind of production stops during the summer months. Positive development, as said, both agriculture, energy. Our perspective is that when it comes to the forest industry, they basically have passed the kind of lowest point in the curve. And when it comes to steel, let's say it's modest but stable development. That is how we look at the Q4 development. Overall, compared to previous year, of course, very soft market, compared to the strong years we had, strong year we had last year.
To these Telko cost measures, do I understand it correctly that they weren't yet quite visible, but they will be, like, fully visible from the first day of Q4 onwards, or how would you describe that?
Yes, we have. Basically, during this year, we have very clearly cut OpEx costs at Telko, reduced fixed cost, looked very carefully at inventory levels, and we already had some impact in Q3, but there will be full cost impact in Q4. And if I look at the total year 2023, the positive EBIT impact of these measures will be in the, let's say, magnitude closer to EUR 1.5 million. And the run rate is fully visible during the Q4 this year.
Right. Maybe final question related to Leipurin, and you mentioned that you are also kind of active on the M&A front. It's maybe not a big surprise, but should I interpret it this, like, that you are, you have activated a lot more on the M&A front within Leipurin as well, or is it a major change?
Maybe that was a misunderstanding. So if I look at kind of top sales, top line development going forward, I think there's a lot of organic initiatives that we have. So basically, food industry is fairly small at Leipurin, and still currently it's mostly about baking. We see a great trend shifting into frozen products, ready products, where we want to explore. And then it's about cross sales. So for example, in Sweden, we have basically no sales to industrial bakeries, and we are fairly strong there in Finland. So a lot of organic initiatives. When it comes to acquisitions of Leipurin, I would not rule them out. I think they're interesting, but that would definitely be kind of a strategic place to strengthen the kind of existing business of Leipurin, similar to Kobia.
Thanks.
Hi, Sauli Vilén from Inderes. I have a couple of questions also. About your hybrid bond, it's up to you in 2025. I think, considering the current environment, how feasible option do you see of refinancing that bond, or would you just, would it be better to let it go, considering the fact that you probably would need to pay double digit, double digit price on that bond?
I would say that the overall target is to not have a hybrid loan and aimed for reducing our financing costs. So that, that's the kind of vision we have in place.
Okay, that was clear. Then if you look at the whole funding of your strategy, obviously, the current economic outlooks for the short term is fairly gloomy. Then obviously, if you want to buy out the hybrid bond or pay out hybrid bond, then that will take some cash, then you have dividends to pay, then you have ESL's, the upkeep investments to do. So I mean, how are you gonna fund all of, all of this considering the fact that, well, the, the economic outlook will probably weigh on your cash flow? And you, I also guess that the selling Supramax at this market is not the best way to create shareholder value or sell a part of ESL also at this market. So I mean, so yeah, how's the funding of all of the M&A strategy?
Good, good question. So I would say the starting point is that our businesses will do a good, excellent profitability. I actually think that this year is a strong sign of that. So in a fairly bad market, we have a core business which will develop some EUR 25 million-EUR 30 million of operating profit. So that's the starting point. Then we mentioned a couple of levers, the two Supramax vessels, pooling, selling out the minority in ESL. I think all of these makes very much sense. Then there are some smaller items which we have also, kind of similar to the ones that we have done over the past couple of months, kind of focusing our core business.
This is basically what we rely on. So good cash flow of our business is that we're building on that, and then these kind of additional measures as add-ons.
Then finally, yeah, then finally, on the ESL's profitability target, you have the 14 percentage point target. Obviously, during the boom years, you went above and beyond that, obviously, but I mean, that was like once-in-a-decade boom market. Now when the market has, well, come the other way, you are way below the target. So I mean, do you still see that target feasible over the long term, the 14% target? Thanks.
I see all the targets of our businesses, so 14% of ESL, 8% of Telko, and 5% of Leipurin, they are as such valid. Then naturally, the business environment will also, of course, impact the kind of ongoing performance. But there's a lot of other things as well. I mean, pooling, investing in new green vessels, etc. It depends a bit on the portfolio of vessels where you end up. For Telko, it more depends on what type of companies you will end up buying, how rapidly you can realize the synergies, etc. But overall, strong belief in 14%, 8%, and 5%.
Well, thanks. This is Pasi from Nordea. A couple of questions from my side. Firstly, you are going to receive new ships quite soon, so have you already actually sold this new capacity you are going to have for this year and for next year, or is it still pending kind of dependent from the, from the market demand? And when looking at the demand picture, so just to cross-check, so did you say that actually the volumes are going to be improving in the fourth quarter when looking at the steel and forest sectors on QoQ basis compared to the third quarter? And, and then regarding the dividend, you have a dividend policy which actually says that the dividend is going to, is, is increasing every year.
Now, if it really happens that your clean EPS is going to be about the same as the dividend paid from the last year, so does this dividend policy also apply for this situation we have now actually witnessed in the very peak market environment? Thanks.
If we start with the new vessels, so what will happen during next year is that we will get the Green Coasters on board. And basically, kind of ballpark figure is that we will have, on average, we will have three Green Coaster vessels operating throughout the year. These, we have kind of framework contracts for these vessels, and of course, we will operate them also across contract. So I'm very confident that we will have great use for these new investments. And I perceive these as growth investments, so I don't assume that I will take all Time Charter capacity and replace that with new vessels. Instead, I want to grow that business.
So that's the ambition, and I see great opportunity there. When it comes to ESL's fourth quarter, as always, if we look at history, Q4 is the strongest quarter, and during the Q3, it's negatively impacted by the summer months. And that's. Then if we look at kind of volumes during Q4, I'm not expecting when it comes to steel and forest industry. I'm not in my calculations kind of incorporating great growth. I think the volumes will be modest, but at the same time, I don't see any negative changes, so basically flat.
But then I see growth from the fact that, for example, the grain volumes will pick up, energy volumes will pick up, and also just based on consolidating the customer forecasts that we have, we see good development during Q4. When it come to dividend policy, I have no news beyond what we said, so we're aiming to pay growing dividends in the future, as well.
Great. Thanks . You also highlighted on your report that something is going to happen late 2023, on this year, regarding the ESL Shipping segment. So, should we already expect that you are able to divest or sell these two Supramax vessels?
I didn't specify what lever will take place during this year. As I said before, we're looking in parallel at the pooling structures, we're looking at selling the Supramax vessels, we're looking at selling a minority share. And naturally, we've been working on all of these three for the past couple of months, and if I look at kind of our estimate, we should make clear progress in some of these, and that is what we're aiming to communicate still during this year. If no further question from the floor, any questions online?
If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. There are no questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers.
I want to take the opportunity to thank you very much for coming here and watching the Q3 reporting of Aspo and listening in to it. Thank you very much, and all the best.