Good morning, and welcome to Hoeghtamaki's Investor Call for the Second Quarter of twenty twenty five. My name is Christian Tanmela, VP of IR. Today, we will have presentations first by our President and CEO, Ralf K. Wunderlich and then by our CFO, Thomas Gjerst. After the presentations, we have time for Q and A as usual. And with that, handing over to Ralf.
Thank you, Christian, and good morning also from my side. Look, it's quarter which is showing stable performance in a very volatile environment. Many things that happened during the quarter. Clearly, the market uncertainty continued. Consumers continue to be also cautious.
The geopolitical tensions continue to be effect. U. S. Tariff situation didn't clarify in full neither during the quarter, and we are seeing a very weakening U. S.
Dollar. And still, we were able to deliver a financial performance, which is in line with previous years and which is showing volume growth versus Q1 this year. We were upgraded also from S and P with regards to our credit rating, and we are now investment grade. We acquired Selwyn Farms and integrated them over the quarter already into our North American business, and we finalized our program to improve efficiencies. There is notable progress in our three focus areas, which I talked to you over the last two quarters already, and I'll do that in a couple of slides again.
It's good to be in a defensive market. People, consumers still want to eat. They want to drink, enjoy their their lives. So it's good to be in a defensive market, and we are clearly seeing this in these uncertainties that we can still deliver. The actions which we took over the last few months are going to continue and are making good progress.
So we talked about profitable growth and using all levers. We talked about the disciplined capital allocation, which we are now doing much more focused. And last but not least, the accountability and speed of execution. Let me give you a couple of examples for each of those three focus areas. On profitable growth, a couple of examples I would like to give.
One is we did an M and A. We acquired Serbent Farms, as just reported on the earlier slide. But we also concluded a couple of relatively important three year deals with large FMCG customers, which we will see the impact starting late this year already. On the capital discipline side, we continue to focus on both working capital as well as CapEx, and you will see a strong cash performance in the quarter. And then finally, on accountability and speed of execution, we have implemented in the first half the change of our operating model.
It's now much more focused on the segments to increase the speed of decision making, and that will, of course, help us also going forward. Very happy to report that we have now finished and concluded on our programme to take out €100,000,000 of costs. We did this ahead of time. It was a three year program. And after EUR one years, point we were able to deliver on the EUR 100,000,000.
We were also able to deliver with a lower cost to achieve. We said that we would spend 80,000,000 or less, and we finished it with €73,000,000 So very pleased with that achievement. And of course, it helped us significantly to offset inflation. Now during the quarter specifically, we continued to work on our cost reduction in all four areas. Let me repeat those four areas for you.
Number one was around sourcing. Number two was around material efficiencies, so specifically waste reductions. Number three was labor productivity. And number four was footprint. So also here in the last quarter, we were active and we continued to restructure our production here specifically in the Foodservice Packaging segment.
It was important for us to optimize our footprint according to the demand which we are seeing and to ensure a profitability which is meeting our expectations. Sustainability and being the leader in sustainable products continues to be our north star and is really important to us. You see here the dashboard which is helping us and guiding us to make this a reality. Let me point out a couple of things. Number one, we were awarded with EcoVadis Gold during the quarter.
Two, we continue to make good progress on renewable and recyclable materials. Twothree of our portfolio are now renewable, recyclable or compostable. So the good progress which we made over the last years continues and again a couple of percentage points improvement only in the quarter. Also strong improvement on renewable electricity. Specifically, in fiber in North America, we saw strong improvements there.
Last but not least, we are making progress also on greenhouse gas emissions. So a 10% improvement year over year on the greenhouse gas emissions, specifically driven by Scope one and two, and we get more and more actions also for Scope three. Let me go to the business performance now. The quarter saw net sales organically growing. In fact, if you exclude currency and even acquisitions, we are a positive flat number here of €1,000,000 That's encouraging, specifically as we had a negative organic growth in the first quarter.
But you also see that the currency impact is now getting much more significant to us. Two of our segments did see also volume growth during the quarter. For the half, it's a very similar picture. As I mentioned, we recovered a bit on the organic growth side in the quarter. So the half year number reduced slightly and is now pretty flat.
And also here, we see the currency impact. In both cases, for the quarter and the half, you see the positive impact of Selwyn Farms, our acquisition, which we did in April. Some more details. So excluding the negative impact of FX, our key financials are in line or slightly ahead, in fact, versus prior year. So top line, if you add the €34,000,000 which I showed on the other slide, you see that we are slightly ahead for the quarter on net sales.
The same is true adding the EUR 3,000,000 impact of FX and EBIT. The same is true also for our adjusted EBIT, which is slightly ahead of the same period last year. We continue to have a strong margin, over 10%. And our EPS for the quarter is flat, whereas our capital expenditure was reduced by 10% versus the same period last year. That's supporting what I said before with regards to capital discipline.
Similar picture for the half. Here, I'd like to point out that also for the half, we are still double digit 10% margin, and we are making good progress on EPS, which is growing by 3%. Let's move into the segments now and let me start with Foodservice. Clearly, Foodservice is still a soft market and we are seeing this and experienced it both in the quarter as well as in the half, very similar picture in both cases. But still, we did a lot of work on cost out and the segment was able to still deliver a strong margin for the quarter of 9.6%.
In fact, the margin was stronger in the quarter compared to same period last year. Capital expenditure was lower, hence they were able to deliver a stronger operating cash flow in the quarter. Very similar picture also here for the half. Still seeing a margin of 9%, which is very encouraging in a market where we have negative growth. It shows that we are doing a lot of work also here on the operational side to protect our margin.
So once growth will come back, we will see a lot of leverage, specifically on the foodservice packaging side. Let me move to North America. Clearly, the impact of the FX is mainly not only, but mainly related to our North American business. So if you take the impact of FX out of the net sales number, we would see a strong growth of over 3% in the quarter, mainly driven by very strong volume growth in the quarter, which is encouraging both with regards to what we told you last quarter, the impact of Easter, which this year was later than last year. So we saw that coming through, which is encouraging.
But also, the other segments, foodservice and consumer goods in North America, did see growth in the quarter. We had negative pricing, though, hence the comparable growth of 3%. Our adjusted EBIT margin continues to be at 12.2%, which is impacted by a number of factors. Number one, it's impacted by the ramp up of our new facilities, the one in Hemet and the other one in Texas Paris, Texas. So both of those are producing costs in the ramp up, but not yet showing the sales on those.
And we also see inflation, which we are going to work hard on productivity improvements. Capital expenditure, very similar to what I talked about when I talked about foodservice. So here, we are below last year as well and also delivering strong operating cash flow in the quarter. Let me move on to Flexible Packaging. Flexible Packaging continued its trend of delivering stronger results.
We are both in the quarter and for the half now over 8%, currently standing at 8.3% for the half, which is 2% higher than same period last year. So the improvement in our turnaround facilities continued and shows also the impact there. So cost measures are really helping us. And we are seeing first signs of volume improvement also in Flexible Packaging, which is encouraging. In both quarters, we are seeing an EBIT improving by EUR 5,000,000.
So for the half year now, we're EUR 10,000,000 absolute improvement versus last year. Segment delivered on cash flow and is for the half ahead of last year's half. Finally, going to Fiber Packaging. Fiber Packaging continues to deliver solid sales growth, both driven by volumes and pricing. Net sales is growing by 10%, as I mentioned, driven by both volume and pricing.
And adjusted EBIT is at a strong margin of 11.8% in the quarter. That's impacted, if you see the comparison, by significantly lower sales of our machine segment, which is part of fiber packaging. Operating cash flow, even though we had capital expenditures, which are going to help us to drive that segment even further, was higher than in the same period last year, but still they were able to deliver good operating cash flow. I'd like to point the attention to two things. One is that the impact on the avian flu in Australia is fading away, so we believe that end of Q3, there will be no impact anymore on that.
But we had a fire in our South Effingham, one of our South African factories, which, of course, as it happened in the last month of the quarter, will have an impact to us. We believe that we will be able to be in full back in full production in the next six weeks. Let me now pass on to Thomas, who will give you an overview about our financials.
Thank you, Ralf. So moving over to the financial review. If I look at the delivery so far, we highlighted clearly that the USD is now, especially the USD, but as you see from this presentation, also many of the other currencies are, from a translation point of view, impacting our reported results negatively. You see the acceleration in the quarter going from to €34,000,000 on top line, minus €3,000,000 on EBIT. And then for the first half year from €23,000,000 on top line and €2,000,000 negative on EBIT.
So from that perspective, get a good view of especially the impact of the USD, which from a low point at one zero two in the beginning of the year has moved now to one eighteen as the rate latest number. The impact is seen on the income statement. But as you will see later on, the impact is even more clearly visible on the balance sheet as the balance sheet is reported on the closing rate of the quarter. So as you see here, USD average rate still at a 1.09, while the closing rate for the quarter was at 1.17. But as you see also some of the other currencies are trailing negative before us.
Some deep dive into the P and L. I would say the positive side here is that we are maintaining a good conversion and and a good discipline when it comes to to our sourcing activities, which have been been helpful for us in defending our result in this still pretty moderate market environment. You can see, however, that despite that, as Ralph already alluded to, we are maintaining the levels If you adjust for what I just highlighted on the currency impact, we are basically flat. I would highlight that we are getting some benefits versus previous year from the financial items, so finance cost side.
And that one is then helping in accelerating our EPS, adjusted EPS above the EBIT growth levels. So these are the levels which we are wanting to highlight from the operative point of view. Obviously, with the impairment we did, we have significant deviations between reported and adjusted results. You will see the main impacts in the cost of goods sold. That's where the biggest impact is.
You will see it on the R and D line, and you will see it in other income. So that's mainly related to the where the main impacts are from the impairment. Moving to the net debtEBITDA. I would say we are tracking on the two ish level, though the reported is 2.1 net debt to EBITDA. We have an increase in our net debt coming from two things.
We have including the increased lease liabilities, the lease liabilities from our Paris, Texas expansion. And then, of course, we had the cost of the acquisition of Selwyn Farm. But I would say we are still tracking and still trading on a very good level when it comes to leverage. You also see that our cash and cash equivalents are on a high level. That's partly due to the issuance of the Schuldschein for which we had the funds at the end of the quarter and obviously did not have yet by the end of the quarter the possibility to utilize all of that cash for mitigation of other loan items.
From that perspective, if you look at the average maturity, it's at 2.9%. It was on 2.4% previous year. As I have said earlier, we are working always diligently to maintain a good structure on our maturities. Obviously, we are happy to have the investment grade now from S and P, which is both helping with the finance costs, but also in in attraction of of of potential bond investors. So so with the maturities coming up, we are obviously evaluating when and how to go go to the market for additional funding.
If we take the free cash flow free cash flow generation at a good level. So the quarter was good after a a weak start to the year. And as you can see from from the negative sides, the change in working capital, you will see on the balance sheet side, it's up roughly €50,000,000 versus previous year. So with the €37,000,000 previous year change in working capital, That's also a outcome of a very favorable situation at the back end compared to the back end of 2023. But working capital CapEx is goes within our capital discipline category, and we are working tightly on on managing this throughout the year in a as diligent way as possible.
When it comes to the asset side, here, you you see the impact of the USD. So on the equity alone, we have a a negative translation difference of of 223,000,000. So with a significant part of our assets in USD, the movement in in the dollar rate obviously moves significantly also our our balance sheet. Here, see the working capital. So we are up €56,000,000 versus previous year, as I alluded to on previous slide.
And then the net debt, mainly driven by the items I referred to on the previous slide. Return on investments roughly or exactly actually on previous year's level. And here, I would say, what we need in order to drive that further up is top line supported profit profitable growth. So next, moving into our long term ambition, comparing this one to previous year's same period, which is not on the slide. It's a pretty similar picture.
So we are still trailing behind on top line, though the quarter was basically flat or slightly positive from a comparable growth point of view. The EBIT margin defended at 10%, so in the lower end of our ambition corridor. And then the other parameters are trailing on roughly the levels where we have been. On the outlook and short term risks, we have no changes. So with that one, I would open up for questions.
Next question comes from James Perry from Citi. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for the presentation. I'd like to ask a couple. Firstly, on fiber packaging. Obviously, you mentioned a strong 10% comparable growth in Q2 when other businesses are low single digits.
What's still driving the outperformance, would you say? And do you think the conditions allow for a sustained growth of a similarly high level throughout 2025? Or is this mostly short term and due to easier comparison basis? And secondly, North America, you mentioned the positive volumes and peers cited higher interest in domestically produced products. I know it's difficult to determine, but do you have any sense as to whether customers are looking for a temporary workaround?
Or are they interested in long term contracts, would you say?
Thanks, James. Let me start with the fiber question. So we are seeing since many quarters that the fiber volumes are strong and showing good growth. That's specifically true for the ag part of what we are doing here. So we actually believe that the investments which we are doing in fiber will continue to help us and support our growth ambition on the fiber side.
So number one, we believe that the Australian avian flu, which is going to fade away, as I mentioned before, will help us in that market. The investments which we are doing in Europe should help us in the European market. So I foresee if there is no new avian flu coming up anywhere that we will continue to see for the foreseeable future good growth in the fiber area. And we are supporting this with investments. You have seen that fiber is the only segment where we have invested more than last year in the first half.
North America is seeing growth, which is mainly coming from a couple of things. First area are the investments which we did last year. We start seeing it's early, so we believe we will see more end of Q3 and then in Q4. But we start seeing the positive impact of the investments which we did. So one in Hemant, which is also on the fiber side and also here specifically for the ag market, we see we continue to see really good interest from our customers.
They have signed up not just for the short term, but for the medium term as well. So we see that in the states which are committed to continue with their sustainability approach that we see that those markets and those states will continue to help us with our growth. We will see that, and that's going to be helpful. We see also that with our Tier two customers in North America, which we are supporting very strongly, we still see for the foreseeable future growth. So also on that side, we are pretty pleased, and our investment on the carton side will help us there as well.
So you remember that we are doing an investment as we speak in Texas. So that one will help and will support our growth ambition. And we have also here signed up customers. So we believe on that side, it's good. The big unknown for all of us and clearly for UTAMAKI as well, is what is the impact of the tariff discussion of inflation in The U.
S. That's so difficult to forecast. But currently, we don't think there's any short term positive behavior. We see the trends, which I described continuing for the time being, but clearly something which we are monitoring very closely.
Okay. Thank you.
Next question comes from Lewis Merrick from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Morning Ralph, morning Thomas. Thanks for taking the questions. Just starting off on volumes, can you talk a bit about what you were seeing early on in July across Mainland Food Service and flexible packaging divisions? Are there any noticeable changes to pull out there relative current trends? And perhaps can you maybe quantify an exit rate in the quarter in those divisions? Thanks,
Louis. Look, July is seeing a continued trend to what we have seen in Q2. So we don't see here a significant change in either direction. So that would be an unfair statement to make. So we we believe we believe that if the market comes down in Europe and that we will start seeing in foodservice in Europe towards the end of the year an improvement, but we need the market to to help us to help us here.
So that's one thing, especially in The UK. Western Europe, frankly, Q2 was already a clear improvement, but The UK is our largest market in the overall European segment, which we have. So but it would be unfair to describe July there as a great improvement. Flexibles, I believe that the contracts, which I alluded to before, which we did win will help us at the very back end of this year. They are really contracts for the next three years.
And then there's always a time to qualify and to start delivering. So we will not see any impact on those, certainly not in Q3, maybe at the back end of Q4. But these are good contracts with very large multinationals. So they, of course, are very important to us in our flexible segment, which is doing, as I mentioned, a good job on cost, a really good job on cost. So they are ready to take on volumes.
You know that they have invested heavily in Blue Loop. So once the volumes are coming, we would see this improving even faster and stronger.
And just one more. On the restructuring you've done this quarter, are you able to quantify the benefit from this restructuring?
Yes, it's look, the immediate benefit of that is part of what we have disclosed. So the €100,000,000 which we delivered, a part of the benefit is in there and will continue. So the savings which we did to deliver the €100,000,000 will continue. So also there, maybe that's the point I should make here, Louis, is we are not stopping with cost initiatives. We are not having this in this program anymore, but all of those which we did in the four areas and other areas will continue.
Productivity in packaging is very important. So we would see the impacts of the restructuring, which we have done in the quarter, a small number in the quarter, and then that will help us going forward as well. It's an adjustment as I mentioned, it's an adjustment to the volumes which we are seeing in Foodservice. So it was important to maintain our strong profitability to do that adjustment and to get the lines really in one area only. And it's important to continue to be competitive.
If you don't do these things, you know, we won't be competitive in the market anymore.
Thank you very much. Very clear.
Next question comes from Maria Wickstrom from SEB. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. Thank you for taking my question. I have, three questions. I I'll take them one by one.
So I first wanted to touch a little bit more on the volume growth in the North American market. You described the impact of the new investments. But could you be more specific, talk about the volume trends in retail tableware as well as foodservice, please?
Yes. So we see the volume strongest. So I'm talking about the half, not the quarter, because in the quarter, it's important to understand that we had, on the retail side, a shift from Q1 into Q2. So I would really ask you to think about the retail part as a half year, okay? So that's number one comment I want to make.
We see overall that in the retail phase space, we continue with our TriNet to perform really strongly when we come to the holidays. So we see that, and we see that consumers still really like our high end TriNet product there. So that's why I was talking about, look, please, at the half for the retail business. So that's number one. And we don't see this going anyways in the wrong direction for us on the retail side.
Foodservice and Consumer, we see a more positive picture. Consumer really driven by the investments which we are making. So that one makes us think really positively about Q3 and Q4 and then going forward, where we will see the impacts of those investments much stronger. And foodservice, we are clearly winning. We are clearly winning.
That's the segment in North America we are doing the best on the volume side and because we have chosen customers, the Tier two customers, which are winning in that market and are growing in that market. So we feel good about that. We don't give specific volume numbers for any of our segments. So I have to unfortunately stay a bit vague here, but I hope you get the message.
Yes. Perfect. And then I wanted to touch upon the pricing outlook in North America. I think you referred that the raw materials, I mean, besides aluminum have been, I mean, relatively flattish. I mean, how how is the pricing outlook, I mean, with the, I mean, tier two customers, I mean, with with the big I mean, with your big retail customers?
Yes. I believe that we have we had needed to use the pricing leverage to gain volume. So I mentioned that very early on in the year that the margin we were seeing before were driven, from my perspective, with very high pricing, which did not allow us to have sustainable growth. So I believe the margins you are seeing now are the ones we can think about going forward. And that is driven by an assumption of flattish raw material pricing.
And that is what we are currently seeing in most, if not all, of our raw materials. So we see that. And it's, of course, also not only but also driven by a relatively volatile market. We are not the only packaging company which is seeing that. So our suppliers clearly are seeing that as well.
And hence, we are not foreseeing any significant change on the raw material side. So pricing, I believe we will continue to see a similar trend in North America as well.
Thanks. That's very helpful. And then my final question, I mean, is on the relatively high impairment you made, and you commented specifically that this 39,000,000 relates to the restructuring of the foodservice. And then you mentioned that there was a some contractual compensation. Can you be more specific?
I mean, who was this contractual compensation paid for and how much is the cash impact?
Yes. Look, as you will appreciate, there's a contractual payment which we received is related to one of our parties, we can't disclose the name of that. Were trying to be helpful by mentioning it's in the foodservice area, but we can't be specific and talk about of the party involved here.
Okay. It it just, I mean, a little bit that unclear that if they pay paid for the client or, I mean, another winter, but I'll leave it here.
Maria, you I'm happy to give you some more ideas about that. So we were I think both Thomas and I, we were alluding to the fact that we have to get the volumes which we can produce and the growth which we can see that we can do this in one product line rather than in two. So we were reducing that because the volumes which we were expecting were lower than they are. So that's why we did the restructuring.
All right. Perfect. That's helpful. Thank you. I have no further questions.
Next question comes from Ben Thielman from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good hey, guys. Good morning. This is Ben from Berenberg. Thank you for taking my questions.
I actually just have one follow-up question on the restructuring one off in the food service packaging division. What exactly were those 39,000,000 out of the 45,000,000 that we have seen hitting your EBIT in q two? You mentioned it was restructuring related, but was that basically just an impairment of your PP and E? Or any color on that would be much appreciated.
Yes. So as Ralph already alluded to, we are talking about an investment that we were carrying out where we, together with the prevailing market conditions and in negotiations and discussions with the customer, came to a level where we concluded that of the investments done, we don't see in the foreseeable future a volume level that would support the levels of assets we have in our asset base. And therefore, we impaired assets. It's mainly related to assets, correct,
Okay.
And then the contractual compensation.
Yep. Okay. Perfect. That's it already from my side. Thank you very much, guys.
Next question comes from Kaeyi Loikenin from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning. Good morning, guys, and thank you for taking my question. I have a few ones here. Starting with the second half of the year, so could you perhaps on an kind of aggregate on a group level elaborate a bit on what you see and expect in terms of volumes and pricing as well?
Morning, Karl. Look, we as Thomas has said in the outlook, we foresee a very similar trend in the next quarter to what we have seen in this quarter. So all of that is, of course, assuming that there won't be any other bigger impact coming from either geopolitical side or tariff side or currency side. So if I take all of that as of today, then we don't see the market reacting more positively than it currently is. We will continue, obviously, with our measures.
As I said, even though we closed the program of taking cost out, we will continue to work on cost opportunities, self help opportunities, and we will focus on growth. We have started our driving organic growth, not just M and A. We have started that. And we are one of the mentioned points I mentioned there was the success with two customer contracts, which we signed. We will continue to drive really hard on that side.
We're not just waiting for the market. We are working on growth initiatives. But do I see those benefiting us short term, so in Q3 or early in Q4? Most likely not. Where we see back end, and there is no change to that as well, where we see back end of the year and positive impact is of coming from the two investments which we did in North America.
We are clearly seeing that they are ramping up the way we have assumed they would. So that impact, we we continue or we are hopeful that we would see in clearly the back end of of this year. But on volume and pricing, otherwise, I don't expect any significant change. Pricing would be driven mainly by raw material, and we don't currently have that. And as the market is relatively soft, we don't have many opportunities to go out and increase pricing.
Okay. That's very helpful. And then secondly, you mentioned in Flexible Packaging that you have been seeing the first signs of volume improvement. So I was just wondering that which markets are you seeing these positive signs?
Yes, we are seeing the first good signs, especially in Western Europe. And as you know, we were working on turnaround also in Turkey, and we see that Western Europe gets support from lower cost materials from Turkey. So they are offering to customers is very often a combination of products produced in Western Europe, mainly in Italy and Germany, and then get support for some lower cost volumes from Turkey. So that offering now with Turkey starting to improve is an offering which is appreciated by our customers. So we see Western Europe slightly, slightly, okay, that's an important word color improving.
But we see the rest of the world for flexibles continuing as they did in Q1 and Q2.
Okay. Thank you. And then lastly, again, looking at the second half of the year you as a CEO, which of the segments is the one that you would be most concerned about regarding the second half of the year?
I'm not concerned about any of our segments, Kalle, because we have very strong leadership in all of those. We got now also our new leader for flexible packaging who started with us, who has really experienced thirty years in this market. So in fact, it's the other way around. I'm really hopeful that our team is is going to continue to drive and use all our levers, you know, the growth lever, the disciplined capital lever and also the self help on on the cost side, which will continue. They need to know which one to play at what point.
And currently, with the soft market, we can't run away from self help measures, which we will continue. So my my concern is not specifically on one. My actually hope is that all of them will continue to work really hard to make us deliver good double digit margin with hopefully soon to come growth to you.
Alright. Perfect. That's, that's that's helpful. Thank you. That's all for me.
Next question comes from Kevin Fogarty from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi there. Good morning, everyone. If I could have two questions, please. Firstly, just around the sort of current uncertainties you guys are seeing. I just wondered if you could comment on how is that manifesting itself in areas like foodservice?
Are we seeing kind of shorter ordering cycles? Clearly, kind of volumes are a bit more challenged there. Just maybe if you could put a bit of color into how customers are behaving there and keeping in mind, you know, your comments on greater accountability, speed of execution, Just so how does that how does that business operate, in that more challenging environment? Guess, what are you doing differently or what can you do differently is the first question. And secondly, if we think about where you talk about capital discipline and where CapEx is running at in H1.
I just wondered if you could give us a view in terms of what the full year outlook might be for capital spend. That would be useful.
Thanks, Kevin, for those two. So look, clearly, with a negative growth in foodservice, the question is very relevant. So let me give you an idea on what we are doing differently rather than just looking at the market and and and going with the trend of the market. What we are doing differently is that we have significantly strengthened with the new account model and the sales forces which we have in country. So we are of course, we will continue to work with the big QSRs.
They are, for our foodservice segment, very, very important. And in addition to that, we are now also looking in our foodservice, especially European portfolio, also at the tier two opportunities which we are having. So and that can be, from our perspective, only done if we are very close to them in the market with sales leaders who are close to them, can form the intimacy, can understand what they need, and can deliver not only on the basics, deliver in full on time, inspect all the time, but also anticipating on how they can help them to win. So that change in the operating model is bringing us much closer. But we implemented this early in in q two.
So we announced this this change in in q one, but we implemented then the change in q two. So we see first signs, but it would be it would be misleading you if I would say that we, on short term, are expecting any positive outcomes. That will take time. The trust of of new customers, you cannot build quickly, but you got to start one day. If you don't start, you're going to lose even more time.
That's what we are doing to capture growth with customers which we are currently not serving. But we will continue to be close to our big, of course, QSRs. And we will continue to work on innovative products. So we mentioned to you, of course, also the plastic free cups, which is one initiative which we are driving. You know we are working on the lit side as well, which is happening in many markets currently.
So there are a number of also innovations which we are doing together with our customers, which, once implemented and once the trend really starts, will help us to grow. Discipline Thanks was
for that color.
Thanks, Kevin. Capital discipline was your second question. Capital discipline, we believe that we will, for the full year, be below last year. We have a much, much more stringent process now in place. We need to absolutely understand on where the capital is used and for what return purposes.
So we are very focused on that part. You remember that we have our three big buckets. And of course, in an environment where we see less growth today, but we have free capacity, especially in foodservice, and there is currently no need to invest in further growth. So that growth bucket is, of course, reduced. The other two buckets are not reduced.
So we will continue to look at productivity measures, and we will continue to maintain our assets. So those two buckets out of the three will continue to be served. But in an environment where we don't see growth, but we have asset utilization, which is not full, of course, we are cautious on how to invest in growth.
Great. Thanks for that. Very clear. Thanks very much.
Next question comes from Hai Win from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you for taking my question. I have three, if you don't mind. The first one, I'll go one by one. Now that the €100,000,000 three year program has finished, what can you tell us about the remaining margin drivers ahead towards your long term objective?
Obviously, top line, but in terms of self help, How are you continuing to drive the margins towards your long term objective?
Yes. Thanks for that, Kai. So I think our long term objectives are between 1012% EBIT margin. So we are, of course, very excited that we again delivered the double digit, the in fact, point 2%. So very, very excited about that one.
But of course, we won't stop here. We will continue to drive that. But we are in the range of what we have communicated. What we will do is we will not stop working on self help, you know, opportunities. So Boost, is going to be an initiative which we will use going here forward to take costs out.
And it's important to never stop that. In packaging, you have to do this work all the time. Costs will start growing again. Inflation will take in. Clearly, personnel inflation, merit increases will take in first of January.
So we can't stop. We can't go back and say, okay, we have done it, and now we wait a few years. In fact, we have widened it. We have worked, in this program specifically on the four areas I mentioned I mentioned before, we are widening this now to say there are more opportunities, there are more areas. Maybe they don't give us the big the big numbers, but the sum of all the small ones will, of course, helping us.
We have in the program now established a culture of doing of doing this all the time. And that culture, you know, is something which is important in any organization, but very specifically for us so that it's not a one time off, but it's a culture. It's embedded in what what we do, what our teams are doing all the time. And then we got to combine this with growth. We don't want to have also a culture which is just looking at self help.
It's needed now because we don't see the growth in the environment we are operating in. But we will clearly have a focus on accelerating profitable growth and using both organic as well as inorganic growth opportunities. Thanks for that question, Kai.
Thank you. Thank you. My second question is on your leverage and the options of spending cash. With the capital discipline ahead, you're not spending too much on growth anymore as volumes hasn't picked up. You're at the lower end of your net debt EBITDA range, 2.1 times.
Are you exploring any options on on spending cash outside of CapEx and m and a? So shareholder returns above the ordinary dividends. Is that a possibility in the midterm, near term?
Yes. We presented at the AGM our value creation model. And in that value creation model, other than what you just alluded to, of course, the first opportunity for us, and we see the biggest return, is to invest back into the business itself for the organic and the inorganic growth. And then we want to serve our shareholders and paying back money via dividends. We have more than, I think, it's seventeen years 16, pardon me, sixteen years of improved and increased dividend.
So of course, dividends are important for our shareholders. But we are not excluding other means anymore. We are open to other means, and we will, of course, always look out at what is what is creating the highest level of of shareholder return. So we are not excluding any of the means which we have at our disposal, but we are focusing, number one, can we invest the money back into the business to create shareholder value number two, let's make sure our shareholders continue to see good dividend And number three is what other means do we have if there's still capital available.
Got it. Thank you. Very clear. And then my final one, just specific on fiber packaging. That's one of the few segments that had increase in raw material costs.
Typically, if I'm not wrong, you tend to pass prices through, but it takes a quarter lag. So should that mean should that mean that we're expecting a slight expansion in margin should because prices will pass through next quarter, should the raw materials remain the same quarter on quarter in Q3?
Yes. So this quarter margin was impacted in the comparison by lower sales of our machine services. And of course, our big volume quarters are Q1 and Q4 in fiber. So that's I think that's one. You will see the impact of South Africa.
I mentioned before, had a fire there at the back end of the quarter. We will see an impact there in the beginning of Q3. My current estimate is for the next six weeks until we are back in full production in South Africa. And we will still see in Q3 also the impact of the avian flu in Australia, which is, as I mentioned, at the end of Q3 fading away. So we see that now starting.
But we see in general always a lag in passing through pricing. We believe that the fiber input prices, the pulp is now going to continue to be relatively stable. It increased over the last quarter, but now we have seen it lately be relatively stable. So hopefully, that's helpful for your model.
Thank you very much. That's clear. That's all for now. Thank you.
Next question comes from Morayo Adesina from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Yeah. Moriah here on behalf of Gaurav and Jane. Just a quick one, and apologies if you touched on this earlier and I missed it. In the food service segment, have you started to see increased promotions? I think you're previously expecting this.
I know you've touched on it already, but if you could just recap what your outlook is for Q3 and the rest of the year in foodservice.
The first one I got about the promotions. Can you repeat the second point, please, Maria?
Yes. It was just on the outlook for foodservice for Q3 and the rest of the year.
For foodservice specifically, correct?
Yes.
So look, on the foodservice side, we and I talked about this before, so let clarify for you. On the foodservice side, our big Tier one customers are driving promotions, and they are starting to see improvements. But even our our largest customers are still not really seeing volume picking up in a in a very positive way at all. But they are, and we know this, they are continuing with their promotions. We are supporting them on their promotions.
And we are, of course, hopeful that this will eventually, and hopefully, eventually, it's not too far away, start showing some positive signs. So, yes, they they continue with their promotions, but it's over overall still a weak market for our big QSR customers. We and that's maybe helpful for the not short term, but for the medium term outlook. We have started to focus much more on Tier two customers, smaller customers. We increased significantly our sales forces to make sure that we are capturing them.
Some of them would be new to us. That will take a bit longer because we have to prove ourselves first. But, we are we are very sure that with increased local sales forces, that's why our accountability model is so important, we will start seeing traction there. So q three, I'm not expecting any change of the trend, but, of course, we are hopeful that the market will change, and then we are a big part of that market, that we will start benefiting.
Great. Thanks. That's clear.
Next question comes from Maria Wickstrom from SEB. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. This is Maria again. I had one follow-up question. I wanted to touch upon a bit about this replacement trend, I mean, in for more sustainable packaging and and, namely, if we think about the Nespresso capsules, I mean, where you invested alongside with Nestle on this whole compostable collection.
So if you could give us a bit of color, like how is that collection, I mean, selling? And if are the consumers in a more distressed environment, I mean, willing to replace?
Yes. Thanks for that question, Maria, and thanks also for the follow-up. Yes, look, we are really happy that regulation is now much clearer. I think the PPWR, which came out a few years back, was was not clear at at all. And I think now it's it's so much easier to understand, what is going to happen when.
So what what is clearly playing to our advantage is that we are a multi substrate supplier. So we are not focused just on paper or board. We are also having options to support our customers, for example, with plastic structures. But and when I talked about sustainability in our dashboard, we are driving renewable compostable materials. So whether it's it's a paper or a board or a plastic, that's the trend we are going through.
And we are doing this together with our customers. And, of course, if PPWR is is pushed out and, you know, the urgency to change over a structure, of course, the pace of how fast customers want to do that, changes. That doesn't take away the growth. The growth is still there. Maybe the growth isn't as strong and as fast as we were expecting it, but the growth is there.
So we are we are very, convinced that our strategy of being the leader in sustainable packaging is the right strategy, and we will continue to follow that one that one through. And we are extremely happy that we have a wide offering, not just a single material offering. Thanks for the follow-up, Maria.
Thank you very much.
With that, we are done for today. If you have any follow-up questions, obviously, as usual, feel free to reach out to us at IR. I would still like to remind everyone that we are arranging, again, this fall, a site visit this time for the flexible packaging plant in Istanbul, Turkey, and we will be sending out registration links shortly. So feel free to join. We hope to see all of you there.
With that, we'd like to thank you all, and have a great day. Thank you.