Thank you, Linda. Good afternoon, good morning, everybody. Welcome also on my behalf to our Q2 presentation here together with Pia. It's been quite an eventful Q2 for Outokumpu. We saw most of you in June when we had our CMD and we launched the second phase of our strategy, and here we are now again then to talk about our Q2. As Linda just mentioned, Q2 really is a time when we have achieved record level EBITDA against a backdrop of substantial cost deflation, which has been going through the whole business sector, and then of course, the geopolitical turmoil specifically here in Europe. Now, if we look at this quarter, EUR half a billion result and cover some of the key points.
I have to say I'm very pleased with the strong performance that Outokumpu has been able to deliver. You remember that two years ago we launched a major turnaround strategy which intended to de-risk the company and to really raise the performance level of the business. We've been fortunate in the sense that we've had this market tailwind, which has helped us really to take maximum advantage of our capabilities. I think the result we present today to you is clearly just shows that what Outokumpu as a company can do at its best when the circumstances are right. Here we're very happy with this result, really amazing performance from the organization. The prices during the second quarter continued to further strengthen, and of course, that did support our profitability.
It's been a period of some volatility also on the price side. I'll come back to that in a moment. On the cost inflation side, as we've discussed earlier, it's been sort of an emerging story. Last year, we were able to quite well push back and mitigate the cost inflation. Now as we got into 2022, gradually that cost inflation has been coming through in many different areas. The second quarter was also a time that especially here because of Ukraine-Russia war, we've had to spend a lot of time, put a lot of energy into thinking about how we mitigate different types of risks. Some of these risks have materialized, some of them haven't. In general, it's been a time of a lot of uncertainty.
I have to say, we as management have had to spend quite a lot of time trying to figure out what might be coming around the corner and what should we do about it. But luckily, I have to say, we've been able to manage very well everything that has been coming our way. So far so good. Now, in terms of the strategy and the first phase, as we said in the CMD in June, we have now completed phase one ahead of schedule. I'm very proud to say that we've achieved that ahead of schedule, and we've also achieved all the targets we set out. I can state that Outokumpu now has de-risked itself. We've come a long way from where we were in the summer of 2020.
Today, just looking at the publicly available data, it seems we have the strongest balance sheet, the lowest net debt in the sector among our peers. So happy about that as well. If we look at overall the performance of the company, we've also been able to develop the way we work inside. Our internal efficiency has increased. We've reduced fixed costs. We have a very lean organization at Outokumpu. Across many metrics, this company is performing very well. On the third bullet, I wanna comment on Long Products. It's been sort of, we've mentioned it in all of our presentations, a bit like a side note. I've said every time it's non-core. Well, here, a month ago, we were then finally able to announce the signing of the SPA to divest Long Products to the Marcegaglia family.
I think this is a win-win outcome for all. Long Products will find a new good owner with the Marcegaglia family. It's good for our employees, but it's also good for our shareholders. If you look at the value we created over the last two years as we embarked on this very ambitious turnaround that Liam Bates from our company has been leading, I would say a rapidly accelerating turnaround. It delivered exactly what we wanted, even I would say more, a bit more than that. Then what we have exercised, I would say, is strategic patience. We did not rush and execute the deal, but we took our time, and I think now the outcome is good for everybody. As said, for employees, for the buyer, but also for the shareholders of Outokumpu.
It also then makes Outokumpu a much more focused business, around stainless steel and then of course ferrochrome, in the backdrop. Against, I would say, these facts, and given the circumstances where we live today, I would like to state that Outokumpu is more resilient than ever before to withstand any changing circumstances that come, might come our way. I said we are living through some very turbulent times, to say the least. You have seen, those of you who have followed this company and our strategy carefully, you know, you know this chart very well. I said phase one is now completed. We've now started phase two, effective July 1. Here in Business Area Europe, we now have the two business lines. We have the standard products led by Niklas Wass. You saw him on video, last month.
We have Tamara Weinert leading our Advanced Materials, where we have the Prodec business. Those two organizations have now been established. They've started running forward, moving their business, getting some of themselves organized, and look forward to then presenting also what they accomplish in the coming years. The Americas business, of course, very important part of Outokumpu, a very solid, I would say, second or third leg for the company, especially in these times when America is such a strong market. I'm very happy that we have a very good business in North America, and then we have our ferrochrome activities here. During the course of phase two, as said, we will focus on investing in productivity.
We will look to add capacity in both Europe and the United States by opening bottlenecks, and then also in investing in activities to further reduce our CO2 exposure. As you know, we are the sustainability leader in the stainless steel industry globally, and we intend to maintain that number one pole position also going forward. That is the strategy, and now we are in phase two. Now that we mentioned sustainability, just a couple of highlights. You know that safety is absolutely number one topic at Outokumpu. We have the best safety record in our industry. Our total recordable frequency rate for the first half is 1.8. You can see the curve on the upper right-hand side.
I think that curve just shows you how much effort and determination we have put into improving our safety. Obviously the target is to get that to zero one day sometime in the future. During that journey, we are gradually trying to reduce it every year a bit lower and lower. Last month we introduced our new product, Circle Green. I would say that the intention of developing a product where we have a very, very low CO2 footprint, it's part of our innovation journey, looking to develop solutions for customers and really looking to test the market's willingness and readiness to take on these low carbon products. I think we will then report to you in the coming quarters how this CO2 journey then goes forward.
On the markets, if we start maybe on the upper right-hand corner, nickel, it's been quite an eventful year. Much volatility, barely seen that, I think as we have to go back to like to before the financial crisis, to see a period where we have so much volatility in nickel as we've had this year. It has been challenging to manage through that. Also it's created, I would say quite a lot of, a fairly big price gap between Asia and Europe at some stage as nickel went up. Now we've seen in the last month or two, again, nickel starting to correct back from the very high levels more towards a, I would say more, a lower level anyway.
Still over $20,000 per ton, but anyway, still coming downward. Maybe a worthwhile thing to mention is that if we look at history and the nickel price, one should also consider the fact that while we also think about nickel in the context of what is the nickel price vis-à-vis corresponding materials in Asia, that also the NPI products in Asia, that their costs are also influenced by high energy costs. I would say that the sort of competitive advantage that the Asians have had in nickel, that is also tightening as energy costs go up in that market. On the lower left-hand side, you can see the transaction prices. The market has been very tight for a long time. We've had 7 quarters of increasing demand.
Correspondingly, we've had transaction prices moving up. Now, during the course of the second quarter, we started to see a softness in some areas of the market, more in Europe than in North America in the second quarter, partially also resulting from the fact that we've seen nickel then fall in value. But also on the distributor side, we started to see fairly strong restocking, and that has then brought a certain softness, which can gradually be seen in the transaction prices. On the right-hand side at the bottom, you can see ferrochrome. The ferrochrome market also has been very strong. But in the second quarter, especially as we came into the summer, we started to see some softness, and especially in the spot market of ferrochrome, in the last eight weeks, we've started to see clear softness.
The transaction levels have fallen quite a lot in the past 8 weeks. Now then, looking at the results from 377 in the first quarter, which was a great number in itself. Now then to 547, a record number for the company, best ever result. What really drove us well, as you can see, deliveries declined somewhat. We were benefiting from the price, elevated prices that gradually came through the order books, that delivered quite a lot. Of course, we had the metal timing impact, which of course then led ultimately to 547. Interestingly, if you look at the costs, we have been able to mitigate still the cost pressures quite well. Maybe one area where we've seen a lot of volatility recently has been energy and electricity prices.
Maybe, Pia, you can lead us to this, the discussion on energy when you come look at the different businesses, and maybe we can discuss that also in the Q&A, when we get that far. Overall, I guess you can see from my face I'm happy, very pleased with where we are. It's been quite a journey, 7 quarters looking at where we were 2 years ago. Now here we are de-risked company, strong balance sheet, businesses, companies performing very well, motivated staff. In spite of challenges, you know, we're in a very resilient position here to face any challenges that the future might bring us. With those words, let me hand it over to Pia, who will start a discussion on the numbers. Please, Pia.
Thank you, Heikki. Indeed, very good afternoon, good morning, to all of you. This has certainly been very eventful quarter. Let me talk you through some of the highlights there. I will really start off with repeating it was not only a record, also sector sort of record result, definitely also in terms of indebtedness, our strategy is now showing the result. Our net debt reduced to EUR 289 million. I will show you the timescale. Obviously, we can remember it's not that long ago that our debt level was still above EUR 1 billion, this has been a good and rapid development as well. When I say eventful quarter, of course there was a number of positive things happening here.
We have signed a new EUR 700 million revolving credit facility. It's sustainability-linked, it's unsecured. All of those are things that really please me and the team very much here. Our liquidity has improved to EUR 1.3 billion. Maybe you remember, or at least I do, that when COVID period started, at that point, two years ago, roughly two years ago, our liquidity was at EUR 0.9 billion. I think sort of all through this period, we have also wanted to make sure we are stronger and stronger also on that side. We worked obviously a lot on the Long Products divestment, and certainly here, you know, we have signed the deal in July, as Heikki spoke to, but this has kept us definitely busy during the quarter.
We also have a number of smaller kind of non-core asset divestments. We are continuing this path to really ensure that you know we keep the house in good order and have the balance sheet in good order here. We paid the dividend for the first time here again after the COVID, EUR 68 million in April. I think you know this is then followed by the renewed strategy launch, the new financial targets, the target also in terms of dividend to have a stable and growing dividend going forward. All of those obviously very positive topics.
When I say it's an eventful quarter, obviously the whole situation in Ukraine has also been something that I think has been weighing on everyone's shoulders, from a range of perspectives, obviously also from risk management perspectives. The energy cost development here is something that I will get back to later in my presentation. Let's have a short look at the main KPIs that we have here. I think this is demonstrating a lot of financial strength of the quarter. You see here record EBITDA, EUR 547 million in the quarter, resulting also in a net result of EUR 385 million. Definitely best result here also for us.
When we look at the next phase of the strategy and strengthening the core, one of the KPIs that we wanna highlight in our reporting more going forward is Return on Capital Employed. Here now in the quarter, it's 29.9%. We have chosen a method where we always count it on a 12-month rolling basis. So just to note that that's the way we are doing it. That's kind of, in our mind, a good way of showing how we create results with the balance sheet that we have. You may note then when you look at the details of the report that we are also disclosing the BA return on operating capital figures now for the first time.
When you look at the personnel figure at the end of the period, I just wanted to add, I'm really happy to say, you know, in this market situation, we've also had 800 summer trainees. I do hope all of the summer trainees get a good experience, and we of course get the support and help that we need in these busy periods that have still been around. Strategy phase one has indeed been completed. Heikki already spoke to the fact that we have been completing ahead of time. You remember the reporting we have done quarter by quarter building this.
I thought there were maybe one or two details that I still wanted to bring just in terms of sort of closing this chapter and kind of moving on into the next phase and the phase of strengthening the core. The first one is specifically just stating the Long Products share of this. Obviously, being a smaller business, it is still a very significant improvement of EUR 18 million that Long Products and the team have contributed into this overall. Out of the EUR 260 million, we can see that BA Europe has been the biggest contributor and certainly then followed by Americas as well as Ferrochrome.
The other thing is that we used, you know, a method, we used a tool following up all of the more than 1,800 projects that we had here, and that's something we will take with us along with the improved cost base, along with the improved product mix also into the next phase of the strategy. Next, I will say more about each business individually. Obviously from a result perspective, I think BA Europe and we all can be extremely proud of the EUR 289 million result in a quarter. This is obviously a statement of the favorable market conditions that there have been in the quarter, even though you see that volumes are slightly lower than in the previous quarter indeed.
We had a higher share of Prodec grades also in absolute amounts, a higher amount of Prodec grades, and this has certainly helped us. The market, indeed, overall, I would say when we more look at sort of the forward-looking situation, there has been a shift with a very high share of imports, especially in the first month of the quarter, and certainly then impacting the business going forward. Many of these things have certainly already been debated, and Heikki has mentioned some of them, but I'll just state at least the obvious facts. First of all, when we look at the peak of Asian imports in April, this then followed kind of the normal pattern of being lower, both in May and June.
Indeed, we have again now in July seen a higher, clearly higher market share of imports. This sort of same pattern seems at least to some extent still to continue here. Another point worth noting is that from distributor perspective, we are indeed seeing higher inventory levels on average compared with the previous periods. There is certainly now some inventory that sort of takes digesting into the system. Nonetheless, when I then kind of look at the total picture of what this paints on the market, I still think it's worth maybe saying, and especially for BA Europe, first of all, that we do have the stable part of the business here, with also end users still being, I would say, in a sort of fairly robust and stable mode.
Obviously projects, Prodec business sort of doing well under these circumstances, oil and gas, for example, also other projects. This is still somewhat of a situation with like almost different segments and also overall. When we think about the third quarter, you may have noted that you know when we still think about what will really be delivered and invoiced, please note that we still have here also orders from previous periods. You know what is happening here and now in the spot market is not exactly what will happen in the invoicing in the third quarter. There I still think we will enjoy some of the higher price levels also from previous periods. Maybe this is enough said about BA Europe. I certainly wanna spend a few words also on BA Americas.
This is also a very strong result operationally. Added to that, maybe you have noted that the share of timing and hedging or raw material related inventory gains and hedging, that has been a good, you know, positive number in the quarter here as well for BA Americas. We certainly had, you know, strong realized prices, kind of good market momentum, good market share, and also looking forward here, I think we can definitely talk about a strong and robust underlying demand, even though there are for sure inflationary pressure, consumers wondering about sort of what inflation will mean, what higher gas prices will mean, et cetera, going forward. Maybe some sort of cautiousness relating to inventories can also be noted. Inventories are also here a bit higher than normal.
Overall, an extremely strong quarter here also for our Americas team, another record. Well, Ferrochrome, certainly as well here looking at Q2, a very good performance, a strong market momentum, high prices, but indeed, experiencing some inflation here in the consumables. When we are then looking forward, then I would move the attention quite a lot to energy and when it comes to ferrochrome, especially to electricity. It's good to remember that ferrochrome is really out of all of our businesses, the one that is most impacted by higher electricity prices, and then of course, particularly in Finland, given the location.
When we look at the Finnish energy markets, you know, if we compare with the situation early in the summer, I think the fact that there were no more imports of electricity from Russia to Finland, that has been well known now for a period of time. On top of that, there have been various announcements relating to Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant. That is pretty significant. I mean, I'm sure you have seen the forward prices also in Finland going up to a much higher level than we have seen before.
The importance of Olkiluoto 3 here I think is, you know, one of those factors really sort of driving the energy balance and also the outlook. Well, indeed, it seems that the new period of trials and tests is just about to start, so certainly we will follow that a lot. Ferrochrome is really the business that is impacted and I just wanna make this a little bit more tangible and also say that, you know, with the forward prices that we see right now and also with the hedging levels that we have into the third quarter for ferrochrome, I could still see a situation that if we remain this elevated, we could have EUR 20-30 million more costs in the ferrochrome business based on the higher electricity costs.
Obviously, you know, autumn and winter will then tell what will happen next, but this is certainly a topic that we need to follow extremely carefully. With the BAs, I wanna end here on a high note with BA Long Products. Obviously a very strong operational result, but also a sort of good piece of timing and hedging included here into the record EUR 63 million. A very big thanks to the Long Products team to Liam and colleagues here for delivering the turnaround, and obviously by now then we have signed the deal to divest the business to Marcegaglia. In this context, the Degerfors business will remain with Outokumpu also going forward on the Long Products side.
A few more words, then, on the cash flow. Here you see the second quarter cash flow first, starting obviously off with a good result but a major investment into working capital. With our strong balance sheets now, I think we have that opportunity to invest in working capital where it's needed, but I do wanna say that out of this EUR 400 million investment, there are indeed impacts that also come from us safeguarding, mitigating risks relating to the war in Ukraine, so for example building some stock or rerouting some supply chains. I would estimate that that impact has been negative or building inventory in this case or investing into working capital of at least EUR 100 million out of this EUR 400 million. Maybe a note sort of overall to this.
Then you can see that, even, in this situation we certainly have managed a very balanced net debt between the quarters. The CapEx for this year will be EUR 180 million. Maybe most importantly also, we expect to complete the investment into deep mine by the end of this year. I promised to show how the debt has been reducing. Certainly, at this point in time you note the higher levels north of EUR 1 billion of net debt in the years 2020, 2021 already decreasing and now kind of continuing on that path, giving us a very strong KPI for the balance sheet, net debt over EBITDA at 0.2 times.
Finally on our funding then, our maturity profile, here you can see that we have been able to extend it further, liquidity at EUR 1.3 billion, and on the left-hand side you can see our debt structure, which I think remains sort of very well diversified. With that said, I would like to hand back to you, Heikki, please.
Thank you, Pia. Finally we have the outlook. I would just say again that the backdrop is that we are living through some fairly exceptional uncertain times, much more so in Europe than the United States. The U.S. market seems to be insulated from many of the at least geopolitical challenges we see coming potentially our direction. The outlook for Q3 for continuing operations, and please notice the star in that statement. Group stainless steel deliveries for continuing operations in the third quarter are expected to decrease by 10%-20% compared to the second quarter. Prices for stainless steel in the already received orders have remained at a higher level. The European ferrochrome benchmark price decreased to $1.80 per pound for the third quarter.
Energy costs are expected to increase in the third quarter and impact especially negatively Business Area Ferrochrome. Plant maintenance costs in the third quarter are expected to increase by approximately EUR 10 million compared to the second quarter. With current raw material prices, significant raw material related inventory and metal derivative losses are expected to be realized in the third quarter. The guidance for Q3 2022 is adjusted EBITDA for continuing operations in the third quarter of 2022 is expected to be lower compared to the second quarter. That is the outlook for Q3. With those words, let me hand it over then to I guess Linda and the operator for Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you, Heikki. Operator, we are ready to start taking questions from the line.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please dial zero one on your telephone keypads now to enter the queue. If you find your question is answered before it's your turn to speak, you can dial zero two to cancel. Our first question comes from the line of Anssi Raussi of SEB. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. It's Anssi Raussi from SEB. Good afternoon. I have a few questions, and I go one by one, and I start with the basic one again. What kind of lead times you have at the moment and, also, again, about your Q3 deliveries as you guide still high prices in already received orders. What kind of mix you have in your Q3 deliveries in terms of timing in bookings? Are these orders from March to Q3 months, or how is it? This is the first one. Thanks.
Right. Thanks, Anssi.
Yeah.
Sorry. Maybe first to say that, you know, where we are booking new orders right now in Europe in cold rolled is early in the fourth quarter. In U.S., of course, the cycle is a little bit shorter, quite sort of following normal practice. When I look sort of the mix quarter-on-quarter, first of all, sort of in the product mix, I really don't see any significant changes. When you are asking that, you know, when did we book this, I think we have started to see shorter lead times sort of throughout the spring and the summer. I cannot really give you an exact that, "Hey, we booked, you know, all of this in March," or something like that. Clearly, sort of on a shortening cycle for sure.
Okay. Thanks. The second one is about your delivery guidance as it is a bit on the low side, some could say. What kind of factors we are looking at here? Like, is it all about maintenance, or is the underlying demand affecting this? Or, like, how much do you expect to lose volumes due to maintenance?
Well, first maybe I can start with having maintenance in this quarter is sort of quite seasonally typical. I would say, you know, the seasonality is definitely a part of this guidance. Then on top of that, this sort of destocking I would say is more important than really sort of being able to say that the underlying demand per se would have changed. I do say this having in mind the macroeconomic backdrop that certainly, you know, gives a lot of negative signals as well.
Just if we really listen to our customers on the end use side, it is clear that, you know, there are still some sort of robust or stable situation in the Americas and even in Europe, I would say still sort of on that more elementary kind of looking at de-risking, destocking in the face of a lot of uncertainty.
If I can just sort of build on that. Still first on the U.S. The U.S. market, of course, has been extremely strong. The COVID rebound was just unbelievably strong. I guess from the underlying demand, I would say we're more moving towards a phase of normalization. Pia already talked about the sort of restocking by the distributors. I would say the stocking issue is much less a topic in the North American market than it is here in Europe. In the US, some of these sectors, if you look at automotive, seems to be quite okay. But I would say not especially strong, so okay-ish. On the white goods side, I mean, we have had a huge phase where people have bought a lot of microwave ovens, et cetera.
There's been a lot of money also supplied in the U.S. to consumers. That is now, I would say, starting to come to an end, and some of the white goods suppliers are indicating that, you know, we're moving more to a more normal phase rather than the super hot phase. Overall, I would say the big trends in the U.S. are positive and now just have to see what the next quarter brings. You know, if you look at the U.S. consumer, for example, we have fuel costs are very high in the US. Housing costs have risen. I think the consumer has less disposable income, although they have a lot of savings. It'll take now some time to see how this really flows through into the consumption.
As Pia said, here in Europe, we have seen that the fairly large or the price difference between Asia and Europe, which sort of started to grow as time went by, led to a fairly substantial import volume from Asia, and that volume has been coming in. We saw that in the first month of April in Q2, and we've seen that volume also come in the month of July. Gradually, you know, the Asian imports are moving in. Let's see how long that takes. I think the European, let's say, destocking of our distributors will probably take a couple of months to normalize again.
Okay. Thanks. The last one from me for now at least about still your guidance and raw material inventory and derivative losses for Q3. Any ballpark here, like something like in Q1 or?
Yeah, Anssi, thank you. I do think it's a relevant question, and maybe I can sort of get back to when we guided for Q2. We talked about, you know, this figure potentially being, you know, a significant positive, and you know, now you've seen the figure. I do think that we could see a sort of similar level, but with a negative sign in front of it, into the third quarter. It's clear that there is a swing. I mean, the dynamic also is one where, you know, Q2 in elements of that brought positive timing, so raw material related inventory gains, but negative hedging. Now when we move into the third quarter, it will be the opposite. We will see negative timing, but we will see positive hedging.
Okay. That's clear. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Patrick Mann at Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good day. Thank you very much for the presentation. I just wanted to ask about, sort of capital allocation, Pia. You're sitting with the lowest net debt ever.
Can you just remind us the sale of Long Products, is that all going to be received in cash? Just the timing around near the end of the year. You're effectively in a net cash position with arguably sort of working capital unwinding. You're still sticking to the capital discipline, sort of EUR 180 million or EUR 200 million a year for the next two years. I mean, at this rate, you're gonna build up quite a cash pile. How are you thinking about deploying that? Thanks very much.
Yeah. Thank you, Patrick. I can say I love that question because, you know, now we are living a period with a lot of uncertainty and that's really the macroeconomic situation that's obviously here in Europe, very much the war in Ukraine and the energy issues around that. I think just, you know, for the time being, I feel super comfortable. I think it's a good position to be in to have this pile of cash. You are right, of course. I mean, if we look a little bit more, we take a bit more perspective, a couple of years, I think this CapEx guidance in the next strategy phase or this ongoing strategy phase now of around EUR 200 million per year is correct.
I mean, this year, 2022, will be still EUR 180 million. But then kind of for that next period, 2023-2025, this 200 per year is what we have talked about before, or more precisely EUR 600 million over three years. Yes, indeed, that's about 200 per year. I think this gives us some room to consider and to maneuver and think about sort of various options for that. Definitely, you know, paying a stable and growing dividend is one of those important points there. I think, you know, once we are kind of over this period of big uncertainty, it's a big opportunity for us to come back to this topic.
Got it. Thank you very much. Just in terms of how and when the receipts for Long Products comes through.
Oh, yes. Thank you. Of course, this now depends on sort of those closing procedures being finalized, and I think we are sort of foreseeing that that could happen by the end of the year. Not everything of this is fully in our control. There are, for example, these competition clearances, et cetera. Given that, then I think that, you know, by the end of the year and obviously sort of looking at a clear sort of cash payment here.
Thank you.
Thank you, Patrick.
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Ioannis Masvoulas of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Heikki and Pia. Thanks very much for the presentation. A few questions left from my side. Starting with the first one. Looking at the EBITDA bridge, pricing and mix was over EUR 100 million positive in Q2. Can you give us a rough idea on the share of mix improvement within that and how we should expect this to develop in the second half?
Thanks very much. The majority of that was still price improvement, so the mix was a positive boost there. Definitely, that's why we mention it, but really the majority was on the price. Obviously, you know, I'm not able to really give you the specific price guidance into the third quarter, but somehow just with this sort of focus on the current sort of market dynamics or looking at CRU price list, et cetera, I just still want you to remember that we will indeed invoice a lot during the third quarter, where we have already priced this in at an earlier point. With that in mind, I'm sorry that there's not really more light than that that I can share.
Certainly, you know, still with some sort of upward trend in the pricing, to some extent being in what we will invoice in the third quarter.
Okay. Thank you very much. The second question on working capital. You've built around EUR 670 million in H1. You talked about EUR 100 million of that being a safety stock as you adjust the business. But thinking about the second half, should we expect that perhaps more than half of that, the H1 investment could be released?
Thank you, Ioannis. I think it's a fair assessment that, you know, there's many elements here that are also dependent on, for example, nickel prices. With elevated nickel prices also, you know, the full price invoice, the accounts receivables, et cetera, have sort of through that mechanism been higher. We see that already now with nickel at around $20,000, you know, these levels will come down. I don't think that, you know, there's no doubt about the direction. The direction is clearly that we will get the cash in here. What exactly is the magnitude? I think that will depend on to some extent, the market dynamics and how low inventories can be taken then.
I would just remind that, you know, the seasonality for us usually always is, you know, significant working capital reduction in the third quarter with typically the lowest inventory points towards the end of the third quarter. Then as we go to the fourth quarter, a little bit of pickup before the end of the year. With that said, certainly following all normal patterns, there will be sort of a good rebound of that in the third quarter and into the fourth quarter.
Maybe I can.
Okay
... now that you talk about working capital inventory, I could just take another topic here, if you don't mind, and that relates to the natural gas situation in Germany. As you know, there's a lot of news flow about what will happen to natural gas flows this winter. We're waiting
For more information from the German government on how they potentially would sort of, you know, guide the industry in a situation if there is not sufficient supply. Our plan is to supply our customers, take care of them, in all circumstances. For that reason, we are now going through all possible contingency plans so that we can take care of our customers. That may potentially involve also creating some buffer stocks in some products. Of course, that would then be in the working capital figures then, potentially in Q4 and so forth. We'll come back to that later. I just wanted to mention that that is in my view a relevant sort of topic, at least on the top management CEO agenda at the moment.
Thanks, Heikki. Is that part of the EUR 100 million in Q2, or is there more to come in Q3 on buffer stocks?
The buffer stocks that I was talking about around Q2 were really more on securing supply and kind of the raw material flows in various ways, also readjusting some of the supply chains. I think, you know, to a very large extent, that has been completed. I wouldn't really foresee sort of further impacts of that. I would say, based on building then sort of on finished goods side, any buffer stock that is then relevant towards the winter. If we take, if that is the conclusion then, and if that is necessary, then that would certainly impact again in the Q4.
Okay. Very, very clear. Just the last question from me, Pia. You mentioned the pickup in EU imports in July.
Yes.
Is that peak higher than what we saw in April?
No. Not as far as I know right now. I mean, we are still looking to some extent at a bit sort of indicative figures, because the statistics are always coming only a little bit later. It doesn't seem higher, but it still seems high.
Slightly lower, I thought.
Great. Thank you very much.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Slightly lower was my.
Slightly lower.
Yeah
on a high level for sure.
Okay. Very good color. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bastian Synagowitz of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah. Thanks, and good afternoon. My first question is on the performance of your European units. I've gotta say, I was quite amazed, particularly in the context where you basically say that the impact from raw material and hedges was close to zero, while it was already very positive in the other units. Is it fair to assume that there still has been some positive effect from selling products which still benefited from the lower lagging factor costs in a rising price environment? Or was this really fully underlying? That is my first question.
Hi, Bastian. I can indeed confirm that the net of timing and hedging impact was really low in the quarter for BA Europe. I would emphasize that net because indeed there could have been, you know, some benefits as you just mentioned. But then when we sort of net it off with any hedging losses there might have been, I mean, the net of those certainly was zero. That one I can just confirm because it's a part of the reporting that we do every quarter.
Mm-hmm. If I bridge that into the third quarter, if we basically look at your gross margin, and you've just told us that at least in Europe, it seems like your gross margin in the second quarter was basically fully reflective of current, I guess, reality, i.e., the cost you see in the market and the price you see in the market basically reflect your gross margins. We then think about the third quarter, I guess you talk about still slightly higher cost, but you have just said that also your ASPs are actually still gonna rise. Are you expecting that you can preserve these gross margins into the third quarter, even though your volumes will be coming down, obviously?
Maybe there's sort of a couple of elements to watch for. One of them is that if we are now focusing really on the BA Europe, I would say that as part of the sort of overall guidance that we had on the net of timing and hedging being significantly negative in the quarter, I would indeed see some of that actually hitting BA Europe as well. I don't think that will be sort of neutral for the BA quarter-on-quarter. That's kind of one element to take into account. Then, you know, certainly there are developments on the cost side that are putting some pressure on the margins. You know, energy could certainly.
Mm
Be one of them that I think is worth mentioning here. There are also, you know, kind of a combination of topics here, including the price development, as you mentioned, that are also, to some extent supporting the margin. It's clear that we are now living kind of the next era of already, you know, pressure on the cost side, the pricing momentum in the market, having changed, et cetera. Looking at the third quarter, you know, I don't wanna be overly negative, per se. I mean, this is still kind of a quarter of adjustment, if maybe that would be kind of a word to explain it.
Okay. Got you. Thanks, Pia. Maybe staying on the cost topic, you talked about another increase of EUR 20 million-EUR 30 million of cost headwind in Ferrochrome.
Yes.
Is that a quarterly number or is that an annualized number?
Yeah. That is a quarterly number, quarter on quarter. Because BA still on both sort of what the actual, you know, what was the actual electricity price in the second quarter.
Mm-hmm
Combined with the fairly high hedging level, I wouldn't really talk about, you know, any significant energy inflation at all per se in ferrochrome. When I look from the second quarter to the third quarter, I think with the hedging level that we had and the very elevated spot prices that we have seen recently, you know, that in combination to me could mean from Q2 to Q3 between EUR 20 million and EUR 30 million more costs.
Okay, perfect. Then the last one is on mix. I guess, like roughly a year ago, you basically started to talk about a significant improvement in mix, which obviously however, at that point you said it would only become visible, in the course of this year pretty much around the current time, basically second quarter.
Yeah.
I'm wondering, is there any sense you could give us maybe for how much additional EBITDA you have been receiving from mix and pro grades in the second quarter comparing this maybe with the second quarter of last year? Is there any way-
Yeah
You could frame this for us?
Yeah. Yeah, maybe that's sort of really when we take the annualized comparison, I would almost kind of maybe need to come back to that then in some later comparison, simply because I think when we look sort of quarter-over-quarter, the development has been very incremental. Now sort of clearly from Q1 to Q2, we did see a positive boost. It was just overshadowed by the other positives from the pricing. That was my earlier comment. I think we need to come back in some later communication if we could give kind of an annualized view on that development. I would expect there definitely to be positive development, but You know, it's still kind of building for the future.
I would not expect that to be, you know, in any way sort of, you know, hundreds, or, you know, that sort of, millions. Certainly it could be tens of millions, absolutely. Need to come back to that one later.
As we said in June, the prospects for the Prodec business are good.
Yes.
Now with our new structure, with Advanced Materials, we're putting even more focus on the global sales and marketing of this product category, and I'm fairly confident that we will be able to, you know, gain results here. Underlying demand is good. There's a lot of activity happening. The energy transition, oil and gas is very strong at the moment, so I'm confident we will be able to get more business, you know, in the future.
Okay. No, understood. I guess that was my question because I guess the trends for these pro grades are still very favorable, so I'm just trying to get a sense for how much earnings portion you're basically able to preserve in what is an otherwise falling price environment. I guess the price trend in those grades is probably materially different.
Yeah
...that was exactly my question. Yeah, if you could give more color later on, that'll be great.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Carsten Riek at Credit Suisse. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Thank you very much. Two questions left from my side. The first one is on the Americas business. Given that the U.S. dollar has appreciated against the euro quite a bit, I'm just curious whether you had substantial FX gains or were they part of the hedging gains and raw material gains you booked in that business? That's the first one.
Hi Carsten. They were not part of the hedging gains. They are actually still in the second quarter, we had hedging losses in the net of timing and hedging, but those hedging losses refer to nickel. That is not as such sort of currency hedging. I mean, obviously our U.S. business is in that sense local, that you know, we both have the top line and then we have the costs in the U.S. dollar. Obviously then when we are sort of having a result, of course that gets translated at sort of various exchange rates into the group figure, but it's not impacting the sort of local margins in any meaningful way.
Yeah. You had some translation.
Yes
...obvious-
Yes
Positive benefits out of the U.S. dollar.
Yes.
Okay, cool.
Indeed.
I'll take it from there. On the outlook statement, obviously we have seen your peers guiding significantly down on EBITDA quarter-on-quarter. We're talking about 30%-50%. If I do it on the back of an envelope and take your comment here that the inventory and hedging related gains could actually reverse taking 10%-20% of the volumes, would you be in the same kind of ballpark as you have seen guidance with peers? 'Cause it looks like-
Yeah
...reasonable.
Yeah. I'm always sort of a bit sensitive about commenting on their comments, but if I focus on the Outokumpu comments, I would say first indeed, I mean, quarter two was, you know, exceptionally good. It was a record quarter. So I think this is sort of a sector sort of joint factor that it's clear that the third quarter will be lower. Even though it would be quite a lot lower, it's still a very positive figure that comes out, and I think kind of that's what we have seen in the market recently. Indeed, this inventory-related gains and losses, I mean, with the hedges, that is quite a big sum, of course, already kind of taking the result down.
Maybe I need to say one thing, that when we guide for continuing operations, I just also wanna make that really clear that once now we have taken this decision to divest Long Products and we have signed, we will in the third quarter report treat Long Products as sort of a business available for sale. It means that in the P&L, it just goes into one line, and it's not visible in the EBITDA. Into our figures, you need to build that first. I know the accounting treatment is not so simplistic, but simplistically, as a CFO, I would still say look at the second quarter EBITDA. That's about the ballpark figure that you should sort of first deduct before you even start counting something.
Just so that we get this right, that you know going forward we will focus on what is the continuing business for us. I think the tricky thing here is you know on ferrochrome business, obviously I want it to be fairly open that this electricity is you know it's a big sort of a cost increase quarter on quarter. In the ferrochrome business, the negative of course also includes the lower benchmark price that we have also shared and that is out there in the market. So that's kind of clearly a step down. We still have you know some of the positive elements here as well, sort of then keeping I would say still kind of an overall extremely reasonable level.
I'm happy to talk about sort of any of the details, but I, you know, just don't wanna give a figure, so because that's not how we guide.
Okay. Perfect. No, that helps already a lot. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tristan Gresser of BNP Paribas. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Yes. Hi, thank you for taking my questions. The first one on energy costs, I think you quantified it in the past. Could you please quantify energy costs in Q2? You flagged a bit the inflation, potential inflation to Q3, especially for ferrochrome, but any kind of a quantitative guidance as well here. I don't think you've done it in the past, but would you reconsider maybe implementing energy surcharge for the flat steel product business in Europe, given the rebound we've seen in energy costs? Lastly, in your operations in Germany, are you able to replace natural gas with propane as well? Or if there is some gas rationing, it just would imply maybe lower finishing production.
Tristan, thank you for those questions. Maybe I address that first of all on pricing and pricing policy. We don't really comment on that, forward-looking at all. We make comment retroactively, but let's see. I cannot really comment at all on your question about the surcharge. Now, with respect to Germany, as said, natural gas is the primary source that we use in our annealing and pickling lines. Here in Finland, we have been able to build that propane inventory option. But in Germany, it is very much dependent now on natural gas. We are looking at all different options which could be available to us.
In some cases, switching sources from natural gas to something else would take some time, so there would be a lead time, and then therefore, it is not most likely possible to get it in time for the winter of this year. There may be permitting things and stuff like that. Therefore, I said we have chosen to look at how we can optimize our total production system, including Sweden and Finland. If there were to be some disruption that impacts either Krefeld or Dillenburg, then we will have the potential buffer stock. Then, of course, we will look at, you know, using Tornio and Avesta more extensively. I said this is very much, you know, a process in motion. Every day brings new information.
We are preparing for all kinds of scenarios, and then we'll execute. At the moment, we have more clarity, we will then make appropriate decisions. The key thing here I wanna say is we will do our utmost to make sure our customers get what they have requested.
All right. That's helpful. My second question is on imports in Europe. Can you please share some thoughts you have on the new circumvention trade case against Indonesian HRC being transshipped via Turkey? Especially, given Turkey's also increasing share in the CRC market, do you think this trade case could also be applied to CRC volumes, or do you think it's not a fair assumption?
Well, first of all, we are pleased that the European Union is active and that they are looking into this case. We've seen how, let's say, systematic and active the U.S. government has been on these topics. Of course, I'm very happy that EU is sort of, you know, acting in a similar manner. I can't really comment on the specifics of the Turkish case. I think that there are experts who are more into the details on that. I said I think my only message here is, it is we believe it's relevant, we believe there is substance, and we look forward to seeing the results. I think that's all I can say about it at the moment.
Beyond that, I think in terms of imports in general, as I said, a lot has come in. I think some distributors in Europe made a choice that when the price gap widened, they decided to go and buy a lot from Asia. However, you have to look at the distributor sector in Europe, and there are different distributors. There are distributors who still, even though they had a chance to bring from Asia, they very much stick to European suppliers. Then there are distributors who I would call are more like traders. So they are very sort of, you know, opportunistic to always go and buy, let's say, get the best deal. If we look at our customer mix on the distribution side, we have customers who are, I would call more traders, and we will see less volume from them.
We also have a very substantial amount of distributors who are very stable and who do not sort of, you know, come in and out of the Asia market. Therefore, I just wanna highlight these two types of distributor customers that are out there in Europe.
All right. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Rochus Brauneiser of Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Yes, hi, thanks for taking the question. Yeah, let me push again a bit on the outlook. I think you made clear that there will be a reversal of the windfall gains of Q2 to Q3. I guess at least one of your competitors have said that the magnitude of the losses could be equal or similar to the gains in the second quarter. Would that be the kind of magnitude we shall keep in mind or from your hedging positions you would-
Mm-hmm
Say that it could be materially better in your case?
Yeah. I could, of course, try to sort of elaborate on this, even deeper and explaining the kind of various elements. I mean, as I've said before, you know, my sort of clearest guidance on this can be when we guided from Q1 to Q2 that it would be significantly negative. You've seen the outcome. Now we... Sorry, significantly positive. You have seen the outcome, and now we are guiding for the vice versa. I think it's fair to assume that the order of magnitude will be the same but negative this time. It was positive in the second quarter. As such, I hope that this brings some clarity to, you know, why we are saying that this could actually be significantly negative.
It is exactly because of that dynamic, you know, the timing losses are quite significant in the third quarter, whereas the hedging is then a little bit buffering that for us.
Okay. Yeah, great, Pia. On the follow-up on this volume question before. I think what we have seen is that US shipments were a bit more down than Europe in the quarter on quarter. You mentioned de-stocking dynamics. How shall we think where the better or weaker end is in the third quarter? Would you again think that the US business is more aggressive in the de-stocking process than Europe beyond the effect from seasonality?
No, I well, I would have sort of started by saying that seasonally, clearly Europe is weak and-
Mm-hmm
Americas is not. I mean, Q3 is nothing special in Americas, but in Europe, of course, we know that this is summer season and maintenance season, et cetera. I still perceive some of, you know, what Heikki also said before, talking about sort of the U.S. market maybe sort of more normalizing from this sort of COVID rebound, to kind of a more normal sort of, you know, robust underlying demand type of market. Whereas again in Europe, we have these distributors, some of them having bought imports sitting with quite high inventories. So kind of without going into further details, I do think those comments are sort of describing pretty well. We did indeed see already during the second quarter as well some downtick, also in the European business for sure.
Right. On Americas margins, based on my calculation and if I take out the inventory gain effect-
Yes
which was substantial in Americas, the EBITDA per ton went down even though, as you described, market conditions were still very favorable. Was there anything in particular, mix effects or other drivers which led to the decrease in Americas profitability?
No. I think mix effects were actually a little bit positive, but of course we don't have really the same dynamic with mix in Americas. I mean, predominantly it's standard products, and it's kind of the mix within that. In Europe, we then have the more sort of Advanced Materials business and the standard business. That was a little bit positive. I would say the inflationary pressure for sure has been visible in the U.S. already over an extended period of time. We kind of, you know, we get some of the push there on the consumables, on the freights, et cetera, you know, quarter on quarter. Energy has not been the same kind of sort of broad topic as in Europe.
Just overall, I mean, we already saw actually in 2021, you know, sort of fairly quickly the way the contracts work in the Americas market sort of make kind of on the way up, when we saw prices increasing, that really fairly quickly came through in our invoicing. We sort of were, you know, sort of earlier on that more sort of rising price curve. Maybe this is kind of a more sort of stable or mature state and then combined with some pressure from inflation.
Okay. That makes absolute sense. Finally, on energy cost, I guess you talked about the dimension of cost increase on ferrochrome. Is it possible to get a number what you see for the whole group in terms of the energy component-
Yeah
for your profitability?
The reason I mentioned it for ferrochrome was that it was so, you know, potentially significant and of course really impacting that business. The reason I'm not mentioning it for the others is that it's smaller. Fair enough, I would say for the European operations, obviously there is an uptick. This is not really an Americas, question per se. That's the reason why we didn't give a number. It is clearly lower than that what is impacting EBITDA ferrochrome, but there is indeed an increase, you know. Does it then mean that it's EUR 10 million? Is it EUR 15 million? I think we will then see, when we get the final sort of situation for the quarter.
All right. No, that's very helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Moses Ola at J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah. Hi, Pia. Hi, Heikki. Thanks for taking my question. Another great set of results this quarter. I just wanted to ask on the strategy to normalize EBITDA run rate target. Obviously in this quarter here, that's on the, you know, you've got the tailwinds of
Good pricing, especially in Europe where you've got greater than 700 EUR per ton, steel margins. If I look at that midterm target, should we essentially expect a collapse in margins just to meet that normalized target? Or is there a room possibly to upgrade these targets within phase two? That would be my first question.
Yes. Moses, thanks very much. Thanks for first for the kind words and, you know, I certainly wanna say that our targets, that the target is really further improvement. We wanna further improve our profits by EUR 200 million by our own actions. Of course, as we have seen, this is an industry where market conditions keep changing, and the reason for giving that sort of normalized range, which obviously is now kind of compared with the second quarter result, you know, it's looking low. One may then talk about is there a collapse here or there? Well, what was the sort of? How did we do this? We wanted to simulate a situation where prices kind of came back to a more normal historical level.
With that said, obviously if the prices are decreasing from that peak, we will see a compression of margins, and that's then what we can see in the normalized. That was really the method of doing that, but I certainly wanna say that's not our target. I think it's there to bring sort of the view of, you know, sort of where we see kind of the more normalized sort of long-term capability of the business, and then we strive to further improve that.
Thank you. Then also on the balance sheet, it's quite strong net cash end of this year. Should we still expect you to maintain a net cash position midterm, or how should we evaluate your capital allocation priorities, especially on shareholder distributions?
Indeed. We stay very committed to the dividend distribution policy that we have said here, stable and increasing. Absolutely. You know, what could happen over and beyond that, I think now with the great uncertainty that we feel, the pressure of the war in Ukraine, at least here in Europe, I think the time for sort of further consideration of that comes once we are out of this period of uncertainty. Now we will stick with this stable and increasing dividend. Next year about EUR 200 million of CapEx, and then keeping up this discipline, and then, you know, we are happy to come with more information, you know, once this sort of period of uncertainty is behind us.
I think this uncertainty is. I mean, there's a lot of things which are completely out of our control, and also many things which are not sort of typical, you know, typical cycle. I mean, we have a war in Ukraine and massive inflation. I personally feel that we need a couple of quarters here to get some more visibility on how are these things in Europe going to play out and before, you know, if we were to make any bigger decisions here. Need to wait a bit here, see what the coming months bring.
Okay. Thank you. Then finally, just from me, do you have any exposure to the low Rhine levels in Germany? Are there any impact from low water levels to shipments or raw material supply to your operations in Germany?
I think it is true that the water level on the River Rhine is very low, and it is impacting raw material and cargo shipments in Germany. I'm not aware that it would have impacted us, but there is of course correspondingly greater demand now for trucks, and then of course you know that truck availability has been very tight. A lot of the truck drivers came from Ukraine, they've gone back, so trucking business is even tighter now in Germany. I have not been informed that we would have had any delivery disturbances because of this low water level.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. We have one further question in the queue. That's from the line of Anssi Raussi of SEB. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Thank you. One more from me. About North America, as we saw today that CRU estimates that the base price was actually stable in the U.S. during July and will also remain at the same level in August. How much of cost inflation we should model in for Q3 compared to Q2? Thinking about North America's EBITDA in Q3. Of course, we have this negative timing and hedging net impact.
Yes.
If we think about the underlying EBITDA. Thanks.
Yes. Thank you, Anssi. On that backdrop of course, the negative timing and hedging is there, you know, overall one of the important components. Then I would just say that there is no individual item per se that we would have guided on. We have seen fluctuations or increases in freight costs and in consumables in the previous quarters and that is not yet sort of fading off. Clearly, you know, looking at some of the historicals could just sort of give a bit of telling the story of the dynamics that we have seen to date.
Of course, on the other hand, if you just look at some of the commodities, the nickel, et cetera, I mean, clearly here on our raw material cost we have already seen the decreases during the month of June, for example. In that sense, I would say I don't wanna sort of exaggerate the topic of inflation here, not in the same way as I did for example, ferrochrome, really explaining kind of individual line items, but certainly there is pressure still from inflation.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Anssi.
Thank you. As there are no further questions at this time, I'll hand the floor back to our speakers.
Thank you, operator. I have one question left, which I received via email. This will be toward you, Pia, and this is regarding the convertible bond due 2025. How are you planning to acquire the shares for the convertible bond?
Well, thank you, Linda. Interesting to answer this detailed funding question, and I have to say obviously, here the maturity is 2025, so at this point we really haven't made decisions about that yet. I can only more speak about it sort of what's possible. I mean, obviously we could issue new shares. We could also be buying shares. I mean, there's these options are still available. We will take the decision then clearly only much closer to the real maturity of the instrument. The convertible bond of course works the way that we have to go over a certain strike price also to repay it as shares. This is certainly something we will come back to in a later phase.
Thank you, Pia. This was our event today. Thank you for all your questions. Thank you, Heikki and Pia. Before we close the event, I would like to remind you that we will be publishing our Q3 results on November 3rd. Now thank you once again and have a great summer.
Thank you.