Hello all, welcome to Outokumpu's Q2 2023 results webcast. My name is Linda Häkkilä, and I'm the Head of Investor Relations here at Outokumpu. With me today, we have our CEO, Heikki Malinen, and our CFO, Pia Aaltonen-Forssell. Today, as per usual, we will first start with our presentations, and after that, we're happy to answer your questions. In the first half of 2023, we delivered a strong result. Today, we also announced that we have started our preparations for the third phase of our strategy, which will commence in 2026. Before we start with the presentation, I would like to remind you about the disclaimer, as we might be making forward-looking statements. Now, without any further comments, I would like to hand over to our CEO.
Linda, thank you. Good morning, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome on my behalf also to the Outokumpu webcast. It's nice again to have a chance to have a conversation with you together with Pia. We've had a very busy quarter, a good start to the year. We're excited with Pia here to give you an update on how things are progressing in our company as we implement our strategy. We also today want to shed some light on how we are preparing and thinking about the phase three of our strategy that we have announced some years ago. Let me just start first by stating, as you can see on the slide, that we've had a good start to the year. We've made nearly EUR 400 million of EBITDA during the first six months. It's a good start.
It's a good result in a time which is still, in many ways, fairly challenging. If we then move on to look at the first slide here and talk a bit about the second quarter. As you can say, it's stated here, adjusted EBITDA for Q2 was EUR 190 million. Again, you know, good performance overall financially from the company. Q2 in many ways is a bit of a bifurcated story. As you'll hear today, our Americas business has been doing very well. We've, I think, had almost 15, 15 quarters in a row of good performance there financially. Again, our Americas business contributed nicely to the bottom line. Very happy with, with the performance that our Americas team and our customers together have been able to generate.
Over here in Europe, it's been a bit of a different situation, a different story, a bit more cloudy, I would have to say, and you'll see from the data in a moment that beginning of the year and accelerating into 2, Q2, it had quite a number of challenges. Overall, as I said, we were able to get through Q2 nicely. One of the important statistics that we always like to follow, of course, is the commercial side, and specifically price of various raw materials and price of various products. Let me just focus immediately on the left-hand side, where we can see the transaction prices for standard commodity stainless.
As you can see from the line, and I want to draw your attention specifically to the curve in the middle on the right-hand side, that little gray line, and you can see almost like two stairs, you know, first stair down, after the summer of 2022, then a bit of a pickup, and then another stair down. It really tells you the story of how things have evolved in Europe, as we've gone by. Now, of course, where are we today? We knew that last summer, when customers started to destock, and especially we knew that some of our customers actually had bought quite a lot of volume from Asia, that it would take some time for that inventory really to get flushed through the system.
Maybe a bit of a surprise, I have to say, is that it's taken actually now a year, for that process to continue. I guess the big question is, you know, where are we today in terms of those inventories, especially for distributors, and when will they start buying? I mean, basically, based on the information that we have, we basically access to publicly, it would indicate that both in North America and also in Europe, that we have reached already the average or normal level of inventories. Some customers actually, have, you know, drawn down their inventories a lot more than average. Some of them still have a bit more, but overall, I would say we're definitely down to normal levels.
Looking at some data, I would almost ascertain that about May of this year, kind of we were already in the buy, sort of in the buy window. Then you can sort of ask yourself, you know, why are customers, are they buying? If not, why are they not buying? There are probably many reasons, depends on the customer. There is a lot of uncertainty about the economy, specifically in Europe. In the U.S., there's discussion about is there a recession coming or not a recession coming? I guess that's a bit of an open macro question. Specifically here in Europe, this uncertainty, of course, it makes it easier for customers then to postpone, "Let's wait another week." Metal prices were also volatile in the second quarter. We saw...
Just before June, ended, we saw nickel also dip a bit below EUR 20,000, having now bumped, come up again over EUR 20,000. This, of course, maybe makes it more easy for customers to postpone. Of course, we've seen interest rates spike quite a lot. I would assume that for some customers, carrying working capital is, of course, substantially more expensive than it was, let's say, one or two years ago, when interest rates were near almost at zero levels. Anyway, what I can state here is as the second quarter ended, and we got into the first days of July, we have seen in Europe some pickup in distributor buying. While it, it hasn't spread yet very broadly, we did clearly see some movement among some of our distributor customers.
Also, those who we know had bought a lot from Asia, they also started to place some orders. Prior to that, we saw the scrap market also starting to tighten a little bit. Is that sort of a trigger to get customers going? Remains to be seen, anyway, I personally found it as a good, good fact that orders started to come in during the course of July. Europe is moving into vacation, especially in Southern Europe. August is usually a quiet month as customers are taking some time off. When we come back in September, I guess we will get a better sense for what is the mood among customers. I said, it was positive to see in July some of our customers starting to place orders.
On the ferrochrome side, you can see, the price levels are fairly flat. There is a bit of a growing delta, vis-a-vis the price levels in, in, Asia. At the moment, the ferrochrome market, as the second quarter ended, it was, it was quite weak. Again, waiting to see some, some, some potential movement here as the summer ends and we move into the autumn phase. Now, if we look at our overall volumes, as you can see, 502,000 tons, we are compared to, to the level, we are not terribly far from what we saw even during the course of COVID times. COVID, of course, was very exceptional because people were almost like panicking with the, with the, with the illness spreading around.
Now, of course, we have more macro drivers, and the cost of capital drivers, which are potentially driving customer behavior. Overall, as I said, group-adjusted EBITDA, EUR 190 million. If you look at the right-hand side, and you look at that bridge chart, EUR 204 in the first quarter, EUR 190 on the second quarter, I wanna draw your attention to two things. One, of course, is that red bar. Obviously, with prices, you know, declining as they were, ultimately it flows through our PNL, and you can see some of that now in the second quarter results, that negative red bar. Pia will talk a bit about how this, how those orders flow through the system once she gets up here. Another thing to take focus on is those green bars. They relate to costs.
I wanna just state for the fact, as a fact, that we have at Outokumpu, we are very focused on cost all the time. We run a tight shop, we have a strong procurement organization, I do feel that our buyers have been doing a good job, allowing us to then save as needed. Moving to another subject here, let me just make sure I didn't go through 1 slide. Let's see, page 7. Should be okay. Talking a bit about ESG. I have to first of all state that, as you all know, safety is number 1 topic. We always within Outokumpu, we prioritize safety over volume. If we look at our Q2 numbers, on the first bullet, you see that our total recordable rate was 1.2.
I would just stop here and repeat that: 1.2. This is an incredibly good number. If you scan companies around the world in process industry, I would be bold enough to say that 1.2, it's a really strong number. If you look at the first half of the year, we're at 1.5. You know, this is a very, very strong safety performance. We put a lot of emphasis on this. Our safety organization reports directly to me, and we do our utmost to manage the company in a safe way. Obviously, we still have a long way to go to get to zero, but the progress we're making as an organization, I think, is solid, and it also tells a lot about how we run our plants.
I think there's a strong correlation between the safety performance of a mill and also how they run the shop overall. A little fun fact on the right, is our ANYmal, it's called. It's a new AI-driven safety robot. We basically have started to use these. We're now piloting it in one of our plants, and our plan is to roll it out to others. The idea with this robot is basically that it allows us to go and work and scan hazardous areas within the plant. So by having our ANYmal walk around and measure through its sensors, different important physical and chemical properties, we're able to identify risks and then focus our maintenance activities more accurately to those places where there could be, you know, a safety concern.
We have a few of these now and look to forward to growing our ANYmal family within Outokumpu. One year ago, we launched Circle Green. Circle Green is a new product. It has the lowest carbon footprint of any stainless steel grade in the world. It's up to 92% lower footprint compared to the industry average. Now, one year has gone. We've been discussing with our customers, promoting it, and I can confirm to you that we're confident we're on the right direction. Obviously, it takes time for customers to learn and understand, you know, what this all means. The four customer cases and that we highlight here from the automotive industry, from the energy and transportation industry, renewable energy industry, and so forth, conferred to me, and hopefully to you as well, that, you know, we're onto something here.
I'm really pleased that we have a product that is interesting to customers and, and the marketing and promotion continues. I really believe we're very, very early days in this journey of, of even further decarbonizing our industry and, and fighting climate change. Outokumpu is really the leader globally in our industry when it comes to this. Now, moving on then to our strategy and giving you a bit of an update on where are we now. Pia will talk a bit about Phase Two financial performance from the standpoint of how our initiatives are generating financial value to our bottom line. I can just tell you overall as, as CEO of the company, that I think we're making good progress on Phase Two.
We demonstrated in Phase One that we have a good system of executing and driving performance in the company, and we're using the same methodology, the same approach also in Phase Two, and we're getting concrete results. In the middle of the chart, there's a horizontal blue line where we say, "Capital discipline and strong shareholder returns." I want to also underscore that capital discipline is very important to us, and shareholder returns are on the top of our minds. As we develop the company and we think about the future, we will not forget them. Now, talking a few words about Phase Three. Obviously, as you can see from the chart, our plan is to start Phase Three in 2026, under the current plan.
We've been spending some time this year, actually, quite a lot of, you know, mental capacity and analysis to start thinking about what concretely Phase Three could entail. Today I wanna just highlight the sort of four areas that we have identified as kind of the core elements of, of that part of our journey. Now let me move to the next slide, which really highlights these four areas. From the left-hand side, Americas expansion. In the following, I will talk in a couple of slides what concretely American expansion means to us. That, because it's located here on the left-hand side of the first bubble, this is clearly the one, the number one topic for the company when we think about Phase Three. European competitive is important. Tornio in Finland is the most competitive stainless steel asset in all of European Union.
Overall, our system in... It is a very competitive industry in Europe. We need to even further improve our competitiveness. How we concretely do that, what we plan to do, is also high on Phase Three agenda. We have value chain integration. As you know, raw materials play a very important role in our cost structure, and we want to make sure that when we buy raw materials, that we are finding sources where the CO, CO2 emissions are low and where the actual raw material source is sustainably managed. I'm excited to, to tell you that in June, we announced that we had acquired a minority stake in FPX Nickel. It is a Canadian junior mine located in the western side of Canada, and it is a unique asset potentially because that nickel source is estimated to have very, very low CO2 emission requirements.
It's going to be a very exciting asset once the mine development gets underway. Then on the right-hand side, sustainability leadership. Energy efficiency is, at the current moment, one of our top projects. At the end of Q3, I told you our objective is to reduce our energy or increase our energy efficiency by 8%. We're making good progress on that, and we're allocating capital to unlock that value. Now, let's talk a bit about Americas. When I talk about Americas for Outokumpu, it's, it's the United States and it's Mexico. So combined, that is really the, the market where we operate. Maybe as a backdrop, first, I wanna raise our sort of, you know, flight, flight level a little bit here.
I mean, we've been living over the last, you know, since I would say the early 2000s, late 1990s, in a very globalizing world. As we've seen from the news flows over the last 1.5 years, there is a lot of discussion increasingly about de-globalization, de-risking, maybe even decoupling. As we see it, the United States is investing systematically to strengthen its domestic economy. They've initiated multiple, let's say, regulatory initiatives, from the Inflation Reduction Act to Build America, Buy America Act, and so forth. The U.S. government and the states are very serious in bringing back industry to the U.S., to strengthening its industrial backbone and to bring back jobs to the U.S. This is not a 1 decade, 1 year, or 1 quarter evolution.
This is a big pivot, a big fundamental change we see happening. Outokumpu wants to be part of that journey. We are one of two leading suppliers of stainless steel in the United States. We are in a unique position to participate and contribute to developing the U.S. industrial backbone. I also want to state that Mexico is also a very interesting market. We're clearly seeing that increasingly capital is flowing, not necessarily into China, but into countries like Vietnam, India, Indonesia, and Mexico. Mexico is interesting because we are the only producer of stainless steel in that country. We have a number of customers, both from Europe, who are expanding their capacity in Mexico. Also U.S. customers who are also investing in Mexico. Combined, the U.S. and, and Mexico really make an interesting market for, for, for Outokumpu.
I wanna state one fact that I picked up here recently, and that is that if you look at real total manufacturing construction spend in the U.S. In 2021 it was about $100 billion. 2023 estimate is $200 billion. On the manufacturing side, expenditures have-- are increasing by $100 billion. While you have these, these different initiatives here, you can clearly see that things are starting to happen in the U.S. In terms of then, what are we doing here? We are working hard to evaluate different options. At the top of the list is hot rolling in the U.S., in Calvert. Why?
We have 900,000 tons of melt capacity, we have 900,000 tons of hot rolling, which is done by an external party, we have 600,000 tons of cold rolling in the Americas. We need to think about how to develop that further. Clearly, in order for us to grow our business, we will need to further expand and find a working long-term solution for our hot rolling. For that reason, we have underway a feasibility study to explore the option of investing in Calvert in that. We haven't made any decisions, but the work is progressing rapidly, and the readiness to decide is growing quickly. That is as far as I can tell you about phase three at the moment, so no decisions, but the readiness is increasing.
Hot rolling has a strategic logic against the backdrop of where the U.S. market and the Mexican market is going during the course of this decade, but then also with respect to our own footprint in the U.S. and where we see concrete long-term needs. With respect to cold rolling, of course, you know, in phase 2, we have already announced our plans to expand our existing operations capacity to 80,000 tons, and that work continues. That is roughly where we are today. I would like to hand it over to Pia to talk about the numbers, and then I'll come back with a brief risk commentary and the outlook. Thank you.
Thank you so much, Heikki. Having those exciting opportunities in mind and, and, and looking forward even into strategy phase three, I thought it could be a good point still to start from our current balance sheet, from our current strengths, and, you know, what's our starting point to think about the long-term future. Let's just dive right into it. I think after Q2, we have paid dividends. During the first half of the year, we also completed our first share buyback program ever, and we still stand at a negative net debt at the end of June. We also got, I think, a really nice credit rating upgrade by Moody's during the quarter, so I think our current balance sheet is in really good shape and the strongest in the industry. A good starting point.
As Heikki has also described, there is uncertainty in terms of the market environment. I will still get back a bit also with BA-specific comments, but I think on group level it means that the practices that we have set in place in terms of capital discipline, we just need to further enforce them. We need to really work with those. I think what we have done on top of the excellent work done by a number of projects groups to assess investments and the markets, we have also focused a lot on modeling various options, you know, for future developments, and in all of those, really taking care to see that the commitment that we as management have also done versus the dividend payment remains solid in those scenarios. I think that takes from us also this constant capital discipline and focus on the balance sheet.
In the second half of this year, you will see that we have a focus on the CapEx. I mean, what we can do here and now in this market environment is to take a few prudent measures, a little bit reduce the CapEx for this year to EUR 170 million. There's many and quite significant cost-saving measures. I think Heikki will get back to those still, and obviously, cash control in terms of working capital. I think we have a good team to consider all of this and to really have this constantly on our agenda. Let me take you through really a few of the key financials of the quarter. I was thinking that what would be the most important ones to pick from here? I think in terms of the market environment, I will also get back with some BA-specific comments.
You can also see from this chart that the volume, the actual volume, even though it was aligned with how we were also seeing the second quarter upfront, it is a low volume. I think especially looking at Europe, it has this sort of COVID time feeling of it, I mean, the really low volumes that we are approaching also versus Q3. Still looking at some of the highlights of the quarter, I would pick up here some of the some of the result-related figures. Also, looking at the earnings per share at EUR 0.21, you may remember that for the previous year, our base dividend was at EUR 0.25, so I think we have already accumulated a good starting point during the first half of the year for the earnings per share here.
As said, net debt remaining negative. Heikki said I would come back to some progress that we are making in terms of our strategy execution. You remember, it's now one year ago that we launched the second phase of our strategy, and before that, we had completed a pretty cost-focused phase during the years of 2021 and into 2022. With that, we already made EBITDA run rate improvements of EUR 250 million. As many of those were cost-driven, it's also a really good support now in this current market environment and also in this inflationary environment. Looking into the projects that we are working with right now, I think the best utilization of scrap, along with the energy efficiency improvements, are like obvious candidates for the top of the list.
We do have a lot of projects in the pipeline as well. You see, we have accumulated EUR 82 million worth of improvements to date in this second phase, and I think we have a good, good pipeline of initiatives here to reach EUR 200 million by the end of this phase at the latest. I would say there's also a few really interesting ones, for example, in Americas, enabling the volume growth that we are targeting in the second phase already, and I think all of those are, you know, in good shape in terms of the preparation, even though, of course, we are not seeing the volumes of those realized yet as per today. From what we can see in the second quarter, I would say there was a pretty big emphasis on improvements out of BA Europe.
I think that then brings me to the status of the financials and the situation in BA Europe. Heikki already pretty strongly shared this message here, that we did see a weakening, pretty fast weakening of the market environment during the second quarter, and this is certainly reflected already in the second quarter results. I think just looking into the second quarter, there was a lower volume, there were lower prices, and also some negative raw material impacts. Maybe specific for Europe, you may recall there was this, like, moly spike as well, started actually already in February, but some of that was sort of weaning out during the quarter with some negative impacts as well.
We still had really good utilization in Tornio. I think this also now continues as we even are in this sort of seasonal low point in Q3. We still continue to have, apart, of course, from the scheduled maintenance break, a good loading in Tornio, but we are indeed seeing a very weak European market, so it means that at some other sites, we are clearly now at some lower volumes into the quarter. The market environment, as I said, it almost has a little bit of this, like, COVID type of vibe in it. When Heikki said that there are already, just now in July... or, well, it's August today, but in July, we could see, let's say, some improvement here in the order intake.
With that happening in July, and I would say what we are quoting right now in Europe is more, you know, later part of September, it's like September and October, it really means that if there's any improvement now, that's something then that we will see in our financials as realized invoicing more really towards the end of the quarter, or I would more say Q4. What we feel in the third quarter in our result is then, you know, the outcome of anything that basically happened in the order intake during the later part, especially of the second quarter, when the market was clearly softening. I think this European environment for Q3 is clearly very challenging, as I think we have also stated here.
I thought I would still comment on the maintenance in BA Europe, and I think we are seeing regular shutdowns at most of our big sites here. I think quarter-on-quarter, the sequential increase in maintenance cost in BA Europe is something, you know, EUR 7 million-EUR 8 million, maybe up to EUR 10 million. That's kind of the magnitude really of the direct maintenance cost increase that we can see. Let me then take you next to BA Americas. Obviously, there's a lot of really positive things we could say on the, the, the growth opportunities and the dynamism in the market. If we really look at the here and now, if we look at the second quarter and going forward into the third quarter, the headline story here is still one of destocking and is there a story already of restocking?
Just looking at really the absolute level of inventories, based on the statistics that, that we all can find out there, it's clear that we are already at those sort of historic average level. We are, I think, even in absolute terms, sort of back to pre-COVID levels. However, there is this sort of macro uncertainty as well that Heikki also talked about, and I think it's putting a little bit of a, of a lid on the happiness, so to say. The market environment is not particularly sort of strongly rebounding. I think when we as a group are guiding for volumes to be decreasing, it's the seasonal decrease, and, and, and you know that's particularly Europe, but we do not see any sort of rebound in the volumes in Americas either for this quarter yet.
I think the market remains somewhat cautious at this point in time. You can see from our realized excellent results, that I think we have kept the good margins. The price level remained robust also through the second quarter, and we also had some positive raw material impacts, again, where I would not be too bold in promising that those repeat in the third quarter, but I do think they benefited us during the second quarter here. Ferrochrome, you know, this was a good quarter of rebound in two ways. We managed to do really full production again, with energy prices being back more to normal. That both impacted the production volume, it also impacted our cost side, which clearly improved. At the same time, obviously, we have some impacts here from just having to build inventory.
It's visible in the group's balance sheet, a bit in the working capital, and it's also visible in the somewhat lower delivery volumes, because we need to prepare for the bigger maintenance stop that we will have during the third quarter. The overall impact of that, you know, the full impact is about EUR 10 million negative quarter-on-quarter from Q2 then to Q3. Good rebound here. On the cash flow here, and on the right-hand side, just really briefly, you see that we are now stating in our report that the CapEx... Oh, sorry, for this year is now forecasted at EUR 170 million.
When you look at the 2022 graph, you see that we still had this significant share of the Kemi Deep Mine strategic investment still in 2022. I think, you know, around EUR 50 million, I think there's only a small tail of that remaining in our cash CapEx in this year, maybe EUR 10 million. You see that there is still room for other investments also within this EUR 170 million. On the working capital, during the quarter, we had some increase. There is a normal seasonality to a little bit increase on the working capital side here. If I really look into the details of this quarter, there are some of these other market dynamics in the background. If you look quarter-on-quarter, the biggest impact here actually was the negative impact from a decreased accounts payable.
That's, I think, testimony then to the market situation, where we have maybe also been buying a little bit less. We have built inventory in, in ferrochrome, and we have also built some other inventory ahead of the annual maintenance stops in Q3. I think with that said, Heikki, I would hand back to you.
Thank you, Pia. I think based on what you just said, I think we can see that we are, as a company, we're managing the changing conditions with confidence, are we not?
Absolutely.
Exactly. I like this picture because I think, you know, if any of you have... For those of you who, who do sailing, you know that in sailing, what's really critical is how you manage those turns. In the steel industry, and stainless in particular, I mean, it is a bit like sailing. You know, you're turning the boat left and right, and you really have to manage the turns quickly and effectively. If you can do that, you know, you can compete very well. I think we are, as a company, we're pretty, pretty good at turning the ship. We're agile when, when it needs to be the case. I think as an example of that, I want to show you the following slide, which is that we are accelerating even more and putting more energy and focus on procurement.
I'm very, very happy to tell you that Marc-Simon Schaar , who's been heading, among others, our raw material procurement, so he is now the new Chief Procurement Officer of the company and a member of our leadership team. Marc-Simon and his team have an interesting and important, very important task: to really fight inflation. What we're saying here today is, we aim to reduce our consumable costs by 15%-20% in Q3. In addition to that, of course, sustainability and, and being able to manage the raw material procurement in the most sustainable way is important, and, and Marc-Simon and his team are also working a lot on that. I already talked about energy efficiency work. Also on that front, we're making good progress.
Maybe to take a bit of a step back here at the end and look at, you know, risks, both upside and, and downside risks. On the positives, clearly, as we've discussed here, we did see a bit of that pickup in order intake in July, let's see where that takes us as, as folks come back from vacation. A lot of, you know, headlines out there on China stimulus. You know, I think many of us thought, you know, things were gonna start post-COVID in January, February, then Q2 was weak. The Chinese state has stated that they intend to stimulate also the local economy again, and maybe with some concrete and sizable measures. Let's see how that flows into the markets and whether those actions then really also move China forward.
China is over half of the Asian GDP, so what really happens in China is very material when it comes to demand of, of stainless steel and, and, and metals, among others. Low distributor inventories, as we've said, when will restocking begin? Are we close to that point now? Then we've talked about our own actions, and then Circle Green. On the uncertainty side, of course, scrap markets are tightening. We do, however, feel that we're well-sourced. We have good supply sources, we have good partnerships, and we have a very professional and good organization buying, so I feel good about our situation on scrap. As you saw, our amount of recycled metal was 94%, which is the highest of any company in the industry.
Inflation pressures seem to be moving downward, we're gonna take advantage of that as we head into the fourth quarter. Of course, energy and electricity was the big topic last year, last winter. It's very good that in Finland now, Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant is running full. As we head into this winter months, you know, we are going to be taking advantage of, of course, Olkiluoto's electricity supply in the Nordics, which make the Nordic market much more balanced in terms of supply, and of course, helps keep a lid on the price of power here up in the north. Against those facts, let me just summarize the outlook for the third quarter.
Group stainless steel deliveries in the third quarter are expected to decrease by 5%-15% compared to the second quarter, in line with the seasonal pattern. For business area Europe, the market environment is challenging in the third quarter. The planned maintenance break in business area Ferrochrome is expected to have an approximately EUR 10 million negative impact on the business areas, adjusted EBITDA, EBITDA. Maintenance costs for the rest of the group in the third quarter are expected to increase by up to EUR 10 million compared to the second quarter. With current raw material prices, some raw material related inventory and metal derivative losses are expected to be realized in the third quarter. The guidance for Q3 2023, adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter of 2023, is expected to be lower compared to the second quarter.
With that outlook and background, Pia and I are happy to take your questions. Thank you.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Tom Zhang from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon, hi, Heikki and Pia. Thanks very much for taking our questions. Two for me. The first one, just on Ferrochrome. Obviously the Q2 contract price in Europe was reset quite a bit higher, so I'm a little bit surprised the sort of revenue per ton wasn't a little bit stronger. I recognize, you know, as you say, you did have to build some inventories in there, but is there anything else that we're missing on the Ferrochrome division? That's my first one. Thanks.
Thank you, Tom. I think when you're asking if you're missing something, then obviously this was a quarter of sort of starting up things again after having a lower production in the first quarter. Even though we had the positive from the sales price and a bit of boost also from the energy, please remember that on the energy, as, as we have said, we are also hedged to, you know, two-thirds or even up to 70%. A lot of this was still, still sort of, you know, already agreed upon earlier, what cost level we would end up at. I, I think kind of on the balance of all of those things and building inventory, you know, this, this is where we ended up.
Got you. I, I, I guess, there's still probably a few cost items that roll off through the second half of the year. Then the second question was just on the timing of some of these investments. I mean, I know you've only just started the feasibility studies, but maybe in the context of you've set phase three to start from 2026, should I read that as that's when the CapEx should start moving up more materially? Is that, you know, that's when you want to be ramping up some of these expansions and raising your sort of EBDA run rates, in which case we should expect a bit more of a pickup in CapEx already sort of next year in 2025. Thanks.
Right. The factors that sort of drive the timing from our standpoint are, I would say two things. One, of course, is the overall readiness that we have, you know, the right resources in place. We have finalized our discussions with various equipment suppliers and contractors, and we have just finalized the actual business case, you know, ready for decision making. I don't want to, at this stage, you know, give a exact date, but I want to reiterate what I said earlier, which is that, you know, our readiness to invest is growing and, and is fairly high. The specific timing, where it hits the calendar year, at this moment, I will refrain from stating more accurately what it could be. We'll have to come back when we're really ready.
Fair enough. Thank you. I'll, I'll turn it back.
The next question comes from Anssi Raussi from SEB. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thanks for the presentation. I have a few questions. Maybe the first one about Q2 and actually more about Q3. The last quarter was strong in Americas. Do you think we could see a similar quarter in Q3 as well, or how should we think about that one?
Yeah, maybe if... Hi, Anssi, maybe if I can, I can start on that one. I, I, I think, you know, on, on the market, just, just, you know, even though seasonally we don't have the same decline as typically in Europe, still sort of waiting for that really sort of restocking sign or, or, or, or signal. Haven't seen that. I, I would be cautious, sort of on just, not, not sort of assuming that there will be some volume pickup yet at this point. Then if we consider cost elements, there were some positive elements on the raw material side in the Q2, that I don't think we can just say they will just repeat.
With that said, on balance, those, those elements at least I could take into account, and then obviously, we still saw very resilient pricing in the second quarter. We'll have to follow up with the market now, how that continues into the third quarter.
M aybe if I can just build on that and just state that, two things. First of all, for many of our large distributor customers in, in the U.S., they don't really have that much visibility with respect to their own demand. Many of them supply, you know, short, small quantities of, of stainless steel, and the orders really come, and they supply them within 24 hours or 48 hours. Things actually can change quite rapidly. Just as you've been looking at the headlines on, on macro forecast on the U.S., is the recession coming? Yes, it is. No, it isn't. I mean, it's kind of moving back and forth, depending on what analysts is, is next. I would say it's been a bit the same with the customers, that they're a little bit uncertain should they accelerate or still wait.
This sort of back-and-forth situation seems to be also going on in the U.S. News in the last few days have been, again, a bit more positive.
Mm, mm.
Let's see, you know, what, what autumn will then bring.
Okay, thanks. That's really helpful. Then maybe then about the BA Europe, like, I understand that you're guiding Q3 to be weak, but maybe to give us some kind of a ballpark here, like, are we talking about single-digit numbers in terms of EBITDA, or maybe even close to zero, or what kind of ballpark we are looking at here?
Anssi, I think it's a fair question, as you know, we, we, we can see that, you know, second quarter results were already, you know, starting to decline, and then at the same time, we still have a volume drop. You know, we are operating in a market environment where actual realized prices were falling during the second quarter. You know, any pickup that we may see now, right now, would just impact more actually into the fourth quarter. There is a number of, let's say, pressured items, and that is why we really wanted to say very openly that this is a very challenging environment.
I don't wanna give a figure, but if we think about sort of COVID, if I recall right, BA Europe was down to a single-digit figure, in that third quarter of 2020. I think the market environment, in many senses, you know, the touch and feel here is the same, so there's a lot of similarity.
Okay, thanks. The last one from me is about your annual, annual contracts. Like, can you remind us, what kind of pricing mechanisms you have in these contracts? Like, are these alloy surcharges and fixed base price-based contracts, or what kind of structure you have in these?
Yeah, there is no one fixed rule. It very much depends on the customer and the end-use sector, and also the country. In Europe, of course, it's been sort of moving a bit back and forth between, you know, alloy surcharge and fixed, and so you've had these, you know, movements. I would just say, in general, when we fix the contracts, usually you make a commitment on volume, and then you will have different types of, you know, you know, volume rebates. Then in terms of the pricing, you know, there are different arrangements depending on the customer. This is something that, you know, as we head into the end of the year, fourth quarter, we will then start to get a better sense for what the, what the world looks like for 2024. Still too early to say at this stage.
Okay, thank you so much. That's all from me.
The next question comes from Tristan Gresser from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, thank you for taking my questions. I have a couple on, on the phase three that you started to talk about. Starting off with the U.S., I mean, you flagged such a large deficit for the region, and I'm wondering why you are not exploring, let's say, a new greenfield facility with new upstream capacity. Also, with the current feasibility study you're looking at on the rolling side, what, what's the potential volume increase, without adding another electric arc furnace? That's the, kind of the first question.
I'm not sure if I heard exactly the beginning of, of the question, but please, you know, come back, you know, if, if I don't answer it accurately. In terms of the current site, we have plenty of space to expand within, you know, the current geographic location, and it makes sense for us to maximize the scale of Calvert in many respects. We also have a logistics chain from Calvert into Mexico and back. Calvert is well over, well, you know, located also for scrap sourcing, so it's a good place to be. We really want to scale up Calvert further. In terms of the capacity, you know, if and when we make a decision, you know, for example, on hot rolling, so that amount of capacity is still sort of.
It's still under consideration. Obviously, with the current 900,000 tons, that's sort of the minimum level we obviously need just to maintain our existing production. Then to develop the asset further for future expansion, of course, you would need to have more, but, but that amount is something that, you know, when the day comes that we, we announce a decision, we'll then tell you.
Oh, okay. Okay, now that's clear. You haven't ruled out necessarily further, let's say, upstream capacity, or you're just looking at rolling?
No, at the moment, as we've said here, specifically, the focus is on rolling at the moment. That is, that in itself as a project is, you know, it's, it's a lot, a lot of work to do in itself, and it's better to kind of focus on one thing at a time.
All right. No, that's, that's fair. My second question is also on phase three, a little bit on Europe. Can you give us maybe some early indication of what could be done, you know, to improve competitiveness there? Also interestingly, you also flagged some potential capacity expansion in Europe. Of course, the market currently is pretty depressed, but I was curious to what you have in mind and what's your view on the medium-term demand outlook in the region that tells you that maybe further capacity may be required, and is it also maybe tied to the carbon border adjustment mechanism? Thank you.
Yeah, many, many very good questions and, and a very comprehensive, you know, list of topics which are very relevant. I mean, if we kinda look at Outokumpu's assets, as I've said, I mean, we have this unique position with the, the chrome mine, where the investments have now been completed, Tornio, and then we have Krefeld and, and the rest. This, of course, it's a very much a question of. It's always a cost game. I mean, these are commodity products on, on the Stainless Europe side, and cost competitiveness is key. So obviously, we're looking at all kinds of solutions where we can, of course, reduce our variable costs, but also fixed costs. But that work is still, still, still so, you know, underway that I really don't, and I cannot really, you know, open that open that up anymore.
I do, however, wanna come back on this, on this carbon border adjustment mechanism, because once that is in installed, it does, of course, mean that for companies like, like ours, with very, very low emissions, it should give us a relative competitive advantage. With the high amount of scrap, the chromium, we are well positioned. Under phase two, we have said that our plan is already to increase our capacity in Stainless Europe, specifically because we are debottlenecking and we're simplifying the portfolio, and we're trying to increase the throughput. That was, in itself, already growing the supply volume, but that's sort of a phase two action without putting any major CapEx into that. Just by, by making things more efficiently, we are able to generate more, extract more volume out of the existing system.
That's a Phase Two. We're not commenting on Phase Three, anything on volume.
All right. I know that, that, that's fair. Maybe, maybe a last one on, on you. I'm sorry, it's all about phase three, but it's, it's very interesting. You're not necessarily looking at developing alloys business like certain peers are. I was potentially expecting to see more interest on the phase three when you get growth opportunities. If you can maybe discuss a little bit why the alloys business as, as a whole is, is not necessarily something you consider at this stage. Thank you.
Yeah, we have, within business area Europe, we have the advanced materials business, where we have what we call in our system, the duplex grades, the pro grades in general, which go to more sophisticated, you know, complex industrial applications, and that is something that we're developing currently, actively. But we see, we see sufficient opportunities internally to organically grow that without, at the moment, any major capacity expansion. We still have work to do there to grow globally, in these pro grades, and therefore, they are... Yes, they are a very high focus, but, but they're not sort of a phase three, CapEx thing, per se.
All right.
America, America is really America is, as I said, it's, it's unique in the sense that the big global chain, macro changes, the big trends, I mean, we're basically seeing a pretty fundamental shift in RBU globally, and we really want to be riding this big wave as it gradually, you know, moves forward over the next decade.
All right. That's, that's really clear. I jump in the queue. Thank you.
The next question comes from Krishan Agarwal from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Hi, Heikki and Pia. I mean, thanks a lot for taking my question. On the Americas, strategic growth plans, would you help us breaking down the current cost structure? I mean, incremental costs, which you are incurring primarily on the logistics for the melting, product to go and for the HR to come back. Also, what are the savings you would be expecting if the HR production were to be in-house versus the current arrangement?
Thank you, Krishan. I think in the current arrangements, we are doing the hot rolling with a partner, but on the same site. In that sense, the logistic costs are, I would say, perhaps of a smaller nature here. There is something, but I, I don't think it's sort of something worth, worth sort of, describing in further detail here. Overall, of course, we are here also looking for the growth opportunity into the future and, and considering this. I do think it's very interesting to think about the cost positioning and the various scenarios, but as this, you know, investment is only one scenario, I think maybe then at a later stage, if applicable, we would come back with more details.
Understand. Moving, moving on to the existing business, in the Americas, raw raw material gains, which you mentioned, was one of the source for the better performance. Could you help us as in, what is the magnitude of those gains? Because, I mean, that will help us to get a perspective on Q3 expectations for Americas.
It's a double-digit figure. It's a low double-digit figure.
Okay, low double digit. Then the third question, I mean, you mentioned that you have repaid a personal, sorry, pension loan, into the June. Does it mean that the book value of the pension liabilities go down, or it was, this was just a, you know, ordinary course of the loan?
Thank you for asking that. That's a, that's a very good question to, to specify, because this is a little bit of a special Finnish funding type. This was really a loan. It was in our debt. You are right that it's connected with, you know, pension payments that we have done into the Finnish, you know, legally sort of, regulated pension system. Then when you have paid, like we have, of course, paid pension costs, then we can kind of borrow it back, but it doesn't impact the pension liability that we have on the balance sheet. It was really debt, like interest-bearing debt, and it doesn't impact our net debt position, because basically, we have taken down our cash position and repaid this loan.
Of course, you know, there's a small saving then in the interest rate for us by doing that.
I understand. The final question, is on working capital. I mean, the volumes going lower in the Q3, prices going lower, I mean, this is kind of ideal condition for the working capital release.
Right.
How should we think about the working capital in Q3?
I think your assessment is right, looking at multiple years of history, yes, maybe there was some anomaly when there was the very quick COVID rebound. Other than that, I mean, the typical pattern for us is end of Q3, inventory at its lowest, when, you know, we have been going through this cycle of maintenance breaks, et cetera. End of Q4, overall working capital, lowest point, and then again, building working capital in Q1 and Q2. Last year, I was pretty specific to say that during last year we had some changes in the supply chain because of the war in Ukraine and because of change of some supplier relationship.
That's when I said last year that, "Hey, you know, there's probably like EUR 100 million or, or maybe even a bit more than that, that really sort of will stick because we have these new arrangements." This year we haven't been going through that kind of structural changes. I would assume that you know, we have the pretty normal annual cycle here for this year.
I understand. Okay, that's it from my side.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Bastian Synagowitz from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon, all. I just have a quick follow-up on the ferrochrome business, and how we should be thinking about the next quarter. Pia, you already obviously walked us through a couple of the points here, which caused the maybe slightly lower than expected performance in ferrochrome in the second quarter. If we think, think about the third quarter, we obviously have the maintenance break, that's EUR 10 million. We get the price cut, obviously, from the benchmark price. Usually, that would be probably another EUR 20 million. That would bring us very close to break even. Yet, in a normal environment at these price levels, historically, you've probably made closer to EUR 60 million EBITDA. Could you maybe just help us a little bit to understand the balance of this?
Should maybe the performance be a little bit more flattish and stable into the third quarter in ferrochrome, or should we indeed assume that we could, could slip towards levels very close to break even?
Yeah.
Thank you.
I have two observations. Thank you, Bastian, for that question. I, and I think the first observation is that we already benefited from somewhat lower electricity costs. You know, there was also, unfortunately, a really high level in that earlier, and now it is rebounding. We had some of these, you know, levels already, already sort of set before. With that said, I wouldn't expect really between Q2 and Q3 any sort of major boost, but gradually we will still get some boost from this sort of deflationary impacts and then also our own, own actions. They don't necessarily all come yet in, in Q3. I, I think when we then go forward to Q4 and, and, you know, a bit into next year, we can still benefit a little bit from this level here going down.
I think that's one thing. The other thing is obviously, you know, following this uncertainty that we have in the market, I think if you follow the spot pricing of ferrochrome, that has been a fairly sort of, what should I say? A depressed story lately. The market itself doesn't seem very vibrant at the moment.
Okay. Okay, perfect. No, thanks, thanks for that. That was my question. Thank you.
Thank you, Bastian.
The next question comes from Harri Taittonen from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you, and good afternoon. Maybe on, on the topic of the U.S. investments, could you help a little bit giving the layman a feel of what the typical unit investment cost would be for cold rolling and hot rolling quick? I mean, is it something like $300 per ton of annual capacity for hot rolling? Would that be really? I mean, just as a ballpark, I mean, is that sort of fair, and cold rolling a bit higher? Related to that, how should we think about the returns? I can, I can see the cold rolling investment being kind of growth-oriented and giving a volume boost right away, so I can, I can see the, sort of, the calculations there. If the...
Should, should we see the hot rolling then more as a sort of replacement investment in a way that, it, it, it's kind of, replacing the current, sort of, setup, and therefore we should perhaps, sort of, think about the returns from that, that sort of angle? Or how, what would be the return hurdles, please?
Hi, Harri. Thank you. I think, if, if I think about the hot rolling, I, I think about it as, you know, a mix between what you call the replacement, because obviously we have an arrangement in, in place right now, and then also an opportunity for growth. Heikki was talking about this earlier, that, you know, really defining what the capacity would be, et cetera, that's still something that we are preparing, preparing for and, and would then potentially talk about later. I think there is this, you know, something of an element of growth also embedded in this hot rolling. It enables, of course, then, you know, further steps, later, later on, for example. That's, that's one perspective, and, and I think we should just, really consider that such a hot rolling investment is significant in size.
You know, are we then talking about the size order of a magnitude in absolute terms of even up to EUR 1 billion? These are things that we will need to come back to, but I think that's one way of thinking about it.
Yeah. No, that's, that's, that's good. Maybe... I mean, no one has asked about the EUR 500 million-EUR 600 million EBITDA in a normalized environment so far, so maybe, maybe can I, can I kind of do that then? How, how does that sort of assessment sound now with the evidence of the, the second quarter earnings and, and your feel on the, on the third quarter and, and, you know, has something changed there in, or is that still your current valid assessment?
Thank you, Harri, for that question. Indeed, it is still, I think, mine and our current valid assessment. Yes, we have seen quite a dramatic trough coming up here now. If you look at, you know, the first half result, we are close to EUR 400 million of EBITDA. We are going towards a weaker Q3. Certainly also in normal, you know, in more normal years, maybe we typically have stronger Q1 and Q2, and somewhat weaker Q3 and Q4. Maybe it's even a bit accentuated this year. I think that assessment is still aligned with our broader view of our company's ability to generate, you know, EBITDA in a normalized environment.
Indeed, that is the case.
Okay, great. Thank you. If there's time, for a third question, I mean, on, on the price mix overall. Sort of interesting, both in Europe and Americas that, Well, first of all, in Europe that with, with the sort of indications of, investment slowing among some capital goods companies at least, I mean, how is the quality mix in, in the order book developing and your pro grade share in the total order? I mean, how, how the, how does that that sort of a balance look like going forward?
If I can just say, I think in, in the second quarter, you know, First of all, I mean, with respect to the pro grades, the whole sector, this whole energy transition to a green economy, that will create demand. I mean, there are many, many applications where stainless steel would be, will be used, you know, from hydrogen to all kinds of energy, energy type investments. You know, the, the outlook longer term looks solid. I think what we have seen here in Q2 was simply, I think, a number of customers on the project side, they are waiting. They're holding off partly because of the metal, significant metal volatility. We saw, for example, moly move up and down. Capital costs have been, you know, rising. For some projects, we could probably have seen that customers are
Their hurdle rate has gone up, and they've taken a decision to kind of hold off a little bit. Inherently, I mean, there is a growing need for these investments, and we do think that it creates a good, positive, solid, you know, background for, for growth in pro grades. We are working hard to sell more of that, not only in Europe, but globally, because we are really the market leader globally in, in that sector. Anything you would like to add?
Yeah. I'll, I'll just add, the, the small detail that from Q2, Q2 into Q3, I think the mix could go a little bit weaker. It's really a very marginal impact, Harri, so.
Okay, thanks for this. Thank you.
Thanks.
The next question comes from Moses Ola from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hey, Pia. Hey, Heikki. Thank you very much for the invitation, for taking my question. I have 2 questions. I'll take them 1 at a time, if possible, please. The first one, I just wanted to clarify: Is your CapEx target for phase two of EUR 600 million still retained? If I look at current CapEx, it continues to run below appreciation, obviously reduced CapEx in a few years. How should we consider this in terms of the phase two growth target, first one, please?
Moses, thank you. The CapEx for 2023, I think we have now adjusted a bit to EUR 170 million. I mean, kind of continuing on, on the phase two logic we announced before, it would mean that this + EUR 30 million would need to land in 2024 or, you know, into 2025. I think following what Heikki said before, the timing of, you know, those, those, for example, Americas related investments, we would then announce those separately. Of course, we are leaning towards the phase three when talking about those, but the exact timing we will need to come back to. We are now in the phase two, EUR 600 million overall situation until we then announce anything else.
Thank you. One thing else that I noticed, other targets within now to 2025, the net zero target in Kemi, how is that currently progressing? Also the investment for Biocoke, is that something that is still valid for phase three as well, please?
Yeah, the first, I'll take the biocoque question first, but then was it on the energy efficiency? Sorry, what was your first question? I didn't hear it.
So the net zero target in Kemi by 2025, could you just provide an update to how you're tracking with this, please?
On the biocoque, we are continuing the preparation, so obviously, it needs to be, you know, balanced with the, with all of the plans that we have here. We are still now working on the feasibility of that, so we'll need to come back later when we have more updates. On the CO2 reduction target, so you know we have these SBTi targets, and we are following this up every month.
Mm-hmm.
The last time we looked at it, I think we tracked really well vis-a-vis those targets. We really have a lot of initiatives going on, and especially as we added this boost through the energy efficiency, I think we are really well on track. That's probably also something that we, at some point, need to add a bit more data points to report on those.
We can do that, yeah.
Thank you for that. Finally, for me, your balance sheet still remains net cash, even after the pension payment, and you guided for some reversal of working capital to support that cash position in the second half of the year. How could we consider potential shareholder returns, given your current organization as well, for a 10% buyback?
Yeah. Moses, I think it's a spot-on question, given that it's our priority to ensure that we also have sufficient fund for the dividend payments. Given the balance of where we are right now with our cash position, with our net debt position, and then the outlook into...
Mm
T he second half of the year, where obviously the EBITDA outlook is now weaker, but at the same time, there are some working capital releases possible. I still remain confident from a CFO's perspective that, you know, we are on track with what we said before, that we have this stable and growing dividend possible.
Yeah, okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Patrick Mann from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Good day, Heikki and Pia. Thank you very much for the presentation. I had a couple of questions. The one is just again, sorry, on the Phase three and the U.S. expansion. Is there a scenario where you could build out some of your own hot rolling capacity and continue to use the third-party 900? You know, as far as I can see, that agreement goes until the mid-2030s, unless it's canceled. Does any of your own expansion automatically have to cancel that, or is it just an easier way to configure the plant? So maybe just if you could help us with that, 'cause that could make, you know, that could make a growth CapEx to start and replacement later.
I'll ask my second question after that one, if that's okay. Thank you.
Yeah, I think, of course, it depends also, the, our, our, our, contract roller, of course, you know, they have their own plans and their own needs, so depends then on what, what they need to do in the, in the, in the future. I think, you know, as we're looking at the, the investment currently, we are trying to size that so that, you know, at once we make the investment, that would sort of fit our longer-term needs. You know, once you start fitting, building it, you know, you, you don't wanna change, come back and change it again, right? Of course, you can build, you can build these lines so that, you know, you have a certain amount of capacity, and then you can augment it later, and that's also possible.
We're looking at all, all options, you know, in terms of, you know, getting to the final level or then some base volume and then expansion potential. All options are being evaluated.
Thanks. Maybe the follow-up is. Please correct me if I'm wrong. In my understanding is your U.S. business is a bit more or quite heavily weighted towards distributors versus the European business. As part of the kind of growth, and, and focus on expanding your, your U.S. business, do you envision that changing at all, or do you think you'll continue to service the, sort of your existing customer mix? Thanks very much.
Yeah, our-- we have a very solid customer mix. The U.S. market operates fundamentally very differently from, from Europe. It's of course, geographically, a huge area. These distributors, they have, you know, tens or hundreds of service centers across the country. They provide a 24, a 48-hour service with very small volumes. That is something that we can obviously not do effectively. They have a different service model, different service capability vis-a-vis us. We manufacture the stainless, and they do the final service. I think that model works very well. It's very efficient. Both parties have their own roles, so, so I pretty much envision that, you know, we will even further solidify the relationships we have with these distributors.
Try to take out costs from, you know, the supply chain, make it more even fluid and efficient in terms of information flow, in terms of being more better at predicting, you know, what the demand is so that, you know, we can take out cost. It's a good model, and we intend to further only solidify our relationships with these distributors.
Thanks very much.
The next question comes from Tom Zhang from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi again. Thanks very much for taking the follow-ups. Just two more, please, from me. On the raw material and metal derivative gains and losses, I guess for the group it was a EUR 12 million loss. Within that, Europe was a small loss, and Americas was a EUR 7 million gain. I actually get a sort of EUR 12 million loss that I guess is in corporate. As a little bit of a housekeeping question, how should we think about that, please? Is that derivatives or is that something else?
Thank you, Tom. That was derivatives, and, and I think, based on our hedging strategy, typically our portfolio of hedging is directly allocated to the BAs, but there could be certain market conditions where a certain restricted amount can remain on group, and that is exactly what happened here.
Okay. Thank you. The second one was just on the consumable costs. Sorry, in the presentation, I think you were talking about reduced consumable costs by 15%-20% for Q4. Could I just confirm is that all raw materials, or is it things like electrodes and refractories and those kind of consumables?
Yes.
Is that target excluding the effects of things like magne--? It's, it's not including the effect of, say, like magnesium prices and graphite prices moving down, right? It's an underlying change.
No, it's not. It's really the consumables here, like the ones that you mentioned, but maybe also something more practical like packaging materials, et cetera, so.
Great. Is there any kind of, help you can give on the sort of, you know, euro amounts on that, or?
The quarterly impact still, I think, is a high single-digit number.
Okay. Perfect. Very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you.
Bye.
The next question comes from Tristan Gresser from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking the follow-up. I have two. It's... The first one is on the Q3 guidance, and I appreciate what you said on Europe and ferrochrome as well. To follow up a little bit on the U.S., I need maybe some help to understand the positive raw material movements you had in Q2. If I look at the bridge you provide in the slide pack, the pricing and mix kind of impact in Q2 was, what? EUR 40 million-EUR 50 million, if I look at it, and ASP has fallen during the quarter.
If there was no mix effect, that, that would imply that, you know, those, those positive raw material that you're not seeing in Q3, they're, they're actually closer to EUR 40 million-EUR 50 million and can, can make quite a, a big difference if they're not there in Q3. I just wanted to, to see if my thinking was correct there, and then I have a follow-up. Thank you.
You know that within this bucket of pricing and mix, that we have the header on that. I, I know you talk about the variance bridge that we have as an appendix in, in the material. We also have the direct impacts that, that sort of the metal buying has into that bucket as well. There were some of those benefits that we reached, I would say, in a, you know, in a, in a certain market environment that certainly was not tight, from, from sort of a scrap perspective, for example, during the quarter. That's really kind of the, you know, unique event that happened during the quarter there, which maybe was a little bit different from just seeing the nickel going up or down or the moly spiking or something like that.
We would actually report separately in the timing and hedging bucket of our variance bridge, to be a bit technical here.
Okay.
EUR 40 million-EUR 50 million is, is to assume sort of too much, you know? It's, it's, it's one part-
Okay
O f that, that, that, that, that we have there. It is a, you know, a double-digit number, but it's, it's not as high as that.
All right. That's, that's very clear. Thank you. The second question is more on the U.S. market. I mean, you, you flagged a strong demand outlook, and at the moment you see a supply shortage of 400,000 tons in normalized market conditions. The first question is: Given, you know, this structural deficit, do you still believe that the U.S. market is bound to, to moderate, to correct in light of, you know, I don't know, global pricing developments? Also, when we look a little bit medium term, can you walk us through the, the structural demand drivers for the next coming years, and with perhaps some concrete example?
Because my understanding when I look at those, you know, new pools of demand, we, we analyze it's really, steel intensive for carbon, when you look at infrastructure, the new manufacturing plants. I'm curious for stainless specifically, where do you see those pockets of demand really materializing in the future? Thank you.
Right. Well, on, on the back, second half of your question, to keep it very simple, we don't have any supportive material to present today. Happy to come back to that question in more detail in future presentations and specifically when we get to the point of, of making a decision. Obviously, overall, we see two things happening. One is sort of increased repatriation of production from Asia, specifically also into Mexico. Secondly, the economy is growing, so consumption will grow, and then, of course, there is a certain amount of imports where we think that a local strong supplier could provide more production. Like we saw in COVID, post-COVID rebound, you know, we just ran out of capacity a number of times, and they had to be supplemented with imports.
That is sort of, those are the three drivers, but happy to come back to that question more specifically. Then in terms of this sort of, you know, de-averaging or, or, you know, let's say, coming back to some kind of long-term equilibrium in the market. I mean, basically, at the moment, what we're seeing is that demand and supply is, is in reasonable balance at the moment. You have these temporary adjustments in inventory, which I think are not really driven by, by sort of changes in underlying demand, but more driven by just customers' uncertainty about, you know, whether to accelerate or de-accelerate. That is sort of creating this unnecessary volatility, I would say, in demand.
Ultimately, the end user demand is not tremendously volatile, but this is more just a structural problem in the supply chain, and that, that makes sometimes our business a bit tough.
Mm.
We just have to be able to be agile and, you know, scale up and down, you know, as, as the customers order, so. As I said, overall, we, we, we look at the U.S. in a very positive light, including Mexico, of course.
Mm.
All right. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Maxime Kogge from Oddo BHF. Please go ahead.
Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Yeah, I just had a question on your guidance for volumes in Q3. If we could have more color by region, because you expect them to decrease by 5%-15% on average. I was wondering whether, I mean, it was fair to assume Europe would decrease very moderately, given that, in contrast to usual seasonal trends, Q2 shipments were actually lower than in Q1, and whether you therefore expected somehow, some kind of a peak there or, or at least stabilization, while in the U.S. it could be falling more sharply.
Indeed. Maxime, thank you very much, and I think when we are guiding 5%-15%
Mm-hmm
T hat is pretty much sort of the range that we have seen before on the seasonal decline quarter-on-quarter, particularly in Europe. I think the average, when I looked at the long time series, was maybe 10% down, quarter-on-quarter. We do see that seasonal pattern repeating in Europe, so there is a decline, despite the fact, as you said, that Q2 was already on a low, low level. I, I just don't wanna sort of jump to the conclusion that there would be a growth in Americas. I think based on all of the facts that we have discussed in this call, in the short term, there's still some uncertainty, and I would also, for the Americas part, see the volume a bit under pressure from Q2 into Q3.
Our typical way of guiding is that we give this range and we try to give it in a way that we are somehow comfortably in the middle there. Of course, this range is there to allow for some variation during the quarter.
Okay, perhaps the last question is on other operational intragroup items. They had been quite significantly positive in late last year. Now they are negative again. Is there some sort of normalized contribution we should assume for them going forward?
I'm sorry, normalized contribution for which, which, item?
For other operations. Yeah, for other operations.
Indeed
I ntragroup items.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What we have here in other operations, of course, there's like a normalized, you know, maybe it's like EUR 10 million-EUR 12 million of a certain sort of cost base that remains as, as sort of a corporate level cost. Then we had one item that was a little bit special. We had this remaining kind of long products operation, which was the Degerfors. That was still a part of the figure early this year.
Mm-hmm.
The divestment was closed now two days ago, so it will no longer be part of the figures going forward. There was a small profit early in this year coming from that, so that will fall off. We are then back to this cost base of maybe EUR 10 million-EUR 12 million. However, on top of that, there are two items that could vary, why I cannot give you just one easy figure. The first item is that occasionally, a part of the hedging portfolio on nickel could land there. Should never be anything really significant, but happened to be a bit bigger in this quarter.
Then the other part is, you know, when you are looking at the kind of supply chains that we have, we have some inventory that, you know, originated maybe in Tornio and, you know, then it went to Terneuzen and then maybe to Krefeld before it, it went to the customer. When inventory is moving between our own units, we then have to eliminate those margins to make the correct group level figure. With that said, you know, we have some eliminations, and they could vary based on the exact inventory count where it is.
Okay. So EUR 10 million-EUR 12 million per quarter, huh? Not, not per year.
That's the normal cost base per quarter, yes.
Okay. Okay, great. Thank you.
The next question comes from Krishan Agarwal from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Hi, Pia. A quick follow-up or kind of a clarification on the America's investment. I think my line got blurred when you were answering that, on the CapEx expectation. I heard a number as billion. I mean, can you clarify, I mean, what was the number you mentioned in terms of the potential investment?
Number I mentioned, so it was not blurry, but I mean, that's just. I wanted just to give an order of magnitude figure to consider an investment of the type that we could be contemplating here. You know, at an investment decision, obviously, we would need to come back with a more concrete figure.
The EUR 1 billion you mentioned was sort of a right number?
Yes.
I heard it right?
Yes, you did.
Okay. Dollars.
And-
U.S. dollars.
Yeah. Yes, maybe this is the European way of talking about a billion, but I, I guess that's good internationally as well.
American U.S. $ billion, yeah.
Yeah.
Dollars.
Yeah.
Okay. Okay, understand.
Thank you.
Time. I hand the conference back to the speakers.
Once again, thank you for joining us for almost 1.5 hours. It's been an excellent and exciting conversation. I wanna leave you with 3 thoughts. We've had a very good start to the year, we're obviously going now through a tougher quarter, a bit of a COVID-like situation here in Q3. As I said, we're seeing some positive, you know, signs here in Europe, at least in the first weeks of July. Secondly, I've told you our view about the future of the Americas market, both United States and Mexico. Outokumpu is uniquely positioned. We're 1 of 2 major suppliers. We have a strong industrial base in Calvert, and of course, we're the only one in Mexico producing stainless steel. We are looking at options on how to develop that business further during phase three.
Finally, we have the strongest balance sheet in the industry. This puts us in a strong, unique position to take decisions to develop the company long term, when the time is right and when we are mature enough to make our own investment decisions. When the facts are ready, we will then come back to you with more details. I wish you a very, very nice summer. Enjoy, hopefully, good weather, and see you then soon again in Q3. Thank you very much. Take care.