Okay. It's 2:00 P.M. here in Finland. Let's get started. Welcome to this Q3 interim report briefing of Raute's results. We will go through the main points, highlights of what happened in Q3. I'm Mika Saariaho, the CEO, and we have also our CFO, Ville Halttunen, here. Ville will then go more deep into the numbers and our balance sheet situation later in the presentation. Let's get started. We announced today our Q3 results, and I think overall we can say that we are quite happy with the financial outcome for Q3. We had a very strong quarter for profitability. As many of you may remember, key focus for this year has been that we deliver successfully the high order backlog we received last year.
In 2023, we received EUR 315 million of new orders. This year's main focus has been to successfully deliver those projects and proceed in execution of those big projects. That has proceeded very well. I would say especially in wood processing, we see good profitability, also good revenue recognition in Q3, following from this execution. This is a continuation of the good progress we've seen this year in this business unit overall. Then as a highlight, I could say that also service business has had another good quarter. There's been a good solid performance in that business for a while now, and we are very happy about that. Of course, in our strategies also, the idea and target is to increase the sale of service and also analyzers business, and the growth is happening there in service business at the moment.
I would say in analyzers it was okay kind of a quarter. It was not great, but it was okay. We had some challenges earlier in this year in analyzers, and we have recovered from those challenges. I think overall we can be quite pleased with that performance as well. Overall for Raute comparable EBITDA, we achieved EUR 6.3 million, which is 13.5% of the net sales. This is now the first time actually we exceeded the long-term target we have set for us, which is 12% over cycle. Of course, fully recognizing this is just one quarter, but this quite clearly proves that we are able to deliver results on this level, and I think this is a good thing and good proof that we are on the right path in that sense as we move forward.
I want to emphasize also that Q3 is also seasonally strong season quarter for Raute typically. If we look at history, this normally is a little bit better than some of the other quarters. That's mainly because we have in Q3, many of our customers are having their annual maintenance break, and then we have the modernization projects finalized during Q3. When and if we are successful in those projects, it normally is shown as a good profitability for us. Also then seasonally, Q3 typically has a little bit lower fixed cost for us because of the holiday season. It's more of an accounting thing that Ville can elaborate more if needed going forward. Despite of that, I think very good quarter in terms of profitability and net sales also on a good solid level.
The other side of the coin is that the market environment really is challenging and remains to be challenging at the moment. We have seen this now in the low new order intake for us. The whole quarter was EUR 15 million, which is low for Raute, but not big surprise now because this is what we've been seeing happening in the market. The construction market is still having a downturn and the recovery of that business, which is important for our customers, that has been postponed, and we see this in the new order intake for technology orders. I would say based on my current understanding, that we have seen now the bottom of this cycle and our customers are indicating that some of these things have been postponed now to next year, some investment decisions. That's what we are hearing.
At the same time, one has to say that the expectation earlier this year was that the recovery would take place at the end of this year, which has not realized and most likely will not happen. We only have couple of more months to go, and we don't see this now in the market. This is the other side of the coin. Challenging for new order intake for wood processing and analyzers. However, again, I can emphasize the services actually had a very good order intake. Nothing wrong with that. Of the EUR 15 million, more than half of that is actually services. It's really is actually on a good level and we should be happy about that. Now because of the situation in the analyzers and wood processing business unit, we have actually also in Finland conducted these change negotiations.
We are considering temporary layoffs in those business units now, depending on how the new order intake develops in the weeks and months to come. This is a measure we are taking as a precaution depending on what happens then in the market. If, of course, the market recovery is faster than we anticipate, maybe we don't need all these tools, but if it turns out that further delays are seen in the new order intake, then we have this tool in use. Of course, very unfortunate for our employees, but as a company, this is necessary action and step we have in use. It does not mean that we have a lot of extra capacity in our organization.
It's just that in certain parts of the delivery organization, we don't have enough work because for new orders, it normally starts with engineering work and then moves to manufacturing, assembly, and then commissioning work at customer site. This whole balance of this whole delivery organization needs some rebalancing in this situation as we don't get new orders in. Overall, I would say we have EUR 186 million of order backlog still. For Raute, this is still close to the level we were one year ago. That's actually is historically quite good level of order book still to be delivered, a big part of that next year. For Raute overall, I think this probably indicates that there's a buffer for next year also still in the order book.
Overall, I would say we are on track executing and implementing our growth strategy, and this is what we are aiming for. Here are some of the numbers. Net sales, I already said EUR 46.3 million comparable EBITDA, which is 13.5%. Order book EUR 186 million. Personnel 789. There has been some increase in the number of personnel. We actually have been hiring some people especially for this big mill size project that we are delivering. We need more people there in certain functions, even if at the same time we have temporary layoffs. This is the way it is and kind of characteristics for our type of business where we are working in the project type of business. Equity ratio on a high level, good level, more than our target for that measure. Here we can see how the order intake has developed.
We see, of course, the volatility here for the order intake. Last year was all-time high by far, the all-time highest number, EUR 315 million. This year has been low start. However, we have had these kind of years also, and if you look at the history, but this is a low level. More important, I guess, for us is now to look at also this order book, which still is, I would say, on quite high level looking historically where we are as Raute. Still a lot of net sales to be realized from this backlog. In terms of net sales now, Q3 was a high net sales. Q2, we reported earlier, was the all-time highest net sales, and Q3 is also on a good level. We have already passed the whole last year's net sales after three quarters this year. 36.2% growth.
Good growth in that sense. Comparable EBITDA, the key profitability measure we have, we can see here the development over the past years. We still, as a reminder, have 2022 there, where we had this significant hit from the project related to Russia. When Russia invaded Ukraine, we stopped that business and we scaled down that operation. We have no business in Russia at the moment at all. But we can see that how we have recovered from those times. Now this EUR 6.3 million of comparable EBITDA starts to be on the level where relatively speaking, we want to have our profitability also going forward. Some of the reasons mentioned here, I already said seasonally strong profitability. We have also seen good execution of the projects, as I mentioned. I would also say that we have improved operational efficiency.
That's, of course, because of the volumes. If we think what has happened in Raute during the last one and a half years, two years, we also introduced our new ERP system one and a half years ago, which did cause some slowness in our operations. I would say now things are operating at normal level. We even see some benefits of the system. I would clearly say that we have improved operational efficiency overall in our operations at Raute at the moment. Operating profit. Here we can see EUR 10.2 million year to date in 2024. This is, of course, what we can be quite happy with this number at this point of time. Personnel, we see kind of 6% increase from last year's numbers.
The figure was even a little bit higher at the end of Q2, that's most likely because we had some summer workers, and now they are not there anymore at the end of Q3. That's the normal variation you can see there. We are slowly increasing the number of personnel as well. Okay. Looking at the segments in a little bit more details. Wood processing, which is our biggest business unit. I would say very good development this year. Last year we got big orders, and this year we've been successfully executing and turning that backlog into net sales. From this picture, you need to look at the orange bars. You can see this year's performance. Increasing profitability and also net sales almost 50% higher than a year ago. We can be very happy about this.
Wood processing is also now 11.5% of the net sales is the comparable EBITDA. That's a good level. The idea to reach our 12% EBITDA level over cycle is based on the assumption that wood processing is approaching that 12%, or close to that 12%, and then services analyzers are over that. The average would be this 12%, which is our target. Now in Q3, for one quarter, this was a good performance from wood processing from that point of view, making its own contribution in the right way. Services, again, looking at these orange bars in this picture, we can see good growth in net sales. Profitability has been on a solid, good level now for some time on this business, and we are very happy about that. Business is growing, and it's a good profitable business for us.
Analyzers, we had some challenges in Q1. We see we even had a negative comparable EBITDA. Q2 and now Q3 were recovery from those figures, and this is back to developing to the right direction. Analyzers is also hit by the fact that new order intake has been low. It little bit has the same dynamics as wood processing, and it's been low. Slow development in that sense, top line is a little bit missing from where we would like to be at the moment. Important thing is also to realize that if we look at the three different businesses we have, they actually all work together as one Raute offering.
Even if some of the numbers are not there in analyzers play a very important role for our digital services business, which is reported under services and for any offering modernization or plant offering in wood processing, because that's very often the key selling argument we have. Not necessarily all seen in the analyzers numbers, but in other parts of the business as well. I would say that if it was actually quite great development and performance in wood processing and services, this I would describe kind of okay-ish development and result for analyzers. Okay. Maybe Ville goes a little bit deeper into some of the balance sheet and cash flow figures.
Okay. Thank you, Mika. My name is Ville Halttunen. I am CFO for Raute, I will go through some of the key figures for Raute during the Q3. Starting from earnings per share, we had nice development in our earnings per share now during the third quarter, more than 4 times compared to last year. Obviously, increasing operating profit having a big impact there, but on the other hand, also increasing our finance net, contributing positively into our EPS. It is figures good to remember that we have this junior loan of EUR 3 million. That has been calculated, the interest of that loan is being calculated into the EPS number. Looking into the cash flow, we had, again, strong cash flow in Q3, nearly EUR 19 million.
Much higher than the EBITDA we generated during the quarter, there we had the net working capital had a positive impact into our cash flow during the quarter. If we look at the net working capital, there again, we had a good positive development into net working capital, minus EUR 32 million at the end of Q3, and a positive development of EUR 30 million during the third quarter. We have put a lot of effort into our payment terms in order to improve this, and this is clearly visible also in our net working capital development. Looking into the financial strength, equity ratio of 54%. There we clearly now increase our equity ratio as we increased our profit and made more equity. Now we are clearly above our strategic target of 40% in our equity ratio.
Looking into the CapEx levels and depreciations, our investments have been coming down from the past year levels. We had the ERP investment that had a major impact in our investment levels during the past years, and now that has been coming down, and now our investments are more directed to other investments. There we have a clearly lower investment levels also against last year. During the third quarter, we had EUR 400,000 of investments. On the other hand, the depreciation level is somewhat increasing due to the fact that we have started the depreciations on the ERP investment that we have made. Still looking into R&D expenditures, they are broadly in line with last year's level the investments and expenses. On the other hand, in relation to sales, that is clearly decreasing as the sales is growing. That is back to Mika for outlook.
Okay. Thank you, Ville. Just couple of words about the outlook now. More or less repeating some of the same messages I already delivered. The market is challenging. When it comes to our customers' market, in a big way is construction market. We know that there is a downturn, and we have not yet seen the recovery of that market. I am now globally speaking, on global averages when I say that. We did see maybe some early weak signals of recovery already earlier this year, and we even indicated that maybe now there is a time for recovery. Now, what we experienced in Q3 was that it did not realize. Really we now are talking about, I think the consensus is that it is towards mid-next year that we really see the recovery of this construction market.
Again, globally speaking, maybe Finland and Europe have their own dynamics, but this is also true in other regions. I just spent a week or two in North America here, a week ago, and meeting with customers, this was also the message. There's little bit different reason there for our customers to wait for investment, which is that they want to see what happens with the elections in USA. I'm not saying whether it's this or that way that they expect, but actually they expect some outcome, and that's always blocking little bit the investments because there's not yet clarity on what are the policies going forward. There's little bit different dynamics in different regions, but nevertheless, the consensus would be that towards mid-next year, the recovery in the plywood market really would be more visible.
What it means then for technology orders, we don't know exactly whether they go exactly in the same phase, but this is impacting, of course, our technology line orders and this probably we need to wait at least some time before that market is also recovering. I would maybe describe that our sales funnel at the moment is good and normal. The amount of cases we have in the sales case is nothing that the things would have totally disappeared from them, but it's really there are many, many cases where the thing is that it's just been postponed, the decision-making on this. What can happen, if I little bit speculate in the world, is that there is a slow recovery from that one.
Sometimes we even see that there's a fast recovery than when the market really picks up that there's also then quickly coming a lot of technology orders. We don't know this at the moment. The message at the moment is that the recovery is postponed, and we are talking about mid-next year when the consensus estimate starts to be there for recovery. Really, a lot of active discussions with our customers on technical support, which might indicate that the next year this investment activity is back there for us as well. Okay. We did actually update our guidance earlier in October when we looked at our numbers. Now the top-line estimate is that we will generate net sales of EUR 190 million-EUR 210 million.
It was earlier EUR 185 million-EUR 210 million, no big change in that net sales, we did actually increase quite a bit the comparable EBITDA guidance for this year. Now it says EUR 17 million-EUR 21 million. Again, if I summarize where we are for Raute this year and Q3, I'm actually happy about the financial performance that we have received, especially now in Q3. We still have, I would say, normal, quite good order backlog to deliver, which will be turning into net sales in the quarters to come. At the moment, of course, business environment is challenging and new order intake is low. The expectation on that one is that it will recover next year. I would say we have a normal amount of discussions with our customers.
When they then exactly realize that, I can't promise, but this is how it looks like. Very good. That's the summary in short. Thank you very much for participating this session, and I'll see you again at the latest in the Q4 full year results release. Thank you.