UPM-Kymmene Oyj (HEL:UPM)
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Earnings Call: Q1 2019

Apr 26, 2019

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

Dear audience, welcome to UPM-Kymmene's Quarter 1 2019 result webcast. My name is Jussi Pesonen, I'm the CEO of UPM-Kymmene. I'm here with our CFO, Tapio Korpeinen.

Tapio Korpeinen
CFO, UPM-Kymmene

Hello to everybody.

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

Ladies and gentlemen, let's move into the summary slide of the conf call. UPM-Kymmene's good performance continued in Q1, in line with our expectations. Our sales grew by 7%, driven by higher sales prices in almost all businesses and increased delivery volumes in several businesses. Sales prices increases continued to outweigh the impact of the higher variable costs. As a result, our comparable EBIT increased by 5% to EUR 374 million. Operating cash flow increased clearly from last year and was EUR 320 million during this quarter. We had net cash of EUR 5 million in our balance sheet at the end of Q1, even after EUR 495 million of leases were recognized in our balance sheet following the adoption of the new IFRS 16 standard. All in all, this was a good start for the year. This also is a 24th consecutive quarter of earnings growth.

Furthermore, we look forward to our transformative prospects that are set to provide us with unique opportunities for significant long-term earnings growth. Ladies and gentlemen, at this point, I will hand over to Tapio to analyze more our result. Tapio, please.

Tapio Korpeinen
CFO, UPM-Kymmene

Thank you, Jussi. Once again, here we have the analysis by driver for the EBIT increase, and on the left-hand side, you have the year-on-year comparison. Sales prices increased in almost all businesses, Asian Fine Paper business being the only exception, and the positive earnings impact was larger than the impact of higher variable costs. Delivery volumes made a small positive contribution to the EBIT increase. On the right-hand side, you can see the same chart, compared sequentially to the fourth quarter in 2018. Our first quarter EBIT came down by EUR 30 million as compared to the fourth quarter. This decrease was mainly due to a lower fair value increase of the finished forest assets. The profitability of the six business areas combined was on the same level as in the fourth quarter.

You can see a clear decrease in fixed costs and a modest increase in variable costs, as compared to the fourth quarter. The decrease in fixed cost is mainly seasonal, and the increase in variable cost also partly seasonal by nature. The adoption of the IFRS 16 standard had a decreasing impact on variable cost and fixed cost in the first quarter of 2019, and respectively, an increasing impact on depreciation. On this page, you can see the comparable EBIT development by business area. Biorefining reported another excellent quarter. Our average pulp price in EUR was 6% higher year-on-year, or compared to the fourth quarter, it decreased by 6%. Pulp, biofuels, and timber all enjoyed good customer demand and were able to grow delivery volumes as we had an operationally successful quarter. Communication Papers had a strong quarter as well.

We achieved price increases in all paper grades at the start of the year, and comparable EBIT increased both year-on-year and compared to the fourth quarter last year. This was the best Q1 since the business area was formed, and the second-best quarter overall, despite the continuous decline in market demand. This clearly shows the results of the consistent work to improve cost competitiveness and to adjust capacity to the profitable customer demand. To ensure long-term success, we continue this work. As the latest news, we announced in April our plan to close down paper machine number 10 at the Plattling Mill in Germany, which would reduce our coated magazine paper capacity by 155,000 tons. In Specialty Papers, comparable EBIT decreased clearly from the first quarter last year, but we saw a slight improvement compared to Q4. Here, good demand continued in label paper and release liner businesses.

Destocking appears to be over also in the Asian Fine Paper markets. Margins are turning, but profitability is still low. We aim to restore profitability in the business area with cost efficiency measures, growth projects in the release liner business, and with product development initiatives. At this point, it is also good to note that our two paper businesses have not yet seen any significant cost relief due to the decreased pulp prices, which has taken already place. There is typically a two, three-month lag from a change in pulp market price to a cost change in the two paper businesses. Demand growth continued in the self-adhesive label markets. Raflatac regained growth momentum in sales and earnings after the challenging last year.

Sales prices increased both from the first quarter last year and from the fourth quarter, deliveries grew compared with the very low comparison base that we had in the first quarter of last year. To further improve earnings, we started a fixed cost reduction program in March. Energy had a good quarter supported by increased electricity sales price. However, our hydropower volumes were still held back by the dry hydrological situation. Plywood maintained healthy margins, compensating for the higher wood costs with increased prices. Solid market demand for plywood products continued in the first quarter. Our deliveries decreased from last year due to the timing of LNG tanker projects, as well as tighter competition in the birch trading business. These points we already covered, I believe, let's move to the next slide.

Here we see the cash flow where, as Jussi already mentioned, our operating cash flow increased from last year and reached EUR 320 million. Working capital increased seasonally by EUR 111 million. To our outlook. Our outlook for 2019 is unchanged. As we discussed three months ago, there still are uncertainties related to the macro environment, which may have an impact on the economic growth in the different regions and on UPM's product and raw material markets during the year. However, we expect UPM's business performance to continue at a good level in 2019. We expect favorable demand to continue for most of our UPM businesses, while demand decline is expected to continue for Communication Papers. In the early part of 2019, pulp prices are expected to be lower and graphic papers prices are expected to be higher as compared to the fourth quarter of 2018.

Input costs are expected to stabilize after the significant increases seen during 2018. Finally, fair value increases of forest assets are not expected to contribute materially to comparable EBIT in 2019. Now I'll hand it back over to Jussi for an update on our growth prospects.

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

Thank you, Tapio. Not only we have had a very good performance in the past three to five years as Tapio was explaining, we have a solid growth prospects for the future. In the coming years, UPM seeks significant growth in three focus areas, i.e. the pulp business or the high-value fiber business, specialty packaging materials and molecular bioproducts. All of these three have key factors in common. First, they all have an attractive long-term growth outlook supported by global mega trends. All of them provide sustainable solution for growing consumer demand. Second, these are growth areas that have a clear barrier of entry. Finally, UPM really has unique competitive position and valuable knowhow and IPR in each. We are growing in the specialty packaging business, Raflatac and specialty papers mainly through focused growth projects that we have been reporting, and they will be shown later.

The potential new pulp mill in Uruguay would be a large growth step for our pulp business, but also for UPM earnings. The molecular businesses, biofuels and biochemicals, could provide a large new growth platform for UPM for the coming years and decades. These businesses are all about replacing fossil-based fuels and fossil-based chemicals with much more sustainable drop-in alternatives. If we can do that in a competitive way, the market potential is absolutely huge. Let's go to Uruguay. In Uruguay, the second preparation phase for the potential new world-class pulp mill is ongoing. The implementation of the investment agreement between us and the government of Uruguay is currently in a very intensive phase. To give you an update, a lot of progress has been made in many areas. The port concession in Montevideo has awarded to UPM in March.

The mill engineering design tendering and the permitting process are proceeding. The free trade zone for the mill has been granted. Environmental permitting processes for the port and the mill are in their final stages, and the first construction contract for the railway has been signed. However, important conditions stated in our investment agreement are not yet to be fulfilled. Those need to be fulfilled before we actually move on. If the ongoing second phase is concluded successfully, as we think, we will initiate the regular process of analyzing and preparing an investment decision of the pulp mill project. As you can see, our estimate for the duration of the second preparation phase is unchanged, between one and a half years to two years, starting from signing of the investment agreement in November 2017. Let's then move on into the biomolecular businesses.

The preparation is proceeding in our attractive biomolecular businesses as well. In biochemicals, we are working for making an entry into a chemicals market in a commercial scale. We have now completed the basic engineering of the potential 150,000 ton biochemical refinery in Germany. During the process, our project has attracted interest from alternative places and sites, which, from our perspective, has been a very good situation. Currently we are assessing two final alternative industrial parks in Germany, one in Frankfurt and then in Leuna, to select the optimal setup for the facility. In addition to the site selection, the commercial studies need to be concluded before starting our regular process of analyzing and preparing an investment decision. In biofuels, the Lappeenranta biorefinery has been a success.

In the potential Kotka project, our ambition is to scale up the biofuels business with the next generation, the higher level technology, in terms of production, product and feedstock. We have completed the environmental impact assessment for the possible 500,000 ton biofuels refinery in Kotka here in Finland. Development work is still expected to continue into next year. Page 11 shows our list of focused growth projects. As you can see, most of them are supporting our growth in the specialty packaging businesses, i.e. Raflatac and specialty papers. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to summarize my presentation by saying that Q1 was the 24th consecutive quarter of earnings growth. We expect our business performance to continue at a good level in 2019. We have cost competitive measures, capacity adjustments, and focused growth projects underway supporting our performance. Finally, we continue the preparations of our transformative projects.

With these projects, we are aiming for significant long-term earnings growth. Ladies and gentlemen, this was the prepared part of the presentation. Dear operator, we are ready for questions.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question, please dial zero one on your telephone keypads now to enter the queue. Once your name's announced, you can ask your question. If you find your question is answered before it's your turn to speak, you can dial zero two to cancel. Once again, that's zero one to ask a question or zero two if you need to cancel. Our first question comes from the line of Lars Kjellberg of Credit Suisse. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Lars Kjellberg
Research Analyst, Credit Suisse

Thank you. I just wanted to start off with the Communication Papers division, which, of course, you are doing quite well. When do we start to get concerned about how seemingly extremely weak demand is? I guess there's various talks about some of the overseas export volumes starting to decline and some exports coming into Europe. Is that something that you're seeing, and how would you expect pricing? I guess that's a difficult question to ask, but conditions generally moving as we head into the second half of the current year.

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

Lars, I guess that this is nothing new. We do have a kind of view that the markets are going 5% down as in the trend line. Some of the years are having destocking and then somewhat higher decline in the markets, variating from the qualities and grades. On the other hand, there are quite many exits as well. If you take LWC, you take fine papers, there will be quite a lot of capacity adjustments coming on. Basically, this is going to be the trend for the coming years, that the trend decline is 5% on average, plus minus. Then we are trying to kind of play the game based on that, keeping our cost down and running our capacity on that level that we are efficient and making good money.

If you just take the page where we have the UPM Communication Papers, long-term profitability, even if the declining markets have been occurring last 10 years, now the profitability last five years has been improving. Our game plan is to keep the profits and play the game based on that fact that we are making solid, good return for our shareholders.

Lars Kjellberg
Research Analyst, Credit Suisse

Yeah. You certainly are managing that very well. You've mentioned Raflatac that had been a bit of a drag last year. When looking at your main competitor, Avery Dennison, they saw a sort of moderation in the Q1 and you are seeing an acceleration. Why are you seeing the improvement in your business, and what has changed from what you were seeing in 2018?

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

Basically, you answered yourself. The first quarter of 2018, we lost quite a lot of volumes. Now you're comparing that to quarter one 2019 volumes, and therefore if we are looking our market share of the business, we are pretty much on that level where we were before end of 2017. Basically now we are comparing a quarter where we did have a tough quarter, which was the Q1 2018. Therefore, our volume report is somewhat looking more positive.

Lars Kjellberg
Research Analyst, Credit Suisse

There's no particular change in the market, positive or negative, it's a steady market.

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

It is actually now we are just highlighting again that we actually did have a quite tough quarter in 2018, first quarter of 2018.

Lars Kjellberg
Research Analyst, Credit Suisse

Understood. Final question from me would be, you have, of course, a host of growth projects as you spoke about. Your CapEx levels have been comparatively low, targeting growth CapEx for a little while, you have clearly a very strong balance sheet. When should we see or expect a more material increase in your CapEx, what sort of levels as you start to execute this big project should we expect, perhaps?

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

That is actually very much related to that. I know that our kind of typical CapEx will be on the similar level that it has been year in, year out, around EUR 300 million-EUR 400 million. That will not change at all. Then when these projects are then kicking in, when the decisions are made, the kind of order of the kind of priority is that, of course, the Uruguay pulp mill is number one in our minds, the biomolecular businesses are coming thereafter. I do not have a allocation of how much of CapEx will be used this year or next year on these transformative investments. We will guide you more when those decisions are then made.

Lars Kjellberg
Research Analyst, Credit Suisse

The base load is EUR 300 million-EUR 400 million then we can make our own assessment. Is that?

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

Yeah. Exactly.

Lars Kjellberg
Research Analyst, Credit Suisse

What you're saying?

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

Yeah.

Lars Kjellberg
Research Analyst, Credit Suisse

Very good. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Robin Santavirta of Carnegie. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Robin Santavirta
Analyst, Carnegie

Thank you. I was just wondering about the biochemicals and the biofuels investment in Kotka, whether those projects in fact have been postponed a bit. When do you expect to make a final decision whether to go ahead with these projects or not? Is it fair to assume 2020 or will it be later on?

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

I don't think that we do have a guidance for you. I guess that I was trying to actually in my speech to say that when it concerns biochemicals, the basic engineering has been done now, and now we are in the final stage of selecting the site. We have done a lot of commercial studies as well before we are ready to move on. In the biofuels, my last sentence was, if I remember correctly, that developing work is still expected to continue until next year.

Robin Santavirta
Analyst, Carnegie

Is that development, are you ready to-

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

Biofuels

Robin Santavirta
Analyst, Carnegie

comment a bit what, in terms of biofuels, what that development work is about?

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

It is all kind of technology. It is all kind of raw materials, all kind of things. We are not going to make just a similar plant that we have in Lappeenranta. We are having ambition to put a lot of more IPR on it, and therefore to make even actually more lucrative investment in Kotka.

Robin Santavirta
Analyst, Carnegie

In Kotka, as I understand, tall oil would only be a small part of the raw material base. Is that correct?

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

Absolutely. It will be multi-feed stock and there will be new technologies implemented as well.

Robin Santavirta
Analyst, Carnegie

Good. Thank you. In terms of specialty papers, I mean, the fine paper market has been very tough in Asia and especially in China over the past half year. I think Tapio called the market bottomed out or bottoming out at the moment. Are you now seeing increasing prices or is it still stable at the low level? Also what is the pricing outlook in Raflatac?

Tapio Korpeinen
CFO, UPM-Kymmene

Yeah. Maybe to comment on the specialty papers part. There, when it comes to the fine paper market in Asia, there that sort of de-stocking phase as we see and feel it seems to be over, and therefore in a sense we see volumes moving positively. The demand side has been good there. Let's say, of course, both in Asia and let's say for the label paper in general, the sort of volume and demand situation has been good as it is. This sort of a margin squeeze, as you know, came from the fine paper business in Asia. There has been some, let's say, modest movement on prices upwards. As we also mentioned here already, the pulp cost will help, but it's not seen in the bottom line yet. That is sort of coming.

Those are the reasons why we are sort of seeing that turning of the margins for the specialty paper business.

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

If I comment Raflatac I need to once again disappoint you. We are not commenting any of the future price scenarios and pricing kind of things in this kind of way. Talking about the past. Sorry.

Robin Santavirta
Analyst, Carnegie

All right. I understand. Just on the pulp market, what is the current dynamics? First of all, what kind of inventory levels are you running at the moment? What kind of deliveries are you having at the moment? I guess almost 50% of what 30%-40% of your sales is to China. What is your inventory level and what is your view of your customers' inventories at the moment?

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

UPM-Kymmene doesn't have any kind of changed inventories. We are operating with the customers that are long-term relationship, and therefore our volumes have been moving quite with a solid pace. If you are only looking at the statistics, as you can see the statistics of the last two days, the whole global market is now on one point, is it 1.1% or 1.2% growth comparing that of first quarter of last year. Basically already we are seeing a growth. How strong it will be remains to be seen. Inventory stocks of the suppliers has been going down three days even if they are still on higher level than that of last year. Basically that is the situation where we are. UPM-Kymmene is kind of a different player. We don't use third-party sales at all.

Basically we have only long-term customer relationship where it is based on volumes and then following the market when it comes to pricing.

Robin Santavirta
Analyst, Carnegie

Sure. Thanks. Just finally on, you have a very strong balance sheet, and it's clear you have a clear investment agenda for the next, what, five years. Are you looking at potential M&A targets at this stage when valuations have, in this industry, come down quite significantly? Is all focus on organic growth at the moment?

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

At the moment, our focus is clear. It is actually with the spearhead of growth prospects that we have. Of course, the balance sheet is strong enough for making an M&A if that kind of situation appears. Our focus is clearly on these three areas of specialty packaging materials, high-value fiber, and molecular businesses.

Robin Santavirta
Analyst, Carnegie

All right. Thank you very much.

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mikael Doepel of UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Mikael Doepel
Analyst, UBS

Thank you. Hello, everybody. A couple of questions here. Just briefly first coming back to Raflatac. You already talked about that a bit, as mentioned, you had a quite strong growth there and the margins went up from Q4 last year, still lagging on a year-over-year basis. Going forward, I know you don't want to comment on pricing and your specific volume, if you talk about the market growth, what would you expect that to be for the labels business and also in terms of your margins? Do you expect to see some further recovery there going forward?

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

It is related to general economy. What the trend growth globally has been, it has been more than the GDP growth. That we expect to continue for the reasons that are well-known in the kind of mega trends, whether it's e-commerce or whether it is other things. Basically, we see a quite solid growth, even if when the GDP goes down, of course the demand on that particular moment goes down as well. Basically quite positive outlook for the longer term. That's what we do. On the margin side, we do a lot of things that are related to our costs. We do run the programs of taking costs down and thus the margin improvement is in our focus on top of that what we do on the markets.

Mikael Doepel
Analyst, UBS

Okay. Switching to your plywood business, how would you describe the outlook there, both in terms of demand and pricing?

Tapio Korpeinen
CFO, UPM-Kymmene

On pricing, unfortunately, we are not commenting the future prices. Demand outlook is quite solid at this point of time. Once again, repeating that it is not immune to any of the mega trends of the world, and the global economy. So far, it has been pretty solid. We have a quite good market, and we have a good position, especially in some of the segments like the LNG tankers, even if those volumes have been somewhat lower this year, not because of the global economy, but because of the project. Quite solid outlook.

Mikael Doepel
Analyst, UBS

Okay. On the paper business in European paper price, in particular, do you foresee any changes there when you head into the second quarter, or is it more or less stable compared to Q1?

Tapio Korpeinen
CFO, UPM-Kymmene

Can I repeat again? I'm sorry. We do not comment any of the future prices, unfortunately.

Mikael Doepel
Analyst, UBS

A final question, in terms of maintenance costs in the quarter, if you think about Q2 compared to Q1, what kind of delta should we expect to see there?

Tapio Korpeinen
CFO, UPM-Kymmene

We have now, as is pointed out in the quarterly release, we have, let's say, the normal maintenance as far as energy business is concerned in Olkiluoto. We have the major maintenance shutdown in one of our pulp mills in Kymi this year, for the second quarter. I would say you can expect about EUR 35 million impact overall in the second quarter. Obviously, in the first quarter, we did not have any major maintenance.

Mikael Doepel
Analyst, UBS

Okay. That's very clear. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Cole Hathorn from Jefferies. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Cole Hathorn
Analyst, Jefferies

Morning. Tapio, I wonder if you could just give us a little bit of color on the outlook for the energy business and the impact from the Olkiluoto 3.

Tapio Korpeinen
CFO, UPM-Kymmene

Yes. Well, let's say, to start from the latter part, Olkiluoto 3, as we have, I think, discussed earlier as well, if you look at where the markets are today or where the forward curves in terms of pricing are at the moment, what you have been asking us earlier is what is the impact for the bottom line of our energy business of Olkiluoto 3 once it starts up, and the answer has been and still is that it will be, let's say, quite a small or not very material impact as such. Therefore, let's say this further delay that TVO announced, which is to be more precisely known in June, that as such, directly, everything else being equal will not have much of an impact on our bottom line.

Whatever it might have as an impact on the market and the market price then is a kind of a secondary possible effect, which you have to look at then from the markets, how they react to the news.

Cole Hathorn
Analyst, Jefferies

Sure.

Tapio Korpeinen
CFO, UPM-Kymmene

Otherwise, obviously, let's say what we have seen so far is that the prices have been on an increasing trend, which also obviously is seen in our first quarter result and in our average sales price for the first quarter as compared to the first quarter last year. In that sense, if you look at the, again, prices going forward in terms of the commodities and particularly the CO2 price, EUA price that has been, let's say, volatile, but more on the bullish side lately.

Cole Hathorn
Analyst, Jefferies

Yeah. Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Saul Casadio from M&G. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Saul Casadio
Director of Corporate Credit Research, M&G

Hello. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. The question is about the investment plans in biochemicals and biofuel. I was wondering if you can help me frame the sort of risk-reward profile of these investments. I understand that the reward can be huge, but also the risk, I guess, is high as well. We're talking about, if I understand correctly, new technology, new processes. I think I've asked this question in the past in terms of your capital allocation to these projects. I'm trying to understand whether, given the risk-reward profile, you're willing to play a sort of small chip on these investments, or maybe the risk-reward profile is not as risky as I might think, you might be willing to invest more given the financial you have achieved.

Anyway, in general, I'd like to understand a little bit better the risk-reward profile and how much capital you are willing to commit.

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

I guess that it is something that we do all the time and maybe the best way of explaining how do we think about the risk when Lappeenranta Refinery, the final decision was made 2012, the initiative of the development started 2006. Six years later, we made an investment decision of investing 100,000 ton facility in Lappeenranta with the new technology to refining crude tall oil, which is a residual of pulp process to make high-quality renewable diesel. People were asking this question as well, what is the risk of not getting into the production and not having the quality or the IPRs are not valid and somebody will challenge you on those IPRs. 2012, we made a decision to invest, and we were able to do the mill at time, started to operate it 2014/15.

The first operating year was challenging, the next one, we were already on the nominal capacity, which I think that is remarkable achievement. Quality was already from the beginning there. Finally 2016, 2017, we made the commercial optimization, and now the returns of the investments are better than UPM on average. If you take the 2018 return on capital employed or EBIT margin, which are 14 point something, this is turning better today. Therefore, I think that this is maybe the kind of best way of describing, yes, there are risks always, but the UPM way of dealing with the risk is to prepare ourselves into the position that when we take the step, they are firm steps and that's our way of operating.

Therefore, like the Uruguay, we have been developing almost seven, eight years to be able to then make a very profitable business. Same happens with the biochemicals, where the first initiative was taken 2010, if I remember correctly. Gradually we are getting there to be securing the profits. Now with the biofuels, it's much easier with the experience that we have, which is I have to say that they are surprisingly excellent, those kind of experiences. We have the IPR, we know the technology, we have been able to utilize the forest biomass into a product that nobody else has been doing. Basically, yes, there are always risks that are on technology or in IPR or in product quality, but UPM is making steps that are firm steps and therefore, I regard the more the opportunities rather than the risk.

You need to be humble always when you develop these kind of businesses.

Saul Casadio
Director of Corporate Credit Research, M&G

For both projects, are we talking about new technologies for both, or it's just for the biochemicals and the biofuel is more like a development of something that is already existing and commercially proven?

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

Exactly right you are, that biofuels, we do have a kind of concrete steps, and we will implement some of the technology on top of that. It is an improvement, right you are, in that respect. Biochemicals is more new setup of technologies, even if the technologies are very commercial technologies. We are not putting too much of unknown technologies. There will be some that will handle the kind of forest biomass into the products that we do. I say that this is a step when and if we are making breakthroughs on this, the entry barrier is enormous for many others.

Saul Casadio
Director of Corporate Credit Research, M&G

Okay. I understand. Thanks. Thanks very much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alexander Berglund of Bank of America. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Alexander Berglund
Analyst, Bank of America

Thank you very much. Two questions from me. First one on with regard to Stora Enso's conversion to wood-free at Oulu. Is that anything that you can benefit from a volume point of view, or you're already kind of fully sold out, and it's more about that maybe kind of helps balance the market a bit? The second question was, I saw kind of news that Metsä Board might be considering or Metsä Fibre considering building a new pulp mill in Kemi, Finland. How do you think about kind of the potential that will have for security of supply of wood in your region? Do you think that going forward you might need to increase your direct ownership of forest or does it work fine with more of these kind of long-term supply agreements that you have?

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

I guess that I do not have very many comments, especially on Oulu conversion. Obviously, it will take quite a lot of capacity out of the fine paper market, which is if I remember correctly, it is close to 20%, in between 15%-20% of the total market. Basically, yes, that will trigger a higher operating rate for the whole business for time being when the markets are going down 5% of the year. That's something that will definitely be there. In Metsä Fibre investment plan, I think that's a concrete plan that has been there. Our pulp mills are in southern part of Finland and western part of Finland, basically we have no operations in northern part of Finland after Kaipola closure, therefore it is not directly on that area.

Of course it is additional volumes that are required on the pulpwood as well in Finland. Basically our position is a bit different on that, and I think that we are long-term operator and having our own way of dealing with that.

Tapio Korpeinen
CFO, UPM-Kymmene

Maybe I'll add to your question there that we do own half a million hectares of forest land in Finland. Having said that, given that we, here in the Nordic part of the world, operate on a different sort of a cycle as far as the growth of forest is concerned than we do in Uruguay. Therefore, you cannot own such vast areas of forest land that you could rely on your own forests for the majority of your wood for an operator of our size. Let's say with the ownership that we have and with the sort of partners that we work with, we're quite comfortable in the Finnish market.

Alexander Berglund
Analyst, Bank of America

Okay. Thank you. That's very helpful. Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mikael Jafs of Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Mikael Jafs
Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Yes. Hello, everybody. I wonder if you could basically talk a little bit about the midterm prospects for the pulp market. When we look on potential pulp projects coming on stream between 2021 and potentially 2024, there's actually quite a lot of projects and potentially your Uruguay project would end up there in that same time period. I know it's a difficult question, but could you elaborate a little bit on how you sort of view this?

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

Very difficult to really elaborate that even if there would be kind of a willingness to do so because you don't know what are really the real pulp projects. There are plentiful announced ideas, and then only those that are then realizing will be affecting supply side. We do have a quite solid view on the demand side that it will grow as it has been growing quite steadily. The trend growth being in between 2% and 3%. It's absolutely something that we believe on. Supply side is something that you have a lot of ideas and then only those that are having a financial kind of solidness or grounds to be then implemented will be implemented. There I do not have any better visibility than you have.

Tapio Korpeinen
CFO, UPM-Kymmene

I would only add to that we don't need to be the only pulp project out there. Certainly there will be others that will come as well, but we believe that the supply side for wood raw material will, as it has in the past, determine how many of these projects will actually move ahead in which time schedule. From that point of view, even if there will be projects other than ours, we still believe that the demand supply balance will be healthy.

Mikael Jafs
Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Okay. Many thanks.

Operator

Thank you once again. If there are any further questions, please dial 01 on your telephone keypads now. As there are no further questions, I'll hand back to our speakers for the closing comments.

Jussi Pesonen
President and CEO, UPM-Kymmene

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us today and have a nice weekend.