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Earnings Call: Q1 2018

Apr 24, 2018

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Good morning everyone, welcome to Wärtsilä Interim Report January-March 2018 presentation. This morning, I have here almost the whole board of management to help me with the questions and answers, and Natalia Valtasaari, head of our investor and media relations. I have a short presentation, then we can go after that one to questions and answers. First of all, couple of words about the quarter and what's happening in the market. I would characterize the development of the start in 2018 as a favorable operating environment for our equipment businesses. Energy Solutions today is developing well and the market divided to the developing world development and the developed world development is going well. Wärtsilä is emphasizing a lot to help the story of renewable energies, at the same time, helping the developing world, for their infrastructure story. Marine Solutions, finally, the world looks a bit better.

Of course, our solutions are well fitted to some of the segments like cruise and ferry and gas carriers, which are developing favorably. Economic outlook looks good, at the same time, we see some geopolitical uncertainty making changes in our customers' decision behavior. You can see in this quarter also how the services has developed, compared to services to our equipment businesses, the sales mix has actually burdened our profitability. It's good to remember that the world is developing well, what comes to new digital solutions, Wärtsilä is spending a lot of resources and money in our future. You have seen our latest idea to make a new acquisition. At the same time, we have developed our own digital platform. Couple of numbers. Order intake grew 7%, very good development. Net sales, 6%. Book-to-bill is very high, 1.41.

Result developed a bit, as I said, a bit burdened by the mix. Earnings per share up EUR 1.1. Now you need to remember that there are much more shares in the market, that's good to remember when looking at that number. Cash flow negative, I will come back to that one also in my presentation a bit later. Order book at a healthy level, over EUR 300 million more than previously. Equipment business development in order intake. Marine 31%. It's a good development. Certain segments where we're going to the right direction. Energy was high last year. Now a bit better. Services last year was a high number if we have a steady development, that's also good. Net sales, as I said, services mix a bit affecting to the numbers. Marine 13% up and Energy 12% up.

If you compare the group numbers, now you can see how the mix has affected. Services is 50% of net sales, Marine and Energy 25 both. Book-to-bill at the good level. Order book distribution. Delivery current year is up, which is of course good when you look at the year-end and also up also when you look at the next year or later deliveries. Operating results, as I said, a bit better than last year, it has been affected by the mix of services being lower than last year compared to the equipment businesses. At the same time, you will see that the parts development within the services is a bit lower. At the same time, as I mentioned earlier, we have spent EUR 3 million more in digital development and in a seasonal reasons, our R&D is up EUR 8 million higher than it was last year.

Stable development in services. Here you can see the distribution between different product areas and spare parts, 49%. Last year it was 54%. Agreements high. It's higher than last year, that's of course good. Segments by segments, no big difference. Cruise and ferries is growing, that should be the case when you look at the cruise orders and our success in the cruise market. That should be growing also going forward. Installed base, no big changes. It's a stable development, of course that's an area which should grow when you look at the agreements growth going forward. Highlight here in Q1, we acquired a couple of years ago, a company, or was it last year? American Hydro, which is serving the different kind of hydropower plants.

We have got a big contract in the U.S., it's an enhancement of our capabilities to modernize these plants and really get better into the industry. Energy Solutions. Activity is at a high level. If you look at our orders in the first quarter, it's a healthy order development. Much more on utilities, gas a bit higher. If you look at the certain geographical areas, Asia is strong. We got a big order in Australia. You have a much stronger Africa and Middle East. America is higher. Good division also globally. One highlight was a deal in South Australia. 211 megawatt power plant for an Australian customer, which is exactly supporting the story of Wärtsilä helping the renewable energy going forward. The more you add renewables, the more you need to add flexible power alongside. Market share increase.

The market itself has decreased a bit, Wärtsilä's market share today is 19%. Moving on, Marine. Vessel contracting a bit lower in Q1 compared to last year. In March, there were significant orders in cruise and ferries. I think it was even 24 ships. You had significant orders in LNG vessels which is, of course, those two segments are very much helping also Wärtsilä's future. We had a good development in our order intake. Here you see cruise now higher than last year. Traditional merchant is very much higher. There you have some of the shuttle tanker orders we have got during the first quarter, which is of course, when you look at the Korean market developing well, where Wärtsilä plays an important role.

Highlight of the quarter is our acquisition or a plan to acquire Transas, which is a global market leader in marine navigation solutions and the training and simulation services, at the same time also providing the ship traffic control systems. The value of the transaction was EUR 210 million, we expect to close it now during the second quarter. Fits well, just spot on to the Marine strategy, where we are looking at the Smart Marine Ecosystem developing globally. Marine Solutions market share. We have a new slide here. We used to show you the market share of medium speed main engines and the auxiliary engines. As you know, Wärtsilä is today much more than engines.

It's much more valuable to tell you where we work in different segments, what can we provide to the segments, and whether we are the top player or challenger or one of the mid players. Here you have the segments. Gas carriers and Cruise and Ferry, we are definitely the top player. Different kind of systems as you see there. Main engine is quite often one of the items, but for example, gas systems, it could be a vessel which doesn't have any engines, so you only talk about gas systems and auxiliary engines, or the ship is not moving. You have the traditional merchants, which includes, of course, bulkers and tankers and container vessels. You have offshore and some special vessels like dredgers and tugs and the navies.

This is a new way to show where we are, and let's see how we can develop this one going forward even further. This definitely tells you more about where Wärtsilä works with different solutions. Financials, cash flow, low. Purely affected by working capital and mainly in Marine Solutions, where we are, of course, preparing us for the future deliveries and certain taxes we paid in advance. Here you can see the working capital development also in the group. Gearing 0.21. To finalize the presentations, the prospects for this year, unchanged. The demand in business areas in Services is good. In Energy Solutions is good and still solid in Marine Solutions. This was the presentation. Now we can open the lines, and of course, are ready here for questions and answers.

I would like to point out that there definitely are a lot of people also on the lines that if you could limit your questions to one question and then one follow-up question, so we could get everybody on the lines to have the possibility to ask questions. First of all, anybody here? Here, we have one question in the audience.

Erkki Vesola
Analyst, Inderes

Hi, good morning. It's Erkki from Inderes. If the outlook still is solid in Marine Solutions, even though your order intake grew more than 30%, what should we expect in terms of order intake in Marine Solutions going forward? It was a slight disappointment that you didn't improve the outlook.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Yes, it's a very good question. Actually, if you look at the market, some of the segments are not developing, or they're developing differently. Steel merchant is a little bit slow. Offshore, no developments. Then you see some of the cruise and ferries and the gas carriers developing well. We still keep the solid in Marine Solutions because the environment is, in our opinion, challenging. Let's see how the world or the year goes ahead and whether we need to look at it differently.

Erkki Vesola
Analyst, Inderes

May I please have a follow-up? It's not actually a follow-up, but the new slide you showed. Are you going to define the challenger, mid, and top players in terms of your ranking or market share, et cetera?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Let's see. Top player means that we are number one or two. The mid player is number three and something four, five, depending on how many players you have there. Let's see. If the market needs to understand it even better, we can come back to define it even further.

Erkki Vesola
Analyst, Inderes

Thank you.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Anybody else here in the audience? We can go to the lines.

Operator

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question over the telephone, please press star and one on your telephone. We have quite a few questions on the line. The first question comes from Max Yates from Credit Suisse. Your line is open.

Max Yates
Analyst, Credit Suisse

Thank you. My first question would be around the EBIT and the investments that you talked about, the EUR 8 million increase in R&D and the EUR 3 million in digital. Could you give us just any kind of idea of how one-off these were in the quarter or whether we should expect that perhaps your R&D could be up EUR 20 million this year, your digital investments could be up EUR 10 million? Just to give us a kind of contextualize these on what your expectation is for the full year. Thank you.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Yes. If I start with R&D, that was more seasonal. This was more for the quarter one. I don't expect our R&D expenses to be towards the year higher than they were last year. That's more a seasonality. Digital development, EUR 3 million more. We are actually going to spend quite a lot of money in digital. The number, I don't have it at the moment because also the market is developing towards all kinds of different solutions. It's going to be higher. If you need to multiply that EUR 3 million by four, you can do that one, but I don't have a number for you at the moment.

Max Yates
Analyst, Credit Suisse

Okay. Just the second question would be around the outlook comments and where you talked about customer decision making being affected. Was that in a specific division, or was that a broad comment across all three divisions? Just trying to target exactly what you were talking about there and what is being impacted.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Yeah. Thanks, Max. Overall, of course, everybody is concerned today about trade wars. You need to be careful, but it hasn't made any changes in our decision-making in the equipment side, so no effect there. Those elements are affecting some of our segments in our services behavior, that they are more looking at the spending. It's more like being cautious that how the transactional spending in merchant and offshore is going to develop. It's more to say that, let's see what's going to happen. Trade wars can, of course, create all kinds of difficulties. That's, of course, now globally, the economic outlook is good-

Max Yates
Analyst, Credit Suisse

And-

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

You need to be concerned.

Max Yates
Analyst, Credit Suisse

I presume nothing in the first month or so that we've had of Q2 has really changed given This is going on right now, so I presume we've not seen any real improvement in the first month of Q2?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

I don't want to start guiding, Max, our quarters, but I would rather say that the more you delay stage 1, you'll anyway need to do the services. This might be seasonal effect. Let's see.

Max Yates
Analyst, Credit Suisse

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line from Manu Rimpelä from Nordea Markets. Your line is open.

Manu Rimpelä
Analyst, Nordea Markets

Good morning. My first question would be on the services sales bit. Can you just help us to understand that why did the spare parts fall to 49% of service sales from 54% a year ago?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Thanks, Manu. May I ask Pierpaolo to open it up a bit?

Pierpaolo Barbone
President, Services and Deputy to the CEO, Wärtsilä

Yeah. First of all, I would say that as you have seen, our order intake this quarter has been extremely high. Last year, same quarter was a record. This year is even bigger record, but this year we didn't have any Carnival. We had very interesting project from in the order intake, and it changed our profile. As you know, our order book for two-thirds is related to long-term agreements. In the sales of every month, two-thirds are related to transactional business. In the transactional business, we have seen, especially for merchant, to purchasing behavior on essential components and essential activities and works. This is the reason for this transactional flat development.

Manu Rimpelä
Analyst, Nordea Markets

Now specifically, if I look at the spare parts, so that sales declined year-on-year, whereas the whole service sales was flat. Anything specific behind that?

Pierpaolo Barbone
President, Services and Deputy to the CEO, Wärtsilä

Anything specific, but we have also to remember that on the agreements, in the agreements is not pure field service transactional. In the agreement there are also parts. Let's say part is part pure transactional. On the agreement, we have a certain portion of parts as well. That's also one explanation.

Manu Rimpelä
Analyst, Nordea Markets

Okay. I guess that's very much it.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line from Alexander Virgo from Bank of America. Your line is open.

Alexander Virgo
Analyst, Bank of America

Thanks very much. Just a couple of questions, actually picking up on that last one. If the customer behavior is changing as a result of geopolitical uncertainty and affecting the transactional business, does that raise a question with respect to the requirement for revenue that you need in the balance of the year? I think if you look at the backlog for delivery this year, it would imply somewhere north of 10%-15% or so growth year-on-year in transactional business. Any comment you can provide on the color around that would be helpful. Thank you.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

First of all, we are not changing our prospects for the year-end. Let's see, this was the first quarter, and there is a concern in the market. No need to start wondering that whether they start or they stopped buying or so. It's good to remember that these might affect the decision making. Of course, when looking at the different quarters within Wärtsilä, they are different. Still, we stick to what we have said earlier towards the year-end. This is not affecting the year-end yet.

Alexander Virgo
Analyst, Bank of America

Okay, thanks. Can you talk a little bit about how that affects your mix, given the EBIT in the first quarter was probably a bit disappointing because of the mix effect? Thank you.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Sorry, Alexander, we lost some of your question. Could you repeat it?

Alexander Virgo
Analyst, Bank of America

Yes, of course. Apologies. It was just that if your service business was flat and slightly disappointing, I suppose, in the quarter because of these concerns, can you talk a little bit about how that would affect your profitability through the balance of the year, given it has clearly affected the profitability in the first quarter?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

As I said, no effect to whatsoever the year-end looks like. There was a certain behavior. Let's see how it develops towards the next quarters and so on. If the mix is as it has been in earlier Wärtsilä numbers, there is of course no change. Here in quarter one, it's good to remember that FX was also affecting negatively to our services numbers, which was actually minus EUR 41 million. That dropped a bit also the services net sales.

Alexander Virgo
Analyst, Bank of America

Okay. That's helpful to know. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line from Sven Weier from UBS. Your line is open.

Sven Weier
Analyst, UBS

Good morning, Jaakko. I was just actually exactly wanting to touch on that point of currency because I think if I do the adjustment, your service revenues were up 78%, not so bad. Shouldn't you also see a positive impact during the rest of the year on service, both from a bigger merchant fleet, bigger active merchant fleets that we now have, and more activity on scrubber retrofits? That would be my first question.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Exactly, Sven. You are right. Of course, the FX was affecting. As I said earlier, we are not changing anything towards the year-end. There will be more merchant vessels. The behavior in merchant and offshore is not always understandable, that might always affect the different quarters. That's developing to the right direction. Scrubber orders, both in Marine Solutions and services, is going to help us. The first quarter was very positive. We got a lot of scrubber orders in Marine Solutions itself, but also scrubber orders from which we will be delivering through our service organization.

Sven Weier
Analyst, UBS

Good. My follow-up question would be on energy power plant solutions. I don't know if Javier is on the call, but maybe just a brief comment on the pipeline.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Yes, Javier is here and I'm sure he's willing to comment on.

Javier Cavada Camino
President of Energy Solutions, Wärtsilä

I'm here definitively, and thank you for the question. We have a strong pipeline, and I have to say that it's getting stronger in both, as Jaakko was mentioning, both the developing world to provide flexible baseload power, but in the developed countries like U.S., we see constantly strengthening our position. We have seen the Australian, our biggest order ever in that country. We see in Europe also the position is strengthening. We remain seeing the full transformation of energy into renewables is making our position strengthen day by day.

Sven Weier
Analyst, UBS

Basically pipeline getting more active and therefore good outlook for the remainder of the year.

Javier Cavada Camino
President of Energy Solutions, Wärtsilä

Yes, absolutely. It is supporting.

Sven Weier
Analyst, UBS

Okay. Thank you both.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Thank you, Sven.

Javier Cavada Camino
President of Energy Solutions, Wärtsilä

Thank you, Sven.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line from Johan Eliason from Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is open.

Johan Eliason
Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Yes. Hi, this is Johan. Just coming back to the services. You blame lower service share as mix of revenues and then lower spare parts in that mix as well as one of the reasons for the weak margin in Q1, or at least versus our expectations. Isn't it so that you have been quite successful on these maintenance agreements? Shouldn't we expect that the mix towards more agreement type of revenues and those implicitly lower share of spare part revenues should change going forward towards potentially a weaker margin picture for the services as such? How does the maintenance agreements impact the margins inside the service business?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Thank you, Johan. As Pierpaolo already said earlier, that the maintenance, the agreement side, if that increases, it increases the spare parts at the same time. Most of the agreements have actually spare parts included in the agreement. That's why when we say that the agreements are growing, it's actually helping our business and our profitability because we first of all have a long-term relationship with the customer. We don't need to fight for the transactional spare parts every year and every quarter and every month and every day, but it's actually included in the agreement, and that will help going forward. If the agreements now are or have been increasing, it's good still to remember they are long-term agreements, and if agreements grows EUR 100 million, it doesn't grow our net sales immediately next month EUR 100 million, but it's divided for years.

It gives the certainty that we can continue. Pierpaolo wanted to comment a bit more on that.

Pierpaolo Barbone
President, Services and Deputy to the CEO, Wärtsilä

I wanted to highlight also the operational profile of installation counts. For example, you have seen in the graph is flat in terms of megawatt installed, the graph. In terms of installation, we have from the end of last year, we have 10 more installations. It means that there is more installation, but we are growing in that field. When I said the operational profiles, means that we have an agreement, but then we perform according to certain scheduled. If you have an installation that is a big plant, of course, the maintenance is scheduled differently compared to a load plant.

Johan Eliason
Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Okay. Thank you very much. Maybe just a clarification on the scrubber side too, so I remember it correctly. New builds scrubbers, they all go into the Marine Solutions. Retrofits, does it only imply that both the equipment and the services goes into the Services, or is it sort of split between the Marine Solutions and Services?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

If it's a new one, it goes to Marine Solutions, and if it's a retrofit, it goes to Services. Services buys the Marine Solutions or the scrubber from Marine Solutions.

Pierpaolo Barbone
President, Services and Deputy to the CEO, Wärtsilä

In the scope, the installation, commissioning, and so.

Johan Eliason
Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Antti from Danske Bank. Your line is open.

Antti Suttelin
Analyst, Danske Bank

Yes, it's me here. Both questions on Services. Why are you getting so good orders from Services, but you have problems turning the orders into sales? Last year, your book-to-bill in Services was 1.14. Really good book-to-bill, but sluggish revenues now.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Antti, first, the answer is that the order intake in Services, it's based on the long-term agreements. They might be, Carnival was last year. It's 12 years, and we only recognize two years of that 12 year in our order intake. At the same time, the development when the sale starts, it doesn't immediately come into the picture. Going forward, step by step, it increases the net sales also.

Antti Suttelin
Analyst, Danske Bank

Okay. What drove service order intake now in Q1? You had flat, even if last year you had EUR 150 million Carnival. What compensated for the, let's say, loss of Carnival compared this year versus last year?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Good questions, Antti. Pierpaolo, you could actually

Pierpaolo Barbone
President, Services and Deputy to the CEO, Wärtsilä

This is the difference with last year. Last year, in the first quarter, we had no order intake linked to agreements. This quarter, that was this huge order intake is related to projects, the Bear Swamp and other projects that we had, including the scrubbers, significant amount of scrubbers and so on. That is the difference.

Antti Suttelin
Analyst, Danske Bank

How many scrubbers did you book now in Q1?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Order of magnitude is around 40.

Antti Suttelin
Analyst, Danske Bank

40 scrubbers.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Order of magnitude.

Antti Suttelin
Analyst, Danske Bank

Okay. How much is one scrubber in terms of order intake?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Well, it's different according to the size of the scrubber.

Antti Suttelin
Analyst, Danske Bank

On the average.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Antti, that was the services order intake scrubber.

Antti Suttelin
Analyst, Danske Bank

Yeah.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Marine had 34 scrubbers. We have always said that the scrubber order is even from EUR one million to even to EUR five million in big cruise ships. When Pierpaolo talks about orders, that includes installation.

Pierpaolo Barbone
President, Services and Deputy to the CEO, Wärtsilä

Installation, commissioning

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

no average size.

Antti Suttelin
Analyst, Danske Bank

Okay. All in all, you had 74 scrubbers, 14 service and 34 in marine. Well, is that understood?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Approximately.

Pierpaolo Barbone
President, Services and Deputy to the CEO, Wärtsilä

Approximately.

Antti Suttelin
Analyst, Danske Bank

All right. Thank you.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

You're welcome.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Glenn Liddy from J.P. Morgan. Your line is open.

Glenn Liddy
Analyst, J.P. Morgan

Good morning. Could you give us an idea what's happening in terms of pricing for each of the three areas of the business?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Thanks, Glenn. It's challenging, but we haven't seen any negative changes. Of course, I would always highlight the marine. It has always been a little bit down and a difficult market. Of course, there is a lot of players, there's a lot of overcapacity. It's a challenging market to get the orders. During the years, we have been able to protect our margins when we sell bigger solutions to our customers. Then, of course, if it includes services going forward, you can safeguard the margins in a bit. Energy, you know the story, that we used to have a low margin business and that's getting healthier quarter by quarter and year by year. Services, it will probably be the same. No changes.

Glenn Liddy
Analyst, J.P. Morgan

Okay. On the service business, your installed base or your percentage of your installed base, I think you've been winning orders in the marine industry with people other than Carnival over the last 12 months, yet your percentage of your installed base that's covered by contracts is now stable relative to last year. Is that just because you haven't booked any major service contracts so far this year?

Glenn, Pierpaolo wants to answer that specific question.

Pierpaolo Barbone
President, Services and Deputy to the CEO, Wärtsilä

No, let's say, in terms of installed base megawatt, we are stable. In terms of number of installation, we have been growing 10 installation from the end of last year. Let's say, it is related to the type of installation, how many megawatts are installed in that specific installation.

Glenn Liddy
Analyst, J.P. Morgan

Is there a big-

Pierpaolo Barbone
President, Services and Deputy to the CEO, Wärtsilä

We are growing in number of installations. We have been growing these 3 months in number of installations. The kilowatts installed are approximately the same.

Glenn Liddy
Analyst, J.P. Morgan

Is that the same for the Energy Solutions business?

Yes

It's stable for a few years as well.

Yeah.

What's more important to profitability, the number of installations or the number of megawatts?

Pierpaolo Barbone
President, Services and Deputy to the CEO, Wärtsilä

The important factor is that the installations are running, and they are not stopped, and they are not peak plants. If they are load plants, they consume more and they require more activities, and then we sell more.

Glenn Liddy
Analyst, J.P. Morgan

Okay. Thank you.

Pierpaolo Barbone
President, Services and Deputy to the CEO, Wärtsilä

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line from Sean McLoughlin from HSBC.

Sean McLoughlin
Analyst, HSBC

Thank you. Good morning. Just a question on your cash outflow in Q1. I see working capital continues to trend up as a percentage of sales. How much is structural? How much is seasonal? Any clarity here would be useful. Thank you.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Thanks, Sean. Marco Wirén, our CFO, wanted to answer to this question.

Marco Wirén
EVP and CFO, Wärtsilä

Yeah. Thank you. I would say that in Q1, or usually actually in the first part of the year, we always build up inventory. Also in this Q1, you can see that the percentage completion is increasing a lot, which means that we have doing a lot of work, but we haven't invoiced our customers yet. Because especially in the equipment side, it is quite visible. We have a lot of deliveries throughout the year, especially in Energy Solutions, that's why we are building inventory now to be able to deliver those equipment in the latter part of the year.

Sean McLoughlin
Analyst, HSBC

The build is mainly for Energy Solutions, and that's the increase. Therefore, as you deliver through the year, we'd expect that number to come down.

Marco Wirén
EVP and CFO, Wärtsilä

Actually, it's both on Marine and Energy. In Energy, you can see that inventory is increasing more than in Marine because the power plant is only engines, so it's a big inventory chunk. While in Marine, we've seen that there's a lot of percentage completion that we've been doing Q1, because they're smaller installations, that's why we're seeing that. In both, actually, the inventory is increasing a little bit more in Energy.

Sean McLoughlin
Analyst, HSBC

Yep. Thank you.

Marco Wirén
EVP and CFO, Wärtsilä

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line from Tomi Rapeli from SEB. Your line is open.

Tomi Rapeli
Analyst, SEB

Good morning. It's Tomi Rapeli from SEB. Coming back to the currency issue, could you be just a bit more specific on the impact of the currency changes in the orders, sales, and profits?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

The negative effect to services sales was minus EUR 41 million. No other effect to other divisions, or major. Order intake minus EUR 41 million in services. EUR 45 million.

Natalia Valtasaari
Director, Investor and Media Relations, Wärtsilä

Forty-one.

Pierpaolo Barbone
President, Services and Deputy to the CEO, Wärtsilä

No effect to our profit. No major in profit at all.

Natalia Valtasaari
Director, Investor and Media Relations, Wärtsilä

No.

Tomi Rapeli
Analyst, SEB

Do you expect a negative currency impact for the full year?

Roger Holm
President, Marine Solutions, Wärtsilä

Depends on USD.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Yeah. USD could be a concern. It's difficult to start expecting or forecasting currencies. I don't know. USD is a question mark.

Tomi Rapeli
Analyst, SEB

On the marine order intake, I can see it actually that the growth was coming from almost tripling in the merchant segment, and the cruise was double compared to last year. Gas carrier was actually very weak in the quarter. Do you see gas carrier orders picking up and maybe from timing perspective to be more in the pipeline, so to say?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Thank you for the question. Roger Holm, Head of Marine Solutions, he could open a little bit what's happening in the market.

Roger Holm
President, Marine Solutions, Wärtsilä

Thank you for the question. If I start with the big share of merchant, there were actually 2 big orders that increased the share of merchant. One was the TK deal where we booked part of it already in Q4, and the other part came in Q1. We had in total 4 shuttle tankers for TK built at Samsung. The other one was 2 tankers also for American Eagle Tankers that were booked in Q1. These 2 orders itself had a large impact for our merchant order. Back to your comment about gas carriers. I would say gas carriers is normal fluctuations depending on when the orders are booked. We don't see any major changes on gas carriers. If you look at vessel contracting, actually in Q1, we had equally amount of LNG carriers ordered as we had for the whole last year.

The LNG carrier segment is very active at the moment. We had no FSRU orders in Q1, while we had, I think, 6 in total last year. Gas carriers are more seasonality from an ordering point of view.

Tomi Rapeli
Analyst, SEB

I understand that it fluctuates, but if it was roughly EUR 20 million gas carrier orders in Q1 and around EUR 100 million in Q1 2017, obviously triggered by some larger activity, but is activity closer to the EUR 100 million or the EUR 20 million?

Roger Holm
President, Marine Solutions, Wärtsilä

I think what you need to take into consideration here is that, last year, we had quite good orders on FSRUs where you can see one deal is between EUR 20 million and EUR 30 million for just the regasification modules. That has a big impact that if there are no FSRU activities, you see it immediately on that part. LNG carriers also, last year, was fairly low, and the activities that we have seen now with new gas carrier orders in Q1 for LNG carriers are not yet reflected in our ordering base. The development and the sentiment in the gas carrier market in general is improving.

Tomi Rapeli
Analyst, SEB

On the storage system side for energy, you, I believe, announced two orders. Can you tell us anything about the MW size or EUR value size?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Yes. Javier can answer to that one. By the way, we agreed to have one question and one follow-up. Javier will still answer to that one.

Javier Cavada Camino
President of Energy Solutions, Wärtsilä

Very good. Indeed, I will answer, try to be short. We have a lot of activity in the energy storage field. There is a lot of interest from the market. Since the acquisition of Greensmith one year ago, we are in the top global leaders in energy storage. Said that, the deals and the projects are all very small in size, mainly focused on complete turnkey solutions that include a software platform that is the Greensmith platform, managing the assets into the grid. In terms of MW, they are not comparable to traditional power generation because we talk about MWh of storage, not about generating power, so you cannot compare them.

It's a market that is in the infancy, is really getting born now, we are taking the leadership and taking the first steps into it and making sure we get as many deals globally as we are doing.

Tomi Rapeli
Analyst, SEB

Thank you.

Javier Cavada Camino
President of Energy Solutions, Wärtsilä

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line from Edward Morawiecki from Citi Research. Your line is open.

Edward Morawiecki
Analyst, Citi Research

Hello. Good morning, Jaakko. Thank you for taking my question. Just had a question to clarify the scrubber numbers. If we look at the 77 scrubber systems sold last year, how does that number compare to the numbers you've given for scrubbers this morning? Is that number just for marine, or is that number comparable to the services plus marine?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Yeah. This quarter, over 70, is both marine and services.

Edward Morawiecki
Analyst, Citi Research

Okay.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Last year, probably we didn't have any services, but only marine.

Roger Holm
President, Marine Solutions, Wärtsilä

Newbuild.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

That's a newbuild. You need to remember that we have newbuild marine and then services makes the retrofit.

Edward Morawiecki
Analyst, Citi Research

Okay. If we were to add the services number to the marine number for last year, what would we get?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

No, we didn't get any service retrofits last year. It's actually started this quarter.

Roger Holm
President, Marine Solutions, Wärtsilä

This quarter.

Edward Morawiecki
Analyst, Citi Research

Okay. Understood. Have you got any, just as a follow-up, do you have any sort of insights, with regards to scrapping rates? If the vessel owners, if you think, if you are seeing scrapping rates going up, because I would imagine if scrubber retrofits are going up, it means vessel owners are starting to take the January 2020 deadline quite seriously.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Yeah. Good question, Edward. I don't think we have seen scrapping rates going up and not at all because of the 2020, because now you need to remember 2020, people might go for LNG, they might go for scrubbers, they might switch the fuel, or they don't comply. Many of the players are waiting just to see the fines and so on. They don't make decision to scrap or increase the rate of scrubbing yet.

Edward Morawiecki
Analyst, Citi Research

Okay. Thank you very much.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

You're welcome.

Operator

Thank you. We have a few follow-up questions. The first one comes from Manu Rimpelä from Nordea Markets. Your line is open.

Manu Rimpelä
Analyst, Nordea Markets

Okay, thank you. My follow-up would be on the quotation activity that you show for Energy Solutions. We have a slight dip in Q1 2018 compared to the last couple of quarters. I think Javier mentioned that the pipeline activity is improving and looking stronger. Could you just explain why we saw a dip in quotations and is that something we should be worried about?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Thank you, Manu. Javier?

Javier Cavada Camino
President of Energy Solutions, Wärtsilä

Thank you, Manu. No need to be worried at all. Some peace of mind is the number of quotations is based on number of projects, not size, complexity. As you know, we are enlarging our solutions widen our portfolio. We are being really turnkey, life cycle support, energy storage, gas solutions. It's not comparable one project to another. In that sense, we see the pipeline getting bigger in value and bigger in activities too. We will continue following up the number of quotations because it gives a benchmark to the past. Small fluctuations like this one is no need for any worry.

Manu Rimpelä
Analyst, Nordea Markets

Okay. Maybe a follow-up on that. Can you comment just a bit more detail in terms of do you see a lot more of the quotation activity being linked towards renewable energy today? Because traditionally, you've been still very much exposed and in the kind of emerging markets and more traditional power generation. Can you give us some figures to understand how the kind of renewable share has developed?

Javier Cavada Camino
President of Energy Solutions, Wärtsilä

Definitely, I want to highlight that we keep our very strong feet and foundation in the developing world as a flexible solution for new electricity in places where they didn't have access to electricity before, as you can see in our order intake. At the same time, our growth in the developed world, supporting wind and solar to happen with the Smart Power Generation, with energy storage solutions. That part is getting bigger and stronger every month that we can see. You can see also from our orders booked in the last, you could say, one year already.

Manu Rimpelä
Analyst, Nordea Markets

Thank you.

Javier Cavada Camino
President of Energy Solutions, Wärtsilä

Thank you, Manu.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next follow-up question comes from the line from Johan Eliason from Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is open.

Johan Eliason
Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Yes. Going back to the scrubbers, is it still mainly cruise ships that are taking these scrubbers, or are you seeing some activity in other segments as well? Is there a difference between the new builds and the retrofits that you're starting to see here in terms of which segment of the industry is buying those?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

There is definitely a change now that it used to be more cruise ships and ferries and only new building. You see new building also for container vessels or merchant vessels, and the retrofits are all basically almost different kind of merchant vessels. The type of scrubber is also changing. You used to have closed loop, and now you have more open loop or mixers and so on. Now finally, because of the 2020, other segments are also looking at the different ways to comply.

Johan Eliason
Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Excellent. Have you had the opportunity to look closer at the marine business Rolls-Royce wants to divest?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Oh, really?

Javier Cavada Camino
President of Energy Solutions, Wärtsilä

Johan, thank you for the question. I was waiting for that one.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Yes, we have said many times that we will look every acquisition possibility if it supports our strategies, the Smart Marine and Smart Energy strategy. Let's see.

Johan Eliason
Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Have they started opening the books for you yet, or how does it look?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

You should ask their opinion whether they want to tell with whom they talk and what they talk.

Johan Eliason
Analyst, Kepler Cheuvreux

Okay. Thank you very much.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Thank you, Johan.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line from Alexander Virgo from the Bank of America. Your line is open.

Alexander Virgo
Analyst, Bank of America

Thanks very much. Apologies for the background noise if there is any. I just wondered, Jaakko, if you could talk us a little bit through the operating profit bridge year-on-year, because I'm just struggling a little bit, I guess, with the operational leverage given, I guess if you adjust for the FX, your organic growth must have been 10% or so at the group level in terms of sales. Shouldn't you be getting better operational leverage on that in the quarter? I appreciate it's only a quarter. If you could give us any color on that, it'd be great. Thanks.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Alexander, thank you for the question. As I said, we have been speaking about the years to come and how we are developing, how our operational leverage is affecting how much we are doing actually for the profitability. At the same time, it's good to remember that our quarters are, they go up and down, and there are seasonal reasons. Now, the unfavorable mix of the sales that should actually change going forward in different directions. I'm not ready to start guiding the numerics or the figures of the year-end. You see that the markets are developing well in all the divisions, that's supporting also the net sales growth, supported by, of course, that we need the services also to perform every quarter and at the year-end and next year and so on.

That's also supported when you get more equipment, more solutions into the market. They will attach our services going forward, that will support the profitability.

Alexander Virgo
Analyst, Bank of America

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The last question in this line comes from Sven Weier from UBS. Your line is open

Sven Weier
Analyst, UBS

Yeah. Thank you for taking the follow-ups. Just on the chart you gave on page 25, your market positioning, I think it's quite a timely chart given what you've just said on Rolls-Royce. I was just wondering if we were including this business into the picture, which business would you not be a top player then anymore? I guess it especially strengthens your offshore, right? Maybe merchant, but hardly any business left where you would not be a top player anymore, right?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Sven, Rolls-Royce is very much in offshore segment or has historically been. Their propulsion systems are very much complementary to our propulsion. They work in certain same segments. The cranes, the deck machinery and so on, that has also been more in offshore. You have automation and you have their new digital developments, it might be supporting some other segments. Overall, I don't know how to answer your final question point that what would be there and what wouldn't be there. You know Rolls-Royce and you know Wärtsilä, and does it make sense? You need to start studying it even more.

Sven Weier
Analyst, UBS

Speaking about offshore, Alfa Laval yesterday, they announced numbers and obviously they had quite a bit of offshore orders in the quarter. Is it really that you're seeing absolutely zero activity still, or is there any cautious signs of some comeback here?

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

I would still say that the numbers are small. What would be the right word? In our case, the only area where we see offshore activity is in services. That's not normal. If there is an activity, they start taking existing ships or lay up ships in operation, we would start seeing it even more in services. Starting to order something Marine Solutions. We were two weeks ago, some weeks ago with Roger Holm in Korea. They said that, "Okay, zero. Still zero." I don't know if there might be then some Norwegian offshore moving on, but very, very small.

Sven Weier
Analyst, UBS

Okay. Thank you again.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Thank you, Sven.

Operator

Thank you. We have no further questions at this time.

Jaakko Eskola
President and CEO, Wärtsilä

Thank you. Any further ones here from the audience? No? All right. Thank you everyone. Good set of questions, let's see you then in July. Bye-bye.

Operator

That does conclude the conference for today. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.