Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the third quarter 2025 results presentation for Elopak. My name is Erica Binde Honningsvåg, and I'm the Investor Relations and Treasury Officer. Today's presentation will be held by our CEO, Thomas Körmendi, and our CFO, Bent A. Axelsen, and will last for about 30 minutes, followed by a Q&A session where the people here in the audience and the people watching online will be able to ask questions. With that introduction, I will hand it over to our CEO, Thomas Körmendi.
Thank you, Erica, and good morning to all of you here in Oslo. It's actually lovely to see such a filled room here today, and also, of course, a very warm welcome to everyone joining us on the webcast. Today, we are particularly happy, actually, to present the best ever financial result for the group to date. It's a presentation with quite a few milestones, and we're very, very excited to present. Before we start on the quarter, of course, just for those of you who are not so familiar with Elopak, what we do is we are in sustainable packaging. What we do is we protect commodities, we enable nutrition around the world, and we do all of that with a mission of actually reducing the overall plastics consumption, replacing more and more plastics with more and more carton packaging.
Let's then look at the quarter, and it's been quite a unique quarter, as I said. First of all, we have seen a plus €49 million EBITDA result with more than 17% margin level. It's a very strong result in absolute terms, and it's also with an organic revenue growth of 1.2%. Most of the revenue, most of the result is driven by an incredibly strong performance. Again, I have to say, in Americas with 18% growth, and also in a period where our plant in Little Rock actually for the first quarter started turning a profit, as we said that it would do actually after Q2 as well. It's also a quarter where we, and I will address that more later in the presentation, have decided to increase the capacity ahead of time in the U.S.
with yet another line, the third line to be installed, and also now a quarter where we say that even though the EMEA business is meeting some consumption headwind generally, we are seeing that the business is resilient and doing well in spite of all of this. Finally, and very importantly, I'm sure for many in this room here as well, this is a quarter where we have a solid cash generation. We've been able to pay back our net debt and are now facing a 2.1% leverage ratio, again almost in line with the midterm target. Overall, strong financial performance in the quarter and some very important milestones for the future growth of Elopak.
Let's just think two minutes on the strategy that we presented back at the Capital Markets Day, and that will be in following up since and where you see that the quarterly result we have now is a direct result of the activities we have initiated throughout this period and on the back of the strategy. Our strategy consists of three elements. Number one relates to the geographical, what we call global growth. For us, global growth for a very, very, very big part relates to America and the continued development in America. Needless to say, performance in America, and what I've just shown, is a testament that that is actually paying off.
The second one relates to the development around making our core stronger, and our core in Europe, where we have a significant part of our business, also relates to development, innovation around new materials in line with and meeting the regulations upcoming in the EU, such as the packaging and packaging waste regulation. A lot of the work in that field is directly transferable into the overall ambition we have in replacing plastics, what we call plastics to carton. This is a massive area way outside our current business, but in adjacent areas, but also in the actual substrate shifts happening in our business, i.e., if you think of it, the milk currently packed in plastics moving into cartons, etc. The potential, of course, is way, way, way beyond that.
Now, starting with number one and the geographical expansion, let's just turn and think about Americas again because it has been quite a journey for us. As some of you remember and have seen, we decided back in 2023 to establish a new plant in the U.S., and that is on the back of a position we've had in the U.S. for actually 20 years. We came to North America in 2000, yes, and supplied North America with plants in Canada, our big Montreal plant, and also the plants in Mexico and the Caribbean. In 2023, we decided we need a plant inside the U.S., and then we established the plant, decided to establish a plant in Arkansas, Little Rock.
In September of the same year, we announced that we're going to put in another line in that plant because we saw increasing demand around our supply, our services, our packaging offerings, and generally an opportunity in the market. In April of this year, we had the inauguration of the plant. The plant, I can happily say, was built, constructed, and made in time and on budget and has been up and running ever since, and we are ramping up. As you have heard earlier, we're now seeing the fruits with the plant turning a profitable business already here in Q3. The demand actually in America is very clear, and if you think of it, we have been growing since 2020 on an average of 15% a year. That's 76% actual growth in the Americas business in a market in a stable, mature category such as milk and juice.
We have seen that there is a demand for our services, and for that reason, we have also taken the step now to announce the decision that we are going to build, extend our capacity with the third line in Little Rock, allowing us to drive our market share, continue on the growth pattern we've been on, allowing us to establish a much broader portfolio than we had before, simply given that as equipment gets, the manufacturing plant gets more and more full with existing orders, we need to have a broader setup to be able to offer a broader portfolio. That is what we're going to do with the third line. What is very fundamental is that with this third line that we're actually putting in place somewhere a year ahead of what we had originally thought.
With this, we confirm again that we will reach our targets as presented on the CMD back in 2024. The midterm target as well as the long-term target, this will enable us to drive, as I said, increase our value share, our share of wallet with a number of our customers, as well as increasing our market share in general in America. Because of the product mix, though, in America, which is in the third line, will be primarily focusing on smaller size packs, including anywhere from school milk size and upwards. For our large customers in the U.S., they always have a mixed portfolio in their sales, i.e., from very small ones to the larger half-gallon sizes.
For us, establishing a third line enables us to get a higher share of wallet with them, supplying them the full portfolio, and hence become a better and more valuable supplier to the industry and to our customers in general. Although we have a run rate because of the product mix on the third line, which is different than what we have announced on the first line, we're also going to see that with this, it's accretive to the group, and it's certainly very, very strongly supporting the group's industrial presence in America. It would also mean that we will have a higher level of flexibility in how we run operations in America. We will have a higher level of operations with line two and three, which will allow us to ramp up line two at a faster pace because of line three than without line three.
That has to do with product mix and how you move products and sizes, etc. Very importantly, we are building line three because we have the commitment, full commitment on that line from customers in the U.S. The line three acts both as an industrial strategic investment. It has the full backing of customers, and it is definitely accretive to the group and will strengthen our overall position in the U.S. Now, back to our results. As you will see, we have a revenue that is down due to the currency effect in the U.S. On an organic level, we are up by 1.2% and up by around 2% for the full year. EBITDA-wise, we have a strong performance, which is both in the quarter and, of course, in the year, but in the quarter, very strongly driven by the development in the U.S.
Remember, we have a negative currency effect that we'll address later in this period. All in all, we are heading now at 17%. For those of you who recall our Capital Markets Day targets, we did say 15% to 17% midterm targets. It's a very healthy level for us to be at in this period here. There is a one-off, though, which has to be set in EMEA of around $1.5 million, which is also part of why we get a positive one of $1.5 million. With this, as I said, this is actually the highest EBITDA we've had to date, and we are very excited with what that brings to the future. With this, I think I'm going to hand over to you, Bent, on the financials.
Thank you, Thomas, from financials to more financials, which is fun today. Let's jump straight to it with EMEA. What we can see here is that we are delivering a revenue of €206 million, which is 5% down compared to last year. If we analyze the performance, the underlying performance, we can say that we do have a resilient performance despite continued soft consumption. Now, why is that? If we look at our Pure-Pak revenues, they are stable year over year. What we are seeing, despite the soft consumption, is we continue to increase market share. Specifically for this quarter, we are regaining our business in MENA, as fresh dairy is strengthening in that region. For the aseptic business, we are growing by taking market share and basically growing with our customers. If we look at the key contributor to the revenue decline, it's actually related to filling machines.
We are commissioning around the same number of machines this quarter compared to last year, but the machines are smaller, so we have a negative mix effect. That actually explains around 60% of the revenue decline. As we have reported before, we still observe competition in the roll fed segment, and that is happening both in Europe and in India. In Europe, it plays out through lower volumes, albeit the pace has slowed down. We see a positive development in the roll fed area because we see that the trend is slowing down. In India, it plays out with a margin squeeze because it's a crowded place. We are growing organically 19% in India with our roll fed business. When it comes to profitability, we are reporting 36.7%. That is up 2% compared to last year. That comes from improved pricing and improved mix in Pure-Pak.
We also have this switch from Pure-Pak to roll fed, which is also contributing to the positive mix. Thomas already mentioned the one-off, which is in Europe, which also impacts these results positively by €1.5 million. In conclusion for EMEA, resilient performance despite continued soft consumption. Over to America, the growth journey continues with revenue growth of 11% or 18% on a fixed currency basis. We are still seeing the interest and the demand in our products. The growth in revenue is volume, carton, and closures, and it's enabled by two things. Obviously, we have the ramp-up in the U.S., but we're also seeing improved productivity in the assets in Canada, and in combination, that is then enabling this growth. Also, in America, we have a negative revenue impact in regards to filling machines. It's the same explanation here. We have a mix effect.
In these quarters, we have commissioned school milk machines, and they are smaller in size and also then smaller in revenues. If we move to the EBITDA, we see a very strong growth of the EBITDA, 21% growth of the EBITDA up to €21 million with a margin of 24%. In addition to the top line growth itself, we have positive mix effects, but we also do see the benefit of improved asset utilization, and we are leveraging our fixed cost base. It's also, of course, as Thomas Körmendi mentioned, very proud that this is the first quarter with positive EBITDA in Little Rock, a milestone for us. We are very, very pleased with that. The ramp-up continues, and it's obviously better than last quarter, but we obviously would have liked to see an even faster ramp-up than what we have seen.
When it comes to the joint ventures, we have an EBITDA or share on net income of €1.4 million. That is actually declined from €2.1 million, and the explanation for that is a softer demand and a change in consumption habits. Overall, the key message is that we do have improved utilization that enables growth in America. Let's take the group perspective and start with the net revenue mix. This is €7.4 million, and that is mainly driven by, one, the growth in America and the positive mix and pricing effects in EMEA. When it comes to raw material, this is again where we have the one-off, which is positive, and then we have a negative effect of €0.6 million for the underlying raw materials. That comes from board price increases, alloy price increases, even though the PE has softened year over year.
Our operating costs are mainly explained by salary inflation of 3% and also the ramp-up in Little Rock, which also is affecting the operating cost level somewhat naturally. The rest of the fixed cost base in the company remains rather stable. The last bridge element, we have already mentioned the joint ventures and the FX, which also Thomas Körmendi talked about. That is the result of the 6% weakening of the dollars versus the euro on an average year-over-year basis, leading to the 70%, which is on par with the best we have done. Let's move to the cash flow, which is probably the most exciting part of the financials this time because we also are not only reporting record profitability, but we are also reporting record cash flow generation from operations. The cash flow from operation is €55 million.
It's not only driven by the profitability, but it's also driven by the improvement in working capital. This element is to a large extent driven by timing of accounts payables. That can go up and down between quarters. It was quite low last quarter, and then it's higher. This could vary a little bit up and down, important to notice. We also have an underlying improvement of our inventory in Europe from our working capital project. Also here, we are seeing the ramp-up effect of Little Rock. We are also building working capital, obviously, as a part of growing the top line in the U.S. Our cash flow from investing activities is €11.5 million. We are still having €2.4 million in investment in Little Rock in this quarter.
The rest is our replacement program in Europe, while filling machine investments are lower than last year because most of the projects are sales rather than lease, and then it doesn't impact the investment line. Cash flow from financing activities is also €11.5 million, nothing special there, which brings us to a net debt of €272 million. This means that the cash bank debt has reduced €31 million quarter over quarter, which we regard as rather solid. With this cash flow generation, we are deleveraging the company. As Thomas Körmendi said, we are bringing the leverage ratio very close to our midterm target of 2. This comes from not only the payment of the debts, but we also have improved the LTM EBITDA by €3 million. The good thing with that, it enables future investment in our strategic initiatives, and it allows us to continue to pay healthy dividends.
If you check your bank accounts yesterday, you received dividends in total of €21.5 million. This comes from the second installment of 2024 and also from the first half result of 2025, as we are in this transition year from annual dividend payments to semi-to payments per year. If you look at the right-hand side, it's a little bit difficult to see, but the curve is going upwards on RSE. We finally are seeing improvement of our return on capital employed, as we have talked about in earlier quarters, and that is coming from the fact that we are finally making profit from our Little Rock investments with the capital that we already have installed there. We have so far invested $86 million in Little Rock. We have $42 million to go, and we expect that around $6 million of those will come this year in Q4.
In summary, the financial position is really strong, and we are continuing to leverage the company despite the investment program. This concludes the financial section, which was actually quite great to present.
Thank you, Bent. Good you liked it. Finally, as you can sense, we are really happy to report to you the highest, and I would change that into the best financials yet for the company. It's EBITDA, as you saw, but it's also the cash generation that we have succeeded with in the period. It's also a period where we are reaffirming our strategy. We are confirming the strategy. We are now putting in and deciding on the third line, really is putting a strong footprint in the U.S. and in the Americas in general, North America.
We are also seeing EMEA, despite these headwinds that we have talked about, that we are actually seeing very solid developments in big parts of EMEA, not the least in South, not the least in MENA, that gives us the confidence that we are also here on the right track and will continue to develop the business in line with the plans we've outlined in the Capital Markets Day. All in all, what we are now saying is we expect to deliver within our midterm targets, as you know, which is 4% to 6% organic growth and 15% to 17% on the margin side for the year. With this, I think we're going to hand over to questions.
Thank you, Thomas. Thank you, Bent, for the presentation. We will now open up the floor for questions, starting with the audience here first. Please raise your hand, and I will also state your name and the company you represent.
Thank you. Marcus Gavelli, Pareto. You had previously said that line two will be fully ramped up in H1 2026. At the presentation today, you said that line three will coincide with line two. Could you try to put some color on what you really meant by that? I assume that line two is still on track and line three will come a bit later.
I just want to clarify that we will open line two in H1 2026, not ramp up.
Yeah, we would ramp. What we said then was we are going to ramp up during 2026, right? It's not that we are fully done. As we have said, we are going to install line two and start ramping up during next year. Thank you. Why are we saying that the two actually help each other? It is like this, right? If you look at the industry, I don't think in a way the dairy industry is very different than many other industries. Our big customers will have a variety of sizes, formats, and evidently will look at their suppliers, one of which is us, to say, can you supply us with a broad set of formats in order for us to essentially become, in order for us to close a partnership with you?
The close partnership in our industry is really, really important because you know we have very long tenures generally in the industry. The closer we work with someone, the better we can develop it and the longer performance we can actually secure for our customers. With this move, we ensure that we can use our line two on some formats that would not have been possible had we not had line three to complement that. From a customer point of view, they would then have said it's difficult for us to move volume into you unless you can also do some other formats. That is the simple story. It's a little bit opaque when I put it like this, but it is actually what it is.
No, that's perfect. Thank you. Also, with what you said in MENA with the volume growth commencing again, could you again try to put some color on is that more of a one-off? Are you seeing some sea change over there, and then also how you think about, I guess, growth into Europe with price increases and so on?
I think sea change is probably overdoing it.
Yes.
I'm very optimistic around MENA, honestly, and it is what it is. It's a sensitive economy, right? Consumption is impacted by ups and downs clearly, but the underlying business for us is the strategic direction we have is add more value to our customers in MENA by adding ESL, longer shelf lives, which drives down their cost, improves the performance of the products on shelf, have a better product with a better looking product on shelf, etc. That is actually why we are seeing that we can gain business and are gaining business. The business we are gaining is not necessarily the business you see right now in this quarter because, as I say, there are ups and downs. Why I'm saying I'm positive is because underlyingly we are moving in the right direction.
What we have seen in previous quarters, a little bit how Ramadan falls and inventory builds up, etc. In a way, I wouldn't put too much focus just on a quarter when it comes to MENA. Much more is the underlying business moving in the right direction, and it is.
Technically speaking, I think the quarter last year was relatively soft. Part of that is also a rebound, but it's really, as someone said, we need to look into longer perspectives to really get insights from the development.
That's all for me. Thank you.
Okay. We will move forward with the questions that we have received online, starting with a couple of ones from Arctic and Jeppe in Arctic. We'll take them one by one. It's regarding the line three. What are the expected revenue levels and EBITDA margin for the third line?
What we're saying is run rate is going to be lower than when we talked about line one. It's a different product mix than what we talked about one, which was really a very, very, I wouldn't say simple because that would offend the people of Little Rock, but a different mix than saying actually one product versus different products, smaller formats, etc. It's going to be lower. We are not explicit about it because we are looking at the plant in combination of the three lines, right? It's not this line, that line, this line. The combination of the lines will generate the result. In fact, what we're even doing more is we are more occupied with looking at the Americas result than single lines and single factories. On the Americas result, we can just reaffirm we are going to deliver the midterm targets and the long-term targets.
We will fix the mixing between the various production lines.
I think the key here is the midterm target. I also want to note that typically the way we follow up the American business is in dollars. We did convert that to a euro top-down target in the capital markets there. Back then, the currency was 1.08. Obviously, things have happened to the currency as well. That could also be good to remember when you are calculating.
Okay. When do you expect production to start, and what's the planned ramp-up for line three?
We expect production on line three in 2027, which means that with these lines, there's a certain lead time when you order them and then installing them, etc. That's why we're doing it now to be able to actually produce in 2027.
Does the addition of this line affect the ramp-up of line two?
It does affect the ramp-up because it gives us flexibility to move products around. To the point of saying with the line three, we can get more customers in who have a mix of products. More customers in will allow us to move products between the lines at a faster pace. Hence, we think it's going to be very beneficial for line two as well.
Will this dilute school milk production from the joint venture?
That is not the intent, no.
Okay. A couple of questions from Louis in BMP. Can you give some extra color on what the €1.5 million one-off is related to?
I can do that. Basically, over the last couple of years, we paid too much in utility costs in one of our factories, and we got that money back. We paid the amount. It's nothing more dramatic than that. It's basically a retroactive correction.
Thanks. Is roll-fed production integrated with Pure-Pak sleeve production, or can otherwise repurpose activity?
Can you just take it again, please.
Is roll fed production integrated with Pure-Pak sleeve production or can otherwise repurpose activity?
I assume this refers to, okay, let me put it like this. If you look at our plants now, it's integrated as much as in the same plant, we will do both. It doesn't mean necessarily it's all the same machines, of course, because you have in Pure-Pak, you have sealing machines you don't use for roll fed, and you typically have different converters as well where possible. We are doing Pure-Pak and roll fed in Aarhus. We will be doing Pure-Pak and roll fed in India as well. You will have mixed factories and you will have factories that are not mixed.
Last one from Louis. What is your competitive advantage in aseptic since you mentioned MENA customers are moving that way?
Right. I think that's a very interesting, actually, question and something I could probably give a longer answer to, but I will make it reasonably short. I think if you are in the aseptic business, you are going to look for something that, I mean, let's go one step back. You're in the aseptic business. Clearly, you need performance, technical performance. You need the performance on the packaging systems, etc. That is the fundament for anyone who goes into this business. In the case of Pure-Pak, we have a technology that allows us to keep a low waste with our filling machines. That is because it is blanks fed versus roll fed, and that actually means that the amount of waste during the production is much, much, much lower in those systems. That's number one. That's a more technical operational issue.
Our machines, our system is running at a high technical efficiency, which is important, of course, but the market point is it is a system that is unique. It is the iconic system for carton packaging, milk packaging, and it is actually the consumer preferred system as well from a handling and consumer point of view. This is, I think, evidenced by the development we have, for instance, in South, where we're seeing solid growth in the UHT long-life milk areas and also in other markets where it is. It is a system with a solid technical performance and a very high consumer approval. In short, we can do it much, much longer if you like.
Thank you.
If you want to buy a machine, let me know.
All right.
We can also lease it.
We have a question from Ole -Petter in Sparebanken. This quarter, smaller machines both in EMEA and U.S. Should we expect an increased share of smaller filling machines also for Q4 and into 2026, or was this a special for the third quarter?
I think this timing has proven to be very difficult to predict. Generally speaking, I would say that Q3 was unusual from a size perspective. I think we haven't done an explicit forecast on that, but our hope is, of course, to get back to the big machines so we can generate more blank sales and also improve our working capital position. This will always go a little bit up and down between the quarters.
Thanks. We have a question from Amir Jabari. How does the cost pressure in raw materials impact your pricing directions in 2026?
Right. This is, of course, early days to be specific around pricing, but what we do see is that there are raw materials, including board, which will go up in the coming period. For us, of course, it will mean that we will also increase our prices for 2026. I cannot evidently explain the amount, but we will be increasing prices, yes.
Okay. We have a last one, but I think you covered it during the last question, was regarding board price changes for 2026. All right. If there's no further questions from the audience here, I think we will round off today's Q&A session and also the results presentation.
Thank you very much. Thank you.