Welcome to AAK Q4 2023 report presentation. For the first part of the presentation, participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing # five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to the speakers, CEO Johan Westman and CFO Tomas Bergendahl. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and welcome. Good morning, everyone. This is the AAK Q4 earnings call. As you heard, together with me as usual, I have our CFO, Tomas Bergendahl. We will take you through the presentation today, and then as usual, we are happy to take all your questions afterwards. On page 2, you will see the agenda for today. And with that, I suggest that we jump right into page 4 and start our presentation of the Q4. We are really closing the year with strength. It's been a strong year for AAK in total, and quarter four was no exception to that. Our operating profit increased by 50% at fixed FX rates. This was very much driven by internal process optimization.
We've talked about that earlier, but very much in line with what we have been doing and executing throughout the year. Also, better portfolio and price management, including a continued focus on selling more of our speciality solutions, and that is a focus that will continue with AAK. Our volumes, however, declined 4% year-on-year, but worth mentioning is that we continue to see a sequential improvement, which we also saw in quarter three. So really good to see that the volume loss to last year, quarter four, is lower than the losses to the previous quarter that we saw during 2023. And if you then go in and look at that sequentially, Q2 to Q3 to Q4, we did see improvement in volume.
Further to the operating results, we also had a very strong cash flow, and the strong cash flow was really driven by the increase in earnings in the quarter. We have a proposed dividend from the board of directors, which is at SEK 3.70 per share. This corresponds to an increase of 35% compared to last year, so a nice increase, also driven by our increased earnings. In summary, a strong quarter, very much in line with the trend for the first nine months of 2023. With those comments, let's move on to page 5. A few comments to some events during the quarter. We are very happy and proud that we have now got our targets, our sustainability targets, reduction targets, have been approved by the Science Based Targets initiative, SBTi. That marks a milestone.
It shows that AAK is really moving ahead. We are also an early adopter with regards to the SBTi targets, because we have now, as one of the first companies, also secured approval for the FLAG part of SBTi, which is focusing on forest, land, and agriculture. So our emission reduction targets have also been approved with regard to Scope 3 under the FLAG directive. Further to this, we have launched a new product, CEBES Choco 15. It has received good recognition at the Food Ingredients Europe. We were in November at this conference, Food Ingredients Europe. We were one of the finalists with regard to in the category for Sensory Innovation Award. It's targeting affordable indulgence.
So in essence, living our purpose, making better happen, in this case, making an opportunity for the consumer to enjoy indulgence at an affordable price. Moving on to page 6. With regards to our three areas, starting with food ingredients, volumes were down 3% year-on-year, but also in this area, we improved volume sequentially. Bakery Special Nutrition volumes declined, but was somewhat mitigated by a strong performance within dairy. Coming back to bakery, our bakery optimization that we have talked about earlier this year had a negative impact versus this quarter. But that was, again, very much according to plan. With regards to our margin, EBIT per kilo, it increased to SEK 1.96 per kilo, which is a 52% increase versus last year at fixed FX rates.
This increase was mainly driven, or, or rather broad-based driven, throughout the sub-segments. Pretty much all of them improved, with the exception of Special Nutrition, which decreased slightly, due to lower volumes and lower leverage on that lower volume. Sequentially, the EBIT per kilo declined a little bit compared to a very high SEK 2.15 per kilo in quarter three. With that, we're moving into chocolate and confectionery on page 7. For the chocolate and confectionery fats, volumes decreased by 2% year-on-year, but grew 3% versus quarter three, 2023. The performance was a bit mixed within the total chocolate and confectionery space.
We saw a bit of a decline for solutions to products like chocolate bars and so forth, but on the other hand, compensated by nice growth for solutions where we target ingredients towards spreads and fillings within the chocolate and confectionery space. With regard to margin, EBIT per kilo was strong. It increased by 67% at fixed FX. It's very much in line with the rest of 2023, where we have seen a strong performance driven by internal optimization, continued portfolio and price management, improving the way we operate. And this also include our continued focus on selling more of our specialty solutions into various subsegments of the chocolate and confectionery space.
To name an example, specialty solutions that we sell to spreads and fillings did very well and had a positive mix effect for the quarter or in the quarter, for Chocolate and Confection. With that, I move into Technical Products and Feed. Volumes declined by 12%. Really also, when looking at that, it is a high comp in 2022 Q4, it was very high volumes, but again, we grew sequentially in the quarter versus the second quarter. So, for the second quarter in a row, we grew sequentially, so really from Q2 to Q3, and now from Q3 to Q4. So again, a slightly positive trend versus Q2, Q3, but when comparing to Q4, it was negative 12%.
The year-on-year decline was mainly driven by lower sales or lower volumes in the feed business, which again, had a strong quarter for 2022. With regards to technical products, including solutions where we replace paraffin to candles, it declined slightly, but still on a good level in a historic perspective. EBIT per kilo declined on lower volumes, so lower leverage, also lower margins into our solution for biofuel, and a slightly lower crush margin also in our crushing of rapeseed. From a rolling perspective, the Q4 results were very much in line with Q2 and Q3, both when looking at volumes and EBIT per kilo. And with that, I hand it over to you, Tomas, for a bit more details on the financials.
Thank you, Johan, and good morning, everyone. Continuing on Slide 9. During Q4, we saw a continued positive underlying trend that we've seen in the previous four quarters, with a strong cash flow driven in Q4, as in Q3, mainly by strong earnings. The quarter generated a positive operating cash flow of SEK 1.4 billion, and a free cash flow of SEK 1 billion. For the full year of 2023, we generated operating cash flow of SEK 5.3 million, and the free cash flow of SEK 4.1 billion. As it relates to working capital, we had a slight positive overall impact on cash flow in the quarter, and we see a positive contribution primarily from accounts receivable, which is driven by a seasonal reduction towards the end of the year.
Inventory values grew and had a negative impact in the quarter. This is also driven by seasonality and primarily related to the sourcing of shea kernels. Interest cost paid in the quarter was SEK 59 million, and this was a fairly significant decrease compared to the same quarter the year before, mainly driven by reduced debt levels. Tax rate was 19% in the quarter and 23% for the full year. And the tax rate in the quarter was, the reduction was mainly related to the utilization of tax losses carried forward, and they are applicable for the full year of 2023. So that's the average to look at.
Other non-cash items had a positive effect of SEK 241 million, and mainly driven by unrealized hedging contracts of raw materials and valuation of pension commitments. For the full year of 2023, the effect from other non-cash items was a negative SEK 65 million, versus a positive effect, SEK 63 million in 2022. Moving on into CapEx, the quarter totaled SEK 325 million. It was slightly below Q4 of the previous year. This, as before, is related to production improvements, debottlenecking, capacity optimization, as well as the completion of the two bio boilers in Aarhus, Denmark. For the full year of 2023, the CapEx spend ended up at SEK 1.2 billion, which is in line with our guidance for the year.
For 2024, we expect CapEx related to maintenance, production improvements, and capacity optimization to reach roughly the same level, SEK 1.2 billion. Our focus and efforts to manage our cash flow has yielded good results, as you can see, and we remain committed to maintain this momentum in the future through our Cash to Grow program, and I will get back to this later on in the presentation. Next slide, slide 10. Here we see return on capital employed, which in the quarter reached 19.1%, up from 17.2 in Q3 in the same year. This is driven mainly by improved profitability. Capital employed has remained roughly flat in absolute terms, despite ongoing inflationary pressure.
The ROCE is up from 14.5 at the end of 2022, and well above the last peak we saw at 15.6% at the end of 2021. Slide 11, please. The net debt EBITDA ratio was further reduced in the quarter, ending at 0.49, down from 0.73 in Q3, and significantly down, of course, from the peak that we saw mid-2022 at just above 2. And now well below the level before the impact of the increased raw material prices that we saw started off in mid-2020. The improvement primarily driven by strong cash flow, which has then resulted in a reduction in net debt position, as well as a strong development of profits. Back to you, Johan.
Thank you, Tomas. Before wrapping up, I would like to review the structural drivers behind our profitability improvements. As I'm sure most of you are aware, or already aware, AAK is a decentralized operation or have a decentralized organization. We're very close to the market and our customers. In the decentralization lies also our strength, and it is a reason for our success. Nevertheless, the decentralized nature of our operations presents certain challenges, particularly in ensuring consistent implementation of best practices and capitalizing on synergies across our production sites and regions. To tackle this, we have, over the last couple of years, been building an increasingly aligned organization on top of a decentralized structure.
While we have made, have made significant progress, as shown by our results in 2022 and 2023, there is still work to be done on further aligning our organization and our culture. Tomas, can you give a bit more color to that?
Yes, I will. Thank you. Please turn to slide 12. As I'm sure most of you remember, back in November of 2022 at our CMD, we updated our strategy and set our aspiration for 2030, which from a financial perspective is a commitment to double our operating profit per kilo, and while outgrowing the underlying market on volumes. And for 2024, we remain committed to this aspiration. 2023 was, as you've seen, a very strong year for the company with an operating profit per kilo at SEK 1.94 . And despite a slight decline in volumes, we surpassed our targets of having an average operating profit growth of around 10% per year.
In addition, and following lower raw material prices, we saw a strengthening of our balance sheets, which in combination with high earnings, then resulted in the ROCE we just showed of 19.1%. As Johan mentioned, we have, over the last couple of years, been working towards an increasingly aligned organization, to strengthen the decentralized structure that has served us so well over time. The strong growth in operating profit per kilo has mainly been driven by a few key strategic initiatives that reflect our commitment to making better happen, as one globally aligned and decentralized organization. And going through some of these initiatives, firstly, we continue our efforts to optimize our production processes, implementing best practices, debottlenecking across our global footprint of some 20 production sites.
The result of this effort is an increase in capacity, improved product quality, increased service levels, general cost savings to mitigate inflation and CO2 reductions. At the end of 2023, we had successfully addressed about 55%-60% of our installed capacity across our five largest sites. While there is still roughly 40% of installed capacity left to address, this entails mostly medium to smaller units, and that means that from an initiative point of view, a majority of the impact has been achieved. The deep dives are expected to continue and be completed by mid 2025. Further significant impact from this effort will be driven by an increase of volume. Building on the learnings from the bakery optimization effort, we also launched an aligned product portfolio and price management structure.
This initiative and alignment was based on the revised portfolio strategy presented also at the CMD in 2022, and as a key driver, and was a key driver for the improvements across both our production and commercial organizations. We primarily focus on product SKU rationalization and product tail management, introducing portfolio-based value pricing. While the process of portfolio and price management is an ongoing effort and will continue to be so, the project itself was successfully concluded at the end of 2023, and the initiative contributed to the operating profit per kilo through improved product mix and also pricing. Looking ahead, we are during 2024 set to apply a similar program structure to align the procurement processes of our non-oil components and inputs.
Although we do not anticipate that this will yield an impact of the same magnitude as the two other initiatives that I just mentioned, we are prudently optimistic about its potential. We're also looking at how we manage cash across our business. So far, we have enrolled four sites in our Cash to Grow program, and this is a process similar to the production-related deep dives. And the project is expected to be concluded going through all sites by mid 2025, same timeline as the deep dives on the production sites. The initiative aims to locally drive cash flow improvements, broaden the financial focus from volume and EBIT, to also include working capital and cash flow.
The process includes bringing together local teams with competencies throughout the entire value chain, from sourcing through production and sales, as well as finance, to get a cross-functional understanding of how working capital and cash flow affect our financial results, and identify improvement areas to work with locally. The first deep dive took place in India in March of 2023, and during 2023, we've also run the deep dives in sites in the U.K., the U.S., and Brazil. Over to you, Johan.
Thank you, Tomas. To sum it up, we closed out the year, we closed out 2023 with strength. We delivered strong profitability with an improved EBIT per kilo, driven by our internal processes, our optimization, and better portfolio and price management, very much in line with what now mentioned by Tomas. Our volumes declined year-on-year, but continued to improve sequentially, and we had strong cash flow, mainly driven by our increased earnings. We remain committed to deliver on our 2030 aspiration. We are excited about the internal as well as the external opportunities that we see and that we have. We are well positioned to continue to grow and expanding our business.
Last but not least, we remain prudently optimistic, and we are fully committed to living our purpose, which is all about making better happen. That sums up the presentation from our end, and we are now happy to take questions from the audience.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Joan Lim, from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Hello, congratulations on a strong 2023. I've got two questions. So just maybe on the 2024 outlook, the structural drivers have been very helpful, but you've also said previously that given the strength in 2023, absolute EBIT growth is unlikely to be at 10% for 2024. So how should we think about EBIT development this year? Is it likely to revert back to 2022 levels? And then the second question is on food ingredients. So Q4 pricing looks like it's declined significantly by around -18%. Can you maybe provide some color on what drove this decline and how we should think about price mix into 2024, please? Thank you.
Thank you. When we look at 2024 and the developments we've seen from 2021 to 2022 and 2023, or 2022 to 2023, we don't provide guidance for 2024, but we, as we've mentioned, remain committed to our aspiration to generate a 10% EBIT growth in absolute terms over time. So it may, of course, vary over time as well, but we are committed to that aspiration for 2030, and we'll continue our focus to generate improvement on the bottom line year-over-year.
And then the second question was about pricing in food ingredients. As you know, if you refer that question maybe to net sales being down and so forth, keep in mind that we do adjust pricing over time, and we lock in pricing based on where we see raw material cost in the market, and we take away those impacts as far as possible with hedging. Our sales price do vary, sorry, our sales in absolute term do vary over time, and that's why we do report our earnings and our margin in operating profit per kilo, looking at the volume part.
If you see there on food ingredients, we see a slight volume decrease, but still a good strength in our operating profit per kilo and our absolute operating profit. So, I would say the sales reduction or price reduction that you referred to is very much linked to following the market and the pricing of the raw materials that we have. Maybe further to Tomas' comments on the outlook for 2024, we have reached high levels, right? We have executed very well with the improvement initiatives. I think it's fair to say that we are now really focusing on striking the balance between continued optimization internally, as well as looking at pricing in relation to how we get loading, get volume, get the contracts that will fill our plans.
So it's really a great opportunity to continue on very high levels and to continue to grow, but also needs to be a bit realistic about how to win volume going forward. So I think that's just where we are. Further to the food ingredients question, as you also see on operating profit per kilo, it actually drops a bit in Q4 versus Q3. But if you look to the history, on page six of our quarterly report, you also see that that's a seasonal trend if you go back and look at the previous two, three years as well.
So in essence, with the right balance act on pricing versus volume and get good leverage over fixed cost and loading plants, there is a good opportunity for us to continue to deliver strong margins and continue to expand our business over time. But again, as a company, we're focused on investing in the right activities that we deliver on our long-term 2030 aspiration. All right?
Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from Simen Aas from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys, and congratulations on a very strong end to 2023. I have a few questions, so I think I'll start with the first one. So I know you said that you stick with your 2030 ambition. Now that you have delivered on this target two quarters in a row, just remind us, how should we then think about it? Is it this is sort of the new EBIT per kilo level, and then you will grow your profits by growing volumes, and you will remain at this level? Or how should we think about that? So that's my first.
Yeah, thank you. And as we mentioned before, the aspiration is, at least from a financial point of view, twofold. One is the operating profit per kilo, the other one is volume, to outgrow the market, and that we haven't done over the past couple of quarters. So it's again, back to what Johan said about striking the balance between price margin and the volume, and that will continue going forward. And we remain committed to our aspiration, but we also need the volume growth to be able to reach the aspiration in full.
Okay, so yeah. So that's, you know. So we should think that, you know, EBIT per kilo then maybe should come down a bit while volumes recover. Is that how we should think about that? Or, because if I remember correctly, you have pretty much very good visibility on, you know, 6-9 months going ahead. So just remind us, how is the price level on the contracts that you see into 2024, and is it, you know, the same level as Q4, or are those prices down?
Yeah. Again, we're getting into forward-looking guidance, which we are not doing, but I understand the interest in the question. But if we look at this very operationally, right? There always, like, you got to balance yourself. There are contracts that you can actively choose to take or not to take, depending on the margin, right? What we're saying is that there is a great opportunity for us to continue to load our plants. We have capacity, we have optimized, as Tomas said before, so there is an opportunity to balance that. If we do that well, that means that maybe with a slightly lower price, we get more volume, but that volume will also load our fixed cost, meaning that there is an opportunity to continue on a high margin basis.
So, while I respect that there is a lot of interest, will it be high? Will it be lower? Will or just keeping it? We're gonna try our best. We're gonna continue to focus on optimizing our structure, getting the contracts to the best possible pricing. But we might give some to win volume, but doing it the right way, that's even an opportunity to continue on high margin or even strengthening them. But again, in relation to our 2030 aspiration, we have delivered more on the margin side over the last couple of years than the volume, which has actually been decreasing. So in terms of focus, it's really about winning in the market.
Okay, okay, that's, that's clear. And then just one final one here. So, you know, the very high cocoa butter prices that we have seen now in tandem with, you know, palm oil and rapeseed all coming down. Just— Can you just give us your thoughts on how this has impacted you? Is it making it easier for you to keep the prices high for your solutions, or how should we think about that? Because you know, they have accelerated now into 2024 as well. So is this a sticky trend in the, you know, the confectionery side?
It is a great question. It has a few angles to it, right? Obviously, we have solutions that do replace cocoa butter. So in that context, you could argue that everything else equal, it's helping rather than anything else, if the competitive solution is more expensive. But on the other hand, this is an open market where we compete with competitors, so it's not a direct link to say, well, if cocoa prices rises, it's easier to just sell our products to a higher price. But of course, there is that gap, if anything, helping. But there is also the consequence of the consequence, meaning that if we have too high cocoa prices and/or sugar prices and so forth, it makes chocolate and confectionery products more expensive on the shelf.
That typically leads to our customers trying to optimize their portfolio. In many cases, we have solutions that can help reduce the cost of the end product by using more of our components and so forth. And/or the consumer actively choosing, which has been a trend over time, called ChocoBakery, where you have a baked confectionery item coated with chocolate or with a chocolate confectionery filling that on the shelf is lower price or lower cost for the consumer, but still is an indulgence. And again, that's where AAK has very good solutions. So when you look at the total mix within chocolate and confectionery, some of these single trends, if you will on, on, let's say, cocoa prices, so leads to follow-on trends where they, many of them have a positive impact for AAK.
It's not a straight line between high cocoa prices and ups and downs in our business. It has follow-on ripple effects that are sometimes a challenge, but often also an opportunity.
That's why you see our spreads performing fairly well now in the quarter as well, with the increasing prices on cocoa going into sort of, a proper branded chocolate, if you will.
Yeah, and that also helps our margin development-
Yeah
- when we sell more of those, advanced solutions for e.g., spreads and fillings.
Yeah, because advanced solutions for us doesn't necessarily mean that it's the very high-end product for the end consumer. We do replacements, if you remember, so.
Yeah. Okay, that's very helpful. So then, yeah, it's fair to assume that that trend, there's no change in that trend then in 2024, given how the prices have moved then. Okay, and then just one final one I have here on the positive working capital effect. Could you just remind us, is it—is this, all these effects are out now, or should we expect positive working capital in the second or the first half of this year as well?
We consider the working capital effects from the increased and then decreasing raw material price to be worked through the cash flow in 2023. So we don't expect any significant working capital contribution, everything else equal, to the cash flow in 2024. It's gonna be driven by our profit levels.
Okay. Thank you, guys.
Yeah.
Thank you so much. I'll leave the others to the questions now. Thank you.
The next question comes from Oskar Lindström from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Three questions from my side, if I may. Just the first one on the CCF segment and your customers there. I mean, they must really have been hurting from high raw material prices. You know, was it all mix and that that enabled you to achieve such a strong result? I mean, really throughout the year here in this segment, or were you also able to sell more expensive products? So perhaps I'm just wondering a little bit more about the details on the very strong result in that segment, given the weak market in that segment.
Yeah. Our visibility into our end customer is sort of limited in terms of what their cost levels and so forth look like for their products. But we do see the raw material prices, of course, that have been mentioned before. But to me, it's a couple of things. One is that Q4 actually saw a good pick up again on volume year-over-year. If you compare the full year of 2023, we're actually down 9% versus 2022, and only down 2% in Q4. So we saw some pick up there, which, of course, helps with you know, using the free capacity that we have in our plants.
The other one, that is the structural initiatives that we initiated, that we talked about before, to improve efficiency, looking at the product portfolio, but also pricing and so forth, that helps our operating profit per kilo. So it's a mix of the two, I would say, that helps in the quarter.
Right. And my second question is on this topic of volume and available capacity, which you mentioned here. I mean, you talked about wanting to drive volume growth during 2024. Is it possible for you to sort of give us a rough figure of how much available capacity do you have in your plants at the moment, you know, given the current product mix?
Yeah, and as you say, it's all about the product mix, right? And it varies, of course, during the year. But we would say roughly, a good estimate would probably be that we have around 15% capacity available in our plants. And again, you don't want to be at 98% - 99% either, because that starts to hurt the product quality, service levels, and so forth, but there is available capacity. And back to your statement there, focusing on volume, our focus is on finding the balance between volume growth and our margin levels, right? So that's the way forward in 2024. But there is available capacity, yes.
Right. Thanks. And then my final and third question is on your the very strong balance sheet and with quite rapid deleveraging during the past year. Are you, you know, are you saving up money for a big acquisition or investment, or are you uncertain about 2024? What are your thoughts about capital allocation going forward?
Yeah, great question. We are certainly not uncertain. I mean, we have been living through a quite significant uncertainty over the last four years, and look at AAK, I'm so proud of the organization. So I think it's fair to say we need to be on our toes, and anything could happen... but we also have an enormous strength in our decentralized structure that is getting more and more aligned. So with regards to, no, we're not saving money for being disproportionately uncertain about the future, definitely not. We are certainly targeting a combination of organic growth and acquisitive growth. So we are looking at continued investments organically for AAK. But we are also actively managing our pipeline of potential acquisition.
There are not that many in our industry, so you need to be there when the time comes, right? But I would ideally see that we could have a balance between organic growth and acquisitive growth, and using our strong balance sheet for that. So in essence, we are more ready than ever to do that with a strong balance sheet and,
Good. Just if I may, a follow-up question on that. I mean, you've now reached 19% ROCE here at the end of the year for the nine months of 2023. I mean, if you're looking to make acquisitions or, you know, organic growth investments, are those going to be at that level of return on capital? Or, you know, would they, by necessity, be dilutive because, you know, you'd be building a base for future growth? How should we think around your sort of return requirements on capital allocation?
Yeah, I mean, obviously, we have seen a good, good pickup in return on capital, driven by lowering the capital base and at the same time improving our earnings. I mean, that's, that's, that's a bit of math, and we're happy with that. And it becomes a bit speculative to say, will we, by default, be dilutive or accretive? I mean, we're gonna always look at how we can make investments and acquisitions that would be accretive. But of course in, in certain time frames in, in, in a bigger greenfield investment, it will be dilutive in the beginning, but eventually it will kick in. An acquisition, the same thing, depending on the, on the characteristics.
So I think it becomes a bit speculative, but still we are operating at a high return on capital employed at the moment, so I think it gives opportunity to find a good, you know, growth mechanism.
I would say, I mean, organic growth through CapEx builds and things like that, that would follow the current trend of return on capital, I would say, because that's supporting the continued journey that we're on. And we have very good control over those type of things when we build something in an existing plant and so forth, to increase capacity or add new capabilities and things like that. So. And when it comes to M&A, it's very difficult to say.
But, historically, we have been buying, or making acquisitions at a lower multiple than we are valued at ourselves, and then growing the business from a fairly basic, maybe bakery, a little bit dairy, into the higher-end products that we offer, thereby again, driving the improved profitability of the acquisition, over the first one to three years.
Right. Thank you. Thank you very much. Those were all my questions.
The next question comes from Alex Jones from BofA. Please go ahead.
Morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Three as well, if possible. The first is just following up on this pricing discussion. Are your comments a recognition that perhaps you lost some market share as a result of your optimization efforts, or is this more about you now wanting to sort of take a bit of market share, given the volume capacity you've unlocked with your optimization? Then, the second question, just around the sort of portfolio and price management that you very helpfully talked about. Are you able to give us any more detail on sort of how to think about that from the outside?
You know, what did you find at the low end of the portfolio that you've now sort of chopped off, and how are you able to quickly find customers to take the sort of more specialty solutions that you've been shifting into? I don't know if there's any quantification of that sort of rotation of volumes would be very helpful. And then finally, just quickly on the biomass boilers at Aarhus, can you confirm that the sort of net saving number is still SEK 100 million, or has that changed at all, given the volatility in energy prices? Thank you.
Thank you. Back to pricing. Of course, one could argue, did we lose or not lose market share? Might not like the word, but when you make active choices, like in a portfolio optimization in a plant, you find the lower end of the tail, you know, low margin business or even loss-making business that we cut out or we reprice it. In such an activity, you can argue you lost market share, or you actively walked away from a piece of the market. And then on the other spectrum, when you drive specialty solutions or trying to really maximize your opportunity, of course, there is a risk that you win some, you lose some.
I think the fact that we did lose a bit of volume is a combination of active choices or lost deals where we're just saying, "You know, we've done really well, but we need to strike that balance." Are we having an opportunity to take market share? Yes, of course, we have, but we have no intention to be very volatile in our behavior. So there is no activity within AAK where we say, "Go, just load, load, load, and steal market share," if you will. That's not the game. We're really trying to find and continue a good momentum, selling high-value-added solutions, protecting good margins, but striking the balance, which is sometimes maybe give a bit on price securing that volume, but not in a way where you just go after any volume. That's not the play we're looking.
And then when it comes to your question on portfolio, it's, it depends on the market, of course, right? But I would say that it's not necessarily so that we close or chop off a complete product segment. We look more to how much that volume is in terms of the overall, and we look at the customers as well. And if we have a strong, big customer that buys from most of our segments, we will continue to support them with a full product range. But if we have a customer that either over time or that's just the way it is, that they buy the lower-end products at fairly high volumes, that's something that we look at to say: Do we want to continue with this customer? And so forth.
So we adjust the volumes in the different segments rather than saying we're shutting something down completely. When you go to Merksem and the close down there, of course, there we took out volume back to Johan's point as well, and stepped out of a portion of the bakery volumes in Europe. We reduced them. We moved what we thought was a good continued future business into Zaandijk and our Hull facility, but we left about half of the volume that was in the Merksem facility to begin with. So it-
And that was, in all honesty, even loss-making business.
Yeah. And then if you go to South America, for example, that same business could be very profitable based on the local market conditions.
Yeah.
So it's different in different markets. When it comes to the biomass boilers, they are now being ramped up to full capacity. It takes a while, longer than I expected, so it's a few weeks, understanding the technology on my end but, but that's what it is. So we expect them to be fully up and running by the end of March, early April, and the full annualized value is still SEK 100 million, yes, but you have to prorate that for 2024 based on that they're not up and running on January first. But everything else is where it should be on those.
Thank you.
Again, maybe just reminding us that apart from saving money, that is also the biggest impact is that we are reducing our CO2 emissions by 90% in the power generation for that plant. So it's a fantastic opportunity to reduce our Scope 1, Scope 2 emissions also under the Science Based Targets initiative.
Very happy about the investment.
The next question comes from Alex Sloane from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Morning, all. Thanks for taking the questions, and congrats on the very strong margin performance in 2023. I guess maybe starting there, I mean, the trend of softer volumes, but very strong margins also appears to be quite common across your listed peers in 2023. So I just wondered, is your sense that they've also been optimizing factories? And to what extent do you think customers are maybe looking at this and, you know, might want to share in some of that benefit in 2024, as perhaps they have to fund higher promotions with retailers to drive their own volumes? That's the first question. The second one, I guess related, but just going back to the price decline in food ingredients.
I mean, obviously, the big pullback in raw material prices took place in the middle of 2022. So, you know, just be helpful in terms of, you know, maybe if you can give any color of how much of that big pullback has now been passed back and is reflected in contracts versus how much more this could be a drag on top line in 2024. And then just finally, any update on preparations for the EU Deforestation Regulation kicking in end of this year, I think? You know, are you confident that you and customers will be ready, and any chance in your view that the regulation could be delayed? Thank you.
Thank you. On your first question, we don't have the transparency into our competitors that way, and we don't comment on their activities either. But when you look at us, and you also mentioned the our customer and our improved margins, I would say our improved margins is not necessarily just a price hike. We're in a very competitive market, so we don't have any product where we have a monopoly-like situation where we can set the price. It's very, very competitive. Our improvements have been done more on the internal arena, in my mind, where we have the efficiency gains, but we also have the portfolio management. And don't underestimate the mix change in going from a lower-end product, adding on higher-end product. Doesn't mean that the price goes up to the higher-end product.
Customer, i t just means our margin goes up, right? So that mix is very powerful in our EBIT per kilo development, I would say, m aybe adding a bit on that perspective, if you do take on the hat of a customer, look at our absolute. We measure the EBIT per kilo as a better view on our development, but you also got to overlay it with the absolute margins because that's how you fund and invest going forward. Our absolute margin is approaching 10%, but not above, right? And that's just a healthy margin. So if I look at this from a customer angle, or if I were to be in their shoes, I would look at AAK as a very healthy, strong partner, and I would love for my partners to be driving innovation going forward, bringing new solutions, and we need to be able to invest.
So I, I'm not shy about that, and, and we don't excuse ourselves for having that kind of margin. If that would have been significantly higher, you could maybe have that perspective, but, but we don't. We have healthy margins, and we sell to healthy customers, and I think that's where we are at the moment. Could you please repeat the second question, Alex?
Yeah. It was just a kind of a follow-up on the pricing, the big sort of price decline in food ingredients. And appreciate that, as you said, mainly reflective of passing back raw materials. But I mean, just looking at the kind of Bloomberg screen on raw materials, the big pullback took place quite a while ago now in the middle of 2022. So just really a question on is that a trend we should expect going forward for the next few quarters, or are we kind of there in terms of pricing? Thanks.
No, I mean, we don't see any concerns in that area. You also have to remember the 6-9-month lag rolling through in our P&L and balance sheets, right? So you have to move the price points in the market to us by 6-9 months as well, right? And then there's more of a good connection in the development, in my mind. But no, we don't see any large concerns regarding that. And then, if that's okay by you, then over to your third question, which was about the EU deforestation. Will we be ready? Is there a chance or risk, depending how you see it, that EU will delay it?
I think, to the last part of it, there's no reason, there's no information that we have that it would be delayed. There are, of course, discussions around how to implement, how to verify, et cetera, where we, others, and government bodies needs to align on how to do that. We are actively working on this one. We have a plan, and we see a clear way forward. And we will continue to work on the in our plan on three areas, where one is supplier development, where we solve the needed verification, documentation, et cetera, together with our suppliers. And two, looking at, in some cases, reformulations together with customers to find a solution, an ingredient that is easier or have that prerequisite already there.
The third leg is to look at investments where we could potentially onshore some of the operations, de-complexify the upstream supply chain to make it easier to comply, and we are well on the way in these plans, and we will come back to that later in the year to give even more clarity. But with regards to the implementation, there's no news, no reason to believe it will be delayed at this stage. Would that be the case, then maybe there would be a relief on maybe having a longer time for implementing the verification and the documentation. But again, that would be speculation at this point in time. We are working full speed ahead to be able to deal with this in the best possible way.
Thanks very much.
I think maybe just to add to that, let's not forget the-
The next question comes from Karri Rinta from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks, Karri Handelsbanken. Two quick follow-ups and clarifications. Firstly, about food ingredients. I think you mentioned that between different categories, most categories had higher EBIT per kilo on a year-on-year basis, except for special nutrition. So the reason for special nutrition not enjoying the same positive development, is it because those optimization efforts were mostly aimed at other categories, or is it because special nutrition had such a negative volume development that it meant that EBIT per kilo came down? That's my first question.
Yeah, thank you. Great summary there. It's a combination of the two for special nutrition. Lower volume, per se, has a negative impact. And yes, the broad-based improvement programs were maybe not targeted only on things excluding special nutrition, but have a higher impact on some of the other categories in general. I think that's a fair summary.
Still have to remember, special nutrition being a well above average margin product-
Yeah
-for us, and, and still remains that, so.
And have also some special purpose parts of the operation, meaning that it has dedicated production lines for certain parts of that production as well, so.
Sure. All right, that makes sense. Then the second question is about the freight cost development in 2023. So can you briefly summarize, how did your freight costs develop during the year? What's the outlook for 2024, and if you have any meaningful exposure to these recent disruptions?
Yeah, very good question. We try to match our costs with freight agreements based on our sales volume, which is not the easiest thing in the world, but we try to do that. So to be able to price in any increases that we see on our cost side in the prices to our customers. We have done successfully since 2020, when things started moving on inflationary roadmaps and so forth. We are following the situation very carefully, and some of the vessels that we are using have also rerouted to some extent.
It's not impacting our production, but some of the deliveries take a week, 10-12 days longer than expected, and costs are accordingly going up a little bit because of that delay but, going back to show how we managed this in the past, I think we've proven that we can deal with these volatilities, if you will, particularly on the cost side, in pricing our products, as well.
Yeah.
Following the situation very carefully, but confident that we can manage the volatility in prices.
Yeah. If anything, at the moment, as Tomas said, it's the longer lead time. It's a longer lead time to get material, and with that, a bit more, call it material and capital on a ship. But that's it, right? It's manageable. But I do hope it goes back, right? It's just sad that we have these kind of disruptions in the global supply chains at the moment.
But right now, we don't see any significant impact, either to production or to working capital, due to this. Not at the moment, at least.
All right. Thank you. That's very clear.
Thank you, Karri.
There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Thank you. And just maybe an addition to the EUDR. We talk about implementation, potential challenges back and forth. I just want to remind us all about the big intent, which is a positive intent to reduce deforestation. We are fully committed in AAK. We have targets on no deforestation on important supply chains, so we're very aligned about reducing to zero deforestation while continuing to grow a sustainable business, and we're very active in that. So I think that's the number one, and we're gonna continue on that path, and EU is making its effort. Now, it's become a bit challenging in how to verify and make sure you can prove that everything is verified deforestation-free, and that's where we will now have a bit of a challenge and make sure we get there.
But again, the intent is really good. We are fully in full support of that, and our plans are targeting no deforestation. I think that's just an addition to that. And Tomas.
Yeah, and just on 2024, I know we receive a lot of questions on that, and we don't provide guidance. But I would encourage you again to go back to the slide we showed on our optimization, internal focus, improvements, portfolio management, and also what we have been stating all through 2023, more or less, to find a balance between volume and margins. And that we have unutilized capacity in our factories due to the deep dives we've done. So we're in a very good position for the year, I would say.
Yeah. And also that the volume reduction to last year has been reduced sequentially, and sequentially, we've seen improvement from Q2 to Q3 and Q3 to Q4 in, in many areas with regards to volume. So that's where we are. All right. With that, I thank you all for listening. Great questions. And with that, thank you so much for the Q4 2023 earnings call.