Welcome to the Atlas Copco Audiocast with Telepaths Q3 2021. For the first part of this call, all participants will be in listen only mode and afterwards there'll be a question and answer session. Today, I am pleased to present CEO, Sven Versthorn and CEO, Peter Kinard. Speakers, please begin.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, good afternoon, everybody on this quarterly results call for the Q3 2021, we will start with a short run through of the results of this Q3. But before I pass the word to Matt Framstern, I would like to already now ask you that when the question session starts, kindly please only ask one question at a time in order to give all participants the possibility to raise their questions. If there is more time left, then of course we can come back and give you the opportunity to ask some more follow-up questions. Thank you.
And then I leave the word to you, Mats.
Thank you so much, Peter. First quarterly call view, exciting. To no surprise to all of you, we have a vacuum pump to the semi industry on the front page. If we then go to Slide number 2, we can look at Q3 in brief. And as you have seen then orders received on a very strong level, 36% growth and SEK 33,000,000,000 is the reason for us.
Yes, we can say that we compare Still with the corona year, but last year, I think it was 24,000,000, so not a bad quarter for us. We could see growth in all business areas, so it was not only semi and in all geographic regions as well. Sequentially, of course, semi and some other segments continue to develop quarter to quarter. Equipment in the most areas, we can see sequential that is slightly down and service is flat. Revenues, there are big challenges in the supply chains.
And I must say that with the 27,800,000,000 considering what we see, we are quite pleased with that number And all the efforts going into that too please our customers. Profitability, SEK 21.6 adjusted and comparable number, mainly adjusted for the LTI at 22%. Please do that as well. If we then go to Slide number 3, it repeats many of the numbers that I've said. But looking at the graph maybe on the right side, you can see the last three quarters orders you've seen being almost out of the scale.
And In the beginning of the year, we said that we would compare with 2019 just to make sure that we don't compare with the corona year. But as you can see now, it's way about 2019 as well. Operating profit at SEK 6,000,000,000, a good number for us and the return on capital employed increased to 27%. Then we have the geographic map on Slide number 4. And it's green all over, also of course compared then to 2020.
North America, very strong, double digit growth for all our business areas. Latin America, Brazil continue to be very, very strong for us, 31% growth and double digit for all our business as well. Europe, 27%, double digit as well. And then Africa and Middle East, we've had 2 of the bigger ones, compressor technique and Developing really well. And then in Asia, very, very strong performance on 47% month, as you remember, China and Asia had recovered a lot in Q3 last year as well.
So we see this That's very strong. Also there, we can see it in all business area, strong development. On Page 5, you can see the organic growth for a number of quarters. For you that follow us a little bit closely, maybe 1.5 year ago, we discussed a little bit what to keep going into this slower period. We talked about keeping our investments in digitalization, which we have done in the product portfolio and Also making sure that we continue to invest in our resources in sales and value selling.
And we do see a strong correlation to the newer product portfolios and how that develops in a positive way. So I'm happy that we had the strength at the time to continue to invest in our customers' productivity. We go to Slide number 6, you get the bridge. And maybe the only new news there is the currency impact Minus €200,000,000 for orders and minus €200,000,000 for revenues. And then you had a pie chart on Slide 7.
And of course, with 63% growth for vacuum technique and a grade gaining ground in the group. And then 18% for compressor technique, 17% for industrial and 23% for power. So this is just for you to see the balance of the different business areas. Then we go to each business area. We start with compressor technique on Slide 8.
Very solid continued order growth year on year. Sequential, you can see an order decline for equipment, but service being flat then. They actually had record revenues and 7% growth. We're pleased with that. And then I think super strong operating margin and also return on capital employed, 24.1% and the 94% return on capital employed.
And as you can see on the orders received, even if it was a slight decline from Q2. It's still the 2nd best quarter we have had on orders received. Vacuum Technique on Slide 9. Of course, looking at the graph, it really stands out, the Incredible development. We used to celebrate when we did SEK 6,000,000,000 And as you can see now, it's quite a huge development here.
So continued growth, 93 present. And this was above our own expectation when we discussed this 3 months ago. Really strong development, of course, in semi but also industrial. And we continue to gain ground in service linked to the given up time on our products, of course. Revenue in par With last quarter, up organically 24%.
Of course, we would like to deliver even more to our customers. But that is still a good number for us at this point in time. Operating profit at 24, Of course, supported by the volumes that we see, but also that with a 93% challenge for operations, you can imagine that we would have challenges in our supply chains and operations as well. Return on capital employed, very good development at 24%. We go to Industrial Technique on Slide 10.
Continued growth there as well at 17%. And you can see both automotive and general industry being strong and continue to go for service. Sequentially, though, that we could see that general industry down together what we discussed before the semi, this is one of the segments that stands out a little bit here. Revenues down at 7%. And operating margin, including these acquisitions that we have done then, that still dilutes bottom line at SEK 20.7 billion.
And the return on capital SEK 15 billion, which is also linked to the recent acquisitions. On Page 11, you have Power Technique. Of course, there is seasonality in their business, But still strong growth at 23%. And revenues increased organically with 13. I'm very pleased with operating profit margin at 16.5 And also the development on return on capital employed at EUR 25,000,000.
So good performance from them as well. And then we summarize in the prospects and just highlight this on Slide 12, if you go down to the EBITA, and in our case, it's amortization on intangibles only. To give you guidance on that is EUR 22.9 billion. And then you recognize the number at EUR 6,000,000,000 and EUR 21,600,000,000. I think I should hand over to you, Peter.
Thank you, Mats. Then as you can see on the net financial items, there has not been really any movement that was worthwhile mentioning, resulting in a profit before tax of EUR 5,900,000,000. The tax income tax expense ended up being higher than last year, which is, of course, on the one hand, due to the increased profit from the operations. But also you see a slightly higher tax rate related to some impact from the UK tax increase expected on our deferred tax liabilities intentions. We, at this point, see in the near future probably a slightly lower tax rate for the coming quarter.
But in the long term, we would rather see the taxes going up as nominal tax rates are increasing. Basic earnings per share are at 3.74 as mentioned, return on capital employed, 27% and the return on equity increased to 30%. Going to Slide 13, looking at the profit bridge, where we moved from 19.2% to 21 point 6%. As you can clearly see, the main impact contributed to this effect is the organic Impact of volume, price, mix and others that contributed mostly to this, we had a slight positive impact from currency, which is actually slightly better than what we had anticipated in the Q2 call. But at the end of the quarter, the dollars changed to an extent that it actually turned positive.
Looking forward, we would expect a rather flattish development of the foreign exchange impact, all things remaining equal. Acquisitions were slightly dilutive, mainly coming from very recent acquisitions like Canadian pump and compressors, but also Perceptron in Industrial Technique as main contributors. But that is, of course, not so surprising And as we typically see higher costs in the beginning of the acquisition in order to invest to be able to harvest later from the synergies. Items affecting comparability were costs related to restructuring in the Industrial Technique Business Area in 2020. And that, I think, is explaining the development of the profit bridge.
Going to Slide 14, you see a bit more detail on the different business areas. My conclusion here is that you see basically the same development across all the business areas, mainly that the volume price mix is the main contributor to the positive improvement of the margins in the respective business areas, with maybe one side comment to be made on vacuum technique, where given, as Mats already mentioned, the Spike in growth of over 90%. It is not so surprising that for the vacuum in this area, it has even been more challenging than for the other business areas to cope with the supply chain constraints and the very fast ramp up. Going then to the balance sheet. I think very few fundamental changes to be noted here.
On the one hand, on the asset side, I would say that the working capital has gone up slightly, which is, of course, very much linked to the volume development that we have seen. In fact, we would rather see like to see a bit higher inventories as it could probably support a better output going forward. Otherwise, on the asset side, obviously, the cash is the big item that stands out compared to September 30 last year, thanks to the very strong cash generation. On the liability side, basically, the main change is on the equity coming from the results and on the non interest bearing liabilities, which is, on the one hand, accounts payable that have gone up similar to the working capital on the asset side and also there's still pending payment of the dividend or half of the dividend, which will be paid on the 28th October of SEK 4,400,000,000 approximately. Going to the cash flow on Slide 16.
The operating cash surplus has developed positively, thanks to, of course, the operating profit going up together with the increased revenues. Otherwise, the main difference between this quarter and the same quarter last year is a change in working capital, where last year we were enjoying a very positive development on particularly inventories and receivables, which we were not repeating this year. And in fact, the working capital remained rather flat. And that is also then the reason why the good improvement in the operating cash surplus it's basically offset a little bit by this changing working capital if we compare to last year, ending at €4,700,000,000 operating cash flow compared to €5,100,000,000 last year. And I think that summarizes it for the cash flow.
Then I would like to hand over back to Mats with regard to the near term outlook. Yes.
As we all understand, it's not super easy to look into the future coming from quite a number of strong quarters. But as we see it right now, we still see quite an high activity level from customers In the sales process, so pleased with that. On the other side, then we could already see in Q3 then The sequential development for equipment, which has a negative trend and the constraints in supply chain, it's a challenge not only for us, but also for our customers. So maybe that doesn't Drive confidence in the business outlook as much versus a very strong Q3. But we still have to see a little bit what comes out of this, but this is the best we can see at this point, high activity level, but maybe not as high as we have seen in Q3.
I think that rounds off the short presentation of the quarter three results. Before I hand over to the operators to help us I have a smooth question and answer session. I would like to repeat once more to please stick to the principle of having one question at a time, so that everybody has the opportunity to ask their question. Thank you very much. Operator?
First question comes from the line of Klas Bjorklund of Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you. Hi, Madsens here. It's Claus
at Citi. So the first one I have is
on the Yes. How you ended, Matt, talking about sequentially weaker demand in Europe and Asia in CT in particular and the way you guide. I mean volumes are always a bit weaker in the Q3 sequentially because of seasonality. But it seems like given how you guide a weaker demand from the 3rd into the 4th, that there is underlying weakness. Otherwise, I guess, you would have been guiding for flat demand sequentially.
So just to confirm, this is the bottlenecks that are also impacting your customers. So you are seeing basically into the 4th quarter slower underlying demand In Europe and Asia, I just want to confirm if I got that right.
I mean, you connect activity to demand. I mean, yes, that's a correlation that you could do. But we still see that in the high activity level. But otherwise, you are spot on. We also know that there is seasonality, which takes it down.
But we see from the high level where we are right now. And it is linked to the constraints in supply chain. You also see a number of activities in China, of course. And that's why we guide as we do. So you're pretty much spot on.
Okay, cool. Just very, very quick follow-up on that. So are you implicitly saying VTE flat and rest of the business continuing it sequentially down? Or are you making any sort of comment on BT and sandwich maps within that?
No, we don't guide A in that sense, as you know. But we are out there trying to catch every order we can On BT, of course, I mean, seeing the 93% up and the main part being in semi, Of course, we are very pleased with that and we will try to stay close to the customer. So I think if the business will be there, we will most likely get our share of that and that's very positive, I think. Thank you. Thank you, Claus.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Wilson JP Morgan,
please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, good afternoon everyone. Thanks for taking my question. It's really, I guess, a follow-up on to Claus' follow-up in that sense. Just on the vacuum number, I mean, clearly, we've seen a super, super strong Q3. I just wanted to know if there's anything that you would point to us in terms of that being exceptional, so particularly large particularly large orders or similar or whether if we look forward and appreciating the number moves quarter, but is this a run rate that we can feel comfortable with as we kind of look out over the coming quarters.
No. But if you look back a number of quarters, of course, as I said also early in the presentation that we were celebrating a level of SEK 6,000,000,000, which we were quite pleased with and had a very good operating margin on that level. Of course, it is an exceptional level too. The business just takes off a 93% growth organically for us. I mean, I think the question will come anyway in how much pre ordering is it.
And of course, everyone likes to get in line to get their product. And for us, it's extremely difficult to know if a customer order for an actual project or he adds a few pumps for as a backup. So I think we all have to wait and see. And what I think you can trust is that and I think they've shown it over and over again that we are Quite good at adjusting cost structure when needed and deliver a good margin then. Although, as you can see, that we are challenged, of course, with machining capacity, supplier capacity on the semi side, it's almost like you've been running flat out for a couple of quarters and you get another quarter that is even better, of course.
And then it's suddenly at the point when you have used All your ideas, you have to come from the 80% utilization to flat out. It's difficult to, yes, okay, let's Do another shift because there's no other shifts to add. There's no extra machine steps. You almost need to be able to predict 12 to 18 months ahead of time that this would have happened, and we couldn't predict that. And I don't see I haven't seen anywhere else that this would really take off like this.
So It's an unusual scenario, but I think we are ready for what will come in our way. It's uncertain.
Thank you.
Thank you, Andrew.
Our next question comes from the line of Daniela Costa at Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, good morning. It's mainly a follow-up, I guess, to some of the questions earlier. But given the visibility you have at The moment, I guess, into the how these supply chain issues are, would you say that this demand is something you Backing to 2022, these very big orders gap that you see now in terms of delivery? Or is there a risk that That demand never materialized. Those orders don't turn into in this to what extent, I guess, are also those Still more dependent on your suppliers rather than yourself?
Yeah. No, I mean, as you could see from the quarters, we built another EUR 5,000,000,000 orders on hand. That's a challenge for us, considering that the Both BT and CT were at record levels in terms of output. I also would like to know exactly what supply we will get from everyone. But it is a scenario right now where you have if I take the some of the core components, it's still difficult with electronics and chips.
It's difficult with electric engines. It's difficult with diesel engines. And those are some of the core part. But then what happens right now is that even you become shortages of commodities, which could be a ceiling, an o ring, a compact zone or anything like that. So it's actually quite difficult.
So if I only would predict on the core, it might be more helpful. But as we see it when we talk to our business right now, No one is saying that it's getting easier, but they're not saying they're getting worse either. But they foresee Q4 to be Very challenging. And then Daniela, I think I need to get back to you in 3 months' time to see, okay, will this continue into 2022 or not. But right now, we see Q4 to be difficult on the supply chain as well.
Thank you. Can I do a follow-up?
Go ahead.
Yes. So and then maybe just asking on your customers as well. I guess they are also having broader Supply chain issues in their projects. Are does that have anything to do with also the difficulty in doing the full sales delivery now or is it just purely upstream?
I think we didn't fully understand the question. Could you please repeat, Daniela?
Sorry, I think this is also Michael. I was asking whether like the gap between orders and sales, and you mentioned obviously all the supply chain issues in terms of like getting, I guess, inputs into your product. But I was wondering if there is any delay in terms of like being able to Nice sales because your customers also have other associated supply chain issues and they can't maybe take the product? Or is it When I said upstream, was is it all you get into your products or customers led basically?
I haven't heard that. I actually think that customers are quite willing to accept deliveries right now. And they are also on the level where we, from time to time, need to go back to customer to say that they have redesigned something to make sure then that we check with the they're also willing to do that. So no, I don't think that is a big issue. If we have products, it's probably delivered to.
Clear. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of James Moore at Brett Burn, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes. Good afternoon, everyone. That's Peter. My question is on revenue recovery next year really. Without being precise, I'm just trying to understand how that could look.
So I think this year you've done €96,000,000,000 of orders with €81,000,000,000 of sales. That's a very unusual gap. So we're seeing very good orders, but you can't get the revenues out and invoice it because of the supply chain constraints. That's very clear. My question is really 2 fold.
Do you see 4Q revenues having the same degree of constraint? And as you look into the full year 'twenty two, if China reopens, supply chains open up, would you expect revenues to catch up in that year, such that they then close that gap and had a strong revenue year, or do you think they'd spill into 2023?
I think it's a very good question, but also one that carries a lot of uncertainty, obviously. I think what we see today is that the supply chains are, in the very short term, definitely not going to get much better, if not, maybe slightly even worse. So that's probably for Q4 at least what we expect. I mean, reading what's out there, then I see that also that there's many people talking about that it moves also into 2022. Of course, if tomorrow all the supply chain issues evaporate, then we should be able to invoice and to produce an invoice significantly more than we have been able to do so far.
But it's hard to evaluate exactly, of course, when that is about to happen. So I'm not sure if I can give you a very concrete answer to that question in that sense.
I guess, there's another side to that that you would invoice significantly more, but it goes back to your previous point that you're running at 100%. So how much do you have to CapEx and higher in that situation, the supply chains did hypothetically free up. Would that be quite a limiting factor? And would it take a long time? Or could you do that quickly?
Well, I think when we look at the supply chain issues today, we strongly feel, and that is what we hear from the different business areas, that the one Big limiting factor to do more is basically the supply chain issues and not so much the capacity at hand. So if supply chains would become more easy to handle, then we would be able, for sure, to have more output than what we have today.
I think when we ask the questions specifically to our teams, it's like 80% of the issues we have is from Our suppliers and 20% of the constraints is from myself. I mean, as long as it is assembly processes, we can always add people. We can add the shift. The problem is, of course, when you get into shortages in machine capacity since the ordering time for new machines is quite long today. That said though, of course, that we have invested during the year, Of course, a lot in RAC and then to see if we can start to catch up and build on our capacity going forward because also if you look at A longer perspective on semi, of course.
We don't see At this point, the full impact on cloud services, we don't see it on 5 gs. We don't see it on connected the products, of course, they can be bumped in the rules that we have seen before, but the underlying demand for this product is strong and will probably do for many years to come. So we are trying to match capacity versus the future scenarios now. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Guillermo Peigneux of UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, good afternoon. Maybe one longer term question regarding electricity prices. I guess, I'm trying to link the dots between 80% of the life cost of a compressor associated with electricity and energy prices and the fact that we have a massive increase in electricity prices in Europe, especially. And if one is correct, I think about 10% to 30% mobility is the consumption in the manufacturing unit is a compressed pair. So I was wondering whether you are are
you seeing any increased quotation activity because of clients trying to assess this problem as well
in commercial technique, And which is a very recent problem or is something that at the moment you don't see as a concern inside for your customers as well.
And do you want to go? Yes. I think if I understood it well, I think
it's about, of course, the rising energy price and how that the compressor technique in this area, given the fact that there is a long standing tradition of constantly looking for energy efficiency in the products that we are launching, quarter by quarter, in a way, higher energy prices are basically a positive for us as we would be able to reduce even more the payback time for the investment for the customers.
Yes. And are you seeing any of your customers asking questions about that? That's, I guess, my only question.
I think that it's always part of the sales conversation. And it's I think we normally say it's 70%, 75% of the running costs the total investment is the running costs for the compressors. What we do see more and more maybe Related to that, but that questions we have always had. But we do see more questions regarding the CO2 footprint that we can give the customer not only financially the better compressor, but also with less CO2 footprint. And That is materializing and becoming a part of the sales discussion these days.
And I will say that, that is accelerating quite quickly, which we see Actually, that's beneficial to us as long as we introduce the most energy efficient products And the cost is always there as an impact. And as Peter said, if the price is On then it goes up to be short and the payback for a more energy efficient product.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Alastair Leslie of Societe Generale. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Yes, just a question on margins. You kind of maintained the very high organic operational leverage for compressor and an acceleration in Industrial Technique as well.
I was just wondering if you could give us more color on the drivers for each of those businesses, particularly the mix impact for IT. And if you could comment on its revision within that, whether that's all good underlying profitability improvement. And it looks like the supply, I suppose, the supply chain headwinds, the impacts of those are largely contained to vacuum. Do you kind of expect to see a rising impact on some of your other businesses, compressor, IT, PT perhaps seen in Q4. That's it, really.
Thank you.
Maybe starting with the last part of your question, I would say that we see the supply chain constraints across all the business areas without any exceptions, and we have all our teams fighting on a daily basis to try to sort out these problems that they encounter. And many of them like pop out sometimes a bit out of the blue. So it's across all the business areas. It's not that the others are not affected by it. But it is fair to say, given the tremendous growth that we have seen from an organic perspective within vacuum the That, of course, the supply chain constraints are even more severe for them, let's say.
So We would not say that we would see that expanding on the other business areas compared to what we see today, but we also would not see a fundamental improvement in the short term there either. Then when it comes to ISRA, ISRA is, of course, as you know, has been acquired more than 12 months ago and is part of the Industrial Technique business area. And we only disclose basically the information related to the business area performance. But what we are happy to say about is, at least, is That the integration activities are going well and according to planned for the moment, let's say, with good integration between the general industry, motor vehicle industry And Isra, R and D people as well as on the sales side, we are working closely together to, of course, leverage on the combined capabilities of the solutions that all the different divisions provide. So I think that's with regard to ITBA, a bit on how the ISA integration is going.
And then I'm not sure if I still remember the first part of the question with regard to the flow through. Maybe just
to add on ITBA as well then, of course, If I still diluting the bottom line, as we said, as you can see as well. But in this quarter, also, we had a positive mix
I was just wondering whether that's still positive mix comment. It kind of was it leading to Israel or there was something else perhaps?
No, I think it's more related to the biggest segment in this industry that's out of I'll be released.
Yes. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Andreas Koski of Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Thank you, and good afternoon, Mats and Peter. I have a question on your comments about the sequential weakness.
Do you think that sequential weakness is do you think they are related to supply chain issues? Or do you think we have started to see some sort of
underlying slowdown in June? I mean, maybe they both these things go hand in hand, I guess. If there is many of the quarter, reports that I'm sure you follow as well and everyone is challenged through the same thing. So I think that is one thing. Separate, I think, on China, the shortage is the biggest car market in the world.
And you see the shortages of chips, of course, impact in that whole industry, not only in China. And at the same time, you can see that they have these difficulties with energy. So you can see shutdowns. And of course, if you have shutdowns, it's not good for the business confident. So there might be a number of other factors.
But The biggest one we see is the constraints in the supply chain and even making it difficult on what I would call commodity part that is on the daily flight to make sure that we can supply our customers.
Yes. I know you don't have a crystal ball, how long do you think those supply chain issues will be going on? Why would they ease in Q4, Q1 next year?
No, we don't have a crystal baller, as you say. In some cases, I think you need to increase your machining capacity to get more components out. And that is a bit dependent on where we are in the cycle and, of course, how The orders received, it looked like in Q4 and Q1. So I would only be guessing, so I wouldn't be able to help you much there. Okay.
Thank you very much. Thank you, Andreas.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Gael Debre of Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks very much. Good morning, everybody. Is it fair to say that the supply chain constraints led to a revenue shortfall of about 5 or 6 points this quarter versus prior expectations or you the expectations you might have had before the quarter itself. And I was wondering if these tensions and shortages have mainly materialized in September. So really only 1 month being impacted?
Or was it already visible throughout the quarter?
No, I think if I understand the constraints, of course, has been quite an ongoing issue. In terms of the possible output, of course, there is a number of businesses that has project in the auto industry, in the semi industry that is in deliveries later on. But there is extended lead times. And if I had all the components I wanted and all the labor I wanted, I'm sure we could have invoiced maybe NOK 1,000,000,000 or NOK 2 more NOK 1,000,000,000 easily. But I think That's as close as we can get at this point.
And it's not really the focus for us to sit and try to predict that. We are going every day into this, trying to make sure that we can help our customers to get their products on time. But I would expect it would be in that range if you had like a more normalized situation.
Okay. Just to be clear, so this was really an ongoing issue and the supply chain Challenges have not really amplified towards the end of the quarter.
No, exactly that is precisely what Mark said.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Sebastian Kurney of RBC. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Sebastian, if you're on mute, could you on mute?
Yes. You should hear me now.
Out of respect for management and analysts, I will only ask the 1 question. So in VT, the book to bill is now reaching 1.5 and 1.3 supply for the 9 months. Could you explain to us what the theoretical capacity would be at BT and explain where the plans are, what the plans are for capacity expansion at VT. Thank you very much.
I'm looking at Peter. I'm sure I don't have those numbers available. But what I could confirm is that in the last Three quarters, we have continued to invest in machining capacity, mainly to be installed close to customers where we have our operations. And by doing so, we are trying to catch up. But even though with the added capacity and the lead time for machining, It still will take time before we catch up on the orders on hand.
And I'm not sure what the normalized situation on max capacity. I mean, It's an all time high in Paribas last quarter, so 2 quarters right now. So I guess that level is a level right now that is challenging for us. And then we need to add new capacity to get to next level and hopefully sort out some of the key issues with the sub suppliers.
Thank you very much. I'll go back in line.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Joe Spungin of Berenberg. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes. Hi, good afternoon. I just wanted to ask very quickly,
it's sort of a broad question, but I don't know
if you can give any color. But sort of thinking about the supply chain issues that you faced through Q3, have they impacted the service and the new equipment side the business in a different way? Or is it just being uniform across both parts of the business? I'm just curious to know when hopefully they start to reverse out how it might affect where it might affect the revenue makeup going forward?
No, but There is you're right there. Since I said that service was flat and of course many of our customers are running their operations in a high utilization mode. So it's also impacting the logistics and the spare parts availability For those teams, we cannot operate as efficiently as we would like to. Yes, I think that's The answer that we could have more service sales as well.
And that's true across all four business units?
Yes, most likely. I will TT maybe not Suffering so much, but it's a smaller part of our business, but IT for sure, CTV know and BT, yeah. So 3 out of 4 at least would probably see benefits of having better access of parts and better logistics.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of James Moore at Redburn. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Thanks for taking a follow-up question. I wondered if I could get back to your outlook for Sequential demand to fall in orders in the Q4, which doesn't surprise me. But your answer to Claus at the start, I I didn't quite catch. But I guess my question is, we've just had very high vacuum orders.
Is the comment really a vacuum comment? And if you had to do a comment on compressor, which you don't do, would you think about compressor orders in the Q4 being roughly similar to that of the 3rd? Or would you also see a sequential drop in the compressor environment for demand?
I think one of Karl's comments was that seasonality, if you read the number of years that There's some impact on Q4. I think that was what we commented. And I think that The somewhat weakened then compared to Q3 is more extended than only AAVT. I believe we will feedback in other business areas as well.
But I always thought in the past you often commented on a seasonally adjusted basis. So I was thinking that you're I'm not trying to signal it'd be worse than the normal seasonal drop.
Correct. Can we be normally build it into the that you would know that there is a seasonality, correct? And Charles, confirm that there is a seasonality In the numbers as they express it. Maybe I'm just confusing you, James. I don't know.
No, no, no. That clarifies it. Thank you very much.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
Thank you. And we have a follow-up question from Sebastian Kune of RBC. Please go ahead. Your line is
please. Hi, gentlemen. On the raw material cost headwinds, could you confirm that the pricing environment is currently be better or running ahead of what you have on cost increases. So you basically pass through costs at the pace or even faster then yes, we are faster than the cost increase, rising faster than coal.
Thank you.
But we are, of course, leading in many of our segments. And there is more an
openness and understanding for price increases.
And we do go ahead standing for price increases. And we do go ahead with price increases. But then I would say that The main part for us is still value creation on new products, bringing in new products to a new price level, But we do also increase prices on existing ranges so that we can confirm if it's fully a match or not, I guess you need to look at the bottom line in the coming quarters then to see that. But of course, we are trying to match that.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Now. And we've had a couple more come through. The next is a follow-up from Joseph Pontgen of Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Your line is open.
Yes. Hi. Just one for Peter, just a quick one. I think you talked in your prepared remarks about the inventory levels and how those have increased and that was obviously a positive thing in the current environment. Is that is that a process that's sort of now done?
Or do you expect that you'll need to continue to invest more to grow the inventory levels further from here?
Do you mean our inventory level, sir?
Yes.
Okay. I mean, right now, Net working capital and inventory might not be the highest priority, even if we see a self as a company trying to generate value creation. Right now, we would prefer to have slightly higher inventory on some parts. But as soon as we are through this, we will continue with the efficiency program, shorting lead times, being closer to customer, being luke for luke for our customers. So our intention is to take advantage of not only the EBIT, But also the capital side of the business will continue to build value for the company.
So but right now, of course, we are Trying to find components wherever we can find them. So maybe not right now we go after this in our organization and they are so challenged trying to find the components.
Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. Thank
you. And we have a question from Sebastian Killeen at RBC. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yes. Regarding IT Industry Division. So auto is roughly 50% of the business. Could you expand a little bit how big the portion of EV and battery, that block EV battery is as a portion of Q3 for us? I mean, are we talking 5%, 10%, 25%?
What's the development there? Thank you.
I don't have an exact numbers, but I think it's significantly more than that. And maybe the easiest Way to get a view on that is just to look at the CapEx for some of the bigger car and truck manufacturers, how they invest. The main part of our investment is on the CapEx and the new from an operational standpoint, if they invest in fossil Programs, I mean, we do get orders for that as well. But I think the new is linked in one way to batteries. New models rely on hybrids.
And if you define hybrid as an electric, I don't know. But I think it's significantly more that is related So this new generation of cars in terms of hybrids and electric, and that is also what I see when I look at Daimler or Volvo and Evon's investment where they fund right now. So I think you can correlate that very much to our investment on new lines, new CapEx. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. Okay. As there are no further questions coming through at this time, I'll hand back to our speakers for the closing comments.
Okay. Thank you very much, operator, for helping us guide us through the question and answers. As there are no further questions, I suggest that we can call the call the to close the call here, sorry. Let him do that, Pete. Thank you
so much. Thanks for calling in, everyone. Bye bye.