Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to welcome you to Boliden's Q2 2022 Results Presentation. My name is Olof Grenmark. I'm Head of Investor Relations. Today, we will have a results presentation led by our President and CEO, Mikael Staffas, and our CFO, Håkan Gabrielsson. We will also have a Q&A session led by our operator. Mikael, welcome.
Thank you, Olof, and excuse us all for being slightly late. We had a little technical error here. It's very hot in Stockholm today, and it's often expected to be 35 degrees today, so maybe the tech equipment has something to say when you get these kind of red hot days. Anyway, I'd like to go through and present the results, and I would say that we generally had a very strong production quarter. We have our mines produced plan. We're happy that Tara is up and running again according to plan. We're happy that we have once again gotten the 45 million ton level in Aitik confirmed and also mine with Kevitsa, and also the Boliden area has performed very well in the quarter. On the smelting side, we've had big maintenance shutdowns. That was beforehand. There should be no news for anybody.
It took slightly longer, and we're still more expensive than we had expected, but they came up this week. Then we've had some minor issues on the smelting, but generally also there, good production quarter. Now, price and terms have also been good so that it's very difficult in these times for prices to go and then down to get the timing right in a company like Boliden, where you have all kind of mix of quotational periods that play into the equation. Therefore, it's difficult because that's exactly how the price and terms would be. But anyway, as we have seen, the ones that got the books have made it. We've gotten a record profit for the second quarter straight. We have also been hit by a strong inflation, and we'll come back and talk a little about inflation.
This is no news to anybody. We're also coming up with that inflation is also affecting some of our projects, especially the other projects. Just to start with the other projects, that we are going very well according to plan. The timing on plan and kind of unforeseen that we have found along the way, there is something in the project that is well covered by the contingencies that we've had. It's not been covered by, of course, the enormous inflation that we're seeing on things that are relevant for a project. We're seeing a very strong inflation, kind of including steel. We're seeing a strong inflation on logistics, which is also a large part of a construction it is, and also then other things, including rebars and so forth follow.
The estimate that we have now is based on expected input for the whole project, i.e., for much more than one period. Otherwise, all systems product is very well on track. There, we have now received the environmental permit. We started without that. Of course, it's a good confirmation that we've gotten it. We're not surprised. We had expected to get it, but it's always a good sign when you do get this. We're still being on the negative side, a slow ramp-up of the nickel line in Harjavalta, and we'll talk a little bit more about that later. All in all, we had a good profit excluding the profit revaluation of a little bit north of SEK 4.5 billion, the highest we've ever had.
Mines at SEK 2.7 billion, and the smelters at SEK 1.4 billion. Also they're good, even though I think they might come slightly lower than had been expected, but I want to get the exact timing of the effects to get it right sometimes. The ESG was also a very strong quarter. We've had a for us very low LTIFR of 3.2. We are now soon after 15 years of fatality-free operation. We do that as well. Sick leave is back slowly, so still, especially in the beginning of the quarter, COVID issues, but we're seeing nice improvements over how it was last. Also the absenteeism went down this quarter. We've had good and stable operations in both mines and in smelters, which very much helps the CO2 intensity to go down in individual quarters.
The first terms, the ones that have been tricky to deal with, that we've had extremely strong prices and terms at the peak and the quarter and then came down that strong towards the end. You know that with the way that we price and the way that we have rotational period, end period pricing is very important as we reprice previous deliveries in previous periods. We've seen that the price might have not been as strong as everybody given how strong they were if you go back in May. We should also be aware of on the other side, we have another positive. I see that most of you have. We have strong by strong premiums. The prices for sulfuric acid are also then on record levels.
If we can see that we are having a situation where number one, the prices have come down to the lowest it had been for the year. That's so interesting. What's more interesting when you look at the chart that we have all the time is that we now see it is really picking up also for our competition. You can see that in zinc, where basically the cost curve is affected by inflation pressures. You see that in copper as well. We see it especially on nickel on the front right part of the curve, where especially the nickel pig iron and the high coal intensity and the other fuels that go into that process have really raised the cost position for them.
Which means that over time, of course, this is actually something that is good in the sense that over time, we will develop better cost curves. The industry is going up. Even though we don't have any exact numbers yet, and we don't know exactly what our division is up to, we feel that we have a higher inflation than many others. To some extent, we might have lower inflation than we are energy efficient many of our peers. This quarter we've had SEK 40 million or very close to SEK 45 million in Aitik. Good production in good production in Kevitsa, although it had slightly lower grades that came into effect for this quarter. A little bit less throughput than normal, but we had higher grades, and this is quite normal.
The ore mix when we got last quarter like Q2 with the lower relative but the higher grades that we had. We are very happy to announce that we're back to a much more normal situation than we had before. Still low grade depending that we cannot access every stope that we would like to access in the mine but we are having enough positions so that we're able to produce in full. We had in two smelters very extensive maintenance stops in Rönnskär and in Kokkola. Both went relatively speaking quite well even though as you know when you have so many maintenance stops there's one thing that shows up. Generally speaking they went well. We also had the chance in the Harjavalta stop to do some corrections to the nickel line.
The nickel line has since then picked up, even though it's not still at full pace, but it's getting much better as we redesigned the concentrator in the maintenance stop we had in Harjavalta. Kokkola line, or in Kokkola and Odda used very well, also had a maintenance stop this quarter, a smaller one for maintenance stop. The other kind of negative news is Rönnskär. Rönnskär had a failure in the furnace, and that had to be repaired twice, and we had an unplanned outage in Rönnskär that was close to a month because of this. Luckily enough, Rönnskär is a relatively small unit to us. With that, Håkan, I leave it to you to go through some of the financial numbers.
Thank you, Mikael, and good morning. Well, as Mikael already said, we presented a strong quarter. We have an EBIT, excluding inventory revaluation, SEK 4.5 billion, which is the second strongest number so far. The downturn towards the end of the quarter meant that we had a negative for the inventory valuation, actually EBIT of SEK 4.1 billion. That's EBIT SEK 2.2 billion as main projects like Odda are getting up to speed. Free cash flow of SEK 2 billion that leads to another appreciation of 1.154. I think business as mine today our mines reached SEK 2.7 billion. They were impacted by lower prices, in particular towards late fourth quarter. Smelters stay SEK 1.4 billion compared to last quarter.
We had maintenance most of the units in the smelting, which had a negative impact on the EBIT. This year, most of the maintenance was in Q2. Last year, we had most of it in Q3. Eliminations positive, 400 due to the lower prices. I've seen a strong inflation. We talked about that already last quarter, but it has picked up further in Q2, and we now see number rolling on the OpEx side, on the operating expense side of 15% year-on-year, meaning I'm comparing Q2 of this year to Q2 of last year. In particular it's energy and diesel, chemicals, explosives, transports, where we feel most of the inflation. It's fairly limited on parts of the cost base.
Looking at CapEx, overall, the inflation on CapEx projects is higher than on the OpEx side. In particular, we see steel having a big impact, often indexed in contracts and also logistics. We have the CapEx guidance unchanged, though, for 2022. We'll have to come back to 2023 and beyond, get the guidance out later on. The reason for that is that there's some expansion plans, which means that we're not expecting to be exceeding the previous guidance for this year, even though we have. Comparing operating profit excluding last year, there is a significant improvement of course, and we've been helped by prices SEK 2.3 billion between the quarters. Out of that SEK 1 billion is stronger depreciation, a stronger dollar. On the metal side, there is primarily zinc that helps us quarter.
A lot of bigger impacts from by-products, meaning that sulfuric acid really and metal premiums influence this quarter. We have a gain of SEK 28 million from by-products and about SEK 200 million from higher metal premiums due to an improved balance in the European market. Volume-wise, we're up SEK 445 million. That's probably a higher volume in months with most of our units performing well. I think at the 445 pace give it a really strong and a good possible run. We do have some slightly lower income, but it's offsetting the positive year volume. Also an impact on the negatives from maintenance stops in smelters where, as I said, we had most of it in Q2 this year, but last year, most of it was done in Q3.
Cost is up SEK 75 million year-on-year. That's an 18% increase overall. In there is about a SEK 150 million increase due to maintenance stop. If you back that out, you see a 15% cost increase. Now it's pretty much exclusively energy consumption, diesels, et cetera. That's what I mentioned before, that leads to this cost increase. There is also from about SEK 100 million we had last year. As at Q1, again, slight improvements. We have a positive effect of SEK 300 million on prices. Comparing these two quarters, the positive impact from currencies are offset by a lower metal price development, specifically a wash.
We see a positive impact in by-products, treatment charges, and metal premiums. Volumes are up 5 million. We have higher nickel volumes on mines. In particular, of course, being hit by the water inflow situation still in Q1 but good improvements. Costs up SEK 546 for the same reason we talked about on the previous slide. Maintenance in smelters, inflation, and higher production. Looking at capital, I think we covered many of these components, but I think one word on the working capital side. We had cash flow SEK 2 billion and SEK 5 billion in working capital this quarter, is primarily due to maintenance stop in smelters. The combination of this strong production in mines and maintenance stop in smelters is tying a bit of capital in this quarter.
We are currently at slightly above average levels in copper and in nickel. The balance sheet's very strong. We are now at the net debt of SEK 85 and a gearing of 7%. In Q2, we paid ordinary dividends and the extra dividends, which explains most of the difference. We have a robust funding and a net payment capacity of close to SEK 14 billion.
Thank you, Håkan. With that, I'll just sum it up with a few points. The other project, I said that from the beginning, I think it's been the project itself is going very much according to plan. We have an increase in inflation on the CapEx side, which you can say it's expected. You could argue for some way that it's a bit unfortunate timing of it. We could have done it earlier. We could have avoided some of this inflation. True, we didn't have a permit already. We couldn't really have done it earlier. On the other hand, the timing was also very, very good because all of the, for example, power contract and so on that were signed that were linked to this are, now, of course, even more interesting for when they were signed.
Generally speaking, we feel very good and our internal numbers are getting even better despite the higher CapEx we're seeing. The project is still financially very attractive. We've gotten this decision in the quarter, we've gotten the permit for the expansion at Laver, which is very good. It will be appealed actually today. We have no indication that it will be overturned by any of the so-called heavy parties in this area. It is likely to be made by some smaller parties, but we have gotten what in Swedish called laga kraft, that is that we are allowed to use this even during the appeals, so we can continue with the project as planned.
Furthermore, we have gotten now the final verdict from the Supreme Administrative Court of Sweden that has ruled that we do have a 2000 application in order to go ahead with the project. We're back to square one. This is not a Laver. We can still work around. We're working in two different avenues. One is within a 2000 permit application to get done. The other one to try to do Laver that is done in such a way so it won't affect that 2000, because as most people know, Laver is not in a 2000, Laver is outside Natura 2000, but has water that goes into Natura 2000 area. If we go this way, we might be able to avoid water going into Natura 2000 areas altogether.
The expansion we're working on the project is not dead. I'd like to remind everybody that the market update in November. I also remind you of some of the outlook. These numbers are very much the same as you see. We don't have any variety in terms of the volume or grade. There are no changes in ore body volume or grade, change in character from what we said before. The maintenance shutdowns is similar to what we said. We have maintenance both Q3 and Q4 of the year mainly, but on a much lower level than we had in Q2. We have the inflationary pressure we talk about roughly 15% on OpEx.
This can, of course, change within factors absolutely not in our control, including energy prices, but as we see right now, this 15% level is likely to remain during the second half of the year. You should also be aware of, as some of you know, that the second half of last year, inflationary pressure wasn't picking up, but we had almost no inflation because we had a good set of contracts meant that the general inflationary pressure, especially on the energy side and on chemicals, did not get through last year. Now it's coming. We have a lower base that we're basing on, which means that we're estimating that it will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 15% for the rest of the year. The CapEx looks lower too, even though we see similar or even higher inflation compared to OpEx inflation.
We're also seeing some delay. There is a very tough market. It has been a very tough market to get certain projects. It's not really affecting Odda, where we get some time, but it's affecting others more. The CapEx guidance for this year remains slightly above SEK 11 billion. With that, this concludes the kind of presentation, and I open up for questions.
Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of your-
Go ahead.
Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Ioannis Masvoulas of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning, and thanks for the presentation. First question for me on the Odda CapEx. How confident are you in the revised estimate? Are there any remaining long lead items or any other aspects of the project that could see further escalation? Maybe I'll stop here for the first question.
Now, do you hear me now?
Yes.
We had some technical issues. Do you hear me? Yeah, you hear me. Okay. How confident am I regarding the other estimate? Well, I am very confident. There are still long lead items, and there are certain things that hasn't been even ordered yet. So there are things in there that could go, and it could go either up and down. So it's based upon our today best estimate where especially the heavy item, including steel and so on, will go. So yes, there is still some uncertainty, but I feel very good about it.
Thank you for that. A related question. You talk about overall CapEx inflation and north of 15% in addition to the older project CapEx increase. How should we think about the 2023 CapEx outlook? Should we expect a meaningful step up relative to this year?
I think we'll actually do 2023 CapEx in October. As you know, we are reworking our plans every year in the fall. Of course, given the situation we have right now, we are working quite a lot. I will come back to that in October once we've been able to do that.
Thank you very much. Last question from me, if I may. On Harjavalta, you talked about the slower ramp up of the new nickel line. When do you expect to hit the full run rate there?
It should come relatively soon. Now, I'm a little better. I said that before, but the remodeling that we do, the concentrate dryer that we rebuilt during the maintenance, is much more viable and much more robust. But it's only, you know, a couple of weeks of operating since then. It's a bit too early to say whether we have quite all the issues, but so far it looks good.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Daniel Major at UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Great. Thank you. First question, just follow up on the CapEx and appreciate you're not going to give 2023 guidance. How should we think about the increase in the budget? Will you look to defer other projects as a consequence of the increase in CapEx at Odda? Or should it be incremental to the current pipeline of CapEx projects that you see from a sort of high level basis?
We always look very critically at everything that we do, including CapEx as part of our budgeting process as we go through that evaluation. We will be looking very hard to see what we can do and what can be done with timing and other things.
Okay. We'll revisit that in Q2 then, I guess. Second question, just around costs or sort of couple of questions around costs. First simple one, what foreign exchange assumption are you using for the 15%? Are you taking spot, Swedish krona?
That is based on the current exchange rates.
Okay, thanks. Just on the energy component of the cost inflation, you previously indicated about 80% of your energy is under fixed price contracts, and you have some other hedges in place for the remaining 20%, but you're flagging energy as a significant driver of the increased inflation. If you've only got 20% open of your energy exposure, it seems a relatively small component to be a big driver of overall inflation. Can you give us a sense about how important energy excluding diesel is in that 5% uplift in expected inflation?
Yeah. I said energy, but they had this different power, and the power component is the major driver of this. Yes, we do have an inflation on power as well, because the 20% is quite more expensive than it used to be a year ago. It is the general inflation that goes to diesel and that goes to gas and everything else that come through in the chemicals. That's the major driver.
Okay. Power is not, yeah, still relatively well positioned into 2023. Is that the correct way of thinking about it?
That's the correct way of looking. Power is not a driver.
Okay. Thanks. I'll leave it there then.
Okay.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Luke Nelson at JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Thanks a lot for taking my questions. Just a follow-up on Daniel's question on costs. If I look divisionally at the quarter-on-quarter waterfall, it actually looks like cost performance was quite strong. In my mind, obviously adjusting for maintenance, it looks like it was actually a benefit. Can you maybe just sort of talk to sort of quarter-on-quarter the sort of cost performance within. I know you just mentioned energy, but maybe within sequentially the effect of reagents, acids and things like that. Then the second comment or question on the 15% inflation you talk about year-on-year, can you maybe quantify what effect that is in terms of a quarter-on-quarter effect?
Does that imply sequentially an increase, given you also talked about a 15% effect in Q2? That's my first question.
I'll leave that to you, Håkan. You can talk about what else on inflation.
In this talk sequentially, we talked about a Q1 give about 10%. We do see an increase there coming up to the 16% level. We do see an increase Q2 to Q1 as well. Then we expect roughly a level, put everything together for the second half of the year. In there, I think we are expecting some changes as we saw macro energy prices already coming up towards the later part of last year so expect inflation rate between the different categories to even out a bit. That's one thing. If we've got the cost inflation year on year, I think one should be aware that it's sometimes a bit difficult to be very precise on individual terms.
You see the longer trend is much better. The inflation that we have seen this past year, you back out, which was about just SEK 150 million between Q2 this year and Q2 last year. There is, we know, we see all within consumables, chemicals, energy, et cetera. As we talked about earlier, is the main part. I think we're up about year-on-year. That is both one of the individual. But diesel and chemicals and sort of the indirect of energy costs are driving a much higher inflation in other areas. On the salary side, we're up less than 2% year-on-year, so that's, you know, a fairly limited increase.
It's very much basically the cost inflation that we see all within these areas that I've mentioned.
Just for you to get a flavor of this thing as we look into this, there are certain chemicals that have increased fourfold, 4 x. Just to have a sense of that, certainly they might not be big, they might be a relatively small part of our total cost base, but they have high to them. That's, of course, part of the issue here, how that continues to develop. Many of those extremely expensive now are very much tied to the natural gas in Europe.
Great. A really good color. Thank you for that. Second question, I suppose somewhat related, to cost, but from the power side and your prior comments again indicated that the inflation coming through the back end of this year was not necessarily power within the broader energy inflation reflects. If we think about 2023, and given your profile of hedging, which I think historically has been sort of two-year duration, 20% spot exposure, but with some flexibility. Can you sort of give a sense on how you're seeing the power costs in 2023 relative to 2022?
Well, first of all, it is difficult with the details, but just as you have the 80%, but just remember that we have north of 50% that is hedged from very long-term. We only have maybe 20%-25% that needs to be set. We're still in 2023 gonna be benefiting from contracts that were made in 2021. Still at relatively good level. Then we get kind of percent spots that comes into it, and we don't really know what it's going to be like. It's clear, I think, to everybody, but we get some guess, but it's only 20%. We also have an advantage in the area, so we are big power consumers, especially in Northern Sweden. The power prices, the market prices are less than they are in other places.
For us, the power inflation is less than the general inflation. It's actually kind of helping us to tilt the inflation down.
Okay, great. Final question, if I may, just a modeling question. Just on the pricing effect within Mines quarter-over-quarter, it was sort of negative SEK 1.5 billion. Can you maybe just break out within that what the provisional pricing effect was? Apologies if you've already mentioned that.
No, I'll be happy to. We didn't mention it earlier, I think. As always, I'd like to start with definitions. The open positions that we had in the year quarter have been revalued to final prices during the quarter. That has a negative impact of a bit more than SEK 100 million, SEK 105 million. It's primarily nickel, which have long quotation periods and where we saw prices coming down towards the later part of the quarter. That drives that number. That is what we refer to as the net effect of the quotation period effect or so. In addition to that, as you know, the pricing, the material that was within the quarter is a bit back-heavy. You never use straight average quarter.
That is, you know, what makes up the total number. The quarterly direct revaluation of quarterly period is SEK -101.05.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Krishan Agarwal at Citigroup. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. Most of them have been already answered. If I can ask a quick clarification on 2022 CapEx, because in the release you say that the expected spending may not be equal to the previously communicated number, but then you also reiterated your guidance for not just over SEK 11 billion CapEx spend. How should we look at the 2022 CapEx in the context of these two statements?
Well, you will have to wait until October for the stated 2023 CapEx. It's inflation that is of course driving it up, but there is also everything from re-engineering to reprioritization that could drive it down, and we're gonna have to see where we end up.
I think my question is more on the 2022 CapEx, as in you reiterated the guidance for just over SEK 11 billion, but then you also alluded to that, the spending may not be as equal as previously communicated numbers. From a modeling point of view, SEK 11 billion CapEx number for this year stands, right?
Stands. For this year, it stands.
Okay. Sorry, the line is a bit blurry, so my apologies for that. Okay, thanks for that.
Yeah, there's a little bit blurry on our end as well. Hopefully, we'll be able to get through this.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jatinder Goel of BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you, operator. Good morning. Got a question on Aitik CapEx revision. Mikael, you alluded to some of the market backdrop getting better, and I reckon it's to do with zinc prices being stronger, TC, acid pricing, premiums all being better as well. If you look on net basis, what does this new CapEx budget do to your, let's say, ROCE or IRR forecast for the Aitik expansion project? If you could give either delta or absolute numbers, that would be very helpful.
You're not gonna get an answer, but I can give you a little bit of a delta because we have run this CapEx on our own estimates to how we have changed our long-term assumptions on exactly the things you talked about, metal prices and sulfur gases and so on. We do that internally. We are basically flat. It's all the same. Be very clear that if we were to have the present pricing terms, the math will be much better. Our prices, even though they are slightly more aggressive now than they were when we made the shift there, are still conservative over certain then.
Understood. That's very helpful. Is SEK 5 billion CapEx on dam not subject to any inflationary pressure or is that already taken care of or is there much uncertainty because the bigger spending chunk is next year?
Yeah. Of course, that is not isolated inflation, but the number was developed much later and had been taken into. We have early stage that reevaluation project means that there is not so. We will have to get a kind of new. Now that means that we need to run it.
Okay. Just the last one, again related to CapEx. SEK 11 billion unchanged CapEx guidance for this year, but the indication is CapEx inflation is higher than OpEx inflation, 15% for three quarters and maybe 10% for the first quarter. Very simplistically, is it 15% of the activity which gets delayed to future years and keeping that SEK 11 billion flat if you were to just think from a high level?
Yeah. You said, I mean, it's not a.
Okay. Thank you so much.
Okay.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Viktor Trollsten of Danske. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thank you, operator. Good morning, Mikael and Håkan. Maybe first just a clarification on your previous answer on the delta in returns on the Odda project. Just trying to understand. When you are calculating the returns, I suppose you are using your planning prices that we can see in your annual report. You know, listening to your previous answer, it sounds like you know, have changed those planning prices in terms of zinc treatment charges, zinc prices, et cetera. Could you just clarify how we should look at it?
To clarify, the thing that you can read in our annual report was the ones that we used to calculate the original return. Now, there are certain things that you can see there. For example, you don't see zinc premiums in there, but they for the original calculation. Now, we haven't told you guys, but we already beginning here modify our long-term assumptions for all kind of factors that you will only see in February when we come out with the next report. We need to have those put in place early in the year because we are using more NPV calculations, for example, during the year.
If we use those slightly moderated long-term prices that we have now, and we also put in the higher CapEx, we do, we also think and do put in the OpEx inflation that comes with OpEx going forward in all the calculations basically.
Okay. No, that's clear. I guess that's what I was sort of after. That it sounds like then in the coming year or so that we could see some upside to platinum prices. That's how I interpret it. That's perfect.
There is some upside in prices, because there's some inflation. We, as you know, had pretty conservative planning prices for 2021.
Yeah, I completely agree on that. Okay, thank you. On the CapEx budget now, and just maybe if you can expand a bit on your best estimate that you talked about. If you know, I guess a big element of the project is, let's say, steel prices. If you know, we are running at current spot prices, we said that those are fixed for the coming years, then we end up at the CapEx budget, and any fall in prices would actually imply a downside to your new CapEx budget, or is that how we should see it?
The way you should see it, we have taken. Everybody is specific about the Odda. Now, we have taken our best estimate of what we know today and applied that to all these indices, having all kind of contracts, and put that all together, and we've come up with this number of SEK 550. Some of that has been delivered, but it's a very small part because the project has not really started to deliver. Some of it is in things that have been ordered, but have all these indices, and we still have a relatively or a part that has not even yet been ordered for data we are still working on. As I said, 50 is based on today's estimate.
If you were to have a fall and you're talking about steel prices and drivers, stainless steel prices an important driver, and so on, if that were to happen, then we could have a positive deviation to this.
Okay. No, I guess that makes sense. Maybe finally, if I may, just on the mining operational performance in the quarter, at least from my perspective, I think grades are sort of ahead of guidance. I know that you typically talk about let's say 10% variation in grade guidance. Would you be able to say that the first half grades are ahead of your first expectations, or have you expected the grades to decline by let's say 14%-16% in the second half all along, so to speak?
Without too much details on that, we did have, in our planning, slightly better grades in the first half than in the second half. The grades of the first half surpassed our. This could be within the kind of margin of error. It's nothing that we have to have a long discussion on why we've seen better. That's still be lower.
That's clear. Finally on my side, here with Aitik. Sorry. What can we...
Sorry to interrupt there, Andre, but we didn't get the last question.
Yeah, sorry, it's hanging a bit up a bit on the line. Here it's Aitik grade on the milled ore in the quarter was quite impressive. You know, is it sustainable level or, I mean, was it an extraordinary quarter from that perspective?
I would say it was a good quarter. We should calculate what is the 9.5 million ton annual, which we have guided for.
Okay. Yeah, thank you very much. I step back in line. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Liam Fitzpatrick at Deutsche Bank . Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Good morning, everyone. I've got three questions. Apologies if I'm slightly going over some stuff that's been asked, but the line is a little bit patchy. The first one, just on working capital, you've had a big build compared to six months ago and twelve months ago. Should we expect this to unwind quite materially in the second half if prices stay where they are or move lower? That's the first question. Secondly, on the power side, it doesn't sound that you're that concerned about power. I think you did mention earlier in the year that you would consider potentially reducing production at some of your smelters and selling surplus power if it made sense.
Are there any smelters, or any of your smelters where, you know, you're getting close to potentially making that switch and that decision? The third question, apologies in advance, it's another one on CapEx. At the start of the year, when you guided on the SEK 11 billion, did that assume around 10% inflation? With you telling us 15% inflation, you know, the shift that's gonna happen over this year and beyond is around 5%. Is that the right way to think about it? Thank you.
Let me take a couple of these ones and then I'll leave the
Okay.
Regarding CapEx, know that the original number that we had was based on the planning last year, which is based on the situation in September for just the timing of it. The number that we have originally was based on the best of the CapEx based on the situation in September of 2021. Then we had seen some inflation, but not at all as what happened later. On the power side, the question is whether we stop production. Here you just have to be in context.
We have always, every time, every year, stopped our operations, especially in the Kokkola zinc smelter in Finland, for maybe 1% of the time in the winter, because there's always been individual hours where the price has been so high that we make more money selling the power rather than producing it. This became more usual winter where we use this option more frequently. Of course, as I said, all our operations are so only in the Kokkola operation with power-intensive on the smelting side that has been the case for this. We have actually during this quarter as well stopped production a little bit in Kokkola.
Most likely it's not gonna match your Q3, but your Q4. I'm pretty sure it's gonna pick up again because we're likely to have very high power prices where it's more favorable for us to monetize on the power contract rather than to use the power for producing metals. With that, the working capital with you, Håkan.
I'll try to do that better. In Q1, we tied SEK 3 billion to streamline working capital. That was 100% price driven, so no volume increase. In Q2, we take SEK 1.2 billion. That is a volume effect, which is actually more than 1.2. As the prices came, they released a small part of the SEK 3 billion that we targeted in Q1. What I say is that with the existing prices, not all of it will come back because it's still up compared to last year. Let's say a SEK 2 billion volume increase in working capital that comes back once we're through the inventory in higher.
Okay. Thank you.
Also say to people, we should also add that given the situation, the nickel market, given the situation with nickel contracts.
We have the fact that we've been not running according to speed at the Harjavalta nickel smelter, which normally was the spot concentrate in the market. We've not done that. We have been sitting on those inventories because it's kind of walking forward, most likely, depending what's going to happen with nickel in Russia.
Okay, understood. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Amos Fletcher at Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah. Morning, gents. Thanks for the opportunity. Two questions from my side. The first one, going back over cost inflation. We're talking about rates of inflation excluding wages. I just wanted to ask about your labor contract, where we're seeing CPI picking up to the highest level in several decades in most of your key jurisdictions. I just wanted to ask, when will wages be reset for each of the main countries or assets over the next couple of years?
That's a very good question, which I haven't commented so much about. You're right that this could be another thing that could affect us negatively going forward. The answer to your question is that we will, during the next winter time, have negotiations basically everywhere. We have, I think, Finland coming up first, right before Christmas. We have then the big one in the end of Q1. I'm not sure exactly for when Ireland is coming, but it's coming around the same timetable and Norway is also around the same. We will have labor negotiations everywhere. You're pointing out a possibility this might be very different labor negotiation given the general in the society, but it is also considered on the other hand.
Okay. Is it sort of based on, you know, your historical agreements that those tend to track in line with CPI or do you tend to pay CPI plus a bit?
Well, we're in uncharted territory because we haven't really been there. Basically, in these jurisdictions, the basis for these labor negotiations is productivity developments and also kind of profitability developments. It doesn't necessarily have to be linked to consumer pricing. The union historically did their agreement as a CPI plus, but that's not the fundamental for it. I think at the end of the day what's gonna happen to our labor costs, what happens with labor in the general case, in certain jurisdictions, like in Sweden, it's very much tied to the negotiation phase. In other jurisdictions we negotiate much more on company basis, but we will of course follow the general trend in those.
Okay, thanks. I just wanted to follow up on this issue around your exposure to physical natural gas supply. In the event that we see actual rationing, are there any assets that are particularly at risk, would you say?
Only asset that we have that uses natural gas that comes off the grid, that's our smelter in southern Sweden. We have other operations that need to have gas, but it comes in an LNG form that we're using for different purposes. That's not really a lot. I see that the risk of production interruptions from gas supply is relatively little. It is more or less if supply is interrupted, the price of chemicals can go very high because the chemicals industry in Europe is very much dependent on gas prices.
Okay, that's great. Thank you very much.
Okay.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tyler Broda at RBC. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Great, thanks. Thanks very much. I'm just gonna ask the question that Amos literally just asked. I guess while you're on the line, can you. Obviously it's fast-moving situation on the macro side in Europe at the moment. From a demand perspective, can you give us any indication of what your customers are doing at the moment or any sentiment from that perspective? Thanks very much.
I would say that it's a bit sentiment as we're in the vacation period, which kind of makes things a little bit special. I think generally so far, and up until the beginning of the vacation period, we have not seen any slowdown in our major industrial customers. They are ordering according to plan basically across the board.
Great. Thanks. That's very helpful.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ioannis Masvoulas of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi everyone, it's Ioannis Masvoulas here. Actually I also have a question on the OpEx inflation and the CapEx inflation, but a bit from a different perspective because for sure the stronger dollar must mean quite a lot to this, you know, elevated cost inflation for you. Could you just indicate what the sort of cost inflation is in more dollar terms or unchanged FX terms, please, if that's possible?
The answer is I don't know.
Yeah.
I think it's-
Yeah.
It's a little bit of an interesting hypothetical, you know, what the dollar appreciation would have been different. It's a little bit of a theoretical exercise. I haven't done that.
Absolutely. I still think it's relevant because if you
Sorry.
It's relevant. Sorry, what you can actually buy in dollars is quite limited. But of course there's an indirect impact from the dollar in, for example, diesel prices, chemical prices. But it's, we have done.
Yeah.
The full equation. I mean, we look at prices that we paid basically, and that to some extent influenced by dollar, but it's difficult to back out. As for metal prices, if you back out the dollar, I mean, there is a negative correlation to metal prices as well.
Yeah. Yeah.
That also covers part of what you see. So.
Yes.
Got you. I know it's theoretical, but I think it's still relevant because, I mean, all your competitors report in dollars, and I sense that you might be compared to the guys reporting in dollars, which is the industry standard. Yep. All right. My second one is more of a tangible question, I suppose, but that is on the by-product side from the smelter. I'm thinking specifically on sulfuric acid, for example. Has this created any positive delta for you in Q2, and how do you see the second half when it comes to pricing the products?
sulfuric acid
I don't know exactly what they've done from quarter to quarter. Just regarding going forward, we don't really know. I would say that right now on an unsustainably high level, they are likely down. When and how, by how much. I can remember there, all in all, the by-products which then primarily sulfuric acid is about SEK 260 million this quarter last year. I mean, that's product total, but that's pretty much only sulfuric acid that makes a difference.
Okay. Okay. That's helpful. Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you. We have one further question in the queue. That's from the line of Daniel Major at UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi. Yeah, thanks very much. To follow up. Sorry, the line's really bad. I just wanted to follow up on the working capital question. I couldn't hear what the answer was, in terms of expected release of working capital in the second half.
If we take out the price part of it all, we have tied in volume about SEK 2 billion working capital, stock year and all of that one in Q2. That we expect to relieve once we get up to speed in Harjavalta, the nickel production and once we're through the maintenance stops.
Okay. You built four in the first half and you could release two. Is that the right way of thinking about it?
Correct. The other two is prices and with lower prices will return with same prices it will stay.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. As there are no further questions in the queue at this time, I'll hand back to our speakers for the closing comments.
Yes. Thank you very much for listening in. Apologies for the technical issues that we had in the beginning and also during the call. We hope that will get better going forward. I would just like to take a chance to wish you all a very nice summer. As I said, here in Stockholm, it's expected five degrees today. I don't know what it's like for us. That's actually pretty nice to get that. We haven't had such a nice summer or very nice summer start before a very few next few weeks. With that, have a nice summer, everybody. Goodbye.