Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to welcome you to Boliden's Q3 2022 results presentation. My name is Olof Grenmark, and 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, and we will start with questions here in Stockholm. Mikael, welcome.
Thank you, Olof, and a very warm welcome from me as well to all of you out there. Sorry, I just jumped right into it and start the presentation. We've had a quarter that has been a strong quarter, but I would say with good results, though we have experienced quite a lot of inflation, and we'll come back around that. We have favorable currencies, and the favorable currencies that are over in total is of course very good to us, is of course also part of these things that we're seeing on the inflation side, where the currencies will drive our prices, even though our suppliers might be invoicing us in euros or in Swedish krona. Of course, the underlying dollar exchange rate does matter.
We've had a strong production result in our mines, but the grades are lower. This, I think, is also in line with the guidance that we have done. On the smelter side, we've had a good quarter, but we have lower production in our zinc smelters. However, we have a positive contribution from selling power that we'll come back to the details around, where we have voluntarily curtailed zinc production in order to save on power. Inventories are high. It's mainly an issue related to that we haven't been able to get everything out of the precious metal plants that we wanted to, and we have an unusually high amount of especially gold and to some extent, PGM, platinum group metals in our inventory. Financial performance, close to SEK 3.5 billion, clearly up from last year.
Free cash flow, close to zero, which is down. It has to do with the inventory buildup that Håkan will talk a little bit more about. CapEx, about SEK 2.5 billion, which is in line with the guidance that we've given. The projects are generally going fine. The big projects in Odda, Kristineberg, and Aitik dam projects are all advancing according to plan. We've had an improvement of the ramp up in the Harjavalta nickel line. It is still not 100% of where it's going to be, but much better than before. We're very good optimism that we'll be able to reach the full production soon. In all, we have the SEK 3.5 billion profits. Mines, roughly a little bit less than SEK 2 billion, and smelters, SEK 1.5 billion.
If you look in a historical context, it's of course a very good result anyway, even though it's slightly lower than the previous two record quarters. Looking at the ESG side, we have a lost time injury development that we are not happy with. Even though it's about the same as it was last year, it is clearly worse than it was during Q2. These things sometimes go up and down. A little bit difficult to understand exactly the dynamics that goes in, but we're working intensely to make sure that we keep it as low as ever possible. The sick leave rate is also still a little bit high. This is mainly due to short-term absentees.
We don't know exactly, but we have a sense that we're not alone, and we have a sense that to some extent, this is a little bit less of COVID, but it's also regular viruses that we haven't really been able to get used to during COVID times. Now as we're getting back and getting to know people and meet people, we're also getting some normal colds, a little bit more than normal. We're working hard to get this one down as well. On the CO₂ side and the climate side, we are happy with the progress that we're having towards the targets that we have, and we have our intensity number at 0.59 this quarter, which is clearly better than last year.
You can see to the right here the development over time, where we are also slowly getting down to better levels. The Boliden price index, we've had a strong but deteriorating average prices in terms. You can see on the graph on the top that the currencies are coming up. They've typically been very stable, but the currencies have been better for us, whereas the metal prices have come down still from a relatively high level. If you multiply these together, you can see in the bottom chart there that yes, we're coming down, but we're still on a relatively good level. If you look at the spot TCs that lots of people talked about connection to the power situation, you can see that they were actually not that high during Q3, even though they did come up towards the end of the Q3.
There is an exhibit in the appendix here for those who want to look more in detail on that. We've seen large curtailment of European zinc production towards the end of the quarter, zinc smelter production. That is, of course, changing lots of things throughout the supply chain, which we have been able to adjust to well in this context. If you look at the prices, what you can see from this chart is that the present market prices as of yesterday, which is the dotted line, are close to the lowest that we've had in the whole year, but still relatively good levels. The prices are still clearly above the cost curve. In that sense, there is still some room to fall, but the room is smaller.
You can also see from this chart relatively clearly that inflation is not hitting only us, it's hitting everybody in the world. You see the costs going up both for copper mines, for zinc mines, and also for the nickel mines. The inflation is universal and hitting everybody. If we then look in our production that we had ourselves and start looking into the mines, I think we've had another good production quarter, 45 million tons now achieved two quarters in a row. The grade is lower than it was last year, still slightly higher than we actually guided for. In Garpenberg, we've had some issues during the quarter. We are not 100% satisfied with the throughput level.
Among other things, we did have a one-week unannounced or unplanned maintenance shutdown in the shaft due to maintenance reasons that we had to do. The grades are also low in this quarter, which is something that happens now up and down. The Garpenberg performance was not as stellar as it usually is. We were slightly helped by relatively good silver grades, even though they were also low, lower than it was last year. Kevitsa, also another good quarter with the mill volumes now up to a pace of 10 million tons per year, which we're very happy about. The grades are also in line with what can be expected. We have slightly lower recoveries in Kevitsa that we're working with and making sure that we try to get our arms around.
Those of you who know the Kevitsa mineralization know that it is not uniform, and we believe that we are in areas right now where it is more difficult to get through recoveries up, but we're working hard to get them back to the levels that they should be on. Boliden Area, even though we have lower mill volume, the Boliden Area is doing very well with good production. We also have higher grades here, and we're also working well into getting into some of the tougher ore areas where we had some hard grain ore, but those are the things that you need to get through. Tara, still a little bit recovering from the events last year with the flooding. We're still not really into plan. We have low grades in Tara because some of the high-grade stopes have not been possible to develop as of quite yet, but it doesn't really change anything in the long term.
We'll get to those high-grade stopes as we move forward. On the smelter side, generally in Harjavalta, and you can say it's good or it's like generally on the copper side, relatively good production. In Harjavalta, also an improved ramp-up of the nickel line, which you can see on the bottom of the charts to the right, the improvement in the nickel production. You see on the zinc side a small but clear step down. This has really nothing to do with that we cannot produce. This is the effect of voluntary curtailments that you see here that we've done in order to be able to sell electricity at times when that is a better commercial solution. Generally, Bergsöe has had a very good quarter after those unannounced stops that we had in Q2. With that, I'll leave it over to you, Håkan, to go through the finance.
Thank you, Michael. Good morning, everybody. As I'm sure you've seen, we've presented a third quarter with an EBITDA of about SEK 5 billion and an EBIT excluding process inventories of SEK 3.5 billion. That is an increase compared to last year, but it is a decrease compared to the previous quarter, Q2. CapEx investments is up to SEK 2.5 billion. That is a slight increase to Q2, and the reason is that we're getting up to speed in some of the key projects.
This will continue through Q4 and onwards, as you've seen, we've reduced the guidance for CapEx for 2022. Michael will come back to that number. Free cash flow is low, SEK 97 million. I will come back to that in a separate slide. Looking by business area, we have mines at SEK 1,964 million, which is a good quarter, but we can see on the chart down to the left the effect of gradually lower metal prices that we've seen in Q2 and Q3 has an impact. Smelters is now delivering a third consecutive very strong quarter at SEK 1,564 million. That is in fact the strongest quarter on record that we see for smelters. So it's a very good performance. Other than elimination, small numbers and close to expectations, I would assume. Inflation.
Well, the overall picture is similar to what we talked about last quarter. There is a strong inflation still present. When we try to measure it Q3 this year to Q3 last year, it's close to 20% year-on-year. It's still very much related to consumables, chemicals, energy, like diesel, caustic soda, et cetera, explosives. It's a similar picture. As Mikael alluded to, even if we do not buy much directly in U.S. dollars, it doesn't say dollar on our invoice, when we buy things, it does have a big indirect impact. The fact that dollar to SEK is up 22% compared to the same quarter last year and 7% compared to Q2, it does also affect the inflation when we measure it in Swedish krona.
Going into some details comparing the profit quarter-on-quarter and starting with the same quarter last year, we have an improvement of roughly SEK 1 billion. Prices and terms have been beneficial to us. We have 1.9 helped by stronger prices and terms, and the most important part is the stronger US dollar. As you can see that the currency altogether adds up to SEK 1.4 billion, and the dollar is the main component in there.
We also see stronger by-product prices and stronger metal premia, bigger numbers than we typically see on these EBIT comparisons. By-products and premia add up to half a billion SEK improvement compared to last year. Volumes are pretty flat. We have higher mill volume, but that is offset by lower grades. The cost side, inflation is, of course, the important part here. The 20% inflation is very visible in this number. We do have higher mill volume. We have about 10% higher mill volume in the open pit mines, which has a variable cost in the order of magnitude just below SEK 100 million, roughly. We've also written down as a one-off about SEK 70 million from warehouses. But the main part is inflation in here.
That's in line with the 20% number I talked about recently. Finally on the line other here, we have the effect of selling energy in connection to the curtailments that Mikael talked about. In here, we've got about SEK 170 million, which is then the net effect of selling energy and then the actual cost of energy. We have accounted for that at a separate line as other operating revenues rather than netting it against the cost, but that's a good contribution. Comparing Q3 to Q2, the difference is also SEK 1 billion, but in the other direction, so this is a decrease of SEK 1 billion. We have lower metal prices. It's partly offset by a stronger dollar, but the base metal prices have come down between the quarters. What we refer to sometimes as MAMA effect, the effect of definitive pricing is about SEK 80 million between the quarters. Volumes are down close to SEK 700 million. We have lower grades.
That's the main explanation. We also have lower zinc production in smelters that is connected to the curtailment of production due to energy reasons, and then also some a bit lower production in the zinc mines. Costs are on roughly a similar level as Q2. There is a seasonality effect here. We typically have about 150 million SEK lower cost in Q3 three compared to Q2. That is in here, and also less plant maintenance. In addition to that, there is an increase in energy and consumables. Again, we have on the other line here, we have the contribution of sold electricity. Cash flow. Cash flow is low at 97 million SEK. That's a 2 billion SEK decrease compared to Q2 sequentially.
SEK 1 billion of those is connected to EBITDA, which we talked about. SEK half a billion is connected to tying working capital, and the remaining half billion is spread across investments, taxes, and financial net. Now we are at relatively high levels of working capital, and there are a few reasons. Firstly, there is an effect from prices. When you compare inventory positions, you look at prices the last day of each quarter, and we've had about SEK 200 million in this capital tied up is palladium that have had a good price development. We have also taken a decision not to sell off any excess zinc or nickel concentrate due to the difficult market conditions.
That adds up to about SEK 1.5 billion in excess inventory, and out of that, about SEK 400 million were built in this quarter. The main part of that we've seen in Q1 and Q2. We've also sourced a higher share than the normal of concentrate with a high content of precious metals. This is primarily in the High Valley plant. This is profitable concentrate, but we haven't been able to feed it as quickly as expected, so we're sitting on a bit on too much inventory in the precious metal side. That explain most of the difference here. Then finally, we have slightly higher zinc inventories due to the curtailments on the smelting side. We still have about SEK 100 million more in inventories in there.
Most of that will come out in Q4. Moving on to capital structure. Very strong balance sheet as previous quarters. You may see that the average interest rate is still on a fairly low level, 1.7%. It increased fairly sharply in September, so we expect a higher number next quarter, but that's following the market trends. It's still a good number. Finally, I'd just like to draw your attention to the fact that we have issued green bonds during the quarter. It's a SEK 2 billion bond, one tranche of SEK 1 billion for three years and one tranche of SEK 1 billion for five years, and is to support the investment in Odda, the expansion in Odda, which has a very good environmental footprint.
I'm happy about this for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's our biggest bond so far with good margin, and we're very happy that there is such a big interest among investors to finance our sustainability journey. Secondly, it's good to be an early issuer of green bonds in the base metals arena. This is one of the first green bonds in base metals, so we're happy about that as well. There are more details about terms and so on our website in case anyone wants to look at that. With that, Mikael, I think it's for you to talk about the Capital Markets Roadshow.
Thank you, Håkan. Yes, Capital Markets Day coming up in a couple of weeks. Think that will be quite interesting to follow. We have a first day in Stockholm where we will have the presentation. The second day is a field trip to Harjavalta. Unfortunately for all you out there, the Harjavalta field trip is actually fully booked, so that one is limited. In terms of attending, either in person in Stockholm or attending electronically, the day one, there are still open slots. Contact Olof if you want to have any more details. Now, outlook, and let us talk a little bit around these ones. Number one, Aitik. Regarding Q4, there is no change of guidance compared to previously. It's about 0.20 grade. Now, for 2023, we are now guiding at 0.17.
This is in essence no news. You all know that we had very good years for many years in Aitik, with, I think, annual grades of up to 0.29, and we have in our R&R statement always had an average of around 0.23 or 0.22. If you're gonna make that average work out, you're also gonna have to go low a couple of years. The 0.17 might be the lowest point of the cycle. It's a bit unclear what happens for 2024 and 2025, but that's on the lower end as we will then in a couple of years start moving up again, and the late 2020s will be a very nice time to get in to be general manager in Aitik. Garpenberg, no change in terms of grade guidance.
For 2023, still the 3.6%. The silver grade is declining slightly. We are both in Aitik, it doesn't say here, but we are guiding for 45 million tonnes as it's now the standard rate for Garpenberg coming up to 3.3 for 2023. In Kevitsa, we're also increasing the guidance on throughput from 9.5 to 10, so more throughput coming through. The grades in Kevitsa will be slightly below the reserve averages for next year. Maintenance side, the maintenance shutdowns we are not guiding yet for 2023. We'll come back to that next quarter. There is not really any substantial change, even though it's slightly smaller maintenance for Q4 than I think previous was announced. Inflationary pressure, we are continuing to see an inflationary pressure.
Those of you who've been around and following us for a while know that we had in the fall of 2021, we had very low inflations in Q3 and Q4 due to the fact that we had quite a lot of annual contracts that we could keep the cost level to, that full year. Now that has all changed and been renegotiated, and as we're now looking into costs for Q4, we are comparing to a previous year on relatively low levels, and we will see that there's still a continuous strong inflationary pressure of similar levels to what we've seen in this quarter, you know, somewhere close to 20%. CapEx, we are guiding the full year now slightly above SEK 10 billion. I'd like to just briefly just get a sense of that. We started this year with SEK 10 billion.
We added SEK 1 billion because we added on the Aitik dam project. We told you that we're having also inflation on the CapEx side. That one is also maybe of the order of maybe 20%. Of course, some of that happened, that takes a while until it plays in, but those of you who would have looked at that would have said that's probably another billion. We should have had SEK 12 billion everything else equal this year. Now we're coming in at roughly SEK 10 billion. We are SEK 2 billion, you can say, late. It's a little bit what happens around, exactly around New Year that plays around what comes in December and what comes in January. We are slightly late. We're not proud of that. We would have liked to be 100% on time, but we're slightly behind.
We're now guiding for next year of SEK 15, which is of course those two that we don't do this year come over to next year. Of those 15, roughly half is those three named expansion projects in Odda, in Aitik, and in Kristineberg-Rävliden. Those make up roughly half of the 15, and the other half is the kind of normal, if you want to say so, investment level. It's important to point out there is no change of guidance in terms of the total cost of these projects that has been guided before. That is not moving. This is just getting a timing into it.
I would say that there, with a word of caution, you know, the word, the number 15 might also change because also if you're looking at the end of December and New Year's coming 2023, 2024 will also be kind of intensive times, and it's a little bit of a peak investment season and whether things will happen in 2023 or 2024 could also matter. But according to our plans, we will be able to spend almost SEK 15 in the year of 2023, which add up 2022 and 2023 will be about 25. With that, outlook and outlook statement, just want to remind everybody about Boliden. This is Boliden. We are here to provide the metals essential to improve society for generations to come. We have a vision to be the most climate friendly and respected metal provider, and we do that through care, courage and responsibility. With that, I open the floor for questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, that opens up our Q3 2022 Q&A session, and we will start here in Stockholm. Viktor Trollsten, Danske Bank, please.
Thank you so much. Maybe just a follow-up on the Aitik grade guidance. Could you give us an indication how to think about recoveries in Aitik when grades fall?
Recoveries might go down a little bit, because lower grades usually means it's a little bit more difficult to get the recoveries at the same level, but it shouldn't be a big difference. I mean, we're maybe talking about a little slight decrease in recoveries.
Okay. In the Harjavalta ramp up, could you just remind us, you know, how far has it come in that ramp up? If you can give us any percentage or something.
I would say that the production in the quarter is around 90% of what it should be, so we still have those 10% to go. As of right now it looks relatively good. I think I told before, we have a specific issue with the new concentrate dryer that was a new technology that we've been working with. That seems to be working much better right now, but there has been some maintenance issues before with it. Hopefully we are through that.
Super. Final from me on the working capital build in Q3, could you just help us? How should we think about that now going into Q4? You mentioned strategic inventories of nickel. I suppose that will be more long duration. But then also from the strike, if you could just you know help us to bridge that.
I would say that out of where we stand today, for the entire year, there is about SEK 1.5 billion that it has a long-term horizon, which is the nickel. In the SEK 1.6 billion that we built in Q3, SEK 400 million was the long-term nickel build-up. I think that we have about SEK 2 billion in excess inventories that we will be able to release in Q4.
Super. Thank you very much. Johannes Grunselius, DNB Markets, please.
Yes. I have a question on the smelters. Obviously a very nice progress there earnings-wise. We have seen from competitors that premiums for the smelters on the copper side is moving up. I suppose you are quite optimistic when it comes to TC/RCs. Could you give some color on the gross profit side? Also if you can talk about maybe the net effect because you also have the cost inflation going on, if you can see this trend continuing basically on the smelters.
This is of course a very difficult question to answer because there are lots of things that are happening around smelters. You're right that there is a trend for increasing TCs, which is good. There is a trend for increase in premiums, which is good. There is a trend of maybe not increasing, but at least keeping the byproducts on relatively high level or maybe not sinking very much. All these are good. On the other side, we have the cost inflation, which is difficult to get your arms around.
If you look at things like, you know, caustic soda and other things, the inflation that we're seeing on chemicals has been humongous, and I'm not really in that business to be able to tell exactly what happened, but at the end of the day, it has to do with gas prices, and we get our fair share of that. It is difficult. I also comment just on the power side. You see now that we are very true to the fact that we can adjust our production to be able to sell off at those times when it's more favorable to sell power rather than to use it to produce zinc. That's very unfortunate. We don't like that. We are industrialists, we like to produce metals, but we have to kind of abide by commercial reality.
Maybe you can, I mean, what we have seen from your competitors on copper premiums from the smelters is like up $100. Is that what you foresee as well for next year?
I think that's a little bit too early to tell. Just make the one comment that premium is not for copper cathode. That premium is for copper tubing and wire rod, so it's a little bit different. We will have negotiation with our customers kind of as we're speaking and in the next few months, and we'll see where we end up. Generally speaking, the balance looks favorable. We'll see where we end up.
I have a final question on Aitik and how to look at the grades. In the fourth quarter, I mean, you maintain the full year grade guidance. That implies actually that grades might come off to, you know, 0.14-0.15. I suppose that will not happen, but could you help us a bit there what we should see for Q4?
No, I think Q4 we have guided at 0.20 for the actual, for the quarter.
For the quarter as such? Okay.
As for the quarter. I repeat and say it.
Oh, okay.
There's no change.
Okay.
We move into next year, and then the average for next year is 0.17.
I understand. I mean, you have consistently been above the grades in Aitik for many years, compared to your guidance. Should we see your new guidance for 2023 as kind of conservative?
No, it's a best estimate.
Okay.
As always.
All right. Thanks.
Adrian Gilani, ABG Sundal Collier, please.
Yeah. Hi. First of all, just a question on the cost inflation. You talk about mostly cost inflation excluding wages. What's your sort of best estimation for wage inflation going into 2023 when it's time to discuss with the labor unions?
I prefer not to answer that one, but I can say that what I said before is that it's gonna be interesting labor negotiations, and I think anybody who follows kind of European, Scandinavian, Irish discussions know that there is of course some people who want to get fully compensated for inflation and others who don't want to fully compensate. We have interesting times. We have Finland going on right now. Ireland is kind of in the starting point, and Sweden is coming towards the end of first quarter, so there'll be intense negotiation. Norway is done. I think it was 4.5% that came out of the Norwegian wage negotiation, so that one is the only one that's kind of taken care of.
Okay. Thanks. Also on your voluntary curtailments in the smelters, could you just give us some insight on sort of how the contracts are structured? Are you allowed to sell as much of the electricity as you want, or is a certain portion of the electricity you purchase, is that earmarked for production as well?
I don't want to go into exactly all the commercial details of all these contracts because it's a whole portfolio of contracts that has different things. In reality, as long as we're speaking the kind of curtailment as we have right now, which is, you know, we can sell it and we're actually forced to sell it. Yes, there are also some limitations, so it's not fully free to sell everything.
Okay. Just a final one from my side on the CapEx for 2022, you said you were SEK 2 billion late. Could you just specify what exactly you are late on? Is it primarily the older expansion dam investments in Aitik, or is it something else?
Yeah, I can say both of them are slightly later than we had in our initial plans, but it's also lots of small projects that are late because of the two big projects, or the three big projects take some time. I would also say, by the way, the Kristineberg project is actually one of few. It's a smaller project, but that's the one that is most late because it took longer time than we thought to get the environmental permits. In terms of the project itself, that's probably the one that's latest.
Okay, thanks. That's all from me.
Mattias Wallsten, SEB.
Yes, a few more on CapEx from me. I guess on the maintenance part of the CapEx, can you share with us, you know, any color on what magnitude you see this being at next year? I mean, we have talked about the SEK 6 billion in maintenance CapEx.
Yeah. If you go back to what we said, when we talked about the Capital Markets Day and if you add the guidance for 2022, I would say that we've said we talked about SEK 6.5 billion for maintenance CapEx plus what we have referred to as stay in business CapEx. That is environmental investments, productivity investments and similar that are needed to stay competitive. Those 6.5 billion, adding inflation to that, leads to 7.5 billion. That is what we see as a base level. In there is mine sustaining, stripping, replacement investments at a normal rate and environmental investments needed to sort of drive that part of our journey.
on top of that, we have full speed on the three key projects that we mentioned that add up to SEK 7.5 billion. That's the 15 billion.
Yes. I guess a follow-up just on Odda. Do you now expect sort of less Odda investments, so to speak, after 2023, meaning that you're more aggressive on how fast you can get this running throughout 2023 at the same time as you may have lost some momentum or at the start of the investment in 2022, so to speak? Are you more aggressive on the pace in Odda in 2023?
Yeah, I would say yes. The answer is that what is part of this 15, I won't go into detail, but of course, the major part of Odda investment will be done by the end of 2023. There will be lots of smaller things coming towards the end to be able to then have the ramp of the production towards the end of 2024. Yes, this 15 entails a relatively aggressive pace in Odda during the year.
Just to be clear, that doesn't necessarily mean that you expect production pace to increase faster versus what you previously-
No, everything in terms of both timing of the project and the total CapEx of the project is unchanged compared to any previous guidance given.
Thank you very much.
Any other questions in Stockholm? Yes. Robert Hedin, Carnegie, please.
Yeah. Can I come back to that Aitik guidance again? I mean, Mikael, you said that 0.17 could be the low in the sort of next coming years grade profile of Aitik, but 2024, 2025 was a bit uncertain. Could you go into what the sort of building blocks or catalysts are for pushing that more in higher or lower?
I think there are a couple of things in there. It's always when you're dealing with an open pit, there's a question of which pushbacks you can take in which pace, and how quick do you get into the kind of juicier places. Another thing that is a little bit moving around for us is the Liikavaara, which has higher grades than average. We are not, you know, exactly when that one will come online is a little bit unclear because that one is actually to some extent dependent on how the dam investment is going because we're using the same truck fleet for the stripping in Liikavaara as we will do for the dam investment. Those are things that are not 100% clear yet. If you want to say the closing part, yes, when will Liikavaara come online, exactly what will the optimization look like at the other pushbacks.
All right. Thank you. Just a note on that, those cash cost curves you showed us. I mean, inflation in SEK is strong, but is it also your view that the inflation of the movement of those cash cost curves is upwards also in US dollars at the moment?
Yes.
All right. Perfect. Thanks.
We have a final question in Stockholm, Alexander Vilval, Pareto. Thanks. Please.
Thank you. Would you say that, inflationary pressure is higher in, when it comes to investments than in OpEx going forward?
That's what I did say a quarter back, and then it was clearly true. Today, it's maybe more even, because some of the really heavy things that were hitting investments like steel has actually come off. We haven't done any deep analysis, but I would say that if you ask me to give a gut feeling, I would say that it's maybe even.
Thank you. Then a final question I would assume regarding fundamentals when it comes to smelting on the copper side and on the zinc side, we see the spot thesis and so on, how they're moving now. How do you sort of paint a picture of the fundamentals currently, the differences between the copper side and the zinc side when it comes to smelting?
Well, there is a difference, or maybe there are two differences, but one clear difference is, of course, the power. There's so much more power intensity in zinc smelting compared to copper smelting, and the power prices will play a bigger role into the whole zinc smelting value chain. That is, you know, both bad news because we get higher prices, but also good news because we're losing some competition. On the other hand, we also have competition coming in from outside Europe, and we don't know where Europe is gonna end up in terms of its trade policies around zinc. There are lots of moving parts in zinc that is very difficult to kind of add up. I would say that anyway, we are in a relatively good position.
Copper, of course, the movements are much smaller, even though there are movements there as well. Copper is not as affected by the higher power prices as zinc is, and therefore it is more kind of general development. We're seeing on the copper side to some extent, a lesser activity in Asia on the copper smelting side, which I suppose in some ways good for us as well.
Thank you.
Operator, please go ahead with questions via the telephone conference.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Liam Fitzpatrick from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Three or four follow-ups, if that's okay. The first one is on working capital. I just wanted to be clear on what the message is there because I think you talked about kind of long-term working capital build, and then you mentioned SEK 2 billion unwind in Q4. So I'd just like clarity on what the guidance is in terms of the Q4 working capital reduction. Then on Aitik, I appreciate the comments around the Liikavaara pit and the uncertainties there. But is it fair to assume that there should be a grade recovery post-2023 as you access that ore? Then the final question is just on the CapEx side, just in terms of obviously, there's a big currency impact running through costs and CapEx. What sort of currency assumption is embedded in that SEK 15 billion number for next year? Thank you.
Okay. I will start with the Aitik grades and then I'll maybe leave the next to Håkan to answer. Regarding the grades, I've said many times that I've used a kind of biblical metaphor about seven good years and seven bad years. We're not out of the grade slump for quite a few years. Maybe we are two or three years into a grade slump.
I would say that what we're guiding for next year is clearly going to be on the lower part of things, but exactly how the recovery will happen and exactly when we will have to come back to, there's a constant mine optimization going into that. Of course, the other part of this is that once you start looking towards the end of the twenties, it starts looking much nicer. I don't know if I answered your question, but at least gave you some color on it. I'll leave the working capital and the CapEx currency part to you, Håkan.
Okay. Working capital, the ambition is to normalize the zinc and the precious metal inventories by year-end, and that means, an inventory release or a working capital release of SEK 2 billion during Q4. That's the ambition. Regarding CapEx, that's connected to our planning process, so we typically base CapEx assumptions on the currencies at the last day of August. That's what we've done this year as well.
Sorry, if I can just ask one separate follow-up. Just on the mine side in terms of volumes, for Q4 and beyond, it did seem that zinc volumes were quite weakened in Q3 because of the issues that you flagged on grades and throughput at Garpenberg and Tara. Should we expect a recovery into Q4 at both of those mines?
Yes, you should. We have not guided for any continued production problems in either of them and also not continued for any grade deviations compared to what we have said before or to what we had guided before, which is higher than what we had in the quarter.
Great. Thank you.
The next question comes from Sandeep Peety from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. The next question comes from Daniel Major from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Can you hear me okay? Hello? Can you hear me all right?
I hear you all right. Do you hear me?
Yeah, yeah. Fine, thanks. Fine. Yeah, thanks. First question, just on the CapEx for 2023, you said half of the spend will be on Odda and Kristineberg. Specifically on Odda, does that imply CapEx spend of about SEK 6 billion? You obviously haven't disclosed how much you specifically wanna spend this year. Just trying to get a sense of how much of the split between, you know, 2022, 2023, 2024. That's the first question.
Aitik then probably into that mix. The number in Odda will not be as high as you mentioned, but I will not go more into detail.
Right. You can't give a breakdown specifically of Odda, Aitik CapEx. I think you said it's SEK 4 billion, so just-
The total Aitik dam project has been guided as SEK five for the full project, with the majority or the biggest part coming in 2023. The order is guided now for EUR 850 million, the majority coming in 2023.
All right. Thank you. You're obviously seeing this big working capital build. Just to clarify, out of the SEK 5.9 billion we've seen year to date, it's SEK 1.5 billion you don't expect to reverse. Is it fair to assume the remainder will be reversed into 2023? Is that correct?
Yeah. If you look at the full year build, there is a price and currency aspect in that as well. If you back out what will deviate from normal levels going into next year, I expect there will be about 1.5 billion more nickel cons than normal. Apart from that, we should normalize.
Okay. Thanks. Just the final one, I mean, with respect to the dividend outlook for 2023, obviously the working capital build will impact the balance sheet position at the end of the year. Is it just fair to assume we follow the same formula and, you know, no deviation, regardless of this some of this working capital build?
We have not announced any changes in our dividend policy.
Okay. All right. Thanks very much.
The next question comes from Alain Gabriel from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen. There are a couple of questions from my side. Firstly, can you quantify the operating profit that was linked to sale of electricity, and at which smelters did you realize that profit? Do you plan to do that during Q4? The second question is on OpEx inflation. The company has seen 20% increase in inflation year-on-year during the quarter. This is up from 15% OpEx inflation that the company saw during Q2. But that was including electricity expenses, whereas the current one is excluding electricity expenses. If you include electricity, then what level of inflation you saw during the quarter? Thank you.
Let me take that. I think it's just to be very clear, it's almost impossible to have an operating profit from the sale of electricity. We have a contribution of SEK 170 million from it. Then of course, we have costs, standstill costs of the operations at that time. Y ou can allocate that whichever way you want to. We don't. We just talk about the margins that we have, the gross margin or whatever you wanna call it. Regarding the sale of power in Q4, we have no plans, or we have a simple plan. We will sell hour by hour, we will sell the power if it makes more sense to sell the power rather than operate the assets.
This is mainly an issue for the zinc smelters in Odda and in Kokkola. We have very much fewer occasions to do this financially in a good way in the copper smelters or in the mines, where the power is a smaller part of the total cost, and therefore it's difficult to motivate stopping those because of high power prices. Even though we hate the high power prices, it doesn't on the margin make them negative contribution. That's the thing on power. Regarding inflation, do you wanna take that one, Håkan?
Well, it's slightly less if you add electricity into that, slightly less.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Christian Kopfer from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks, operator. Good morning, everyone. Sorry if you have already answered a bit my question. I have some other conference calls in parallel here, sorry about that. But just on the CapEx side, you've been pretty clear about the items for this year and next year. My question is, how much CapEx on those strategic projects are to be left to be spent after 2023 with the guidance taken into consideration?
We have not guided for that, Christian. We might do that a little bit later at, maybe at the Capital Markets Day. That will, as I said before, the majority will have been taken care of, both Aitik and the other project, the two really big ones will be having passed the peak, and the Kristineberg project might almost be finished by the end of 2023.
Okay. Little bit surprised there because, I mean, if you are very explicit about the CapEx, why can't you say how much, I mean.
Yeah.
How much of the CapEx that is assignable to the strategic projects?
Well, the point is, Christian, that I don't know exactly, so I need to look at the number.
Okay. All right. On Tara Deep, what is the scope here, do you think, Mikael, on putting that project on stream when it comes to volumes? Obviously assuming that you will go ahead with the project.
All right, Deep, number one, we're gonna come into more details on the Capital Markets Day, but without, you know, selling too much beforehand, we have lost about a year in terms of exploration because of the flooding that we had, so we are behind. A reasonable timeline for making a decision is probably now 2025. However, that should still be possible, if we decide to go ahead, to be able to get it bolted on to the existing Tara mine, i.e., we will be able to do that seamlessly, not go down in production because the reserves in the existing Tara mine are good for about 2029 or maybe even 2030. By the way, also likely to be extended with kind of normal exploration success.
Therefore, we are not worried about that we would have to come into this situation where we would have to go down to then restart again.
All right. Okay, that's good. Finally for me, for you, Håkan, I'm sorry again if you have mentioned it already, but what was the normal affecting in Q2?
If I haven't mentioned it, I think at least it was -SEK 80 million.
Yeah.
-80.
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you very much.
Okay.
There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Okay.
May I just say one thing? Sorry about that. Sorry to interrupt you. First of all, I was glad that you mentioned the Capital Markets Day so many times. I think that was an excellent teaser for our Capital Markets Day coming up November fifteenth and sixteenth. For those of you who haven't signed up, once again, it's possible to join the first day at least. For those who have signed up for the second day, you're more than welcome to join us to sunny Finland in November. I've also got some emails here during the Q&A session that we have had some technical problems today, unfortunately. You know where to reach us, so if you have follow-ups, please come back to us. Now I'd like to hand over to our President and CEO, Mikael Staffas.
Okay. Sorry to hear that we've had technical issues again. Very, very sorry about that. At least the recording of this session will be available for everybody to listen to afterwards. I'd like to summarize this, that we've had a good quarter. We have also good prospects going forward, and we haven't really changed the guidance of anything, even though we've become more detailed regarding CapEx and detail regarding the grade profile of Aitik for the next year. With that, I look forward to seeing many of you in about three weeks at the Capital Markets Day, and look forward to see the rest of you over time. Thank you all.