A warm welcome to this Epiroc presentation. Thank you.
Hello and welcome to Deutsche Bank's Virtual Investor Conference, DBVIC. This is Zafar Aziz from the Deutsche Bank team. I'm pleased to welcome our next presentation by Epiroc from Sweden. Before I introduce our speaker, a few points to note. Please click on the questions box to ask a question. All of today's presentations will be recorded and can be accessed via the Deutsche Bank website, www.adr.db.com. I'm happy now to hand over to Epiroc.
So thank you very much and a warm welcome to everyone. Here today to present Epiroc is Alexander Apell, my colleague in the IR team, and my name is Karin Larsson. We're very eager to present Epiroc. I've been with the company for 11 years. Alexander is moving on to his.
My eighth year.
Eighth year, so we are looking forward to present a very good mining equipment company, so moving on with the presentation, I would like to start with the safety share. As you know, the mining industry is quite dangerous, and the last few months have actually been a sad reminder that it's a dangerous industry. But there are highlights, and we would like to start with one of ours, and it was not a customer of ours, but it was the Red Chris mine in British Columbia in July where a mine collapsed, and three mine workers were stuck in the mine 284 m below surface in a refuge station, and what happened was that the customer called Epiroc and said, "We need your mixed fleet automation kit," because we are very known to do mixed fleet automation.
And within 24 hours, we managed to fly the kit to this site, install it on a non-Epiroc loader, and this loader was then used to rescue these three mine workers, and this is an excellent example on how technology and also OEM-agnostic interoperability, those solutions can save lives in mining. So, Alexander.
Yes, and I would like to start with a little bit where we come from and where we're going. So basically, why we exist is to accelerate the productivity and sustainability transformation within our industry. And we have been given the tools basically to do so, and we became a separately listed company in 2018. And we like to identify ourselves as a 152-year-old startup company. So basically, we were part of Atlas Copco for 145 years, but then in 2018, we were separately listed on the Stockholm Nasdaq exchange. And if you look at our orders on the slide to the left here, you can see that we have gone from roughly SEK 39 billion to SEK 63 billion since the listing. We have around 19,000 employees globally. We have a large portion of our business that is aftermarket, roughly 67%, and only 33% is related to equipment.
And on the right side of this picture, you can also see the geographical split, and this varies a little bit from quarter to quarter, but often we are fairly strong, especially in North America, Australia, but we have, of course, a global presence.
Yes. And what do we do? I mentioned mining, and I mentioned mining equipment. So we are a mining equipment company, but we also serve infrastructure customers. So if you look to this graph, you will see the split of orders received. And about 22% of our orders are from infrastructure customers, and the rest, 78%, is mining. And if you look to that exposure specifically, you will see that copper and gold make out more than 60% of our orders received. And we do actually anticipate by 2030 that there will be a deficit of both minerals, which would bode well for the extraction of these minerals and also then potentially the sales for equipment to extract these. And our strategy, if you have followed Atlas Copco historically, we were a part of that company. A lot of that strategy is also the ones we have.
So we try to find attractive niches. That means niches where the equipment is used and is critical so that we can get a lot of aftermarket. We try to sell the best equipment. We try to be in the forefront of the industry, and we will both tell you more about that very soon. But it also means that because of these harsh environments and the performance-critical equipment, there's also a high proportion of aftermarket. Alexander said 67%, and that's roughly 2/3 historically that's been the aftermarket business, which is both profitable and resilient. We try to work for operational excellence always to do things in a better way. And then we try to reach outperformance. But the strength in Epiroc is really the people.
We mentioned briefly by saying how many years we've been with the company, and many in these companies, they stay and they stay on forever. So we have a very strong culture, and we have a very strong mindset in trying to make not only the customers richer, but also the world a better place. And on innovation, if you look to the R&D spend to revenues at Epiroc, you will find that it's about 3%. It's not super much, but please note that the equipment portion was about 1/3 . Whereas the rest was aftermarket. And obviously, we pay the most money and invest the most money for the equipment part. So we would say maybe the 9% of the equipment revenues goes to R&D.
But then again, we're also only more or less an assembly company because we produce the core components only, the secret ones, the ones that make the biggest positive difference. So we work a lot with sub-suppliers and contractors, which in turn means that they also have innovation. So we have a huge leverage on the innovation that we put into the equipment. And if you look to the new sales ratio in 2024, 61% of the equipment that we sold was actually launched within the last five years.
And within the industry that we operate in, we do see three mega trends that we invest quite a lot in to make sure that we are in the forefront. So those are automation, electrification, and digitalization. So I will start going through a little bit about automation. And for example, on this picture here to the left, you can see one of our flagship products is called the Pit Viper. It's a platform-based surface rotary drill rig. And if you want to automate one of those machines, we have seen that you can boost productivity with up to 22%. You can also reduce your cost base by up to 40% and then substantially lower CO2 footprint. So it makes so much sense to choose automation solutions when you buy new equipment. And foremost, I mean, the most important aspect is that you take away people from dangerous situations.
So we look really bright on this technology going forward. But we have actually decided to take this one step further, not only automating our own equipment sold, but also to automate other OEMs' equipment. Because the typical customer behavior is that they don't buy from just one OEM. They buy from multiple OEMs because they want to have the best equipment for whatever application they need it for. So one example is that we are currently creating the world's largest OEM-agnostic autonomous mine in Australia. So this is a remote mine site in the Pilbara region. We were not the original equipment manufacturer supplier to this mine site. So basically, we are putting our technology on Caterpillar and Hitachi trucks. So currently, and actually recently, we achieved a milestone, and we have automated all 78 mine trucks to fully autonomous mode.
So operators will be observing what is happening at the mine site so the customer can reduce the number of headcounts substantially on the mine site. And also productivity has boosted quite a lot at this specific mine. So we reached a milestone in October, and we were able to invoice the customer around SEK 300 million . So this is something we are super excited about going forward. And when we talk about automation, we like to talk about a ladder because this is a journey for our customers. Because historically, it has been a very human-operator-based industry. So the first step in this journey is to take the operators out of the machine to operate the machines with a joystick, remotely controlled, basically. The next step is to do maybe the drilling automated.
And then, as I said before, we are taking it one step further to do the mixed fleet automation for both load and hold, but obviously including drilling in this as well.
Yeah. And this is nothing unique. We think OEM-agnostic in most things we do. So when Alexander told you about automation, we are definitely in the forefront on OEM-agnostic automation globally. But we think in the same way about electrification, and that's the second big trend that we see. And if you look to the left here on the graph, you will see that if you replaced all your drilling rigs, the loaders, and the trucks in your mine, and this is an underground mine in Australia, you would save about, say, 29-30% of your carbon emissions. But the sweet thing with going electric underground is that you save a lot of ventilation. So basically, if you have a diesel machine, you need like 7 m of airflow per second versus a battery electric or electric machine where you only need 1 m of airflow per second.
And not having to, because when the mine goes deeper and deeper every day or wider every day, you need to turn on that fan capacity. And at some point, you also need a new ventilation shaft. That's very expensive. But 40% of the OPEX in the mine can be ventilation cost. So by not having diesel machines underground, you save a lot of ventilation, you save a lot of OPEX, and you save a lot of emissions. So we do believe underground mining, this is going to happen in some form or other. And if you look to our electrification offer as such, we are now moving from the first movers to the fast followers, and the group revenues from electrification-related products is 4.2% in 2024. And we saw that the battery electric vehicles, the utilization rate more than doubled in 2024.
And more than 39 mining sites globally use electric solutions from us today. And about 1/3 of those have actually chosen to buy more, which is very encouraging given that it is a new type of technology. And if you see to the left here, we speak a lot about different things, but if you see here, it's like we have the diesel electric, like hybrid. We have battery electric with trolley. We have fully electric, and we also have cable electric. So we do believe that electric mining will be the future. And you spoke about automation, and I speak about electrification, and you can actually combine them. So in April, we actually announced the largest contract in our history, SEK 2.2 billion over five years from Fortescue in Australia, and they will buy surface equipment. So electrification is not only happening underground, it's also happening above ground.
And it's going to be. They are really in the forefront, Fortescue, when it comes to being the most sustainable mining company in the world.
So speaking a little bit about the last mega trend, the digitalization. So for the customers, increased safety and productivity is the key. And one example is the evacuation time with some of the safety features we can offer that up to 25%-50% lower evacuation time we have seen. But there is a lot of low-hanging fruit that can be reached with this type of solutions. And one example is collision avoidance. So here we are able to offer the highest level of collision avoidance, level 9. So basically, the machine will stop by itself if something is in front of it. And we were actually glad to see that one customer, Hindustan Zinc, ordered for all their mines in India our collision avoidance system, and we announced that during the fall.
Yes. And speaking about safety again, about 40% of the people that die in mines is because they or the vehicles they are in is overrun by a larger vehicle. So the collision avoidance systems are really critical. Looking to our offering and reporting structure, you will see that we have two business areas. It's equipment and service and tools and attachments. And you can see here on this page how we separate them. But again, like 2/3 of our revenue stream is aftermarket. And then beneath the business areas, we have separate divisions. And it's the division presidents that are the highest operational entity in Epiroc, making sure that they have profitable growth. And looking at the equipment fleet, since we were listed in 2018, the fleet of machines out there is bigger than ever. And the fleet age is also older than ever.
And all of this bodes very well for recurring growth and more growth into the service and aftermarket space, of course. And then we had this business area that is not equipment, it's not service, but we called it tools and attachments. And basically, what we do here is the best drill bit, the best attachment when you remove hard rock. Because we haven't really said it yet, but we are a hard rock company or hard foundation company. So everything that you need to remove that is hard, that's what we do the best. And on the top here, you see that we have a drill bit on a drill rig. So here, the yellow circles represent what we provide. So Epiroc, we try to provide the best equipment with the best service and also the best rock drilling tools and giving the customers the best performance.
In the attachment space, you can use any supplier of an excavator, and you can hopefully have the best service from your provider of excavator, but then you add the best attachments. And here I say it's like when you work in the garden, you have a garden glove. If you want to drive motocross, you have a motocross glove. If you want to work with electric things, you have an electric glove. So we do the best attachments for hard rock performance, and they're helping the customers to reach that. Looking a bit into financials, if you've been looking into our share price, you have seen it's been coming down the last week since we had a report. So I just want to briefly say what's going on.
And looking to tools and attachments to the right of this side first, in 2023, the second half of the year, we actually started to see the construction market turning down. And that impacted the attachment severely. So the margin has been going down, but in Q3 this year, we actually are at 11.6%. So here, the measures taken are starting to show off. If you look to equipment and service in the middle of the picture, the weakness is rather explained by service mix, which means that either we have sold more equipment or within service, we have actually sold that part of service, including digital, that comes with a lower margin, and here, we are working hard to improve margins onwards, but as you see, it's broadly still around 20% EBIT margin at Epiroc, and we strive to have the highest industry-leading margin.
So how have we done historically if you look a bit further back? Well, orders since we were listed or since Q3, actually, Q3 in 2018, we have had orders CAGR of 8%. Revenue also CAGR of 8%. EBIT and adjusted EBIT, we have grown by 9% and 8% respectively. EPS 8%, but the surprising thing is the cash flow. We have a large portion service and aftermarket, and we are a cash-generating company. So if you look to our financial goals, we would like to grow 8% per year over cycle, and since 2015 to 2024, looking 10 years, we have been able to grow 9% per year. In 2024, we grew 5%. We lost quite a meaningful portion in the construction market. Profitability, industry best, as I just mentioned. We've been at higher level, but we're striving to get back to where we have been.
Maybe not peak 2022, but at least back to historical level. The rest, yeah, we try to be efficient, basically.
Cash is definitely king at Epiroc. And as Karin mentioned, we have a large portion of our business that is aftermarket, generating a lot of cash. So what do we do with all the cash that we generate? We prioritize to innovate, to continue being a leader in the technology change within the industry. We also focus on acquiring new companies within the group. And thirdly, we like to pay our shareholders. So we have a target of paying out 50% of net profit as a dividend, and we have done so every year since we got listed. And one year, you can see the yellow bar here on 2020, we actually gave an extra dividend because we were sitting on too much cash.
Yes.
And I just also want to mention some of the goals we have for 2030 when it comes to people and planet. So safety first. We don't want to see any work-related injuries. We also want to have a balanced workforce and double the women in operational roles. And I mean, a lot of companies speak about doubling the number of women, but I mean, we want to double the number of women who actually can make an impact, who has P&L responsibility. Then we have some targets when it comes to CO2e emission reduction. So both when it comes to operations, when it comes to transports. But the trickiest one would be the CO2e emission to half that for sold machines. Because when we have sold a machine, it's a little bit out of our control.
So here, it's absolutely crucial for us that we succeed with selling more electrical machines, more automated machines, etc., in order for us to reach the targets.
Looking, I mentioned briefly we had our quarterly report last week. Some highlights from that report before we wrap this up. So Alexander mentioned the Roy Hill mine, where we create the largest fully autonomous mine. Also, Hindustan Zinc, where we will provide all their mines with collision avoidance systems. We also had the Pit Viper. Alexander briefly mentioned it. It's like the most iconic drill rig, and it celebrates 25 years. We do see high mining demand, strong order growth. Equipment grew 10% organically in Q3. And we do also see that the weakness in construction that I spoke about, the destocking phase among distributors is largely complete, which is rather encouraging onwards. And the margin did decrease, but we do see that the actions in tools and attachments, the business area is actually yielding results and more than compensating the negative effects of increased tariffs.
And the cash flow, as Alexander said, it's strong, and it decreased 38% year- on- year to SEK 2.5 billion. And before we go to questions, what do we expect onwards? Mining demand will remain high. Construction customers, it will be stable at a low level. And we host our CMD in June in Örebro in Sweden. And Volvo AB is also hosting their CMD in June in Sweden the next day. So if you have time, come to Sweden next year, and now we are open for questions.
And the first question is related to mixed-fleet automation. And it is, are there opportunities for additional mixed-fleet conversations at other mining customers globally? And the answer is yes, it is. It's a really great interest for customers. We have been very hesitant in taking on another project while we were doing the Roy Hill one. Because the worst thing that can happen is that something goes wrong with this technology. Because this is new technology after all, and then all customers will basically take a couple of steps back. So we really wanted to nail the technology with this customer before we were to open order books for another project. But there is definitely great interest from customers for doing another Roy Hill eventually.
Yes. And we are quite unique in this mixed fleet. So a lot of interest. And we've had the project for five years with Roy Hill. So we have proven the concept, and we are opening the books for more orders. Another question we got is, can you share insights into any recent customer wins or large contracts that are expected to materially impact results and how these deals were secured? We did mention the Fortescue SEK 2.2 billion, but that's over five years. So I wouldn't say that it's meaningfully impacting our results. There are a lot of mines globally. We have a lot of machines globally. 50% of equipment growth. Of equipment is actually replacing worn-out machines. So. There are a lot of exciting things ahead, but I wouldn't say that anything particularly will really change the way Epiroc works. But we do see good growth opportunities.
And another question we got is, could you provide more insights into how the company is mitigating supply chain and tariff risks, particularly for tools and attachments? So basically, we do a lot of rerouting. We try to mitigate this as much as possible. If we look at the competition side, we are very much in the same boat as our main competitors for both when it comes to underground equipment, surface equipment, and also a lot on tools and attachments. But for example, instead of using the U.S. as a hub for shipping spare parts or tools to Canada and Mexico, then we have rerouted the shipments straight from our factories. It could be in India, it could be in Sweden, to the markets in Canada or Mexico and so on. So we try to mitigate.
Of course, it will cost a little bit more, and it will take a bit longer, and we will have a little bit more inventory, but at least we don't have to pay all the tariffs on those.
We also got a question on how tariffs weighed on Q3 profitability. It was approximately 0.5% on group EBIT margin. We have taken measures, and we do hope that it's going to be less in Q4. But that said, it's a very moving matter, and it's hard to foresee and predict how the tariffs will change.
Should we take one more question before we round this up?
Yes.
Maybe this one. Can you speak to your pipeline for new product launches and how quickly do you expect major contract like Fortescue in Australia to scale revenues?
I would like to mention the Minet ruck 66. So basically, today, Epiroc has the most popular underground 65-ton payload truck. It's like a bread-and-butter business in trucks underground. Now we have launched a 66-ton truck that is a hybrid solution, and we think that's going to be a big popular truck. And when we speak about Fortescue and the deal, I would say that it's a contract over five years. And we have only booked SEK 100 million in the orders received for that contract as of now. And the way you should think about it is that the orders received you see for Epiroc, they will materialize to revenues in six to nine months. So we only book those orders that we are actually trying to produce and ship to customers and also invoice. So we have good visibility on what's coming in revenues.
Perfect. Thank you so much, everyone, for listening in.
Thank you very much, and reach out if you have any questions. Alexander and I, we're more than happy to help you. Thank you.
Thank you. Bye-bye.