Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this third quarter results presentation for the Gränges Group. My name is Jörgen Rosengren, and I've had the pleasure and great honor to be President and CEO of the Gränges Group since 2021, so five years now. Today I'm joined in this conference by Oskar Hellström, our CFO and Deputy CEO, and Anna Hedenberg, our Director of Investor Relations. I will start this presentation by giving a short summary of the third quarter, after which Oskar will present our results more fully. Then I will round off with some comments on the outlook. Today, we know it's a very busy day on the Stockholm Stock Exchange, so we'll keep the presentation a little shorter than usual, to make sure to have ample room for questions after the prepared remarks.
On the third quarter, we have to say it was a record quarter. In fact, it was another record quarter. We felt that demand remained generally quite weak across many of our markets, but despite that, and despite our reduced capacity in Asia following the fire in Shandong in June, we increased sales volume by 1% and extended our track record of year-on-year volume growth to 11 consecutive quarters. Our adjusted operating profit grew by a full 50% year-over-year and amounted to SEK 596 million , which is a new record in the single quarter for Gränges, despite the third quarter generally not being our strongest one. This development was driven by growth and mix by improved recycling, pricing, and those factors together more than offset headwinds from cost increases and currency. We also continued to strengthen our financial position with increased operating cash flow and reduced leverage.
As we report almost every quarter, our sustainability performance also reached record levels. So another record there. With our lowest-ever carbon emissions intensity and highest-ever recycling performance. Those are some really great achievements, which really strengthen Gränges and our competitiveness for the long term. When we look ahead, we feel we enter the fourth quarter with positive momentum. It is difficult to predict the demand going forward, but we're still rather confident, as I will get back to in my comments later in this call. Looking at the markets then in the third quarter, our contained market share gains offset weak end market demand and also the reduced capacity in Asia. As I've already mentioned, we saw a relatively weak underlying demand across most of our end markets and also geographies.
In Shandong, we continued to operate the facility with reduced production capacity in the quarter. We are progressing with our repairs in a good way, as planned, and we expect to have them completed around year-end so that we can ramp back up again in the first quarter of next year if things go to plan. A positive in the quarter, of course, is this fact that we continue to take market share across our regions and in most of our end markets. If we look here in this picture at the volume in our different end markets, we see that automotive grew by 12%, and that was fully due to good market share gains in Europe and in Asia, in a relatively weak market.
Industrial, however, shrank by 20%, and that was mainly due, of course, to the severely constrained capacity in Asia and due to our decision to prioritize the most strategic and most profitable business in Asia during this outage. Packaging was slightly down, but we had a very good quarter last year, so it was a tough comparable. Climate control grew by a full 22%, and that was quite a rebound then compared to a weak Q3 in 2025, when we had negative growth of 9%, but it also reflects market share gains. In summary then, as you can see, we saw good growth in Americas and Europe, and good growth outside industrial also in Asia.
In fact, the automotive business in Asia grew by a full 17% compared with the same quarter last year, and that's, of course, much, much faster than the market and is due to our market share gains and to new business associated with electric vehicles and other battery applications, and those gains more than offset the weak market demand. In total then, we had a year-on-year volume growth of 1% in the quarter. As we're keeping this short today, that really concludes my initial remarks, and I would like to hand it over to you, Oskar, for a more detailed run-through of the financials.
Thank you, Jörgen. As you heard from Jörgen, the third quarter of 2026 was a very good quarter for Gränges, and in many ways, it was the best quarter we've had so far. As you can see to the left here, the sales volume increased by the 1% that Jörgen mentioned to 154,000 tons, or 634,000 tons on a rolling 12-month basis. This is a smaller year-on-year growth than what we've seen in the earlier quarters this year. But the reasons for this is the reduced production capacity in Asia. If we adjust for that, we would have had a similar year-on-year growth in Q3 as in the earlier quarters this year. On the earnings side, we saw a very strong positive development, and the adjusted operating profit increased by 50% to SEK 596 million.
If you look at the mid chart there, you can also see that our rolling 12 months adjusted operating profit is above SEK 2 billion for the first time. So that's also a new record. For the margin, the adjusted operating profit per ton improved by more than SEK 1,300 from SEK 2,600 in Q3 2025 to SEK 3,900 in Q3 this year. If we look at the earnings drivers, we continue to see high inflationary pressure for several cost items. This together with price pressure in Asia and negative, but sequentially improving currency effects totaling SEK 20 million net currency hedges. These are the key negatives in the quarter. The external pressures are, however, more than offset, but very positive developments in several other areas. We note continued improvement of the market scrap spreads, and this is an important contributor when we compare with last year.
Here we do need to remember, though, that we had the reverse effect from the scrap spreads in Q3 last year, and that we are now back at a level slightly above the level we saw in 2024. In total, the improved market scrap spreads added some SEK 70 million to operating profit from a year-over-year perspective. Provided that the current scrap spreads remain, we expect to see a positive year-on-year effect from this also in the fourth quarter, albeit not as high as in the third quarter. Looking at the things we can control ourselves, we continue to see positive effects from improved pricing and recycling. Here I should also point out the excellent operational performance we had in Americas in the quarter, with high production stability and consequently very good cost productivity.
In Q3, we also had a favorable geographical and product mix, driven by the fact that we had the highest growth in the niches where we have the highest profitability. Let's look at some more details of the financials. On this slide, I think it's worth to highlight that we have items affecting comparability of SEK -49 million in the third quarter. These are related to the fire in the production facility in Shandong in Q2 and are additional cost for tolling and transportation. This means that the reported operating profit for the quarter is SEK 546 million , compared with the adjusted operating profit of 596. The profit for the period increased by 53% to SEK 388 million for the quarter, and this is, of course, primarily driven by the higher operating profit.
Earnings per share attributable to Gränges parent company shareholders increased to SEK 3.63 for the third quarter. Also the operating cash flow improved compared to last year and came in at SEK 396 million for the quarter. We will look more at this in a second. Before we do that, I would like to comment on the return on capital employed that increased to 12.6% in the quarter. This represents an improvement of close to two percentage points compared to Q3 last year. We need to go back to third quarter 2019 to see an equally high return level. That being said, we still have quite some way to go to reach our 15% return on capital employed target, but we are certainly taking steps in the right direction here.
Now moving on then to the cash flow and looking at the SEK 396 million of operating cash flow in more detail. As you can see on this chart, the main driver of the cash generation in the quarter is the strong EBITDA. When it comes to net working capital, we typically see a seasonal release in the third quarter. This year, the seasonal effects are less visible as we had a buildup of working capital of SEK 186 million in Q3. The primary reason for this is a buildup of work in progress inventory in Asia as a consequence of the alternative supply solutions that we use there and the additional lead time required for tolling and transportation. This is a temporary effect, and we expect to reduce this inventory once the Shandong plant is back to normal operations.
On the positive side, we saw a slight sequential decline of the market price for aluminum at the end of the second quarter, followed by a small rebound in Q3, whereafter the price remained fairly stable. This resulted in a positive effect on our working capital and cash flow with some SEK 150 million in the third quarter. The further decline of the aluminum price so far in October will, provided that it remains at the current level, impact the operating cash flow positively with about SEK 150 million in the fourth quarter and further positively also in beginning of Q1 next year. Capital expenditure amounted to SEK 183 million in the third quarter, and including taxes and interest paid, as well as changes in currency rates.
This led to that the financial net debt decreased by SEK 161 million to just short of SEK 5 billion during the third quarter. Together with the improved EBITDA, this resulted in the net debt to EBITDA ratio decreased to 1.7x . We are improving this within our target range of between one and two times. Let's continue with the operating segments, and then look at Gränges Americas that made a record quarter and reached a new all-time high for both operating profit and margin. The sales volume in Americas increased by 6% year-on-year in Q3 and reached 63,000 tons in the quarter. The growth was driven by recovery of the climate control market, supported by market share gains. In terms of earnings, we continued to experience increased inflationary pressure for many cost items.
On the positive side, we had a quarter with excellent operational performance in all our U.S. facilities, and this enabled a very good cost productivity. We also note the continued improvement from the market scrap spreads, which together with improved pricing and recycling, are important earnings drivers if we compare with last year. In total, the adjusted operating profit increased by close to 73% to SEK 490 million .
The year-on-year currency translation effect turned positive in the quarter as a result of the weakening of the Swedish krona against the US dollar. In terms of margin, the operating profit per ton increased from SEK 4,800 to SEK 7,700 . I think our Americas team deserves a lot of credit for how they have managed to deliver here. Continuing on to Gränges Asia, where the main theme of the quarter has been the aftermath of the fire in Shandong in Q2.
Our Asia team has, however, done an outstanding job in establishing an alternative route of supply for most of our products. As I mentioned earlier, and as you heard from Jörgen, it was only about 10,000 tons of industrial products that we couldn't deliver in the quarter. These, we need to remember, are fairly low margin products. For automotive products, the market slowdown we experienced in the first half of the year continued in the third quarter, but this was more than well compensated for by share gains. In total, the sales volume in Asia decreased 12% year-on-year in Q3. If we exclude the effects from the fire-related reduction in industrial sales, we would have recorded an 8% growth in the quarter.
When it comes to earnings, the effect of the lower sales volume and market price pressure were only partly offset by product mix improvement. As a consequence, the adjusted operating profit decreased to SEK 71 million, and the operating profit per ton came in at SEK 1,600. Regarding the P&L effects from the Shandong fire, these were primary two in the quarter. First, the contribution loss from the reduction of 10,000 tons of industrial products, which was approximately SEK 30 million absorbed in the reported operating profit. Second, the extraordinary costs for tolling and transportation of SEK 49 million that was accounted for as items affecting comparability. As you heard from Jörgen, we expect that the Shandong facility will be back to normal operations as of year-end, and consequently, we expect similar financial effects in Q4 as in Q3.
For those of you who want more details on this, there is a section covering this in our third quarter report. Finally, Gränges Europe, where we continued to experience weak underlying end customer demand across most of our markets. We did, however, continue to compensate for this with share gains, especially within the automotive and industrial markets. In total, the sales volume in Europe increased by 2,800 tons or close to 6% to 52,000 tons in Q3. Despite cost increases and still quite negative year-on-year effects from foreign exchange rates of SEK 28 million, the operating profit increased by 15% to SEK 75 million, and the operating profit per ton increased to SEK 1,400 . The key drivers behind the improved earnings are the sales growth and improved pricing together with the tailwind from the market scrap spreads.
Finally, some words on our sustainability performance that continued to develop well in the third quarter. We continued to reduce our greenhouse gas intensity, which is down 8%, and increase our volume of sourced recycled aluminium, which is up 13% compared to third quarter last year. The share of sourced recycled aluminium was 48%, which is 3 percentage points higher than in Q3 last year. A key driver behind this is the record high level of recycling in Americas, that reached 73% in the third quarter.
That being said, we saw a slight sequential decline in sustainability performance from the second to the third quarter. This is driven by the lower sales volume in Asia, combined with the fact that some of the alternative sources of supply that we use to secure deliveries in Asia are less efficient from a greenhouse gas perspective. This is, however, a temporary effect until we get back to our normal supply chain setup. With that, I hand over back to Jörgen, who will provide you with an outlook for the fourth quarter.
Thank you, Oskar. We are nearing now the end of our prepared presentation, but let me give you first a short summary of what we are expecting in the fourth quarter of this year. We do need to acknowledge, to start out again, the fact that market demand remains quite difficult to predict. Having said that, we do enter the fourth quarter with good momentum, and we continue to see opportunities to take market share. In Americas and Europe, we expect sales volume growth of mid-single digits compared with the fourth quarter of last year. More or less, all of that we expect to be driven by market share gains. To get the full benefit of that growth, our ambition remains the same as before, which is to offset cost increases through pricing, recycling, productivity, mix, and other factors more in our control.
In Asia, we do expect the fire in Shandong to result in a year-on-year sales volume reduction of approximately 10,000 tons, which primarily then refers to lower margin industrial products. In the first quarter of next year, we do hope to be able to start ramping up again after hopefully having completed our repairs by the beginning of the year or so. Finally, we do expect continued tailwind from improved market scrap spreads, or I guess I should say restored market scrap spreads, and we forecast limited currency effects for the fourth quarter of this year. To wrap up this talk that we prepared for you, we deliver in the third quarter of 2026, our 11th consecutive quarter of year-on-year volume growth, thanks to our continued market share gains. We had a fantastic development of our adjusted operating profit.
It is up 50% to SEK 596 million , and that is our best quarter for Gränges in our history. We had continued strong sustainability performance, which Oskar explained to you just now, and we felt good momentum at the end of last quarter, and we see good momentum going into Q4 as well. That really concludes our prepared remarks for today. Operator, we are ready to take questions from the audience.
Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. We will now go to our first question. Our first question today comes from the line of Kaleb Solomon from SEB. Please go ahead.
Hi, and thank you for taking my questions. Maybe I will start off with Americas. I asked this last quarter as well, but we are seeing EBIT per ton reaching a record high for the third quarter in a row, despite the fact that HVAC was a larger share of the total in Americas this quarter, and a significant chunk of that still being delivered on old pricing terms. Does that imply we should expect profitability in Americas to continue to improve next year as you renew those contracts in Q4? As a follow-up to that, can you give us a sense of how big the gap is between those old terms and current pricing and the timing of when any repricing starts to feed through into earnings?
Kaleb, those are really good questions. As you know, I guess, asking them, we do not really make forecasts for profitability so far out in time, and especially not for a single division for a single region. When it comes to our terms, it is true, as you point out, that we try in all of our regions to have not all contracts come due at the same time, but try to layer them so that we have multi-year contracts and contracts that come due for a negotiation at different times.
That is part of our general risk management strategy, and does have an effect to smooth out earnings over time. Also this year, that is the case. About this time of year is when we renegotiate contracts. Really, we do not know ourselves really yet what kind of terms we will have for the new contracts for the next couple of years. I guess, you and we both will have to wait and see.
Okay. That is clear. Thank you. On Asia, the growth in automotive was very strong, and it has been negative for the last two quarters. I guess I am wondering if you saw any improvement in underlying demand as well, or if all of that is simply market share gains. If so, was there anything specific that drove that step up in gains this quarter?
Yeah. Good morning, Kaleb, it's Oskar here. I agree with you that we had a very good automotive growth in Asia in the quarter. The underlying market is not very particularly strong in Asia, right? I think if you look at vehicle production numbers, they are neutral at best, probably slightly negative. I think it's fair to say that we have a substantial share gain here. But I think it's also so that you can't only look at this on a quarterly basis. I think it makes more sense to look at this in a bit longer time period. If you look year to date, for instance, you will see that we have a 3 percentage points or so growth in automotive, and light vehicle production is flattish, right? I think that's a better representation of us versus the market.
That being said, we do see positive effects from EV penetration, content per vehicle effects, some new applications there. We also have positive discussions and some developments with Asian customers that are looking to expand outside of Asia. For that, of course, Gränges is a very good partner because we are a global company. As a consequence, we see positive effects from this also in our Asia sales.
Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. A question on Europe, maybe. The average fabrication prices have improved quite a bit over the past few quarters as well. Is that mainly a mix effect, or are you also seeing some sort of pricing improvement more broadly? Also, you touched on the impact of improved scrap spreads in Q4 and said it would be a bit less, but can you quantify how much you expect that to be?
Yeah. I can start with the scrap spread question there, and maybe then Jörgen wants to comment on the market and pricing and so forth in Europe. But for the scrap spreads, we had a negative effect year-over-year in Q4 last year. We expect that to basically come back this year. So around SEK 30 million positive is what we expect, provided that the current scrap spreads remain for the quarter.
The question on the pricing in Europe, could you repeat it please, Kaleb?
Yeah. I note fabrication prices in Europe, if you just calculate it per ton, has improved quite a bit in the past few quarters. I was just wondering, is that mainly due to mix or some sort of pricing improvement more broadly in Europe?
Okay. I see what you mean there, Kaleb. You have some mix-related effects in there, but you also have an effect from the fact that some of the products in the distribution business in Europe are priced including the market metal premiums, then you will actually have effects from that as well when you back out our fabrication price. You see some effects in Europe based on that. That is not the case in the other regions.
Okay, that's clear. Thank you. Just one last question on working capital. You talked about this earlier, but you had some help from lower aluminum prices, and that was partly offset, I guess, by the alternative supply arrangements in Asia. But can you give us a sense of how big that Asian drag was in Q3? Will that drag be equally big or smaller in Q4?
Yeah. It was around SEK 300 million in Asia in Q3. We do not necessarily expect to ramp this up further in Q4. Not so much additional effects from that if you think from a sequential perspective. Rather that we will try to start to reduce that once we have our Shandong facility back in full operation again.
Okay. That is all from me. Thank you for taking my questions.
Thank you, Kaleb.
Thank you. Your next questions today come from the line of Adrian Gilani from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hello. A few questions from my end. First of all, just breaking down your outlook statement where you write that you expect to offset cost increases through price and productivity. Then you mention the scrap spreads and FX separately. Should we read this as a neutral effect from price, cost, and productivity? Then the scrap spreads and FX will come on top of this?
Yes, I think is the answer to that. You read it exactly the way we intended when we wrote that.
Okay, perfect. Thanks. Then a follow-up on the net working capital. You mentioned the SEK 300 million Asian effect. Can you give us some help with the Q4 regarding how much you expect from normal prices and volume movements on net working capital?
I think the way to think about this is to say, typically, everything else the same, the driver of net working capital for Gränges is the sales volume. If you have a sequential movement up in sales volume, we would tie more net working capital. If the sequential sales volume goes down, we will release net working capital. That is what we typically also often refer to as the normal seasonality effect. This quarter then we mentioned these two separate things. The effect that we have, the additional inventory supply chain related that we built in Asia. Then we also commented on the positive effect from the metal price, which was approximately SEK 150 million in the quarter.
I think for outlook for Q4, of course, we are guiding for a certain volume development, and I think that should be the basis that you use when you calculate the net working capital movements there as well.
Okay. Understood. Then another follow-up. You mentioned in your previous answer, discussions with the Asian customers to go outside Asia. I assume this is Chinese EV makers looking to produce more in Europe. How far along are these types of discussions, and are you seeing concrete effects of this on European volumes fairly soon?
Yeah, I think this has already started to happen several years ago. Especially you see the battery makers were quite early on moving out from Asia. You see that increasingly in other parts of the supply chain as well here. You have the Chinese automakers looking at Europe and so forth. That is part of it, of course, and they need their sub-suppliers and so forth.
The tier ones-
Sorry. Yeah.
The tier ones, I think also in Asia generally speaking, are of course quite interested in Europe as an expansion market and try to capitalize, I guess, on their prowess, on their strength that they have proven in the Asian, in the Chinese market also, in other markets. That definitely represents an opportunity for us where Gränges is maybe a bit uniquely positioned then, at least, because of our strong presence over decades in China and our intimate relations with all of these players. Then an equally strong presence in Europe, which then gives them comfort that we are somebody to lean on, so to speak, in both regions. We feel that this is part of the explanation, certainly on a strategic level, for our ability to continue to take market share in automotive globally.
Okay, understood. Thanks. Then finally, just a housekeeping question. Previously, you mentioned SEK 40 million and one-off costs per quarter in Q3 and Q4. Now you realized roughly SEK 50 million. Does that mean that it is only SEK 30 million left, or should we still keep our SEK 40 million one-offs for Q4?
Our SEK 40 million was our best estimate going into the third quarter. We-
It was wrong.
It was wrong. Yes, it was wrong. It was SEK 49 million. I think to be fair, it was wrong for the right reason, because we increased more in the automotive sales than we maybe expected, and that drove a little bit of additional costs. I think it is fair now to say for Q4 that, as I said earlier, we expect similar effects from the Shandong fire in Q4 as in Q3. That means then not SEK 40 million but rather SEK 50 million of additional costs for these tolling and transportation arrangements.
Okay. That is helpful. I guess that is all for me. Thanks.
Thanks, Adrian.
Thank you, Adrian.
Thank you. Your next questions today come from the line of Oskar Lindström from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Three questions from me. We start off with on Shandong. It should be repaired by year-end with a ramp-up in Q1. What are the Q1 volume and margin effects that you expect, and what about the insurance recovery? That's my first question. Should I go ahead with the other ones right now or?
We'll take your first question first, and the Q1 volume we'll forecast when we exit the Q4. So you'll get a very precise figure then. We try to be ahead of this and give you as much information as we can by saying that we're able to complete the repair and then we'll ramp up. But of course, this is a sizable project that we're undertaking, and we are going to have to wait until the fourth quarter to give you a volume forecast for the first quarter. Now, I already forgot the second half of your question, but maybe Oskar remembers it.
Yeah, it was about insurance
Insurance
compensations. As I think we've mentioned before, of course, we have full insurance coverage for the Shandong facility. As always, of course, it's a process with the insurer and especially for the business interruption part of the insurance, we always anticipate a negotiation with the insurer. That typically takes place once you know exactly how large compensation you're asking for. That will probably be a 2027 thing then when we are ramping up in Shandong again and know when we are out on the other side, so to say. The property damage part is probably going to be concluded on earlier than that.
Okay. My second question is, for Q4, you guided for single-digit volume growth outside of Asia. Can you say sort of how much of that comes from new contracts and how much of it is from underlying demand, I guess existing contracts? If it's at all possible to sort of split it up like that.
Okay. It's a combination of things. I think the main message here is that we don't necessarily think that we are getting so much help from underlying market growth. There are, of course, pockets in the market that are better than others. I think in general, we believe that most of the growth that we are seeing is generated by ourselves through market share gains. That can be both in the shape and form of new business, new contracts, but of course, it's also increasing volumes of existing business with existing customers, and it's a combination of all of these things.
Some of the volume growth is coming from existing contracts, existing clients, rather than purely market share gains.
Yes, but we do consider growth. If you grow your share of wallet with an existing customer, we also consider that to be market share gain when we talk about it.
Yes, of course. My final question is on Americas, and I think you said contracts are being renegotiated now. What share of Americas volumes reprices this year, and then how are the multi-year layers set for next year? Do you understand what I'm looking for here?
We understand what you're looking for, absolutely. I'm not entirely sure we have a figure to tell you, but most contracts in the Americas, and in all of our regions range between, let's say, one and three-year in duration. And that if you pick a number, then a little north of two or so, maybe that says something that gets close, perhaps, to the average duration. And then the renewal happens according to that number, I guess. So some contracts renew every year, some only every third year, and we try to keep the percentage of contracts that do get renewed fairly constant over the years.
Yeah.
But if you do your very basic math here and say we have an average contract duration of around two years, that means 50% of the volume is up for negotiation every year, right?
Could you remind me, what were the market conditions two years ago when you did the last renegotiation? Are they tighter now, or is the market worse in North America?
It's like this, I think that two years ago, everything, if we're talking specifically about Gränges Americas now. two years ago-
Yeah
everything in Gränges Americas was a lot cheaper than it is today. That means that for our business, of course, our costs have increased quite a lot in the last two years. To compensate for that, we are doing many things on productivity, on recycling, on mix, and so on, all those things. But unfortunately, we also do have to go to our customers and ask for price increases. That means that when we increase prices in Gränges Americas and indeed in Gränges Europe as well, we don't always get the full benefit of that price increase down to the bottom line, because it's a price increase that's prompted by the cost increases that are occurring in the market. We're basically compensating. That will be the main driver of our discussions with our customers this quarter also.
Good. Thank you. Those were my three questions.
Thank you, Oskar.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone. That is star one and one to ask a question. We will now go to the next question. Your next question today comes from the line of Mats Liss from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, thank you. A couple of questions from me as well. I guess, I need some more about Gränges Americas there. You have this 15% ROCE target, and the question is where do you see, in which continent do you see the improvement to reach the 15%? Is it in Gränges Americas, or is it more in Gränges Europe, Gränges Asia?
Well, I think firstly, to reach the 15% ROCE target, which we are edging closer to, but as Oskar pointed out, still have quite some distance to go. It looks 2- percentage- point distance doesn't maybe sound like so much, but it is a lot of work to get there. Firstly, I think that is going to come, basically from our two strategic steps that we're trying to take now. One is this utilize step to try to get up to at least a 90% utilization of our asset base. The second one, of course, is Optimize program, which we will run in 2026, 2027, 2028, and 2029 to improve the return of the assets, on top of what comes from the utilization and the operational leverage. Those plans are made for all regions. So all regions have planned to utilize their assets better, Americas, Europe, and Asia.
All regions also have plans to Optimize the use of their assets over these years. That means if you look at our plans, in fact, all regions are ambitious in Gränges, and all regions have plans to improve their profitability, if I put it like that. Also, they're sustainable, by the way. But the 15% target should be seen as a group target, not as a regional target. It means that when we say we have some confidence in getting there eventually, that means that that's a consolidated picture for the whole group, which takes into account those plans, but also looks at the whole portfolio and sees what is reasonable, I guess. I'm not sure I answered the question, but anyway, that's how we look at it.
Yeah, it sounds good. In Americas, I guess your performance is well above the 15% already. Do you see opportunities there to expand capacity further, or do you have ample capacity on hand, so you don't need to do that?
If we look at what we call our nameplate capacity, which is the number that for each region then adds up to the 800,000 tons of total nameplate capacity that we have. That's, in a sense, a theoretical proxy number. As you know, we're operating relatively far below that in all of our regions. When it comes to our actual capacity, that is to say, how much can we actually get out the door in any given week or quarter? There is absolutely opportunity to improve that in all of our three regions. If we had more actual capacity now in Americas or more actual capacity now in Europe, we would sell more. Same for Asia, by the way.
That is part of the work that goes into this utilize, but also part of the work that goes into Optimize is, of course, to look at how we can improve the productivity of our asset base, the productivity of the individual machines, for instance, by increasing utilization, for instance, by increasing overall equipment availability, for instance, by increasing yield, so as to be able to get more out of the same asset base. So definitely there are opportunities like that in all three regions.
Great. Jumping to automotive, you have a solid performance there compared to the underlying development. The outlook for automotive looks a bit soft. Do you expect to continue to grow the market share here, or electrification trends are maybe stronger now? Is it sort of a trend going forward as well for you to grow that area?
Well, the orthodox answer, I guess, is that we make volume forecasts quarter by quarter. But it is, of course, so that we have an ambition to increase our volume, generally speaking. Because we have set this 90% utilization target, and we're quite a distance from that. So we do absolutely expect, and we do absolutely have plans to grow our volume going forward. We can't grow our volume going forward unless we grow also in automotive, because it remains not as big a portion of Gränges as it was, but still a sizable portion. So we definitely have plans to continue to grow at a good clip also in automotive.
Sure. Finally, just about power prices, electric power prices are sort of quite high now. Do you expect some headwind from those, or are there contract clauses that sort of help you to pass those forward?
That's a good point, Mats, and I think it's like this, that we are, of course, in the aluminum industry. That, of course, means we're using quite a lot of energy, but we're also not in the primary aluminum industry, where you use much, much more energy than we do. That being said, we are managing the price risk in energy, basically in three different ways. We have the contract clauses, the surcharge clauses that you mentioned. We also have hedging in place where in the markets where this can be hedged. We also have a fair share of our portfolio that is on shorter contracts or spot pricing, where the current market price for energy is basically taken into account. These are the three ways where we sort of manage and mitigate this. But we are contractually protected from big swings here, I would say.
Okay. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. We currently have one further question, and the question comes from the line of Linus Alentun from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, and good morning, Jörgen and Oskar. A couple of questions from my side here. Perhaps starting on climate control in the Americas here, up 22% here in the quarter. I was just wondering here, do you know how much of this comes from restocking and how much is real end market demand? What are you hearing from customers on the ground, perhaps?
I think if you look at production numbers among our customers, they have a similar growth rate. I think that at least, not for the full quarter, but I looked at the August to date numbers. I think it's fair to assume that the underlying demand or production rates at our customers are fairly similar to what we are seeing. Then we see a little bit of additional positive effects here from the data center growth as well. That is not within the traditional HVAC market.
But when it comes to restocking, I guess our customers basically are, when it comes to stuff we send to them, they're basically hand to mouth because it just goes in, it's just in time, so to speak. When it comes to restocking the HVAC industry, often we think about further downstream from them in one or two steps from the customers that we deliver to. I can't say we have any good picture of how that stock there has developed or is developing, other than to say that of course now, to some extent at least, the HVAC season is over in the Americas, or is close to being over, and that this is not typically a period of the year when there's a lot of restocking in the trade.
All right. Got that. Thank you. Another question here on scrap spreads. I know you talked a lot about this and answered a few questions here already, but you said they were slightly above 2024 levels here. I'm just wondering here, how much of the Q3 benefit comes from being above some kind of normal level, or perhaps 2024 level? On EBIT.
Yeah. What is really a normal level maybe is the question then. That I cannot answer, but if you look at where we were in 2024 and compare with 2025, we had, if I remember correctly, approximately 45% or so, or 40% or thereabout negative effects from this, and now we are at a 70% positive effect. So there is some timing of this, but let us say that two-thirds or so of the year-over-year-
SEK 70 million?
SEK 70 million.
Yeah.
Yes. So let us say that two-thirds or so of this scrap spread effect is coming back to the 2024 level, and then one-third then is above the 2024 level. As a proxy. This is not perfect science.
Got it. Thanks. Just a quick follow-up here on the gas prices. I didn't hear the whole answer, but I'm just wondering here, how much is hedged here and for how long, if we look into 2027 perhaps?
We typically hedge energy prices up to 24 months ahead in time. That means that we are currently having a fair share of for the part of the portfolio that we're hedging, we're having a fair share of the 2027 portfolio already hedged and some part of the 2028 as well. But we need to remember that we also manage the energy through clauses in our customer contracts, so it's a combination of things. We never hedge 100% of our forecasted energy usage.
All right. Perfect. That was all for me. I'll get back in line.
Thank you, Linus.
Thank you. That was our final question for today. I will hand the call back for closing remarks.
Thank you, operator. We have no closing remarks other than to say thank you to everybody who joined today's conference call on Gränges' Q3 result. Have a great day, everybody.