Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget SCA (publ) (STO:SCA.B)
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Earnings Call: Q2 2018

Jul 25, 2018

Speaker 10

Sincerely welcome to the presentation of SCA's interim report for the second quarter of 2018. We regret the slight delay, the presentation will now start. The report will be presented.

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

Thank you for that, Bjorn. Good morning, everyone. I like to start this presentation exactly in the same way as I did Q1 earlier this year, by saying that we have a continued really strong market out there in all regions, in Europe, Asia, and also in the U.S., but also for all product segments. We can also see now that during the second quarter, the market for publication paper has strengthened further, which is, of course, nice. We've seen a strong sales growth of 11% this quarter in comparison with Q2 2017. Main reason for that is, of course, price and currency, but we have also moved volumes closer to our mills, so the mix has also had an important impact on the sales growth.

On the other side, we have seen that volumes due to the planned maintenance or startup stop in Östrand has went down by 7%. On EBITDA level, we are up 43%, mainly again, due to higher prices and also currency. We are, during the second quarter, negatively impacted by the startup stop in Östrand, which has costed us approximately SEK 250 million. As we did announce during our capital markets day in May, we have formed a partnership with St1 and SCA in order to see in what way we can produce renewable biofuel based on crude tall oil. We have started up a pre-project. We believe that in the beginning of next year, we are ready to take a decision over a SEK 500 million investment in order to produce 100,000 tons of biojet.

Last but not least in this summary, we are happy to say that the expanded Östrand pulp mill is now up and running. We have started up well. We are well ahead of the startup curve or the expectations we had in the investment case. On the other hand, we have just run the mill for one month, but a really good start. So far, so good. I'm also happy to say again that we are on time and on budget in Östrand. We have also started to deliver the pulp, and the quality is surprisingly good when it comes to brightness, but also to cleanness. It's perfect, more or less.

When it comes to strength, it's a little bit more volatile, but we have already now seen that we are able to produce a high strength in the new mill than we could do in the old mill, and the old mill was really good. We see a great potential in this area. Yes, now we are focusing on the ramp-up progressing well, focus on calibrating the plant to quickly achieve full production, but also to further improve the quality. If we then look into our performance in Q2 and look into some financial KPIs, we can first see that we have done a little bit over a billion on EBITDA level. Then again, we are negatively impacted by the startup, the planned startup cost that we've had in Östrand by minus SEK 250 million.

Our industrial return on capital employed is 19% when we exclude Östrand, as during the second quarter, we haven't had any positive effect from the investment. That will come now in Q3 and Q4, of course. Our EBITDA margin was a little bit over 22% in the quarter. If you look to the right-hand side, you can see that when we exclude pulp, we've had a really positive trend during the past five quarters, and Q2 2018 would have been better than Q1 2018 if Östrand would have been up and running as it did in the first quarter. We would have been closer to 30% also in Q2 2018. All segments, except from pulp, is performing very well and better than we did Q1. Our leverage is 1.7, and that means that we financed a big project in Östrand with our operating cash flow.

If we then walk into each segment, starting with the forest side, I can just mention that, as you've seen, probably we've been hit by a lot of wildfires in this region and in the whole of Sweden during a couple of weeks now. Between 20,000 and 25,000 hectares has burnt down all over the country. We have seen that many small private forest owners has been hardly hit, which is, of course, a catastrophe for many of them. We had, at the end of last week, 200 people from SCA out trying to help wherever we could. So far, luckily, we are not hit in the company too much. 600 hectares of SCA land has been burnt down, and that is equal to what we normally burn every year in order to keep our FSC certification.

We still have dry and warm weather, so still it is a danger out there, of course. We've had a stable wood supply during the quarter, and we also had a stable wood supply during the winter. We had harsh winter conditions. We have had now dry and warm summer, as we have a high degree of the wood that we need from our own forest, we can handle that in a good way. We've seen some price increases in the market, especially for imported wood, but again, as we have around 50% from our own forest, and as we also buy a lot of wood from the domestic market, we are not especially impacted by import prices as it is just now. We have, during this period, built up inventory in order to meet Östrand's increasing demand.

As Östrand now is well ahead of the start-up curve, it may challenge us a little bit more, which is, of course, positive. We had some lower volume this quarter in comparison with Q2 2017, and that is, of course, due to the expansion stop at Östrand. EBITDA was up slightly from 30%-32% EBITDA margin due to higher prices. In wood, we have a continued strong market, as you can see to the left-hand side, prices has went up since at least Q2 2016, I think even the first quarter 2016 was that we had increase in prices. Q2 2018 in comparison with Q1 2018 is up a little bit more than 5%, 50% due to currency, 50% due to pricing. We have already now announced that we will increase prices also for the third and fourth quarter this year.

In general, we have really low inventory levels, that goes also for our SCA mills. Sales was up 13% during the quarter, in comparison with 2017. That is mainly due to higher prices. EBITDA was up as much as 49% due to prices, due to currency, of course, but also we've had a good production during the quarter, we also have good cost control. On the other hand, we have seen some slight increases when it comes to raw material costs. In pulp, we've talked about Östrand and the start-up. We have now invested 85% out of SEK 7.8 billion. So by that SEK 6.6 billion. Production is now up and running, quality is good. The market is super strong, which means that we can sell all pulp as prime pulp. We've done that already from the very beginning. We have a PIX price today at $1,230 per ton.

Sales during the quarter for SCA was down 17%, that was only due to the expansion stop that we've talked about earlier. On the other hand, we had higher prices also Q2 2018 in comparison with Q2 2017. Our negative EBITDA is 100% related to the start-up stop that we've had, which has costed us, as I mentioned, SEK 250 million at least during the quarter. In paper, we have a continued strong market in general, not the least for kraftliner. As you can see to the left-hand side, we've been able to increase prices step by step since Q2 2016. We have now announced another price increase in white top kraftliner by EUR 50 per ton from 1st of September, that will be gradually implemented during the third and fourth quarter.

For us in SCA, that means that we have this price increase on around 15% of the total kraftliner volume. We've also seen an improved market in publication paper, we have announced between 6%-8% price increases, slightly more for uncoated grades and slightly less for coated grades. As you might remember, two-third of the production in SCA is coated grades and one-third is uncoated grades. Sales was up 17% during the month, mainly due to higher kraftliner prices and currency, EBITDA was up as much as 112% due to prices, due to currency, but also due to a stable cost development and strong production during the quarter. We have also during the quarter launched a new paper category, which we called fine wood-containing paper.

It is a paper based on chemical pulp. That paper will compete with wood-free paper. We have a super good brightness, good bulk in the paper, and also good opacity. Why we base this quality on mechanical pulp, it will be really cost efficient both for us as a producer, but also for our customers. We have done between 5,000 and 10,000 tons in the market, and it has been really well received in the market. We continue the work that we have done many years now in Ortviken to find new products to launch in the market. As it is today, around 35% of the sales is coming from products that didn't exist five years ago. That is a strong and good development, which will, in a good way, contribute to the profitability of our Ortviken mill.

With that, I hand over to Toby.

Toby Lawton
CFO, SCA

Thank you. Thank you, Ulf, and good morning, everybody. I will start off by showing you the income statement here, and you can see, as Ulf mentioned, the net sales increased by 11% in the quarter, and the EBITDA increased by 43%. We delivered an EBITDA in the second quarter of just over SEK 1 billion, SEK 1,034 million, and that's after taking into account the effects of the Östrand expansion stop, which Ulf mentioned. I will also come back to. We had an EBITDA margin of 22.1%. We had financial costs of SEK 4 million, and you can't compare to the previous year here because the second quarter last year was also the quarter that we had the separation from Essity towards the end of the quarter. Those costs were largely before the separation.

We have a positive tax result of SEK 369 million, and that's because of the revaluation of deferred tax, which happened here in the second quarter from the recent changes in the tax rates or the future tax rates that the Swedish Parliament decided recently. That has a positive effect of some SEK 530 million on the tax line. If you take away that effect, then the underlying tax rate is very stable, it's 21.4%. Here I can show you the development per quarter, per segment. The net sales, if I start with Forest on the left-hand side, the net sales was slightly down because of the start-up of Östrand and the lack of supply to Östrand during the expansion stop, which Ulf also mentioned.

The EBITDA in Forest was stronger in the second quarter than the first quarter, this is largely the seasonality with a larger delivery of wood sourced from our own forest in the second quarter versus the first quarter, also some effect from higher prices. The Wood segment had a strong second quarter on top line with some price increases and some positive currency. It's also a seasonally strong quarter for the Wood segment. The EBITDA was also strong in Wood with 13% EBITDA margin, with some of the higher prices coming through and dropping through to EBITDA.

Pulp, you can see the top line is affected by the expansion stop, of course, in the second quarter, the result as well has had a significant effect from the expansion stop, which I will come back to, where we had, as Ulf mentioned, also some SEK 250 million effects from the project in the second quarter versus the first quarter. We also had the effect there from the lower volumes and the lower sales, which you can see on the top line. That's on top of the, if you like, the project cost. The Paper division has a slightly improved top line from higher prices coming through in kraftliner, also in publication paper, that's also dropping through to the bottom line with a strong 26% EBITDA margin.

If I go here to the waterfall in net sales, you can see the biggest effect we had in net sales was from price mix, where we had 13% improvement versus the second quarter last year. We had an effect from the lower volumes, particularly in Östrand, with minus 7%, currency again positive and particularly the euro positive in the second quarter versus second quarter last year with 5%. When it comes to the EBITDA waterfall, again, price mix is the biggest effect on here. We've seen a positive effect in all segments from the higher prices. We had an effect again from the volumes with minus SEK 39 million.

The raw material costs, we've a negative effect from some higher costs for raw materials for wood and for chemicals, here also some effect from the Östrand start-up, the higher direct costs or the usage of raw materials in Östrand and chemicals. On energy, we have a small positive. The electricity price is actually higher now in the second quarter, we've had some effects from a higher price for electricity certificates, we also had a negative effect from electricity certificates last year in the second quarter. Currency, again, is positive, SEK 80 million, in other, we have minus SEK 100 million, which is mainly the expansion stop costs in Östrand, also we have slightly less costs from last year with the separation. We had some separation costs which came in the second quarter last year. If I flick onto the cash flow.

If I take the half-year numbers here on the right-hand side, we had SEK 2.2 billion of EBITDA for the first half year. If we adjust that for the non-cash items, particularly the revaluation of the biological assets, then we had operating cash surplus of SEK 1.863 billion. We had a growth in working capital, which we expected ahead of the start of Östrand. That is minus SEK 345 million. But even after that, and current CapEx, we delivered a cash flow of SEK 1.265 billion. That means, as Ulf also mentioned, that we are funding then the strategic capital expenditures, which is the Östrand project entirely from operating cash flow during the first half. Just come on to a couple of more details on the Östrand project. This you have seen largely before, but just to help you understand the effects. Production began in June according to plan.

The ramp-up period is expected to be 12-18 months, and that means we expect 2018 volumes to be in line with 2017. That means also that 2020 is the first year we expect to be at full capacity. The new mill will be world-class in its cost position. It will double the softwood capacity. We will have a fixed cost reduction of SEK 350 per ton. We will have an improved energy balance where we will go from being a small net consumer of electricity to a net producer of some 0.5 terawatt hours. We see potentially some higher wood costs from wood needing to be sourced from further away. Then particularly on the cost impact. Here you have seen this table before as well, but we have updated for the second quarter.

If I just focus on the table on the right-hand side, you can see the main effects from the project here. You have the project-related costs where we had SEK 15 million in the second quarter. We had the actual maintenance stop or expansion stop effect in the second quarter, which was SEK 236 million. Here we expect SEK 256 million for the full year. So we plan for some small effect in the second half. Then we have the ramp-up effects, which is the effect on direct costs during the ramp-up period, where we had some SEK 50 million in the second quarter. We expect some SEK 100 million-SEK 250 million during the full year, depending on how fast and how well the ramp-up goes. That means totally we have around SEK 300 million in the second quarter versus SEK 40 million in the first quarter.

That is the SEK 250 million we mentioned is basically the increase from the first quarter to the second quarter. On top of that, we also expect, as it says on this slide at the bottom, an increase in working capital, which we have seen then during the first half year, due to the higher production volumes coming through, and particularly on raw material inventory. Then on the balance sheet here, pretty stable balance sheet. On the deferred tax line, you can see the effect of that deferred tax adjustment which came through the tax line. Capital employed has increased to SEK 44.5 billion, which is largely the effect of the Östrand investment. But again, net debt is stable at 1.7x EBITDA, even including the significant investments that we are doing in building the new Östrand mill, of course. So it is a stable leverage. Okay. With that, I think, yeah, [inaudible]. Hmm?

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

If we should shortly summarize the second quarter this year, we can again say that we have a continued strong market, all regions, all product areas. Strong sales growth. We were impacted by the start-up stop in terms of volumes during the second quarter, but still growth of 11% this quarter in comparison with 2017. EBITDA up 43%. As we also stated, that we are negatively impacted by the planned start-up cost in Östrand, which has cost us SEK 250 million, approximately. We have, during the quarter, announced a partnership together with St1 in order to produce biojet. Last but not least, we are now up and running with Östrand. We are well ahead of the start-up curve, and the quality is really good as it is just now. By that, I think that we open up for some questions.

Operator, now we can take questions from the audience.

Operator

Dear participants, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and 1 on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. The first question comes from the line of Mikael Jansson. Please ask your question.

Mikael Jansson
Analyst

Yes. Hello. Good morning, everybody. A couple of questions from my side. The first one is around your Wood Products division that historically has been very cyclical, and now it's doing very well. If I heard you correctly there, you said that you had price increases also announced going into the second half. Could you just elaborate a little bit on that market? Also in conjunction with that, you mentioned that raw material prices are going up. Is that a function of rising wood prices in your areas? That's the first question. The second question is around publication paper. Normally we should see decline in demand. Still we see paper price increases. Could you talk a little bit about that? How long could we expect to see, let's say, a balanced paper market? Those were my questions. Thank you.

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

Thank you. Well, if we start with the wood business, as we've said, we've seen price increases now for many quarter in a row. We know that we will have further price increases in the second half of this year. The reason for that is, of course, that we still have a strong consumption in more or less all areas, as it is just now. In general, inventory levels are very low, and that goes the same for SCA. It's a balance question. How long will it last? Well, it's not up to us to judge, really. As it is just now, it is a stable to strong market, I would say.

Yes, we've seen that price on sawlogs is coming up a little bit again as we are in a good position in the way that we take a lot of the wood that we need from our own forests. We are quite balanced, but you're right, 70% of the cost for sawmill is related to the raw material cost. As it is just now, we've been able to compensate that increased cost. Again, for us, what's positive is really that we keep our cost control, and we keep also a good productivity in our mills, and that is what we can really have an impact on ourselves. That is really super important. In publication papers, still you have these structural challenges that we've talked about earlier. The consumption long term is going down as a result of the digitalization.

Just now we have a better balance than we have before, and that is also the reason why we can now increase prices between 6% and 8% during the second half of this year. I don't like to speculate longer than that. We know that we will have a reasonably strong second half of this year, which is perfectly good for us.

Mikael Jansson
Analyst

Okay, many thanks.

Operator

Thank you very much. The next question comes through the line of Cole Hathorn. Please ask the question.

Cole Hathorn
Analyst, Jefferies

Thank you very much, operator, good morning, everyone. Just to follow up on the paper side, you mentioned here during the presentation, you have mentioned before as well that you have raised prices on white top. If you just could put that into relation to unbleached kraftliner, as we have not seen any price hike announcements on that. If you could just elaborate a little bit on the market balance on white top versus unbleached. Thanks.

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

Okay. In unbleached, we've increased prices step by step gradually now during many quarters. We haven't seen any new announcements in unbleached. White top has been more flat in the past, now we feel that we have a great demand for white top, that is the reason why we have announced a price increase from 1st of September. The balance in SCA is that we produce 865,000 tons of kraftliner. Out of that, 150,000 tons is white top.

Cole Hathorn
Analyst, Jefferies

Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes through the line of Linus Larsson. Please ask the question.

Linus Larsson
Analyst, SEB Enskilda

Thank you very much for taking my question, and congratulations on the startup of the new Östrand pulp mill. With regards to Östrand, you talk about the direct costs, and you said that they had an impact of SEK 50 million in the second quarter. Could you just talk a bit about what to expect in the third quarter? You have put the total figure for the whole year. How do you see the timing of that? Is the impact in Q3 similar to Q2? Is it bigger? Is it smaller? That's my first question.

Toby Lawton
CFO, SCA

If I take that. I think you can see our guidance that we've given this range because it's hard to predict, and it does depend. The range of SEK 100-SEK 250 we've given for the year. The third quarter will probably see a significant effect. We expect that effect to decrease going from the third quarter into the fourth quarter. If we take that full year amount, we expect an effect also in the third quarter. Whether it will be more or less than the second quarter, it's hard to say. That's the range, and we stick by that range for what we expect for the full year.

Linus Larsson
Analyst, SEB Enskilda

Okay. Fair enough. Also a cost item in relation to the Östrand ramp up. How do you see your wood sourcing and wood costs develop now that your own sourcing of wood is gradually increasing with the ramp up of the Östrand volumes?

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

In general, we see that prices has gone up a little bit. We feel that we are in good control. We have built up inventories now. We are prepared for this startup. Just now we are well ahead of the startup curve and still I think that we are in good control. We have a controlled wood supply, I would say.

Linus Larsson
Analyst, SEB Enskilda

Are you looking to increase imports of wood, and if so, does that automatically increase the average cost of wood for you?

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

As it is just now, we don't need to import more wood than we've done in the past. Long-term, import is an alternative, but we prefer to be domestically based in our sourcing. The flow now from private forest owners is quite good, so we feel confident.

Linus Larsson
Analyst, SEB Enskilda

Okay, excellent. Then just finally on volumes, looking at kraftliner, you've had 7%-8% year-on-year shipments decline in kraftliner in Q1 and Q2. Could you just explain why that is, and what to expect in the second half of 2018, please?

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

That's quite simple. We have had a really strong market for kraftliner now for many quarters and we are sold out. That's the reason. We have very low inventory levels in all product areas, and the same goes for kraftliner. That is a simple answer on that.

Production is good. Production is as strong this year as it was last year.

Toby Lawton
CFO, SCA

I was just going to say, in the second quarter last year, we sold quite a lot out from stock. That's when you compare to the second quarter last year, you see this effect.

Linus Larsson
Analyst, SEB Enskilda

Okay. That's helpful. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Martin Melbye. Please ask your question.

Martin Melbye
Analyst, ABG Sundal Collier

Yes, good morning. Some nitty-gritty questions on Östrand. Say if the pulp price and the wood price is flat in Q3, what would EBIT be? You have all these different effects impacting EBIT, maintenance, direct costs, indirect costs, volume lost, et cetera.

Toby Lawton
CFO, SCA

I think the simple answer, if you're trying to model, basically, you have this effect from the expansion stop, which you see, that will not be there in Q3. The ramp-up effects, we don't know. There will be some effect from that. Of course, we expect the sales volume to improve somewhat with the production having come online. If you adjust for those effects, you should be able to guesstimate the result for the third quarter, perhaps.

Martin Melbye
Analyst, ABG Sundal Collier

You add back the SEK 236.

Toby Lawton
CFO, SCA

Yeah.

Martin Melbye
Analyst, ABG Sundal Collier

You also soon say another SEK 100 million of startup costs, as you call it, maybe, in the second half altogether.

Toby Lawton
CFO, SCA

On top of adding back these costs, you will have an effect from in the second quarter, we had a low turnover and a low volume because of the stop. That will improve in the third quarter.

Martin Melbye
Analyst, ABG Sundal Collier

Depreciation, that is included in the SEK 460, SEK 556, because that hasn't really started until the second half, right?

Toby Lawton
CFO, SCA

The depreciation will increase successively during the second half. It won't all come in in the third quarter, the depreciation increase.

Martin Melbye
Analyst, ABG Sundal Collier

All right. These higher wood costs, when will that be visible in your forest division? Or higher wood prices.

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

To some extent, you've seen it already in the second quarter. As mentioned, we don't have too high wood cost. You have a price increase, but nothing really substantial.

Martin Melbye
Analyst, ABG Sundal Collier

All right. Good. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Oskar Lindström. Please ask your question.

Oskar Lindström
Analyst, Danske Bank

Yes. Hi, this is Oskar Lindström from Danske Bank. Four questions here. First off, the Östrand pulp mill startup. You are saying it is ahead of your investment plan after a month of operation, and that the quality is good, and in general, I get the feeling it is progressing very well. Yet you reiterate the 12 to 18 month startup period which you have talked about before the startup. Should we at least start to plan for maybe a 12 month startup period or perhaps even shorter? How confident are you in the startup after one month?

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

One month is one month. It is a very short time. We are happy now to see that mechanically we have no bad surprises. The mill is working now, and step-by-step, gradually we can also fine-tune and a lot of things to do, of course. I think the tricky thing now will be when we reach the design capacity. That is really hard to predict because sometime we will have some bottleneck coming up and then we will really test the design capacity. I think that we will have now a good start up during the autumn. It is too early to say if we need these 18 months or if we can do it faster. It is too early to say if we reach directly the design capacity or if we need to do some complementary investments in the old lime kiln or wherever. It is quite tricky.

So far we are happy because we have not seen any mechanical issues, which is good. Step by step we are getting on high capacity. It is very volatile. One day is super good and one day is really bad. We have to take it step by step now. It is too early to say. We have just done one month. We are happy that we started on time. We are happy to say that we are well ahead of the start-up curve. Of course it will be more challenging the longer the time goes here now.

Oskar Lindström
Analyst, Danske Bank

All right.

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

Quality is good. Clean brightness, cleanness, also strength, that is all positive things, and not the least that we already now see that we can produce a stronger pulp than we did in the old mill. The old mill was good. It was good in the benchmark, but this is really promising, I would say, quality-wise.

Oskar Lindström
Analyst, Danske Bank

You're selling it, as you said, all of the volume coming out of the mill is now being sold as prime pulp?

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

Yeah, we do. One reason is the good quality, of course, and one reason is the strong market.

Oskar Lindström
Analyst, Danske Bank

All right. A second question is on the other project. Well, pre-project that you announced is the Obbola mill expansion or potential expansion. I think you said that you would sort of come to a conclusion towards the end of this year, any early news or further news on that project or potential project?

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

No. We have said that the pre-project will be finalized in Q1, and then we have something to take a decision on. The pre-project is running well, and it's run by the former mill manager, Per Strand. It will take until at least first quarter next year.

Oskar Lindström
Analyst, Danske Bank

Right. My third question is around the forest fires. You don't mention them in the report. You have a press release out on your webpage. It sounds as if that's not something that we should expect will have an impact on your wood supply in any significant way in the third quarter. Is that how we should understand it?

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

Yeah, as I said, on SCA land, we've been very lucky so far, and we have had productive forest land around 600 hectares that has been burnt on, and that is equal to what we normally burn in order to keep the FSC certificate. Of course, we now try to be as careful as we can. We don't run our harvesters during daytime if it's dry and hot, and we use them during nighttime. That kind of disturbances we see, but nothing major, really. This isn't over yet, so if this weather will continue, then it might be so that it will cause further problems in the region. As it is just now, it is controlled.

Oskar Lindström
Analyst, Danske Bank

Good. My final question is around wood products. You mentioned low inventory levels in the industry, but also in your mills, and I presume that's sort of finished product you're talking about. Can you increase volumes in your wood products operation further from where you are today? Or are there limits either to your own capacity or in terms of wood supply?

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

I think it's more a question of our own capacity. We utilize the capacity that we have to 100% just now. You can add another shift, of course, but in a sawmill, it is not as easy as that because the fourth shift in a sawmill is not necessarily a good thing to do when it comes to profitability. We utilize 100% of what we have in plan, and I think we will continue that way.

Oskar Lindström
Analyst, Danske Bank

All right. The types of volumes that we've seen over the past couple of quarters, that's what we should be expecting-

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

Yeah

Oskar Lindström
Analyst, Danske Bank

in the period ahead.

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

Yeah. When you look at the sales, the main reason for increase in sales figures is just mentioned, the price and the currency and so on. Not volume, really.

Oskar Lindström
Analyst, Danske Bank

All right. Super. Thank you very much. Those were my questions.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Robin Santavirta. Please ask the question.

Robin Santavirta
Analyst, Carnegie

Thank you very much. Still one more on Östrand. I know you say ramp up has proceeded ahead of the plan. I understand it's only one month, but would you mind to quantify that in any way? You're still, as I understand, sticking to the guidance of the pulp division. They're delivering equal amount of volume roughly compared to last year. Why is that if the ramp up is better than expected?

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

Okay. I think it's too early to say something. We've had a good start, which is super good, of course. I don't like to quantify because it's just one month, but if this will continue, then of course we will produce somewhat more this year in comparison with 2017, that's for sure. We are just in the beginning, and many things can happen, and we feel that when we see something that we have to adjust, it's better to close down the mill and do that in order to prepare for the future. We will not do whatever to reach a high volume the first year. That is not the big issue. The big issue is to create a complete mill in different ways. We don't feel any pressure. With this good start, we don't feel any pressure.

We will take it calm and easy and do what's needed to create a really good future performance here.

Robin Santavirta
Analyst, Carnegie

I understand. Thanks. Related to the pulp market strength. Obviously, prices have been very strong, and you also call the market super strong. Is that also what you're seeing now during the summer in Europe? What are you seeing at the moment on the pulp market, especially when it comes to Europe?

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

It is a strong and stable market. We haven't been able to deliver more or less just small volumes in the second quarter, and that has caused our big customers big problems, and we are sorry for that. Now we can start to compensate them, and we feel that the demand is really strong. I don't know if we misjudged the situation just due to the long stop that we've had, we feel it is a strong market not only in Europe, but also in Asia and also in U.S.

Robin Santavirta
Analyst, Carnegie

Have you decided where to place those volumes of the extra volume from Östrand and going into the latter part of this year and in 2019? Will it be more in China or all in Europe?

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

As we've said before, just now we could place everything in Europe, but we think long term that we should place some volume in both U.S. but also in China and we stick to that. When will be the starting point? Well, it's too early to decide really. As it is just now, we are more or less 100% focused on Europe.

Robin Santavirta
Analyst, Carnegie

Good. Thanks. Then the final question from me. In terms of input cost inflation, you guys seem quite relaxed. Is it fair to assume that as it is now, the input cost inflation sequentially in Q3 will be roughly the same as in Q2?

Toby Lawton
CFO, SCA

Yeah, I think that's a fair comment. Like you say, we don't see any dramatic change. We do see increased cost for raw materials, as we said, and chemicals. We don't see any big trend change or increase in Q3 versus previous quarters.

Robin Santavirta
Analyst, Carnegie

All right. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Dear participants, once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone keypad. Dear speaker, there are no further questions at this time. Please continue.

Ulf Larsson
President and CEO, SCA

By that, I think we have to thank you for shown interest and also wish you all a good summer. Thank you from us.