Hello everyone. Welcome to this call focusing on our performance in Q3 2025. Also, this quarter we improved our margin in a challenging market, and that was thanks to commercial execution and cost control. This was definitely evident for our industrial business area. My name is Sophie Arnius. I'm heading up Investor Relations, and I will also be joined by our CEO and President, Rickard Gustafson, and our CFO, Susanne Larsson. There will be, of course, opportunities to ask questions before or after their presentations. There are two ways to do that. Let me just remind you on how to ask a question. If you have joined via the telephone, you press star and one. If you instead are watching via the webcast, you can already now type in your questions, and it's in the tab that you find above the slides. With that, let's get started.
It's a great pleasure to hand over to you, Rickard.
Thank you so much, Sophie, and good morning everyone to this earnings call. As you heard from Sophie, yet again we are able to present a resilient and somewhat improved adjusted operating margin despite rather challenging market conditions. Also, as you can see on this chart, after eight consecutive quarters of negative organic growth, we are actually back to organic growth in the quarter. Actually, it's primarily driven by our industrial business, where we have seen growth across our geographies, while automotive is still more volatile and a more negative demand environment. This performance was actually slightly better than we anticipated walking into this quarter. However, the underlying market conditions have not significantly changed in this quarter versus the second quarter, and to some extent we are also helped by favorable comparison figures compared to Q3 last year. When it comes to our strategic initiatives, we are making good progress.
Our automotive separation is progressing at a very high pace, and I will share some more lights on that today, but I will refer also to our upcoming Capital Markets Day in a few weeks' time on November 11th in Stockholm, where we will be able to share more lights on this. When it comes to our industrial rightsizing initiative that we announced in the last quarter, it's also progressing according to plan at a high pace. As we said when we announced it, we do not anticipate significant savings in this quarter or in the fourth quarter this year. The majority will come in 2026 and into 2027. We continue on our strategic journey to invest in our capabilities and effectiveness.
This quarter I would like to put the spotlight on an initiative that we have developed in Italy, where we inaugurated a new global Super-precision Bearing Center that we are pretty excited about. I will share some more details around that shortly. If we move on and start taking a look at the high-level numbers, net sales ended at SEK 22.4 billion, representing an organic growth of 2%, as I mentioned before. The adjusted operating margin improved slightly to 12.3% in the quarter, despite significant headwinds from FX and rather challenging market conditions. I refer to them primarily to the tariff situation. The main reasons why we have been able to further enhance and maintain the resilience in our earnings are our ability to drive commercial capabilities and execution on commercial activities.
It's our good cost control and also that we benefit from previous investments that were done in regionalization and in world-class manufacturing. Turning to cash flow, coming in short of the same quarter last year, primarily driven by higher items affecting comparability, where automotive is the main or the automotive separation is the main driver behind that. You will hear more of this by Susanne very shortly. If we then turn to our different regions, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, I'm very pleased to say that we have growth, organic growth in our industrial business across the regions, where we have some more variation on the automotive side. Let's pick them one by one, starting with EMEA, our largest region, where we have an organic growth of 1%. It's driven by our industrial business, where some industrial verticals stand out and have very significant growth.
I refer to aerospace and magnetics, while in general demand in Europe is still at a fairly low level. Industrial demand is fairly low level, but has clearly stabilized in the quarter, but is not yet taking off. When it comes to automotive, we're still in a negative growth territory, however, though, less so if we compare to the same quarter last year, and that is primarily due to a stronger rebound in our commercial vehicles section. Turning to Americas, also a low single-digit organic growth, again driven by industrial. In this region, you know the price mix activities to manage tariffs are part of the organic growth journey. Some industrial verticals are also standing out. Here I'd like to mention marine and aerospace. Turning to automotive, a weak underlying demand that we have seen, and it's especially true for commercial vehicles in this region.
China and Northeast Asia, mid-single-digit organic growth, and here we see growth both in industrial and automotive. On the industrial side, it's primarily our industrial distribution that is growing and also our renewable energy business. Here I need to make the same comment as I did in Q2 last year. Some of the renewable energy growth is somewhat inflated from pre-buys or policy-driven pre-buys in China. On automotive, the growth there is pretty stable, and again we report and see very positive development when it comes to EVs in this region. India and Southeast Asia, also a region where we have growth both in industrial and automotive, where we see very good activity levels in India and Vietnam as examples.
From an industrial point of view, agriculture and material handling stand out in a positive way in the quarter, while automotive has a good development both when it comes to vehicle aftermarket and commercial vehicles in this region. If we then focus in on our segments and start with industrial, this quarter represents roughly 70% of our net sales and 90% of our adjusted operating profit. As I mentioned, we're back to growth here, and we have an organic growth just shy of 4%. In absolute terms, as you can see from the chart, we are actually declining some 3% this quarter versus the same quarter last year, and this is driven by FX. However, the adjusted operating margin continues to improve and now reaches 15.5% despite significant headwinds from currency, and also we've been able to manage a volatile environment and the tariff situation.
The main drivers here are the same as I repeated for the group. Again, our commercial capabilities have played a significant role here. We have very good cost control. We benefit from investments in regionalization and world-class manufacturing, as I mentioned. We have a small but not very sizable also contribution from the rightsizing program. As I mentioned, most of the value from that program, benefits from that program, will come later as we move into 2026. Turning to automotive, this quarter, roughly 30% of sales and 10% of adjusted operating profit. As I mentioned, still in the negative growth territory, but somewhat different across the regions. The negative growth, as you heard me say, is driven by Americas and Europe or EMEA primarily.
We have talked about the tariffs a number of times, and we said at the group level, we do believe that we will be able to largely compensate for the tariff impact, and that has been the case also in this quarter. We also said that the majority of the net negative impact from tariffs will be found in automotive, and that is also the case. With that in mind, and also the fact that FX had had a really significant impact on the earnings in this quarter, I do believe that the adjusted operating margin performance, not just shy of the same level as last year, is a rather good delivery.
The main thing, the positive thing I'd like to put your focus on here is the fact that we continue to see a lower material cost that enables us to offset some of those headwinds and maintain the margin. This is not a one-time event. It continues to be driven by very solid procurement activities and also a better material mix in our production that is helping to reduce material cost. That is something really positive. If we then turn our focus to our ongoing separation initiative, it's progressing well and at a very high pace. It's still a large program and a lot of work to do, but in this quarter we have some significant milestones that we have achieved.
We have actually concluded a number of very important IT cutovers during the quarter, and they actually turned out fully in line with our plan, and no negative surprises came out of those. Another key thing is what's happening in India, where you may know that our business there is listed also on the Indian Stock Exchange, and there we have been able to complete the separation, and we are ready to list the new entity in India before year-end. Another significant milestone. To give you some flavor on why we talk about that, this is a very tight, tight schedule, and there are, you know, I mentioned a couple of times that, you know, there are always risks with this massive project like this or program like this, and a number of activities are on the critical path, and that has not changed.
I don't have any red flags to report today, but to give you some color on this, you know, we're talking about more than 1,000 IT applications that we need to cut over. We're talking about more than 9,000 intellectual property rights that need to be split. We're talking about more than 60 manufacturing lines that need to be transferred around in our footprint. It is a sizable project. As we said before, we believe, we still stand for that we should be operationally ready to list automotive by mid-2026. Turning to another item, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, we are investing in a product line that is named Super-precision Bearings that we are pretty excited about.
Today it represents some 2% of our industrial net sales, but this is a product line that goes into a number of important industrial verticals like robotics, advanced machine tools, and compressors, all of them that also benefit significantly from some key megatrends such as electrification and automation. Why are these products? What value do they bring in these types of applications? Clearly, it's about accuracy and speed with minimal friction, exceptional running accuracy, and they also provide better stiffness and power density for these types of applications, enabling increased energy efficiency, just to mention a few of the value creation that we have from these products. What we have done and what we inaugurated earlier in the quarter is that we have now built a new global cross-functional Super-precision Bearing Center.
It's based in Italy, in Airasca, close to our normal operation there, where we have been able to co-locate our R&D, our engineering capabilities, and our production teams under one roof. We have invested in a highly automated and digitized manufacturing capacity there that can enable very, very short turnaround times and also increase throughput significantly. The benefits that we get from this by getting this under one roof are clear, as it can drive cross-functional synergies. More importantly, we can then co-create with our customers and help solve their needs in very critical applications. I had the joy myself to be part of the inauguration ceremony, and I must say that it was very rewarding to see the excitement among many of our customers when they saw our new capabilities in this field and what that could do for their business.
We do believe that this is an exciting opportunity where we will benefit from good growth and profitable growth, also driven by electrification and automation, as I mentioned. With that, I end my part of this presentation and hand over to Susanne to take you through the numbers in detail.
Thank you, Rickard. Good morning, everyone. Now we will really talk about the financial implications, and some of them you have also heard Rickard commenting upon. Let me first start with a financial summary and an overview of the quarter itself. Starting off with the net sales, it was down 5.1%. It was explained first by an organic growth of 2%, more than offset by a significant FX headwind. Our gross margin was down 0.5%. However, if we put the one-off cost, the ISCs aside, we saw an improvement of 0.4%. Our adjusted operating margin strengthened compared to last year from 11.9% to 12.3%. This in spite of FX headwind of -1%. Quarter three, one-off cost ISCs amounted to $755 million, with the main areas being the automotive separation costs representing $362 million.
We had $230 million related to impairment charges of fixed assets, and finally $141 million on ongoing restructuring activities. Net-net, we had an operating profit of $2 billion compared to $2.5 billion last year, where the main difference is explained by the increased one-off charges. If we look at the bridge here analyzing the operating margin from 11.9%- 12.3%, I start with the organic dimension. As I said, sales growth amounted to +2% with industrial contributing to the growth. Negative production volumes were more than well compensated by price mix. Talking about price mix, the key initiatives are pricing, portfolio management, but also managing the tariffs mainly through price adjustments. The organic impact on the adjusted operating margin was 1.5%. Cost management was good with the development almost flat in the quarter, and this in spite of negative impacts of inflation, volume-related inefficiencies, and tariff costs.
In the quarter, as Rickard said, we managed to largely compensate for tariffs and expect to do so also continuing into quarter four. Currency remained significant with a headwind taking down sales by 6.9% and had an impact on the adjusted operating margin, as I said, on -1%. The main currencies remain the same. It's US dollar, it's Chinese yuan, and it's Turkish lira with the main effects vis-à-vis the Swedish krona. Finally, the structure is a small one. It's a net effect of the divestment we did in aerospace in Hanover and last year's acquisition of John Sample Group. Let me try to explain the cash flow performance in the quarter. Cash flow from operating activities ended at SEK 1.8 billion, and there are some reasons for that relatively weak cash flow, and it comes from what I will address now then.
First of all, we had one-off ISC costs with a relatively immediate cash flow impact, and that is particularly related to the automotive separation costs that is converting to cash flow relatively immediately together with ongoing restructuring programs. This explains SEK 500 million in the quarter. In the bar other, we have SEK 300 million negative explained by realized FX effects. Taxes paid in the quarter amounted to SEK 700 million, which is higher than last year, SEK 200 million. However, last year was low, so this is on a normalized level. Finally, the networking capital, we had the change there of -SEK 400 million, and this was partly explained by accounts receivable and the timing within the quarter, and accounts payable being low due to seasonality, typically in our quarter three.
Inventories, we are pleased to see decreasing in the quarter where we saw reductions in both automotive and industrial. Before leaving this, I just want us to remember that last year we had a change in the networking capital where we changed the reporting of consignment stocks. We had both increase in inventory and accounts payable of SEK 1.5 billion each. Let's take a look at the balance sheet and the return on capital employed. SKF has a strong capital structure, and at the end of September, we had a net debt of SEK 14.5 billion. If we put the pensions aside, it ended at SEK 7.5 billion. Cash and cash equivalents ended at SEK 7.6 billion, and were reduced as a consequence of a bond repayment of SEK 3.3 billion in the end of September. The SKF liquidity remains strong.
Net debt excluding pensions in relation to equity ended at 13.3%, while net debt excluding pensions in relation to adjusted EBITDA ended at 0.6. Finally, adjusted ROSE remained on a similar level as previous quarter, and that is 14%. Coming to my last slide with the outlook then, the global economic development remains uncertain. The outlook expected is that the market demand remains similar as the one we just left in quarter three. By that, we mean that we expect an organic sales to be relatively unchanged quarter four year- over- year. The currency impact on the operating profits remains high, and we estimate that to be -SEK 650 million applying the rates as per the end of September. The full-year tax rate guidance is adjusted to 28%, which is 2% higher than the previous guidance, fully driven by FX.
Finally, the CapEx guidance for the full year we have taken down somewhat from SEK 4.5 billion to SEK 4 billion. By that, Rickard, I hand back to you.
Thank you so much, Susanne. If we wrap this up then, as you heard us say, the market conditions continue to be challenging with a lot of volatility and geopolitical uncertainty, which puts a negative push or downward push on demand. With that said, though, we are very pleased that we are after eight consecutive quarters of negative organic growth and are back into organic growth. As you heard us talk about, primarily driven by our industrial business. Also pleased that we continue our margin resilience story where we see that we are managing in this rather volatile environment and managing headwinds in a decent way and holding up our operating margin. This is due to that we actually execute on what we said that we're going to do. We are driving commercial capabilities.
We are standing firm on cost management, and we are continuing to invest in our own business in terms of automation and in terms of regionalization. I'm also pleased to report that we're making strong progress, as I mentioned, in our automotive separation. It's a lot of work still to be done, and it's too early to claim full victory, but so far we are driving this fully according to plan. As I mentioned, we have achieved some significant milestones in the quarter. I'd like to again put some spotlight on the upcoming event in Stockholm in a couple of weeks on November 11th, where we look forward to seeing you all and sharing more details on how we see our future industrial business, some key highlights on our future automotive business, and provide some more transparency on the cost also related to this separation.
With this, I'm going to hand over to Sophie that will then initiate the Q&A session.
Thank you, Rickard. Yes, we hope that many of you can join us in Stockholm for the Capital Markets Day, but there is also an option to join us online. Nevertheless, you need to register, and the registration closes on Friday. You find the link to register on our website. Let's now open up for Q&A. Before we do that, let me just remind you on how to ask a question. If you have joined via the telephone, you press star and one to ask a question. If you wish to withdraw it, you press star and two. We will also accept questions from our online audience, and you can type in the questions in the box just above the slides. I know that there are many of you that want to ask questions, so please limit it to one question.
If time allows, we are happy that you join the Q&A queue again. We will start with a question from the telephone line and from Rory Smith at Oxcap. Rory, please go ahead.
Good morning. It's Rory from Oxcap. Thank you for taking my question. I'll stick to one as instructed, Sophie. Thank you. That is just if you could unpack that North America and particularly the U.S. performance and even put a number to the volume versus price impact in the quarter. I'm just trying to separate out those tariff price increases from any underlying improvement or otherwise there. That would be great. Thank you.
Rickard is happy to respond to that question.
Yes. We will not disclose how much is volume and how much is price mix as such. When it comes to Americas, it is price mix that drives the growth, and we are actually still in a negative volume territory in Americas. That's as far as I can go.
That's great. Thanks very much.
Thank you. Let's continue with a question from the line of Alex Jones at Bank of America. Alex, please go ahead.
Great. Thank you. Good morning. Just on the guidance that you've given for Q4, are you pointing for a sequential deceleration in organic growth given you're talking about relatively unchanged? I think you talked about unchanged into this quarter and then delivered + 2%. Is that still in the range of possibilities? If it's more the former and you are talking about a deceleration, can you just explain the moving parts for us, given I'd imagine that pricing gets sequentially higher as you continue to recoup tariffs? Thank you.
Let's hear from Susanne on this topic.
What we are really saying is that we do not see a significant change in the market environment quarter four over quarter three. Since quarter two, I think we are seeing signs of bottoming out. From the sequential question you asked, we have to remind ourselves that quarter four last year we came in strong and that we have in mind when we compare quarter- over- quarter, and that is the reason for us to guide flat.
Thank you.
Thank you. Let's continue with a question from Erik Golrang at SEB. Erik, please go ahead.
Thank you. A question on automotive just for some perspective. I mean, currency, as you say, continues to be a heavy headwind for you from a profitability perspective, and the relative impact on automotive is quite significant. I mean, it's a sub 5% margin business now on an adjusted basis. Is this sufficient for the company to be standalone, or is currency dramatically changing the outlook for automotive? Thank you.
Rickard, do you want to take this one?
Of course. Erik, as we have said also and we announced our ambition to do this separation, we have higher ambitions for automotive than the current performance. Yes, we have ended up in a more volatile environment maybe than we anticipated before, but we are managing through this. In our internal plans, when we look forward, we're still very confident that we will create a solid and profitable automotive business as we move forward. More details to come in a couple of weeks' time in Stockholm.
Thank you.
We will continue with a question from Daniela Costa at Goldman Sachs. Daniela, please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. My question relates to tariff impacts in Section 232, but first, I guess a clarification on the bridge on the cost. You have $23 million headwind, which I guess sounds quite small. Is it because you've been selling out of inventory? Is that repeatable in Q4? How do you size the direct and the indirect inflation coming from Section 232 going forward?
This is a CFO type of question. Susanne, please.
Hi Daniela. I think we are very pleased to see that we have a cost development which is only 23 negative, really flat. I think what you see is a lot of effort coming in from managing the cost variability, looking into what we have done with automating our manufacturing operation, and really driving a lot of cost initiatives, which is necessary from a long time in a negative decline. I think that is something that we see will continue to be a leverage that we can utilize moving forward. Talking about Section 232, I think what we are guiding now is to say that we anticipate that the majority of the tariffs, and also including Section 232, will be compensated and not ending up in our P&L.
Including suppliers' indirect impacts from.
Including that, yes.
Thank you. Got it. Thank you.
Thanks.
We will continue with a question from Andreas Koski at BNP Paribas. Andreas, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. Just a short one on the pre-buy effect in China. What was the impact? How many percentage points did it support the organic growth in this region? Thank you.
Rickard, please.
Yes. As you know, we normally don't disclose that many details around these things for a number of good reasons, and I'm going to stick to that also today. I'm not going to give you a percentage as such, but we do see that some of the organic growth that we report on the industrial side in the China region is somewhat inflated in the quarter due to these pre-buy impacts that we don't expect to see in the fourth quarter.
Okay, thank you.
Let's continue with a question from Rizk Maidi at Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. Thank you for the time. I just wanted for you, Rickard, maybe just to draw a picture on the demand. I think even if I look at China, it does seem that industrial distribution has had maybe perhaps a little bit better performance. Moving on to Europe, I think earlier this year you talked about some green shoots. If you could just give us an update, it looks like from today's commentary that things are stabilizing, not picking up. If you could have a comment as well on Americas, just to draw sort of an overall picture. Thanks.
All right. I will try to do that then. Starting with EMEA then, if we go down that path. As I mentioned, we do see some growth on the industrial side, especially in a few verticals such as in aerospace and marine. While I do sense that in general terms, we haven't seen a significant uptick in demand in EMEA yet. We're still waiting for that to come. We do feel more confident, though, that it has truly bottomed out. Activity levels are not yet picking up from that level. Turning to Americas, as I mentioned on the previous question, the growth there is primarily tariff-related, less so on volume. Aerospace and marine are some green shoots in that particular region. Industrial distribution is holding up okayish.
It's not growing, but it's holding up okayish, which is also important from a profitability point of view and a mix point of view. That's positive. Turning to China, where we do have a mid-single-digit organic growth for the group, the industrial business, as I mentioned, industrial distribution is contributing to that. I need to remind you that it's also a reclassification that would happen. That's why the numbers may look more stronger than they actually are. Even if I compare like for like, it's a solid and somewhat growing performance also in distribution. We see that in China. I already commented on the renewable energy area. For automotive, if I just touch on that briefly, we are very pleased to see that we continue at a very solid growth rate when it comes to EVs in that particular region.
India and Southeast Asia, primarily driven by very good activity levels in economies such as India itself, which is the majority, and also like Vietnam, which is a smaller contributor to us, where India is the most important market for us in that particular region. In general, good demand levels across industrial. I mentioned two that stand out a little bit more than others. That is agriculture and materials handling. I do believe that the tariff situation, the uncertainty, is having a negative impact on global demand. We do see some signs of bottoming out, as I mentioned, but we still wait for the uptick to come back. As you also heard, Susanne, when we guided for Q4, we sense that the underlying kind of dynamics of the business in Q3 was roughly the same as in Q2.
Our best estimate is that that will be also the case for Q4.
Thank you.
Let's continue with a question from John Kim at Deutsche Bank. John, please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. I'm wondering if you could give us a little bit more color on the planned listing of your Indian asset. Any color there would be helpful. Thanks.
Rickard, do you want to bring some color on that?
I'd be happy to. It's a massive achievement in such, but it's not so much to say. It's a kind of odd comment. I hear that myself. It is a complicated effort to split that business in India, both from a legal point of view and also get all the authority permits and tax permits. That has been a rather sizable effort. Now we have concluded that everything is set and done. We have a new entity that we are ready then to also put forward to the Indian Stock Exchange, and that's going to happen sometime between now and year-end. I think that's as much as I can say.
Okay, thank you.
Very good. We will continue with a question from Tim Lee at Barclays. Tim, please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe a little bit more on the Section 232. Do you have any estimate on the cost impact from Section 232 alone, both directly and indirectly? Have you already made any price hike because of Section 232, and is there any pushback from customers in terms of further price increase? I just want to see whether there will be any comments on the further effectiveness on pricing activities going forward. Thank you.
Let's have Susanne answering this question.
Talking about the tariff environment, I think that is really one of the uncertainties that makes the demand still not really picking up. I think the biggest impact of the tariff is the lack of recovery that we see. Generally speaking, we have been successful in managing the tariff costs. We have worked through the Section 232 implications for SKF, and we anticipate to be able to take that through with the majority also to our customers. We, of course, have a close relationship with our customers in this, and we are normally applying surcharges while this situation remains.
If I may add a few more comments. Of course, we are having intense discussions with our customers on these items, and we're not just using price as the only mechanism to compensate for this. We're also pushing forward activities to drive more of our assortment to become USMCA compliant as an example. That's another key component in this. When it comes to general price increases, the market cannot absorb more general price increases, but we will continue to do selective price increases. That has nothing to do with tariffs, but more where we see that we can drive price, especially when we come with new innovation and when we work together and co-create with our customers, we make sure that we also take our fair share of the value that's being created. That will continue.
Thank you. We will continue with a question from James Moore at Rothschild & Redburn. James, please go ahead.
Thanks, Sophie. Morning, everyone. Thanks for the time. Could I ask a question on the new Specialized Industrial Solutions business, which you basically renamed Independent and Emerging and brought in Hans Landin? It's going to be like not a third, but kind of towards that, the future industrial company. I wondered if you could say two things, really. What are you changing to improve the profitability of Specialized? As Specialized is mostly field lubrication and aerospace, could you say where your confidence is the greatest amongst those three for profitability uplift and potentially what you're doing to drive that?
I will ask Rickard to address this one.
I will give you a cliffhanger. You're right. We are excited about what we then call the new name of this entity. There are very important and exciting business units that make this up, with very solid growth. Some of them are further down the road and have already done some to reestablish their profitability levels and are now in full gear growth. Others are still doing some kind of work to further enhance profitability before ramping up their growth. This is a key component in our future industrial story and growth journey that we foresee. It is going to be a part and something that we will share in more detail when we are going to put more color to our future industrial business on November 11th. That is the cliffhanger.
You will see more there, but clearly we drive them now much more as fully owned subsidiaries of this company than what they were before and with no overhead anymore.
Thank you, Rickard.
We should also just clarify what is included in specialized industrial solutions for those of you that have not seen the press release that we had out a few weeks ago. It's aerospace, it's seals, lubrication, and our magnetic business. As Rickard said, we will come back more on that topic, the interesting topic of specialized industrial solutions at the Capital Markets Day. We will now continue with a question from Anders Idborg at ABG Sundal Collier. Anders, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. You are guiding CapEx to come down, but you are guiding extraordinary items or items affecting comparability to come up. I was just wondering, could you give us an early look at how we should think about those two items trending in 2026?
Susanne, can you please respond to this question?
I almost repeat what Rickard had said around cliffhangers. You're right, the CapEx, we took down that outlook for the full year from SEK 4.5 billion to around SEK 4 billion. We also say that we sequentially increase the one-off cost into quarter four. When we meet at the Capital Markets Day, we will provide some further clarity on how we look upon CapEx moving forward, but also how we look upon the one-off costs and the rightsizing that we are doing, including the spin of automotive.
Okay, can't wait. Thank you.
We are marketing our Capital Markets Day as you can hear. We hope that you all can be there or tune in. We will continue with a question from Andre Kukhnin at UBS. Andre, please go ahead.
Hey, morning. Thank you very much for taking my question. Can I just start with a quick clarification first? On the change of accounting for consignment stock, could you just explain to us what that is and whether that took place in this quarter or was that the quarter a year ago, and the impact of it?
Susanne, can you add some light here?
Thank you. Sorry, I was obviously not clear previously. When you compare the cash flow this quarter three compared to last quarter three line by line, I just wanted to remind everyone that last year we did the classification, which is not impacting the change of net working capital as such, but line by line. We changed the reporting of consignment stock last year, and by that increased our inventories with SEK 1.5 billion. We also increased our accounts payable with SEK 1.5 billion. The net net was zero, but line by line makes it more difficult to compare this year's line by line in the net working capital. Thank you for the question.
Andre, you had another question as well there.
Sorry to try to squeeze through, but really, I wanted to actually understand the cadence of profitability into Q4 versus Q3 a bit better. Just thinking about, obviously, normal seasonality, I think you see sort of 70-80 bps decline normally in Q4 versus Q3. We've got, I guess, savings stepping up from the program that you launched the last quarter. I also note FX of SEK 650 million, I think, guidance versus less than SEK 500 million in Q3. The tariff pass-through, is that margin neutral, or are you passing through the actual cost increase? Hence, there is a bit of a margin headwind. I just wanted to understand whether Q4 will be a normal seasonality or whether a combination of these factors will do it one way or the other.
Rickard, do you want to address this one?
I will try to. I think the answer is yes. We do foresee that it's going to be normal seasonality in Q4, so you should bear that into your estimates. The negatives that we foresee in the coming quarter is clearly FX. As I mentioned, probably going to have, if we remain at current levels, a negative SEK 600 million impact in Q4. Tariffs, we do say that we largely compensate. We believe that we're going to do that also in Q4, but that largely means there is some net negative impact in the numbers, but largely compensate. On the positives, we do see that we will continue with our cost control. We will continue to drive our portfolio management and price mix activities as we have done in the past.
We do foresee that we will continue to yield benefits from regionalization and from world-class manufacturing, and probably some, but not significant, also contribution from the rightsizing initiative. Most of that will happen later, though. All in all, we do expect normal seasonality.
That's really helpful. Thank you very much.
Let's continue with a question from Klas Bergelind at Citi. Klaas, please go ahead.
Thank you, Sophie. Hi, Rickard and Susanne. Klas at Citi. I was late on the call. Lots going on, so you might have covered some of these. First on North America, I was expecting higher growth driven by the pricing there to compensate for the tariffs. It seems at least versus what I thought that underlying volumes are weaker. Can you please talk through, Rickard, what the end market sort of weakened quarter on quarter? I mean, commercial vehicles, heavy machinery, and have you seen any improvement as we went through the quarter into October? Just curious about the underlying volume development in North America, please.
Right. Yes, Klas, we did touch on this a bit earlier, but I'll try to give you some color to this. When it comes to the numbers I report for Americas, it's both industrial and automotive. We do see growth in our industrial business. I have answered another question today where I do acknowledge that the growth in industrial is driven by price mix. We're still in negative volume territory, also on the industrial side in Americas. Some areas that are growing nicely in Americas in this quarter are primarily aerospace and marine that have very strong performance. As you mentioned, in automotive, we have seen a weak demand when it comes to commercial vehicles in the quarter. Automotive is also reporting negative organic growth in the region.
Okay. When it comes to, yes, one follow-up, I'm sure you talked about it, Section 232, a lot of questions on this. Have you given any sort of clarity around the share of steel and aluminum out of your COGS at the moment, i.e., the share that is subject to the 50% tariff? We can do, I mean, we're stumbling a little bit in the dark, right? We're trying to do our own models. If you have said anything on that, Rickard.
Susanne, can you please respond to this question?
We are not disclosing the share as you're asking for. At this point, we are mainly saying that we will continue to compensate the majority of this out into the market.
When we say largely compensate also for Q4, that includes what we know right now related to also Section 232.
In the current scope, it is. Yeah.
Okay. Through the final one, promise to be quick, is on the spin-out costs. I think when I spoke with Sophie this morning that you're guiding for higher one-off quarter- over- quarter, I'm trying to understand the composition relative to world-class manufacturing, spin-out cost, and also you had that sort of non-cash write-down, I think, Susanne, in the third quarter. I'm just, are we going to see any more? I'm just trying to understand the level of one-offs into the fourth quarter, please.
Yeah, Susanne, do you want to?
Yeah, I can take that. You're right. We said that sequentially we will increase it in quarter four over quarter three. I also want to just make you pay attention to our announcement that we are closing a factory in Argentina. That is something that will also come into quarter four as a one-off charge. That, together with a continued high level of effort into the automotive separation activities, are the main reasons for that.
Thank you.
Very good. We will continue with a question from John Kim, Deutsche Bank. John, please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for the second round of Q&A. I'm wondering if you could just give a bit of color on your rightsizing, whether your headcount reduction or optimization has gone to plan versus the initial guide. I'll leave it there.
Right. I'll take this one. The answer is yes. We are progressing well in line with our internal plan, and a lot of the necessary negotiations in the different jurisdictions or countries have been completed, and the vast majority of people impacted have been informed. We're now going to start to see the staff reduction to happen. As I said a couple of times, we do not anticipate a significant impact on our cost base or positive contribution to the cost in the fourth quarter. There will be some, but it will not be significant. The vast majority will come as we enter into 2026.
Okay, thank you.
We have the final question from the line of Seb Kueene at RBC. Seb, please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question. You raised the tax guidance to 28% from 26%, and this is not because of any impairments not being tax deductible, but more because of your regional profitability structure. Do we now have to assume that the tax rate will also be higher in the coming seasons or coming years? Could you split that between industrial and automotive? Is it more industrial profits being in high tax countries or more the automotive side? Thank you very much.
Susanne, that's a CFO type of question.
It is indeed. Thank you for the question. Yes, we raised the outlook for the full-year tax rate from 26% to 28%. All of that is actually explained by FX. We have some of our entities with the functional reporting in another currency than their local. This is something that is impacting the tax as well. That is a reason fully for us having that. This also means that this is not necessarily something that you can assume is going as we move along, but having this impact where we have big FX implications as such. Talking about the two standalone companies and their relative tax rates, we have not disclosed that yet. I leave that for now.
Sorry, the acoustics were a bit bad. It's more of a one-off FX issue rather than an underlying structural regional split of profits.
Correct.
Thank you so much.
Thanks.
Very good. That was the final question. Rickard, please go ahead with your concluding remarks.
Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you all for joining us for this call and for your energizing and engaging questions. As you heard us talk about, we are continuing to maneuver in a rather challenging and volatile environment. With that said, though, we are sticking to our strategy, and we try to deliver on what we said that we're going to do. That recipe is working. We continue to report resilient and somewhat improved earnings that we are pleased about. We are also happy that we now, after eight consecutive quarters of negative organic growth, enter into a more growth territory, and especially that is driven this time by our industrial business. We don't yet say that we've seen the shift and the uptick in the market, and the activity levels are rather unchanged.
We are happy also with the progress that we'll make in the strategic transformation of the company. With this, I thank you for your attention, and I hope to see you, many of you, either in person or if you join through digital means in a few weeks' time in Stockholm. I wish you a good day, and thank you so much.