drive our transformation from a position of strength. The level of earnings during the last years has been record high. We have achieved a 40% global market share in wear-resistant steels, and we have taken the lead in the green transformation of the steel industry. We plan for major investments in the Nordic operations, putting SSAB in a superior cost position. The blast furnaces and coking plants will be closed, and our CO₂ emissions will largely be eliminated. Pilot shipments of fossil-free steel to customers already began in 2021. We will continue to increase the share of high-strength steels and premium steels. This will be done with industry-leading profitability and create value for all stakeholders. Join us when we're transforming the future of steel.
Good morning, and welcome to this presentation of the SSAB Q2 report. My name is Per Hillström. I'm Head of Investor Relations at SSAB. Presenting today, we have Martin Lindqvist, President and CEO, and also CFO, Leena Craelius. If we look at... Oh, sorry. If we look at the agenda, here we have the agenda. Martin will start with a brief overview of the quarter, then Leena will come with some more details on the financials, and then Martin will close up with the outlook and a summary. At the end, we will have time for your questions. By that, please, Martin, start.
Thank you, Per, and good morning, and welcome to this quarterly presentation. If we start with some highlights, we saw somewhat higher earnings in Q2 compared to Q1, but of course, a big drop compared to the very strong or exceptionally strong second quarter last year. We saw continued good results in special steels in Americas, but we also saw the European market weaken during the quarter and get, getting an uncertain outlook for the rest of the year. In order to meet that and mitigate that, we focus on two things: cash flow generation, I will come back to that, and then actions to lower cost. We have during the last couple of years, built a flexible system, or a more flexible system, where we can take away temporary employees.
We can do some structural changes, we can use work hour banks, we can reduce on new hires and other fixed costs. The target is to reduce on a group level, costs by more than SEK 500 million on an annual basis. We saw a continued good trend in safety, and this is lost time injury frequency per million working hours, including contractors. We are just north of one lost time injury per million working hour, which is a good development compared to the last number of years. We continue to focus on the ambition to become the safest steel company in the world. We continue to generate decent cash flow. We had a decent cash flow generation during the second quarter as well.
The reason why the balance sheet is slightly weaker than the end of 2022 was that we paid out more 9 billion SEK in dividend during Q2. As said, strong balance sheet within our financial targets. If we look at special steels, earnings continued on a good level. We had an operating margin or an EBIT margin of 23%. We saw in Europe for strip-related products, a slightly weaker market, or we expect slightly weaker market than in Q2. No big changes, but some hesitation. Overall, a good and strong performance. Americas continued with earnings on a good level. We had a margin, EBIT margin of 34% during the quarter. The shipments were somewhat lower than in Q1, and we experienced some bad weather conditions during the end of Q2.
We had some thunderstorms and other things happening. We missed the shipping targets with two days or 1 week. That will come back in Q3 then. That led to somewhat lower shipments in the 2nd quarter compared to our internal plan. We saw stable market pricing during the 1st half of the year, so on good levels, and stability for plate prices. In Europe, we had a better result than previous quarter, of course, a big drop compared to the very strong 2nd quarter of last year. Here we see the measures to become more cost-effective or to lower cost and meet the slower European market. We had stable production, we had stable shipments. Automotive advanced high-strength steels continue on a high level.
We also see that we had very low shipments to construction-related products, that is also visible in Ruukki Construction. We saw spot prices moving down during Q2, and that will be visible in Q3 in our P&L due to the normal lag. If we look at Tibnor, we met weaker market conditions. Q2 last year, we had record high earnings, including inventory gains. This quarter, we had inventory losses, when we reevaluated the inventories. Here, we also do measures to lower costs, in line with what we do in SSAB Europe. Ruukki Construction, we usually see a seasonal improvement compared to the winter season in the summer year, half year, so to say, and we saw that, but that was much less pronounced than a normal year.
We do cost savings there, and we saw some of it visible already in Q2, but the majority will come in Q3 and Q4. As said, all in all, on a yearly basis, we aim to reduce costs with more than SEK 500 million. If you look at the transition, the green transition, and sum up Q2, we continue to ramp up the production and the sales of SSAB Zero with big and huge interest from the market. We formally, in the board, took the decision of the transformation in Oxelösund during end of May, and we have started a project to explore eventual possibilities for DRI production in Raahe in the future.
This fantastic picture is from end of May or beginning of or in June, when the TTC meeting was held in Luleå. We had Secretary Blinken and some other high-rank politicians and officials visiting our hybrid plant and giving us the opportunity to explain what we are doing and what we are aiming for. If we look at the plan to convert SSAB into a fossil-free steel company, I would say that we are on track. We are ramping up the zero steel production with the ambition to produce and sell at least 40,000 tons this year.
We took the decision end of Q2 to convert Oxelösund, and the next step will be the two mini mills, one in Raahe and one in Luleå, and those decisions will be taken 2024 and 2026. If we look at what we are aiming for, this is repeating a bit from the capital markets day. We took the policy decisions in January 2022 to convert SSAB into fossil-free steel production. In Luleå, we are aiming for building a mini mill with melt shop, a hot strip mill, finishing and shipping, cold mill complex, an integrated process with melt shop, hot strip mill, cold mill complex in one facility. There, we are very dependent on grid connections and electricity. We have discussions with the relevant authorities when we will get that possibility to get electricity.
In Raahe, we are also planning to build a mini-mill and close the existing blast furnaces and strip mill and coke plants and so on. We are also there build aiming to build an integrated process with steelmaking and direct rolling in one process line. We are also, as said, looking into the option to add the hydrogen DRI production. Here we have positive signals on grid connections and electricity. I would say, overall, we are following our plan. The challenge is, of course, grid connections and electricity. With that, Per.
Yes, very good, Martin. Thank you. We invite Leena here to discuss a bit more the details of the financials. Please, Leena, go ahead.
Thank you, Per. Let's start with the group overview, shipments, revenue, and EBITDA. As already Martin mentioned, the shipments were slightly lower during Q2 compared to Q1, 15 kilotons to be exact. Here, the graph is summarizing the steel shipments, it looks like we would be on the similar level compared to previous year, but we need to add here the Tibnor and Ruukki Construction volumes, which is then illustrating that we are on a lower level, as already mentioned, in the previous slides. Revenue trend, well in line with the shipments, quarter-on-quarter, and yes, lower than last year, mainly driven by the 12% lower average prices this year compared to last year. No need to remind that last year was exceptionally good.
EBITDA development, on the other hand, slight improvement in Q2 compared to Q1. Let's dive into more details. Quarter-on-quarter, operating result, improvement at 230 million SEK. Prices compensating for the higher cost, mainly improvement in SSAB Europe. Maybe to mention that during Q1, we were delivering spot deals that were impacting the average price. We had no spot deals during Q2, so the product mix was improving on top of the underlying price development. Prices in this graph does include the positive impact of the FX, which on the other hand, is then opposite impact in the variable cost. Inventory adjustments, inventory value went down, and some higher cost when it comes to CO2 emission rights. Volume, minor impact, negative impact, quarter-on-quarter.
Fixed cost, higher during Q2, and that is mainly seasonal impact with summer workers, and also the salary index impact is coming through in Q2 in the salaries, and some higher cost of materials and services. Minor positive impact of FX. The capacity utilization also contributing positively to the result, so the utilization rate was slightly higher during Q2. Comparison to the exceptional year last year, Q2, we can see that the price is clearly lower. This is mainly Europe division and Americas, while Special Steel division is still holding prices rather well compared to last year level. Here also, the effects have an impact, a positive impact in prices, while negative impact in the variable cost analysis.
To remind that last year we were building up inventories with rather expensive raw materials, and we were building safety stocks, and this year we are actually reducing the inventory. In the risk analysis, it is then impacting negatively. Also some higher CO2 costs compared to last year. Fixed cost, here we have some higher FDEs, higher salaries, and also we can see that the cost of external materials and services is higher. On a total level, this is around 7% higher fixed cost compared to last year. The capacity utilization here also positive. We can mention that during this year, during the first half of the year, the production has been more stable compared to last year. Solid cash flow, already mentioned. Earnings, as illustrated in the previous slides, good performance in the working capital.
Positive impact, mainly due to inventories, you can see last year it gave a big negative impact with the piling up of the inventories. Somewhat higher maintenance cost. The other line here is related to purchase of CO2 emission rights. Financial items, positive with interest income. Taxes on a similar level as last year. Strategic expenditures, lower than last year, but this will pick up now with the Oxelösund conversion project going forward. Positive SEK 61 here is related to a sale of G&G mining entity in Australia, deal done by Special Steel division. The dividend close to SEK 9 billion at the bottom of the table. End of Q2, still very strong financial position.
Net cash position, SEK 11.7 billion, and the net debt/equity ratio -17, which is in line with our financial targets, ±20%. In June, we were issuing two new sustainability-linked bonds in line with our EMTN program. 5 years maturity, a total of SEK 2.1 billion, and at the same time, we were buying back around SEK 900 million worth of bonds, so the net of SEK 1.2 billion. We were rather moving the short-term bond portfolio to be longer term. Raw materials. The iron ore has been fluctuating, but all in all, during Q2 it has been rather stable. The consumption cost has been rather stable, somewhat lower compared to quarter-on-quarter.
The outlook with the iron ore is that it will remain to be stable and somewhat lower cost in Q3. Coking coal, it was peaking during last year, has been leveling out. We had expensive raw material inventory, but as a trend, we can see that it's also coming downwards in cost and volume. The outlook for Q3 is that it will be somewhat lower. To bear in mind that the PCI coal inventory we still have rather high, and compared to the latest market prices, it is still rather high cost for us. Scrap costs stabilizing, and the outlook is that it will remain stable also going forward. This slide, we haven't updated for quite some time.
We still anticipate the cash need for this year to be around SEK 11 billion. Compared to last year, the increase in the CapEx is related to Oxelösund conversion project. This is actually my last slide, just to remind that we are starting the annual plant maintenances during Q3. Q1, Q2, we didn't have these big maintenances, but in SSAB Europe, we are starting maintenance in Raahe, Luleå, Hämeenlinna, and Borlänge. In Special Steels, Oxelösund is starting their annual maintenance at the end of Q3, and naturally, this will have an impact to the outlook when it comes to volumes.
Yes, thank you, Leena. Then we can invite Martin back again to close the presentation part.
Thank you, Per. If we then look into the third quarter and look at the market segments and start with heavy transport, we see signs of slowdown in heavy trucks in Europe. We see very healthy demand from rail cars and shipbuilding in the U.S., so overall, I would say neutral quarter-over-quarter. Automotive, we see structurally growing market for advanced high-strength steels, but we also see signs of slowdown in car demand, and that is, of course, due to inflation and higher interest rates, but overall, I would say quarter-on-quarter, neutral. Construction machinery, good demand in North America, somewhat weaker demand in Europe, and China continue to be weak demand, so somewhere between weak and neutral. Material handling, somewhat cautious sentiment within mining, a stable demand in recycling. Overall, I would say also neutral.
Energy being strong, good demand from wind power and other renewables, and that is, especially, I would say, for our US operations. Construction continues to be weak, and we expect, the Nordic construction market to continue to be weak throughout 2023. The swing factor, service centers. In US, we see low inventories in the supply chain, but we also see service centers being hesitant due to price levels, but overall, very low inventories. In, in Europe, the inventories are more normal, and we see a wait-and-see mood among service centers, so somewhere between neutral and weak. Overall, neutral to slightly weakening, segments with the exception of, energy.
We sum that up then to our outlook, we say that demand in Europe weakened during Q2, and there is a risk of a more pronounced downturn than normal in Q3, because we typically see a seasonal slowdown. Demand on the heavy plate market in North America is expected to continue at a good level, and for high-strength steels, the market has been good. It will continue to be good, but we see some small signs from customers of a more cautious sentiment. When we sum it up, for special steels, we expect somewhat lower shipments and prices. For Europe, we expect significantly lower shipments and lower prices, and for Americas, we expect somewhat higher shipments and stable prices. To sum it up, before we open up for Q&A, continued good trend in safety, weaker European market.
We have taken measures to reduce costs. We continue to have good cash flow generation. We should continue to generate good cash flow and a good cash conversion. We have a strong financial position. We are following our plans when it comes to the green transition, with the decision in Oxelösund, the ramp-up of SSAB Zero, and so on. So far, so good when it comes to our green transition. With that, Per.
Thank you, Martin. Then we can prepare for the Q&A session. As always, I just like to remind the people calling in, it's perfectly fine to ask more than one question, but please state them one at a time to make the process smoother. With that, please, operator, can you present the instructions for the Q&A session, please?
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. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one and one. We will now go to your first question. One moment, please. Your first question comes from the line of Alain Gabriel from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, everyone. two questions from my side, so I'll start with the first one. Martin, your outlook and price volume comments for special steel were not particularly bullish for Q3. How confident are you about the margin resilience of that business in the next two quarters of the year? If we look at 2021, the EBITDA run rate of that business was half of what you have achieved in Q2. How different is the environment now versus then? That's the first question.
I'm very confident that we will have more stable markets, margins in special steels than Europe as an example. They will be on a higher level over time and much more stable. We have seen that after a very strong couple of quarters, we see some hesitations on the European market, and I guess that's due to high interest rates and inflation and so on. Overall, underlying good demand, and structurally, the demand will continue to improve. We have had, when it comes to the Q&T products, we have had challenges to meet the demand with production. We have been producing at very high levels.
It's more the strip-related parts of the special steel business where we see, some hesitation.
Thank you. That's clear. The second question is on the gearing ratio. The net cash to equity ratio is at 17%, which is very close to the 20% lower band of your gearing target. Should we see the 20% as a trigger point for the buyback?
No, I said we have the mandate now. For me, it's more about timing. We will come back to that.
Thank you.
We have a decent balance sheet, and as said many times, we should, this business should continue to generate strong cash flows, independent of the business cycle.
Thanks.
Thank you. We will now go to your next question. Your next question comes from the line of Tristan Gresser from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good morning. Two questions from my side. The first one is on the plate business. You're guiding for stable prices and higher volumes there. The market environment seems to remain supportive.
Do you believe that the stability of this business and the prices we're seeing at the moment is due already to the increased demand from, higher infrastructure, renewable demand as well? Or have those pockets of demand yet to materialize? As of today, do you see any reason for those market dynamics to materially, deteriorate in coming quarters? That's my first question. Thank you.
No, I mean, we see a strong underlying demand, and the U.S. plate market is structurally undersupplied. What you typically would see in a situation like this, with a strong U.S. dollar currency, or a strong currency, would be higher import. We see some import, but I think this Made in Americas, these programs that are introduced, gives us confidence in the coming quarters as well. We expect, as I said, well, I mean, the visibility we have and the order intake and the order book we have for Americas is for Q3, and there we see stability when it comes to pricing and volumes.
Have you seen a pick up...
If anything, I mean, if you look at the underlying sentiment on the market, it remains positive.
Yeah. Have you seen a pickup from infrastructure and wind power over, let's say, the past two quarters, or?
I think the pickup, there are a lot of especially offshore wind projects being planned, and that will materialize. We see a strong demand from energy and, but, the big projects are yet to materialize.
Okay. That's clear. My second question is more on the decarbonization. I mean, we've seen some of your peers unlocking very large CapEx and now OpEx subsidies as well. I know you're still in discussion for the next DRI plant, but is there any reason why you would not ask for some level of public funding more directly for the DRI plant or EAF? Is that in the cards when you make that decision?
We have asked for help with to develop the DRI plants and have also got them from the European Union, some positive signs. We are working with that question, and it is of course an important topic, but I think the most important topic is to be quick on the market and to the market and be able to supply the demand we see and the interest we see. That's also why we introduced this SSAB Zero product, where we produce steel, not from virgin iron ore, but from scrap, but without any emissions. There has been a huge interest on that.
We need to ramp up that, and we need to continue our journey, according to our internal plans, because the demand on the market is definitely there.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now go to your next question. Your next question comes from the line of Tom Young from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning. Thanks very much for taking our questions, two from me as well. The first one, just on the cost savings. You're trying to get to a SEK 500 million annualized run rate. Maybe if you can just help, first with the timing, and then two, just how structural those elements are. I mean, I already see in Q2 there's SEK 20 million in Ruukki Construction. Maybe you can just give an idea of how much of the additional cost savings are coming in Q3 and then more in Q4, and then just an idea on whether those are mostly temporary or more structural. That's the first question.
What we have done during the last couple of years is to set up the organization and the operations with, I would say, compared to the history, at least, a larger portion of temporary employees. We meet high demand situations with more temporary employees, and then when the market softens a bit, we don't prolong those contracts. We have also created a system in Sweden with time banks, so we save time, or utilize the time more than normal in a strong market, and then reduces the working hours and cost during a lower market. Our ambition has been the last number of years, and that will continue because it's so important, is to increase flexibility, and internally, we call it lift the low point profit.
That's our one of the main targets we have. In a, I would say, a rigid system and a volatile industry, to be as agile as possible to be able to adjust costs. The ambition is to reduce cost with a bit more than SEK 500 million on an annual basis. The full run rate, I think, will be seen in Q4. We saw some effects in Ruukki Construction. There they also do structural changes, because we expect the construction market to continue to be weak throughout at least this year.
In other parts of the organization, it is a combination, but it goes for the whole group. The majority will be in Europe, Tibnor and Ruukki Construction for obvious reasons, but also on group level and in other divisions. It is more about utilizing the systems, the system we have built in recent years.
Okay. Got you. The second question, just on sort of inventories, actually. Interestingly, you mentioned they look normal in Europe, which is probably a bit higher than I think some of your peers have been flagging. Just wondering whether that comment is very Nordic specific, or you think it's true more broadly? Also how you think about inventory levels at customers as well, so not just service centers?
clearly, real demand is not great, as you say. Do you think customer inventory levels are low, or do you think they're also fairly normalized?
I wouldn't say that they are higher than normal, at least. I would say maybe on the low side. What we comment is what we call the swing factor in terms of steel service centers, and they are typically opportunistic. They try to adjust inventories in line with what they expect for steel prices. I would say our comment when it comes to steel service centers, it's on a European level and what we have read and what we have understood. In U.S., it's for the U.S. steel service center market, where we see that because these are official statistics, the inventories are on the low side.
That's very clear. Thank you. I'll turn it back.
Thank you. We will now go to our next question. One moment, please. Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Mann, Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning, Martin and team. Just wanted to ask a little bit more on the outlook for Europe in particular. I suppose I'm thinking back to last year, where in the second half of the year, when apparent demand was very weak, we saw some capacity closures and sort of production curtailment in Europe. Do you think we might see something similar this time around, or is it too early to see? Do we need to see what real demand is doing after the sort of seasonal summer break in the third quarter? That's my first question. Thanks.
I mean, without having the answer to that question, just allow me to speculate a bit. I mean, what has changed now compared to a number of years ago is that the European steel industry have higher marginal costs because of buying emission rights. I think the interest to adjust production in line with the underlying demand is bigger. No one is really hunting these marginal volumes to the same extent as they did a couple of years back. My guess would be that we will see, if the market deteriorates, we will see capacity adjustments in the European steel community. We also need to remember that we have also due to this very terrible war in Ukraine, we have lost a lot of imports from Russia and other parts.
We will also see a ramp down of semis coming out of Russia until the end of 2024. I think maybe the volatility on the European market for those reasons have decreased a bit.
Thank you. The second question, just on working capital. You had a release this quarter. How should we think about it for the full year, and for the next couple of quarters? Thank you.
You should think about, we call it cash conversion internally, and we have a high target for this year when it comes to cash conversion. The profit should, to a very large extent, come out as free cash flow. We went into this year with high raw material inventories, because a year ago, or a bit more than a year ago, when the war broke out, we, as anyone, everyone else, previously bought a lot of raw material from Russia, and we stopped that the same day as the war broke out, and we had to look for other suppliers. When you do that, you're not used to using different type of PCI coals and so on, so you need to test it out, then you need...
What we did at least, buy more than our needs, and that's why we entered this year with high raw material inventories. They you should expect them to normalize during this year, so that will give the possibility to reduce working capital further.
Thank you.
Thank you. We will now go to your next question. Your next question comes from the line of Christian Kopfer from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator. Good morning. Just a few questions from my side. Firstly, just so I interpret your guide, your short, called short-term guidance, fairly here. My read is that if I take into account the price guidance and the raw material guidance for special steels and Americas, it seems that you expect rather, you know, stable margins sequentially in the Q3 year.
Mm.
Right. That's good. For Europe, is it the same or should underlying margins come down a little bit because of?
No, we have seen, as you know, Christian, spot prices coming down in Q3. Then, of course, the summer season in Europe is always hard to predict. I mean, July-
Yeah
... means that, the Nordic market is very slow, and then followed by August, which is typically slower than in Europe due to vacation. Then, it all starts again on a, call it, a more normalized level in September. Spot prices have come down during the second quarter, and that will be, with the lag we have, visible in the P&L in Q3.
Yeah, that's right. Okay. All right, I mean, specialty steels are delivering very, very strong profitability. What do you think, if anything, would bring that profitability down in next year? Is it primarily about Q&T demand, or what do you think?
No, when we look at this midterm and long term, we see a structural growth of Q&T demand, and because customers want to have more effective products that last longer, that can load more and so on. The structural demand is growing over time, and it has been growing with 7%-8%, if you go back a number of years and take that, annualize that. We expect that to continue. What we also see, unfortunately, is due to the war, of course, increasing demand for armored plate, and so we will need to have with the production system where we are producing at for plate Q&T, at maximum, we need to figure out a smart way to deal with that demand.
As you know, Armox, as an example, has very good margins for us, but requires longer lead times and takes more production. It will be a balancing between different product groups. When it comes to Q&T, I'm still very positive and the underlying demand is strong. It can vary, of course, between a quarter or two, but the underlying demand, we expect to continue to grow in line with what we have seen historically. That would speak for the possibility to have good and stable margins.
That's very good. Thank you very much, Martin.
Thank you. We will now go to your next question. Your next question comes from the line of Bastian Synagowitz from DB. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, all. 2 quick questions left from my side here, the first one is also on the 3rd quarter outlook. I just wanted to follow up on costs, where you single out the cost relief from coking coal, I guess there should be some relief from iron ore in Europe and then scrap in the U.S. as well, which you don't mention. I'm wondering, have you already realized part of most of the iron ore price decline, which you show on your charts here? Maybe you can put that into context for us. That is my first question.
I mean, I think we guide for a slightly lower raw material cost or stable raw material cost. We... You never know. I mean, scrap prices are set every month, so you really don't know. What we guide for is slightly lower raw material prices.
Okay. just to be 100% clear, I suppose you have not yet seen the major benefit from the lower iron ore prices, which you are showing-
We have a lag of between a month to two months. What we are, though, saying is that due to what I discussed earlier, the inventory buildup of especially PCI coal, we will not see that effect yet, because we are still consuming PCI coal that we bought a year ago.
Got you. Okay, sounds good. My second question is with regards to mix in Europe. Typically, color coated used to be a good support factor for you, into the third quarter. I'm wondering, how does your third quarter order book for color coated compare versus the one, for example, you had last year, just given the softness in construction? Will you still see a relatively decent support in mix, or how does mix look like in the third quarter?
Well.
First and second.
Typically, we see that, but with the weaker construction market, that help is less pronounced than a normal year. We already saw that in Q3 last year, because the construction sector was slowing down, and then it has been gradually slowing down. We are, I mean, compared to a normal year, you will see less pronounced help in mix from the construction segment, because they are the ones taking color-coated. Q3 last year, we started to see the slowdown, but there were still projects in the pipeline. They will come back, but what we are planning for, as I said, is the construction market to be, continue to be on a low level or be tough during the rest of this year. That's our planning horizon.
If we are wrong, we would be happy, but that's what we are planning for.
Okay. Well, thanks for the color. Maybe one very quick follow-up, if I may. Just on the volume side in Europe, where you talk about a possibly weaker third quarter than normal, and let's say normal is typically around, say, -12%, -15%. I'm wondering, is there a risk in your eyes where you see your numbers falling significantly short of that level, i.e., -15% at the upper end? What is your current order book telling you? I appreciate there's a lot of uncertainty, but maybe there's some early-stage color you could give us, when it comes to the amplitude.
No, I don't really see that risk, to be honest.
Okay, perfect. Thanks, Martin.
Thank you. We will now go to your next question. One moment, please. Your next question comes from the line of Moses Ola from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you very much for taking my question. I just wanted to focus on your utilization rates. In Q2, we've seen stable to higher capacity utilization rates, but how should we expect this to trend into year-end, and the potential impact on net costs, obviously guided for lower raw material costs, but potential fixed cost impacts from lower utilization, second half versus first half? I'll ask my second question after.
No, I mean, as Leena alluded to, we will have the planned maintenance outages during the second half of the year. We will have that in the Nordic system. We will start in Q3. We will have it in Q4 as well. We will have it in Americas as well. We have that every second year. We will have Montpelier in Q4. Apart from that, you should expect us, or at least we are expecting to have stable and decent production. Of course, adjust to the market situation. Nothing abnormal, I would say.
Okay, thank you very much. The only other question from me, what are you currently seeing in terms of import penetration in Europe, specifically, from Asia, China, currently?
Imports have increased, during the year, and we expect them to be on a higher level also going forward. What we can see now into Q3.
Mm.
A bit more supply on imports coming.
Is that versus Q2 or year-on-year?
That's the question.
Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. We will now go to your next question. Your question comes from Maxime Kogge from ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Sorry, good morning. My first question is on the SSAB Americas. You pointed to transportation issues that affected your shipments at the end of the quarter, and I was wondering whether that would be whether you would be able to catch up on that in the third quarter, and to what extent, I mean, this affect when incorporated in your guidance, what could be the impact of this of this resolution of transport issues?
I mean, to predict weather is always, of course, impossible, but we had some shipments that were supposed to go out in June that went out in July instead. I mean, it was a delay of a couple of days or up to weeks, so nothing major, but that affected shipments in U.S., and that was due to weather-related issues. I think it was some thunderstorms and some other things that made it impossible to ship out from, I think it was Mobile, standard material from Mobile.
Okay, okay. Yeah, if we look at energy prices, I mean, they are falling even more, especially in Sweden, and things are particularly low compared to what they used to be. They used some upside on that front, in your Q3 and Q4 results, or is it already totally included in the Q2 results?
As said, the spot prices in Europe and including the Nordics, fell in Q2. We typically see that in our quarterly prices than with a quarter of a lag, that's why we are guiding the way we are guiding. Of course, we have the order booked for a large part of Q3, we are quite confident in our guiding for the third quarter. When it comes to the fourth quarter, we haven't opened the order books yet.
All right. Perhaps lastly, you had a quite positive working capital variation in Q2. Does it mean that we should expect a big outflow then in Q3, or?
As said, we went into this year with quite substantial raw material inventories. I wouldn't say that you shouldn't expect a big outflow in Q3. We took away some of it in Q2 because we consumed it, and we will continue to consume, especially the PCI coal, where we had quite substantial inventories moving into this year. That's also, as said before, we are consuming now PCI coal that we bought in a very, I would say, turbulent market a year ago. We are still consuming PCI coal at a higher cost than the current market price. You expect us to continue to sweat out during the rest of this year.
Okay. Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you. We have one or two further questions. We will go to your next question. One moment, please. Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Mann, Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking a follow-up. I just wanted to ask on the green steel. I mean, looking at DRI at Raahe, I mean, everybody else is now I feel like SSAB led the way with HYBRIT and with kind of using green hydrogen to make the green DRI. Now the other, your competitors have really stepped up their investments and have obviously, you know, received these big government grants here. Is there a risk here that you get overtaken, or do you think the market is really looking for 100% fossil-free green steel, and that, you know, this strategy of your competitors for using natural gas first and hydrogen later is not really a concern for that 100% fossil-free steel?
I think the market as such are looking for more environmental friendly products. You need to remember that we are a fairly small steel company. I think I'm 100% convinced that the route we have chosen to and the hardcore definition we have chosen and what we have developed, will be very much appreciated by the market. You need to remember that we are already producing fossil-free steel and delivering fossil-free steel out of the pilot plant in Luleå. Now we have also introduced this SSAB Zero, steel with zero emissions. Produced from scrap, yes, but with zero Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. The bottleneck there is our own production capacity. How it will look in the future? Impossible to tell.
I guess there will be customers perfectly happy with using DRI produced by natural gas, and there will be other customers perfectly happy with using steel in parts of the world with produced from blast furnaces with coking coal. It will be a combination. Hopefully in the future, more and more customers will choose a more environmentally friendly produced steel. For SSAB and the segments and the customers we have, I think we will have a very good chance to continue to lead this development with the two products that we are aiming to continue to produce. The fossil-free from fossil-free sponge iron, or actually, fossil-free steel from a fossil-free value chain. The SSAB Zero products. That's what we are investing for.
We are already on the market with those products. Not to a large scale, and I said, SSAB Zero, we are aiming for 40,000 tons this year. Internally, I've been clear and said that it's not a bad thing to overachieve that target, that's the target we have for the year, is what we will deliver on.
Got it. If the DRI study for Raahe is, I see it's scheduled to be completed early next year. If that is a favorable outcome to the study, do you have any kind of idea on timeline for that item?
It's too early to say, but.
Sure
... to look into options and possibilities. You always need to have a plan A, a plan B, and then a plan C. That's what we always do, and that's what we are doing here as well. I mean, we have fairly substantial production in Northern Finland, and now we look at the possibility, how it would look to produce DRI there as well. That study, as you've mentioned, will be ready next year, and then we will come back with the outcome and the conclusions. It's too early to say.
Brilliant. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now go to the next question. Your next question comes from the line of Krishan Agarwal from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you very much for taking my question. Most of them have been answered. Two follow-up. The steel prices in Europe are coming down in Q3 as well as we speak, so is it fair to assume that the trading business in Tibnor will continue to see those negative wind fall losses from the price evaluation in Q3?
Sorry, we had a very bad connection, so I had a hard time hearing your question. Could you please repeat it again?
Yeah. My question is more on the Tibnor, that given the steel prices are still coming down in Europe, is it fair to assume that you will continue to realize those negative windfall losses in the Tibnor in Q3?
That will, of course, depend where the prices are heading in Q4, but I think the majority of the revaluation of the stock as we see it right now, was in Q2.
Understand. The final housekeeping question, I can see there's a little bit of a change in the maintenance schedule for special steel between Q3 and the Q4, more in the Q4 now. Is there any change in the operating plan, or?
No. We try to be as agile as possible when it comes to the planned maintenance and how we schedule them. They are typically, of course, better to have in Q4 and towards the later part of Q4, because in a normal year, you typically see a slowdown towards the end of the year. That, of course, is a bit complicated due to weather conditions and so on. And the planning horizon is, of course, I mean, you can't just decide one day to do it the next day, because you will need to have people, and you need to have equipment and so on.
We try to be as agile as possible and as part of the flexible system we are trying to build, do that when the market situation is, I mean, giving possibility, so to say. We need to do it every year. That's, that's the problem. We need to take this, the maintenance outages every year in order to run, continue to run, the mills 24/7, all year round. It's more a timing issue that we try to balance, which is not, it's not an agile system in that way, but we try to balance as much as possible.
Understood. Okay, that's it for my side.
Thank you. There are currently no further questions. I will hand the call back to Per Hillström.
Okay, thank you. I guess then we can conclude this, today's conference call. We would like to thank all participants. Good questions. Then wish you a nice day. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Transformation from a position of strength. The level of earnings during the last years has been record high. We have achieved a 40% global market share in wear-resistant steels, and we have taken the lead in the green transformation of the steel industry. We plan for major investments in the Nordic operations, putting SSAB in a superior cost position. The blast furnaces and coking plants will be closed, and our CO2 emissions will largely be eliminated. Pilot shipments of fossil-free steel to customers already began in 2021. We will continue to increase the share of high-strength steels and premium steels. This will be done with industry-leading profitability and create value for all stakeholders. Join us when we're transforming the future of steel!