[audio distortion] Call Operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode and that the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time using the star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Rohit Aggarwal, CEO. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and a warm welcome to the presentation of Lenzing's results for the financial year 2024. Ladies and gentlemen, with me today is Nico Reiner, our CFO. We'll start with an overview of key developments. I can clearly say that the revenue, profitability, and free cash flow significantly improved in 2024 despite a continuously challenging market environment. Our revenue increased by 6% to EUR 2.66 billion, compared to 2023, mainly reflecting a higher level of revenues generated from fibers.
EBITDA significantly rose by 30% to EUR 395 million in 2024, and the EBITDA margin increased from 12% to 15%. This development was driven by the positive effects of the performance program on the top line as well as on the cost reductions. Free cash flow also showed a clear positive trend, with an increase to EUR 167 million compared to -EUR 123 million in 2023.
Overall, our performance continues to show positive developments despite the lack of market recovery. Moving on to the next slide, our focus remains very much on driving price and cost excellence. As I said, markets remain challenging in 2024. Let's start with a brief overview on demand prices as well as input costs, and we'll go into a bit of detail in the subsequent slides. On the demand side, global apparel markets developed mostly flat, while non-woven markets continue to remain more robust.
With regards to market prices, we saw a slight increase of selected generic prices on fibers compared to the end of 2023. However, the average of 2024 was lower compared to average pricing in 2023. On the cost side, energy and caustic soda market prices remained elevated versus pre-crisis levels. Let's go into a bit more detail and look at, first, the market demand. We have two key markets: textiles and non-wovens that we serve. Let's start with the textiles markets.
When adjusted for inflation, global demand for apparel remained largely flat in 2024 compared to the previous year. The U.S. sales showed resilience, while Europe saw declines, and China experienced stagnation. Inflation still impacted apparel retail sales in 2024. Lower consumer confidence and reduced spending appetite posed ongoing challenges in 2024 and are expected to carry into 2025.
Factors such as economic volatility and geopolitical instability were also significant factors and will likely remain at the forefront this year. Maintaining balanced inventory levels has also become an ongoing priority for apparel companies since 2022, when levels were just too high. Overall, it has been and continues to be a challenging retail landscape for apparel.
From 2019 to 2024, global apparel retail sales are estimated to have now grown by less than 1% per year on average, which is less than population growth and has likely led to a certain spending demand. Now, let's turn our attention to non-wovens. Non-wovens are developing more stable in consumer markets like absorbent hygiene or wipes as their daily need items. Regulatory framework like the upcoming U.K. single-use plastic ban on wipes is setting the stage for a shift towards cellulosic fibers.
This, paired with growing brand interest in sustainability credentials like carbon footprint. In dynamic times, local supply and supply security become a key value-creating aspect for Lenzing. Let's move and look at how the price evolution took place for generic fibers in 2024. These fiber prices are for the Chinese market. Please keep in mind that prices shown on this slide are generic market prices.
Lenzing prices are mainly traded at a premium, and the current share of specialties in 2024 increased further to 93%. However, the generic market prices shown here give an indication of the price development in a major fiber market. The China viscose market performed relatively stable in 2024. Chinese plants were producing at high operating rates, and inventories remained low in historical comparison, and the prices stood higher at the end of the year at around RMB 13,750 per ton.
Looking at cotton, cotton prices were volatile throughout 2024. After a peak in February, demand concerns started to weigh on prices later in the year. The international cotton prices closed the year about $0.12 lower than 2023. Looking at dissolving pulp prices, they went up over the year as mainly stable operations of viscose plants supported demand and price development of dissolving pulp. Moving on to the next slide, we talk a little bit about the input costs, and here are two of the main ones: energy and caustic soda.
They were slightly significantly higher compared to historical levels, and there was an increase in the first quarter of 2024 compared to the third quarter. Geopolitical developments increased uncertainty over gas supply in Europe, while cold and windless conditions drove gas consumption for largely power generation. This resulted in a further increase of gas in the European market. Caustic soda prices were on the rise in the fourth quarter, as planned and unplanned outages reduced supply.
The cost side remains a challenge for fiber markets. As we just saw, the relevant markets for us still show no or little signs of sustainable recovery, especially generic fiber prices continue to remain under pressure, and input costs are still at elevated levels compared to 2020. It is therefore even more important that we took swift action last year and are implementing the holistic performance program.
The program initiatives are primarily aimed at generating free cash flow and improving EBITDA through strengthened sales and margin growth, as well as sustainable cost excellence. Just as a reminder, it consists of three pillars: profitable top-line growth with full focus on margin improvement; number two, cost excellence in all what we do; and number three, free cash flow generation. The overall impact of the program should result in significant positive free cash flow.
Looking at the first point of the program, the commercial activities, we have undertaken extensive actions to strengthen sales activities, such as acquisition of new customers for the most important fiber types and expansion in new markets, which are having all a positive impact. We've also updated our commercial processes, strengthened performance culture and commercial teams, upgraded compensation schemes, and introduced new sales management tools. This is all part of what we would describe as commercial excellence.
A key element to increase the margin is to shift our product mix further towards premium fibers. In 2024, the share of specialty fibers increased by 14 percentage points to 93%. As another very important outcome, our fiber sales volume increased by 16% compared to 2023 to over 960,000 metric tons. With regards to the second point of our program, which is around cost excellence, we anticipate significant cost savings of which over EUR 130 million were already realized in 2024.
We expect cost savings to further increase to an annual cost savings of more than EUR 180 million for this year. To make it very clear, we're talking about recurring targets with an ongoing impact beyond this year as well. Very good progress has been made in the area of product costs and quality through intelligent efficiency improvement measures. Successes have also been achieved in purchasing through operational and strategic measures.
Looking ahead, the holistic performance program is expected to continue to improve manufacturing costs and to leverage further cost potential, particularly in the areas of overhead functions. At the same time, the structural and process improvement addressed will lead to positive effects on sales and margin generation. Here, I mentioned the performance program is currently well above plan.
We can certainly be satisfied with our success so far, but there are still improvement areas ahead of us in order to maximize our full potential. From an organization perspective, we continue to focus on strengthening our global sales. At the same time, we have adapted our corporate organization to the changed market conditions and thereby strengthening the positioning of the Lenzing Group as a leading integrated fiber group. With this, I hand over the time now to Nico Reiner for an update on financials.
Thank you, Rohit, and a warm welcome from my side as well. Despite continuously challenging markets, we were able to increase both our revenues and our margins thanks to the measures that we have taken actively. Revenue increased by EUR 50 million in Q4 year-on-year. Looking at the full year in total, revenues increased by 6% to EUR 2.66 billion. EBITDA increased by EUR 48 million or 56% in Q4 compared to Q4 2023. Looking at the full year EBITDA, it increased by even EUR 92 million or 30% compared to 2023.
Looking at adjusted figures, the EBITDA improvement would have been even higher. Depreciation was at EUR 307 million, leading to an EBIT of EUR 88.5 million, a significant increase to 2023, which was impacted by impairment. Income taxes amounted to EUR 96.3 million compared to EUR 7.3 million in 2023. This reflected the retroactive withdrawal from the Austrian tax group as a consequence of the interest of B&C falling below 50%.
In addition, the income tax expense was influenced by the value adjustment of tax assets of individual group companies and by currency effects due to the transition of tax items from the local currency into the functional currency in a volume of EUR 47.5 million. As a result, net loss attributable to Lenzing shareholders amounted to EUR 156.6 million. This is, of course, not satisfactory, and we must clearly continue to improve. Let's move to the next slide.
Looking now at cash flow, trading working capital increased by 5% in line with revenue growth and reached EUR 578 million at the end of 2024. We were able to significantly decrease trading working capital since the peak levels early 2023. With regards to CapEx, Lenzing continues to put a clear focus on maintenance and license to operate projects as part of its performance program, and CapEx significantly decreased to EUR 156 million in 2024. This compares to EUR 283 million in 2023.
As a result, free cash flow increased by EUR 290 million to EUR 167 million in 2024. This development shows clearly a positive impact from the measures taken in our performance program. The fourth quarter had a negative free cash flow of EUR 25 million. However, it needs to be considered that seasonal effects such as the 14th monthly salary, as well as interest and tax, had their impact. Let's move to the balance sheet. On the left side of the slide, we show the development of net financial debt.
Net financial debt decreased by EUR 30 million compared to 2023 and was at EUR 1.5 billion at the end of 2024. Our leverage in terms of net financial debt to EBITDA significantly decreased by 1.3 turns and was below four at the end of 2024. The direction here is the right one. However, as you know, we clearly aim for further reducing our leverage. On the right side, you see the development of our liquidity cushion. It decreased by EUR 284 million compared to the end of 2023 and reached EUR 650 million at the end of 2024.
This decrease reflects the repayment of debt mainly in the fourth quarter. In September, we announced the successful issuance of a $ 650 million green bond by the Brazilian joint venture LD C. Part of LD C's new financing structure, with a total volume of $ 1 billion , is also a $ 350 million syndicated loan. With this, LD C converted the existing project financing, which enabled the erection of one of the world's largest dissolving pulp plants, into a standalone corporate finance structure.
As you know, Lenzing has a 51% share of the JV and is fully consolidating LDC . Based on the maturity of the bond as well as the terms of the loan, the refinancing led to a positive shift of debt maturities. Please note that the EUR 500 million hybrid bond is not included in the numbers on this slide, as it is treated as equity in our balance sheet.
Financing considerations for 2025 and beyond are ongoing in a structured and professional way, and we will communicate any potential next steps in due course. With this, I hand back to you, Rohit. Thank you.
Thank you, Nico. Shifting gears, let's kind of talk a little bit about innovation and sustainability, which are Lenzing's DNA. On the back of our strong heritage, we continue to strengthen our leading position in the industry. Sustainability, combined with transparency and traceability, innovation, and our strong brands are our key differentiators. Now, just to mention a few of our milestones in 2024. On the textile side, we have refreshed the TENCEL brand identity.
We have carried out successful collaborations with our matte TENCEL fibers and received an award for innovative outdoor clothing. In non-wovens, we worked on our totally chlorine-free lyocell and viscose fibers to provide high-quality, clean fiber solutions to our customers and partners, and we have further raised awareness of the fight against plastic pollution. These are only a few examples of many excellent sustainable innovations and collaborations we did last year, and more shall continue in the years to come.
Now, let's look at the outlook for 2025. I can clearly say that thanks to our performance program, the operational performance in 2024 was much better compared to 2023. Market visibility remains low, and we cannot predict when a full market recovery will occur. We assume stable demand involved and have a cautious outlook on the generic fiber market development in 2025. However, we are not relying on tailwinds from the market. We continue to take the future in our own hands.
As a result of the performance program, we expect ongoing improvements of our margins, and on the cost side, we expect positive impacts from our cost excellence activities to continue. We therefore expect EBITDA for the 2025 financial year to be higher than in 2024. With this, I will hand over back to the operator for the Q&A.
Ladies and gentlemen, we'll now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, then press star and two.
Questioners on the phone are requested to disable the loudspeaker mode and eventually turn off the volume of the webcast while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from the line of Patrick Steiner from ODDO BHF. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, this is Patrick Steiner speaking. Thank you very much for the presentation. I would have one question. In the beginning of the presentation, you mentioned the positive effect on top line and on cost base coming from your performance program. Could you please give us more details on the top line effect? What did you change in terms of sales strategy? How large was the effect in terms of numbers? Also, what do you expect for 2024 and beyond? Thanks.
Yes, thank you for this question, Patrick. The improvement of our top line, Rohit, if you could answer this, what impact does the performance program you could name?
Thank you, Patrick, for that question. Just as a quick reminder, our performance program, as we detailed out, has three legs. One was around driving improvements in our top line, and that has three components to it. One is to continue to upgrade our product portfolio to more specialty products. That's where Lenzing enjoys a unique position. Our value offering on sustainability, traceability, and to be able to address some specific application areas allows Lenzing to have a clear advantage.
Number two, we continue to move towards a more profitable and enjoying the premiums over generic market prices. Therefore, even though the generic market prices that are showed in China remain pretty much flat, we at Lenzing were able to improve our price premiums. That kind of speaks to our value offering and the value propositions that we have to the market. Number three, we continue to look at our customer mix. We have been looking at new customer acquisitions.
We've been looking at improving our customer mix, moving away from some of our standard customers to customers who value our value proposition more dearly. Therefore, all of those combined allowed us to actually improve our fiber sales significantly last year. That allowed us to improve our margins.
Now, if you look also at our work that we're doing with brands and retailers, that has continued to further strengthen our position in the market. We increased our co-branding programs last year, and we think that is going to allow us at Lenzing to continue to have better price positioning than our competitors.
Thank you very much. Do you have a kind of a specific number on the revenue uplift coming from that? That would be very interesting for me. Secondly, as a follow-up, maybe to give me a bit more insight into this, what have you achieved already and what is still to be achieved? What's on the agenda for 2025 in terms of your top line program? Thank you.
Patrick, thanks for that follow-up question. I understand your desire to understand the details, but at this stage, I would not be able to disclose the specific numbers that you would understand. It is competitive information that we do not generally hand out. Having said that, our program continues to intensify in 2025. It will continue in the same direction, in the same themes. We are also, as I mentioned, strengthening what we call internally commercial excellence.
We are creating foundations for that to be able to sustainably improve our price premiums in the market. On the other side, equally continuing to shift our portfolio towards more premium products. We feel that as Lenzing, given our value propositions on sustainability, customer relationships, innovation, application understanding, technical support, all of these combined would allow us to capture better value.
Through 2025, we are continuing to implement very strongly all those programs. We hope to see continued success and benefits of that even in a market that is not currently giving us any tailwinds.
Thank you very much. That's actually very helpful for my understanding. Last follow-up question, I will get back in line, I promise. Based on your EBITDA guidance for 2025, I mean, it's rather unspecific. You've performed quite well now in Q4, fulfilling a 2024 guidance by a good piece, basically. How confident do you feel with the 2025 guidance now? Should we—I mean, where if you would have to put this on a spectrum or in brackets, is this something you say, "Okay, that's quite something you're very confident on"?
Patrick, I'll make a comment, and I'm going to ask Nico as well to join and add to it. Look, Patrick, what we are very focused on is doing what I call self-help, taking the future in our own hands. We can only control what we can manage within our business. We can't predict what the market conditions and geopolitical situations, as we all understand, are currently creating a degree of uncertainty.
Having said that, we're very confident of our performance program. We have executed that successfully in 2024, despite lack of good market conditions. We feel pretty good about pulling the same levers stronger in 2025. Therefore, all I can say at this stage is that we do expect at this stage that our EBITDA is going to be higher in 2025 than in 2024. Let me ask Nico to add to that.
Now, Rohit, I think a perfect summary of the question which has been raised by Patrick, and I cannot add to that because you answered it in a perfect way. Thank you very much for that.
Okay, great. Thank you very much. Understood. I'll get back in line. Thank you for your time.
The next question comes from Sebastian Growe from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, good afternoon, everyone. The first one is also around the performance program. As you've raised the target for the expected savings from the very program, the questions I have is firstly on the cost related to get there. As you're also pointing to Lenzing overheads structure, how should we think about any potential implementation costs to reach the target? From the free cash flow perspective around the performance program, I would be interested in the thoughts around working capital.
You've also labeled to be more efficient on working capital management going forward. At the same time, we have seen an increase in the working capital quota to about 22% at the end of the year. I guess my question really is what the right working capital going forward should be. I have two more questions, but maybe we can start there, please.
Yes, thank you, Sebastian. Two questions first. The first was related to any costs with regards to the performance program. This one I would hand over to Nico.
Yeah, thank you very much. Sebastian, what we can say on the cost side for the implementation of this performance program, all these costs are already digested in our balance sheet and also in the P&L, so none of additional costs being expected. That is point number one.
In regards to your question on the working capital side, what we can really say is on the working capital side, as you know, coming from the very high levels, beginning of 2023, we have been already significantly released here capital coming out of the working capital structure. Nevertheless, with the positive development of revenues in 2024, there was a certain increase on working capital back again, especially with focus on inventories. What we are really targeting is to get that also more decreased a little bit.
I would not expect too much coming out of further improvement of working capital, but I can confirm it's one of the key elements. We are driving it. It's one of our pillars within our performance program, and we have a very close look on improving working capital to the maximum stage what we can achieve.
It sounds great. May I read into this that this also suggests that the outlook that you're having into the earlier part of the year 2025 is relatively good in order to just be able to supply the market with product that you had to sort of step up on the inventory side?
Overall, yes. We do have the situation also in a little bit of a seasonality. If you look into the Lenzing seasonality, you can see always that in Q1 and Q2, there is a little bit lower, let's say, revenue situation in the first half of the year, where you also need to balance out your capacities and production topics, as the second half of the year is mostly a little bit higher than the first half of the year.
Yes, you are right from a tendency. You could imagine that in the first half of the year, there is a little bit more on the tightness on the inventory side. That is the right conclusion. Yeah.
Okay, good. One more question quickly on the net financial results. You also made the point around the ADC refinancing. I've seen apparently that the net financial expense has been going up quite remarkably in the fourth quarter. Would it be right to assume there has been any sort of one-time cost related to this refinancing? How should we think about the future costs for the very new financing in place?
Yeah. Also your assumptions here in regards to the LDC refinancing, usually there has been a situation where into the fourth quarter, we had to write off costs in relation to the old financing. In a usual and regular transaction, you do usually capitalize on the costs for the new financing. Yes, there has been some impact in the fourth quarter coming from that refinancing structure. You are right.
Would you be willing to give a number to just get a better idea of what the sort of underlying net financial result might be going into 2025?
I would love to, but as you know, as a professional analyst, that I am not allowed to, unless they need to stay in the regulations of the market. We are not guiding on individual numbers. We are only guiding on if there are. I am very sorry about that.
Okay. The last one that I had, I asked that one before in the quarter three call, and that is around the position of a 15% stake by Suzano. Can you just update us on what the sort of latest is around this in the sense of then also the envisaged improvements where there was apparently then a statement made in regards to revenue growth, profitability, etc., and how it has played out since, and to what extent you have these discussions open in the meantime?
Yeah. With regards to the Suzano stake, I'm not sure about the line, it was a bit weak, but I think we heard you, and Rohit will answer.
Thank you, Sebastian. I think your question is more around the share of Suzano's participation in Lenzing's equity. If that's the correct question, then I'll try and address that. Look, Suzano is a well-known market player, and during the past years, both Lenzing and Suzano have acted in a similar space on the pulp side and therefore know each other and have respected very well.
Now, I would just kind of refer to the public statements made by Suzano's management about Lenzing's unparalleled track record of innovation and technology and making it a global leader in sustainable fibers. Therefore, as we have said, we have welcomed Suzano as a co-shareholder of Lenzing. We are getting to know them even closer as Suzano now has a presentation on the supervised report.
Therefore, the discussions are happening at a level where we can learn from each other's experiences to be able to bring a better value unlock to Lenzing. Now, as far as what they would like to do with their shareholding going forward, it is a matter not for us to comment. As you can imagine, it will be something that will be best answered by them. Therefore, from our perspective, we are just happy that we have got two core key shareholders now, and both are of equal value to Lenzing.
is just too early to talk about what these measures might be in order to speed up revenue growth or do better on profitability. Is that the right way at this juncture?
I would not want to delve into too much detail, Sebastian, but you can understand that we do operate, and they have experiences in the paper pulp market quite significantly. Obviously, with them being in Brazil, with the scale of operations they have, they obviously have a great degree of understanding on potential synergies on the cost side as well as on the market side.
We are currently in the process of exploration. We are currently in discussions. We are looking at identifying, but probably it is just too early to be able to be precise about what that could look like. We have been looking at every potential opportunity on how we can harness and synergize for maximum impact.
Okay. The very last one to this, and then we'll let you go. There's no sort of link between that very discussion with Suzano and the upgrade of the performance program target. That's your right conclusion at this point.
Sorry, Sebastian, can you repeat your question?
The question was the upgrade that you have undertaken in the savings related to the performance program. There is no link to the corporation or the entry of Suzano as becoming then a 15% equity owner in Lenzing. Is that the right way to look at it at this point?
Yeah, Sebastian, this is Nico Reiner again. When it comes to our program of performance improvement, this program has been set up in summer 2023 and is completely self-sufficient and executing on a separate lever, as you already stated. Therefore, your interpretation is the right one.
It's an owned program which is owned by the Lenzing people, by the Lenzing employees, and they are fully committed to deliver. As you have seen, we are significantly better than the program was set up. Therefore, we are very confident about getting the program into the next level of success.
Okay, great. Thank you so much.
The next question comes from Sebastian Bray from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hello, good afternoon, and congratulations on the results. They're pretty good in what must be quite trying circumstances at times. I'd have a few questions, please. I'll ask them in turn. The first is on the net impact of energy cost hedges and FX hedges versus spot at the moment. I appreciate you're not going to give me any quantitative guidance on what this exactly is for 2025. If you take those two items, energy and FX, would you expect them to have a positive or negative impact on EBITDA as things stand?
I'm sorry, Sebastian, do you refer to 2024 now or to 2025?
To 2025.
Okay. I'll forward this to Nico. Impact, potential impact on energy and FX, the hedges situation on our guidance for this year?
Sebastian, just our thoughts around FX is FX should be always in a neutral position when it comes to profitability. That is the way how we are managing FX. Therefore, I would not comment on any impact of FX in regards to our operational, let's say, to the EBITDA, as our position is here pretty clear. It needs to be neutral.
On the other side, when it comes to energy, which is one of our crucial input factors, here we do have a policy in place, which we mentioned already a couple of times in further calls in the past, where we said, "Look, we are hedging it on the basis of the policy one-third," let's say, which is in regards to the next 12 months, where we are hedging 2/3. Then for the following 13th and the 24th months, we are hedging roughly 1/3.
What we are also doing, we are looking also beyond the 24 months to get also energy costs as much as possible neutralized to our operational EBITDA development. This would be my comments on your questions.
That's helpful. Thank you. My second one is just on the definition of net debt that Lenzing applies when getting to the 3.9 x reported net debt to EBITDA. Just to clarify, the net debt corpus of just under EUR 1.6 billion that Lenzing reports includes only 50% of the $1 billion of debt associated with the Brazil JV and does not include the hybrids. Is that right?
Sebastian, let me comment on the two topics. As we do own on our Brazilian JV, LD C, 51%, we are fully consolidating LD C in our numbers. It is fully included and embedded. When it comes to your other question, it was in relation to the hybrid. The hybrid is an equity tool. It is just not shown in our presentation as it is according also to IFRS rules.
I see. The Brazil is completely consolidated within the EUR 1.5 billion-EUR 1.6 billion reported net debt. It just does not show.
Correct. Correct.
That's helpful. My last one is just on a question related to disclosure. Why is it that Lenzing, despite its relatively high level of indebtedness currently, although it's heading downwards, is not prepared to tell the market what it thinks its financing costs will be in 2025? Many other European companies are prepared to provide guidance on CapEx and interest costs. What is the thinking underlying not guiding the market explicitly in one direction or the other here?
Look, Sebastian, we always guide on one number, which is the EBITDA, and that's what we do. That is why I'm pretty sorry about not giving you guidance on special items of the P&L, but that's the basic way how we are handling it. You should probably see that that's the way how we are doing it. Very sorry about that, but that's the case at this point of time.
No problem. Thank you for taking my questions and congratulations once again on the results.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Saul Casadio from M&G PLC. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. The first one is really just a clarification on the point that you were discussing before about the exploration you're doing with Suzano. I just want to clarify exactly what is it that Lenzing and Suzano are exploring at this stage. Sorry, I missed that point. It's an interesting one.
Saul, thank you for the follow-up question. Just at the outset, just to be clear about it. Suzano is a shareholder of Lenzing. Any discussions and any activities are through the supervised report, and we still have to operate as two different independent companies at arm's length. Having said all that, under the possibilities of what can be done, is still what we are trying to understand and explore both on potentially market side as well as on potentially cost side and, of course, cost learning on operational issues.
Let me kind of say it in a broad way where there are certain markets where we may have some common customers where they serve their solutions and we serve our solutions. They are in paper pulp. We are in dissolving wood pulp. We sell fibers. They sell the paper pulp, but it could be a similar customer base, and we could learn from there. Also, on the cost side, they have significant operations in Brazil. We do have our joint venture LD C. Again, opportunities to understand the market structures and so on and so forth.
There could be areas that we are still at an early stage, and therefore, I do not want to delve too much into speculating as to what that could look like, but that would be at a very high level views. Again, all of this would be within the frame of two different companies trying to find opportunities for each other. Does that help you?
Okay. Yeah, I guess if I maybe rephrase just to make sure I understood correctly, effectively, Suzano is contributing its know-how at this stage. Is it just know-how or there's more on, I do not know if you can say that, but.
No, I can't say more than that. Saul, at this stage, as I said, it'll be speculative if I delve into any more discussion on this. We will keep you posted as and when things get more concrete.
Okay. That's interesting. The other question I had is on LD Celulose. First of all, on the reporting, sorry, I haven't followed up the financials, but looking on the website, the last reporting is FY 2023. Maybe I've missed something. How frequently do they report? What do they report and when?
Yeah. Let me elaborate on that question. Look, when we brought the new financing in place last year, we have also issued a bond for the refinancing. This bond is a publicly listed tool, and therefore, we have to report also on this tool. That is the reason why LD Celulose is also reporting in accordance to law on the basis of that tool, which is there in the capital market, just to give you that framework.
Is it reporting quarterly, annually? What is the frequency?
That's done on a quarterly basis, yeah.
Where can we find the reports?
There is a separate investor relations homepage established or is now actually going to be established at LD Celulose. It will be online by the end of this month.
Okay. Thank you. Can you give us the EBITDA and net debt of LD Celulose as of FY 2024?
Look, this is something what we do not disclose here. It is done directly to our investors who are in relation to the tool which has been established there. I am sorry about that one, but that is the situation here.
Okay. You confirm there hasn't been any reporting since the bond issuance?
No, look, the tool, the investors' relation homepage, is going to get online, and all the reporting which has been in place has been done according to all obligations coming, first of all, out of the old financing structure and also in regards with the new financing structure which is here in place. It is something like a transition phase what LD Celulose is going underway at this point of time. That is the picture how to look at it, yeah.
Okay. Last one, if I may, on LD, sorry to belabor on the point, but what is the cash extraction system out of LD Celulose? I guess it's a dividend. I'm just checking what are the limitations you have on extracting dividends from LD Celulose.
Yeah. This is one topic and one motivation also why we did that refinancing in the last year. We do have here at the tool, and you're totally right, it's the dividend policy LD Celulose is going into. Based on the refinancing which we did and also the very successful development of LD Celulose, we expect the first smaller amounts of dividends within 2026, increasing then the following years.
Okay. There is no dividend in this year coming in 2025?
Not in 2025. You are correct.
Okay. Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Isha Sharma from Stifel. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for the presentation. My first question is on the performance of the two segments. We saw in the bulk division an acceleration in both absolute EBITDA as well as margin in the second half, but at fibers, we saw a deceleration despite a sequential improvement in prices.
Why is that, and what are your expectations for 2025, please? Just on the second question, you clearly overshot your initial savings target of EUR 50 million in 2024. If you could please share with us which pillars contributed more than your initial expectations and if there is still upside potential to your 2025 target.
Thank you, Isha. Two questions. First, with regards to the segments, the difference of the performance development of the pulp versus the fiber segment and the outlook of this year. I will hand over this to Rohit, please.
Thank you, Isha, for that question. Just as a reminder, Lenzing continues to position itself as a leading integrated fibers group, and our pulp is really a key feedstock, with the majority of that being used for captive fiber production. Therefore, what we see in 2024 and continue to see even in 2025 is more and more our ability to grow our fibers business, both in textiles and non-wovens. We made a significant movement in terms of volume growth in 2024, and we hope to be able to continue to do that in 2025 despite the current market conditions.
That has all become possible because of the factors that I initially talked about in terms of our value proposition and some of the changes at the macro level that are helping drive sustainability and other considerations which allow us to benefit from. Therefore, the trend will continue, and we expect that in 2025, we will do three things very specifically in that area. We will continue to drive what we call premiumization, which is moving our product mix to more specialty fibers.
Number two, trying to find better ways to capture value in our pricing. Number three is going to continue to bring innovations into 2025 to allow us to accelerate our growth. I hope that kind of gives you a feeling, Isha, that the focus is very much on helping drive our fibers' market penetration in our specialty fibers. For the second question, I hand over to Nick.
Yeah. Thank you, Rohit. When it comes to our performance program, we have highlighted in the presentation the pillars, the key areas, and sections where we are working on to improve. When you think about what has been the key driver of the overachievement in 2024, first of all, there have been initiatives, and by saying that, you need to reconcile that we have hundreds of initiatives which we are doing here. There have been initiatives which have delivered earlier than expected to improve the situation in 2024.
Additionally, there are also another category of initiatives where the outcome out of the initiative has been simply higher than expected. Overall, we are very confident about our performance program, also delivering in 2025 the numbers we are communicating here with EUR 180 million. This confidence is pretty much the same as when we started our overall performance program in 2023.
As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star and one. The next question comes from Benoit de Broissia from KEREN Finance. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. My first question would be on the liquidity question you mentioned. Can you clarify if this is consolidated cash and headroom on our RCF lines for lending as a whole on a consolidated basis, including potential cash at LD Celulose that you do not plan to upstream? This is my first question.
My second question is, can you clarify the EBITDA guidance? When you mentioned EBITDA improvement year-on-year, is it based on reported EBITDA, including biological assets revaluation and CO2 certificates disposals, or is it adjusted for that? My last question would be on reverse factoring, any reason why reverse factoring has increased year-on-year? Thank you.
Thanks, Benoit. Three questions here. First one is with regards to the liquidity cushion of EUR 650 million. What is included there, especially with regards to cash, potential cash at LDC?
Yeah. You are totally right. This is a consolidated number for the whole group. The EUR 650 million, that's a very simple comment I can make that we are reporting also all our numbers on a consolidated basis. When it comes to your question around EBITDA, yes, this is the reported EBITDA what we are guiding here. Also in our presentation, we are in detail showing the impact coming out of the biological assets, and the impact is relatively foreseeable in 2024.
You have seen the numbers there, but we are doing it on a reported basis. For your last question, yes, we do have also a reverse factoring program in place which we are partially using in regards to optimize also here the situation, especially here for the receivables which are partially then used in this program.
Okay. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our Q&A session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Rohit Aggarwal, CEO, for any closing remarks.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that was it for the call. We will publish our results for the first quarter on May 8th, and I look forward to seeing you then. Thank you for your attention and goodbye. Great weekend. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Lenzing, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.