Outotec Thursday, 29 th September :00 Hrs UK time Chaired by Pirjo Lifländer

Transcription

1 Outotec Thursday, 29 th September :00 Hrs UK time Chaired by Good afternoon and welcome to this Q3 Q&A session with Outotec s president and CEO,. I would like to remind you that this webcast will be recorded and the recording is available on our website, on our webcast centre later this afternoon. Also, the purpose of this Q&A session is not to disclose any new information but to declare maters that already have been published. My name is and with me here is, of course, our president and CEO, and chief financial officer Mikko Puolakka. Today our theme is the recent TME acquisition that we completed in August. Of course, also other issues will be discussed in this session. To start with I have couple of questions about TME. Could you describe in detail what type of skills and competencies this TNE acquisition brings to Outotec? Yes, this acquisition of TME is a continuation of our strategy to accelerate and strengthen our service capabilities around the world. TME s special focus is grinding mills and the linings of, re-linings of grinding mills so they have a long expertise in handling the maintenance and services of grinding mill re-linings. They have operations, strong operations in Australia, Tasmania and then in sub-saharan Africa so this further complements very well our services capabilities in grinding mills and also enables us to give total services to our customers. How is this different from the Mill Team acquisition we did in 2011? Well, of course, both of these acquisitions are focusing on grinding mills services. Mill Team mostly is operating in northern Europe. Their geographical focus is in northern Europe and, as I mentioned, TME is then on the southern hemisphere currently so Australia and Africa. Why is it so important to have these specialist skills for grinding mills and other service offerings?

2 2 Well, of course, we do want to be a solution partner for our customers so that we are not only delivering them a piece of equipment or a process but also all the services related to efficient utilisation of this investment also during their life cycle. So this is part of our service and solution package to our customers. Okay, thank you, Pertti. There s been a lot of discussion related to mining and metal capex. What is your view on this matter? Well, of course, the recent macroeconomical concerns or turbulences have been reflected in the mining cap ex forecasts. I would say that the world is currently quite divided so if we first look it by value chain, it s fair to say that in the steel and iron ore value chain, there has been turbulence. The price levels of iron ore have been going down due to the concerns of what will be the growth in China and, of course, this has been reflected then into the readjustment of some investment plans of the big players in the iron ore value chain. And we have also noticed that there has been some slowdown in this part of the market. But then on the other hand, what describes the quite strong polarisation is that if we then, for example, look at copper or gold, the activity levels have been very strong and those markets really have continued on a very high intensity. But I would also say that in iron ore there are structural demand factors which suggest that sooner or later also in the iron ore area the investments need to go forward, otherwise there would be a structural lack of capacity in the value chain. So is it even possible that, as the large cap ex investments are cut, there will be more investments to the process technology side, both brownfield and capacity increases? This is a very good point so when the large mining companies have been adjusting their investment portfolios, quite often what they have done is that they have been postponing the progress of large greenfield projects where, of course, a huge share of the investment is going to infrastructure. Often it is necessary to build railroads, ports and so on and when the adjustment is then happening in such a way that the investments are more happening on the brownfield side, more as capacity expansions of current operations and so on, a bigger share of the investment actually is going to the process technology itself rather than to the building up of the infrastructure. So some forecasts are suggesting that mining cap ex this year, 2012, might decrease from the levels where they were last year but if you look what, how the business of Outotec is developing, we are growing very strongly and actually our growth in the first half of this

3 3 year has been more than 70%. So one shouldn t draw too simple conclusions about these changes or adjustments. Thank you. One of the mining industry s biggest events, MinExpo 2012, was held this week in the US. What have been the messages from customers of this event? How would you describe the overall sentiment or customer activity? Well, I would actually refer back to what I just said about the polarisation or different situation in different markets. So we have a quite strong momentum in areas like copper and gold and, as I already said, some slowdowns in those regarding the iron ore value chain. So it s been, the messages have been quite mixed but all in all, I think that the message is that the underlying factors are there, the structural demand drivers are there, new investments are required and right now, the industry is experiencing certain cautiousness because of the question marks related to the global economy and especially to the growth of China. But it seems to be that this is more or less viewed as a short-term turbulence in a bigger picture where the structural drivers are there for the mid to long term. Thank you. Then switching to energy side, Outotec has started hot commissioning of Narva oil shale plant. How is that processing? Well, those areas which we have been responsible for and are responsible for are, have been progressing well and as you mentioned, the hot commissioning is ongoing and step by step during this autumn and the rest of this year this is going to progress according to the plans and we should be able to see the first oil being produced still this year or early part of next year. Can we expect new oil sale plant orders soon? Well, of course, always when this kind of the first of its kind reference plant is built, the whole industry is following what is happening and how is it starting to perform and when the results are positive then the other customers will take forward their feasibility studies and their investment plans and investment programmes. But the cycle times here, of course, are there so it is taking some time before the rest of the industry is able to make the investment decisions after the first reference is there. So it will take some time and we will be growing mostly in the other parts of the energy business in the short term but mid to long term we should be expecting that this will lead to new orders.

4 4 And what would be the size range of the possible new orders? Well, the order that we received and announced in Estonia; that was roughly 130 million, I think, all in all. It will always depending on what is the scope that we agree with the customer, if we go with a full lump sum turnkey EPC type of a road, scope then the size can be anything between 100 to 200 million, I would say. Then if it is an EP scope, more like technology and engineering where we would not take the full responsibility for the construction on those areas then we will be speaking about some tens of millions. So it is very much dependent on the scope. Okay, thank you, Pertti. I think, at this point, we are ready for the questions from the telephone lines. Chris Smith Barclays Questions and Answers Hi, there. Thanks for taking my question. Just firstly just on the kind of the water treatment side, I mean, historically you ve been very focused on kind of mechanical treatment, you know, removing heavy metals from kind of industrial water but, I mean, kind of less exposure on the biological treatment side. I was just wondering in terms of kind of the opportunities for acquisitions that are kind of scalable and kind of sufficiently protected from competitors there. Could you describe what you re seeing in that area? Yes, indeed. Our focus has traditionally been exactly as you mentioned. Of course, our agenda on the industrial water treatment side is to continuously expand the portfolio of the technologies that we are having in order to make sure that we can actually create solutions for our customers to different kind of water and effluent treatments. So we do have quite a lot of R&D going on in order to expand the portfolio of technological solutions that we are having and, of course, scalability is one key driver there, as you mentioned, and really the need to have a versatile range of different treatment technologies to suit the water or effluent in question. So we will be systematically developing and further enhancing our portfolio there. That s great, thank you very much. Thank you. Edward Stacey Espirito Santo

5 5 Hello. Question on the copper industry and you ve said the dynamics are generally better than iron and steel but I wanted to ask about smelting in particular because we had some comments out from I m not sure I pronounce it right but Zhang Shi copper, I think it s called, the big copper smelter in China, saying that the overcapacity situation was as bad as it s ever been. So is there a different or worse dynamic in smelting than in the other parts of the processing or is that just isolated to these guys? Well, of course, we have received quite significant orders in the copper smelting area in the last two years and we are executing those projects as we speak. All in all, in copper smelting, the amount of new plants that are built in the world varies between one to three plants a year so really this greenfield copper smelting is not a huge market. Of course, there we do have a very, very strong market share. What is important is to pay attention to the brownfield, ie the copper smelters, the fleet of copper smelters which actually is already operating today and is accounting for the annual production volume of copper. And there, if you have followed our announcements, we announced a deal with Grupo Mexico where we are doing a turnkey refurbishment of their, one of their old copper smelters. And this is a great example of how we are providing turnkey services to our customers so basically what we are doing to, for Grupo Mexico is 55-day hot to hot complete refurbishment of their smelter. And the smelters have a certain limited lifetime after which this refurbishment has to be done so if one would just look at the greenfield investments, that would not give a proper size of the overall market so we are active not only in the greenfield but also in the brownfield and we do have a very strong position there. Thank you. Chris Smith Barclays Oh, hi, there. Another one from me, if I may. Just in terms of the, I wonder if you can provide us with a bit of colour on the order backlog I mean, there s always a lot of focus there how that s kind of developing in the second half and kind of what the kind of sales mix we could expect in the second half. Yes. As we have been commenting, the order activity has remained on a strong level all in all. We have already announced a good quantity of new orders in the third quarter and the underlying demand has been continuing on a good level, which basically means that we do have a very strong all-time record backlog which gives us, of course, a very solid position for the rest of this year and also for next year. And in that sense, things have been developing very well and very positively. Regarding the sales mix, of course, our deliveries consist of services, equipment and then complete plant solutions and then typically, towards the end of the year, yes, there can be project completions of larger-size plants and then very much, the equipment deliveries tend to be weighted to the latter part of the year. And also services activities are normally quite strong in the latter part of the year so you should be able to expect a normal kind of a mix during the latter part of the year in our sales revenues and basically normal type of seasonality.

6 6 Thanks very much. Okay, thank you. It seems that we have no more questions from the telephone lines but we have received some questions through and one is concerning our sales by destination. How much of the sales comes from China and how much from other Asia and how much from Europe? Perhaps, Mikko, maybe you could take this question. Mikko Puolakka We have not disclosed separate countries but in general, I would say that China and European Union both account roughly 10%, or slightly less, of our total business so they are, of course, important markets for us but we are not exposed to any specific market area in a big manner. Thank you, Mikko. Then another; Outotec has committed to long-term financial targets; annual sales growth ten to 20%, an average 10% EBIT between 2011 and Top line has been growing faster than the target but EBIT margin is still below. What are the reasons for this? Well, of course the EBIT margin, I would say we are completely in the plan so what we have said is that our long-term target is to deliver, on average, 10% EBIT from the business operations over the cycle. And now we have been consistently improving our EBIT percentage when going forward. The reason why we haven t kind of emptied the bank is that we are investing a lot of our growth so we have been strengthening our market reach, our sales presence in the rapidly growing markets. We have been increasing our investments to R&D because we are the technology leader in our industry and we want to stay that way. Also we have been investing a lot to build global supply capability so we have the organisation there and are, of course, expecting that the fluids will then be coming in the future in form of improving margins. Also, what we have been doing is to invest a lot into shared business infrastructures in order to better and better facilitate a fully globally operating Outotec. That will give us productivity improvements, it will improve our speed and the agility and, all in all, productivity. So we have been consciously investing to the business rather than try to deliver the maximum profit margins that one could perhaps think that we could deliver. So regarding the profitability, we are focusing spot on our strategy road map. Okay, thank you. The share of services sales has gone down from 29 to 20. Why is this?

7 7 Yes, this is, in a way, a positive problem or challenge. We have been growing our services very strongly so the year-on-year growth has been in the range of 30% in services; extremely strong growth but we have been very successful in winning cap ex business and that has grown even faster than the services business. And as you can see, our revenue growth for the first half of this year was more than 70% year on year so it is this mix of cap ex versus services which is diluting, percentage-wise, the share of services but the underlying absolute growth of services is something we are very pleased about. And also, that is going, actually it s going ahead of our plans so as we have been commenting earlier, we are ahead in reaching our 500 million target for the services revenue that we have set ourselves for 2015 when we announced that target in Closing Comments Thank you, Pertti and thank you, Mikko. I think we have no further questions at this point but before we end, I would like to remind you of Outotec s Q3 results which are coming out on October 25 th at 9:00 Finnish time and also our capital markets day which will be held in November 29 th and 30 th in Hamburg, Germany. That was all for this time. Thank you all for joining and thank you, Pertti and Mikko. Goodbye. Thank you.