Stora Enso Oyj (SEOJF) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Stora Enso Oyj (OTCQX:SEOJF) Q3 2024 Earnings Conference Call October 24, 2024 4:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Hans Sohlström – President & Chief Executive Officer
Seppo Parvi – Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Ephrem Ravi – Citigroup
Pallav Mittal – Barclays
Andrew Jones – UBS
Charlie Muir-Sands – BNP Paribas Exane
Lars Kjellberg – Stifel
Cole Hathorn – Jefferies
Patrick Mann – Bank of America
James Perry – Citi

Hans Sohlström

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Stora Enso’s Third Quarter 2024 Results Presentation. Thank you for joining us today. I’m Hans Sohlström. I’m the President and CEO of Stora Enso, and I’m here with our CFO, Seppo Parvi.

Today’s presentation is titled Continued Growth and Earnings Improvement. We will guide you through our performance and share insights into our outlook for the fourth quarter. We will also address any questions you might have towards the end.

So now let’s shift focus to the key highlights of the quarter. We achieved a continued profit improvement compared to the same period last year primarily driven by price increases and ongoing cost saving actions. And we are encouraged to report an increase in our adjusted EBIT for the fourth consecutive quarter.

Notably, our Packaging Materials Biomaterials and Forest segments have performed well contributing positively to our results. However, we recognize the challenges faced by our Packaging Solution and good product segments and are focusing on navigating the weak markets in both segments.

In October, our focus was clear to take decisive actions that would solidify our financing and retain the value of our assets. Also, we achieved a reduction in our net debt-to-EBITDA ratio. We still remain above our target of 2.0. We have therefore decided to sell approximately 12% of our forest assets in Sweden in total our Swedish forest assets cover 1.4 million hectares with a