Granges AB

STO:GRNG

Q1-2025 Earnings Call

[Jorgen Rosengren, executive]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this First Quarter Presentation for 2025 for Gränges. My name is Jorgen Rosengren. I'm Gränges' President and CEO. And I'm here together with Oskar Hellstrom, our CFO; and Sara Lander Hyléen, our Vice President for Communications and Investor Relations. We'll be taking you through our presentation here first. And after that, there will be an opportunity for Q&A, which the operator will announce.



We had a good first quarter characterized by profitable growth in the turbulent environment. In particular, we're happy with the strong sales volume growth and also profit growth. The sales volume increased, as you can see here, by full 24% which was driven by new business that we've gained in Asia, but actually also market share gains in all of our 3 regions, quite encouraging. Our EBIT or adjusted operating profit increased 15% to a little over SEK 400 million, as you can see here. And actually, this is the best first quarter result we've recorded in our history so far and sets a bar, I guess, for future endeavors also.



The volume growth that we achieved, but also improved productivity together helped to offset a price pressure, which is prevalent in our industry, to then achieve the profit growth that I explained above. What's especially encouraging is that all 3 regions and in fact, all customer groups as well contributed to this growth and to the result. And I'll speak more about that in a minute, but I find that especially encouraging in a somewhat turbulent environment around us.



And also on that note, it's also very good to see that we have a positive cash flow in the quarter, which is unusual for first quarter because typically, we build working capital in the first quarter. But this time, we had a positive cash flow, which is, of course, especially nice as it comes after a weaker cash flow performance in the fourth quarter of 2024. And then finally, on tariffs, I'll get back and speak more in detail about that in a moment. But the short version is that so far, there has been a very limited impact on Gränges' growth and financials of the trade turbulence around us.



Turning then to our regions and to the customer groups. First, we can note here that we've now started to report our numbers in 3 regions to reflect the good balance that Gränges now has between these 3 regions with approximately 250,000 tonnes of capacity per region, a little more, totaling to a total capacity of 800,000 tonnes for Gränges. And if you look at the regions, we actually had good growth in Europe, starting from the bottom here, which I think is an achievement in a rather weak economic sentiment in Europe, generally speaking.



We had good growth in Gränges Americas at the top, 8%, which was driven, as you can see, by several of our large market segments there despite negative growth in automotive. And we had spectacular growth, of course, in Gränges Asia of 94%. We're almost doubling that. And that is mainly the result of being able to quickly build up enough business to fill at least half of its capacity, the new factory that we acquired in the fourth quarter of 2024. So we're saying that we have approximately a 90,000 tonne run rate volume in that factory now, which is enough to make it breakeven. But it was also the result in Gränges Asia and in fact, in all of our 3 regions of taking market share in our important customer segments, for instance, in things like HVAC, generally speaking, but also in the fast-growing segments within the automotive sector, such as heat exchangers for the -- for electric vehicles.



Turning then to automotive. There is, of course, in Europe, a bit of a negative sentiment around the automotive industry right now, uncertainty maybe. And therefore, it's, I guess, especially encouraging to see that Gränges is able to grow at a very good clip in automotive, 13%, in fact, mainly fueled by Gränges Asia and the business I spoke about earlier, but also, in fact, a slight growth in Gränges Europe. In Gränges Americas, there was a negative growth in automotive, but it is a smaller portion of our automotive business, and therefore, it's not very impactful on the total number.



Also super good to see an even stronger growth in air conditioning business in HVAC, which is especially encouraging because there was some worry going into the year that the year would start soft for that industry. That hasn't been our experience so far at least. Packaging was stable as it should be. And other niches grew quite a bit, as you can see, mainly driven by Gränges Asia. So a very balanced result firing on all cylinders, you could say, all regions growing, all customer segments growing and many of them, both the regions and the customer segments at a very good clip.



Turning then to the most beautiful word in the English language, tariffs. There has been, of course, a lot of news about this, and the news can create uncertainty inside an organization and outside it. And therefore, it's important to note and to also communicate to our owners and any listener on this call that so far, the tariffs have had a very limited impact on Gränges, in fact, at all. And why is that? It's because our strategy is to be regionalized. So in fact, everything that we sell in Europe, we have manufactured in Europe. Everything that we sell in Asia, we have manufactured in Asia.



And in the case of North and South America and Central America, everything that we have -- that we sell there or at least 90% of it, we have, in fact, manufactured in North America, in fact, in the United States. And that gives us a good resilience against higher or lower tariffs. And we also have had a lot of practice on tariffs in the past couple of years since there have been large import tariffs to various regions, notably to the U.S.A. in many years now, and we've grown adept, I guess, at maneuvering in such a landscape.



Specifically on Americas and on the U.S., there is a concrete effect that is visible in our numbers, and that's that the price for aluminum in the U.S. has gone up quite a bit as a result of import tariffs specifically targeting aluminum. And that is a cost increase for Gränges, but it's a cost increase that we're able to pass through to our customers using automated formulas, which is also industry practice. So this is not a matter of negotiation. It's how things are done in our industry. It makes, of course, -- the tariff landscape makes our domestic production in the U.S. or any domestic production in the U.S. more competitive on the U.S. market. And that presents some risks to the volume that we're importing into the U.S., but also presents opportunities to take market share, for instance, in the U.S. from other imported volume or to defend our price levels.



Now of course, some people think that tariffs over time will drive inflation or may drive lower demand, and that may be so or it may be not. So I don't know. And we try to not worry on that -- worry about that too much inside Gränges, but instead to focus on things that we can control and also have proven we find that we can control our market share. We can control our own productivity. We can control our own cost level, and we can control our own cash flow. And those are the things that we're now focusing on rather than focusing on trying to predict the market climate 4 or 5 quarters out.



I mentioned already our new factory in Shandong, and that's in the Shandong province in Northeast China. And that is actually a new chapter for Granges Asia. We've doubled our capacity, give or take and have now also very quickly ramped up production in that new facility to a breakeven level, which was a major factor enabling an 81% sales volume growth in Gränges Asia in the first full quarter of that -- of owning that factory.



We say enabled because, of course, having production capacity doesn't mean you can sell. And in fact, the sales team in Gränges Asia has done an outstanding job to very quickly ramp up volumes with new customers, new products that fit this new production capacity that we have. And some of those gains are made in niches that are entirely new for us and that we therefore report in other niches. But other parts of that growth was made in niches that are familiar to us, such as electric vehicles, where we are selling now both battery components, but also battery heat exchangers in large volumes enabled by this Shandong acquisition.



We're operating now in line with our stated ambition for the year, which is to have a run rate of something like 90,000 tonnes, which equates to something like 20,000, 25,000 tonnes in between there per quarter. And we're -- the contribution of that new volume is covering our fixed costs that we have acquired. So these 90,000 tonnes or maybe in the quarter 2025 somewhere there that volume is more or less a breakeven profitability, which, of course, shows up in the KPIs.



Our focus in Asia is to retain this new volume, but start a long-term work to optimize price and mix and cost so that we can continue to keep more or less the same volume, but gradually over time, improve its profitability. Sustainability is very important in Gränges, and we have a very long and very successful track record of decreasing our carbon footprint and increasing our source -- our share of sourced recycled aluminum in the products that we sell.



We're going to report these numbers during this year on a like-for-like basis, meaning that the numbers from the new Shandong facility will be included only after the year in the full year report. And on a like-for-like basis, then we had a record low Scope 1 and 2 intensity in the quarter, which is good because that's things that it's not the majority of our footprint, but it is an important responsibility of us, of course, to ensure that our own use of energy is done in as good way as possible for the environment.



We had, however, a higher total carbon intensity in the quarter, which was mainly driven by less use of recycled material in this particular quarter. And also, we issued a very large and very sought after green bond in the quarter, where we borrowed another SEK 600 million with -- while committing to sustainability-linked targets as a further way to show our commitment to the strategy going forward.



And with that, I would like to turn over to Oskar, our CFO, who will take us through more of the details of the volume and profit development.

[Oskar Hellström, executive]

Absolutely. Thank you, Jorgen. So as you heard from Jorgen earlier and as you can see on this slide, the first quarter 2025 was another strong quarter for Gränges. And in fact, it was the best first quarter so far. We continue to experience solid sales growth despite the continued softness in some of our markets there, as Jorgen talked about. And the sales volume grew by 24% year-on-year to 152,000 tonnes, about 20,000 tonnes or 2/3 of the 24% increase was enabled by the ramp-up of the new facility in Shandong.



Also from an earnings perspective, we saw a very positive development with the adjusted operating profit increasing by SEK 53 million to SEK 409 million. Looking at the adjusted operating profit per tonne, this, however, decreased by SEK 200 from SEK 2,900 in Q1 '24 to SEK 2,700 in Q1 '25. If we exclude the new business in Shandong that is currently at breakeven, the operating profit per tonne increased about SEK 200 year-on-year on a like-for-like basis. And this means that the margin dilution we experienced that was fully attributable to our Asian business and to the ramp-up of the new business in Shandong. And here, we know that the growth in Shandong initially comes from relatively low-margin product segments.



If we look at the drivers behind the positive like-for-like development there, excluding Shandong, we can see that we continue to manage to fully offset the market price pressure as well as cost increases, primarily related to continued wage inflation and increased market prices for aluminum scrap. And the main contributors to this development is the increased sales volume, fueled by the new business gains, as we heard from Jorgen, and generally improved cost productivity.



And let's now look at some more details of the group financials for the quarter before moving into the individual regions. Starting with the sales volume, we just learned that this increase was a little bit more than 24%, while the net sales increased by 33% to SEK 7.2 billion. The higher increase in net sales than in sales volume is primarily explained by a higher aluminum price and by currency effects.



Looking at the earnings, the adjusted operating profit increased to SEK 409 million, and this includes a SEK 22 million year-over-year increase in depreciation related to the Shandong facility and to completed expansion project. During the quarter, we also saw a significant strengthening of the SEK, especially against the U.S. dollar. We did, however, not get that much impact of this on the operating profit in Q1. The net effect from changes in foreign exchanges was positive SEK 13 million compared with last year for the first quarter.



Looking into the second quarter, though, we expect to see some negative currency translation effects when comparing with Q2 last year. And here, I encourage you who would like to understand a little bit more about Gränges' sensitivity to changes in currency rates to have a look at Note 31 in our annual report for 2024, where you find some good information about that.



Going back to the first quarter, the profit for the period increased by just above 10% to SEK 261 million for the quarter. The earnings per share increased to SEK 2.34 per share. Those of you with sharp eyes have probably already spotted here that we have a new KPI on this slide, which we call operating cash flow. This replaces the previously used adjusted cash flow before financing and it's defined as EBITDA plus changes in net working capital less capital expenditure. We will see this more in detail on the next slide. But for now, I think we could note that it was positive SEK 21 million in the first quarter.



The return on capital employed decreased to 11.7%. That's down 0.1% compared to the year before. And the decrease in ROCE is fully attributable to the additional capital that we've added in Asia through the acquisition and ramp-up of the facility in Shandong.



Moving on then to the cash flow and balance sheet. As a consequence of the seasonality of our business, we typically see a quite large buildup of net working capital in Q1. And first quarter '25 is no different in that respect. And the working capital increased by SEK 373 million in the quarter. And here, we should also note then that the working capital increase, it includes effects from the increased aluminum price in the U.S. and following the introduction of tariffs on aluminum.



When it comes to the working capital in Asia, we know that, that increased significantly in the fourth quarter, but it stayed sequentially stable in Q1 as Shandong remained on the same volume run rate at which it entered the quarter. During the quarter, we also continued to invest in developing the business. The capital expenditure amounted to SEK 240 million in Q1. Of this, SEK 147 million is related to the completion of the ongoing expansion project. And I think here, it's worth to note then that we expect the remaining expansion CapEx to come primarily in Q2 and very little in the second half of the year.



Finally, I think it's also worth to comment on the large currency translation effect that impacts the net debt in the quarter, and this is primarily related to our dollar-denominated debt and the appreciation of the SEK against the dollar in the quarter. So in total, this led to that the financial net debt decreased slightly to SEK 4.2 billion or 1.7x EBITDA at the end of first quarter. And that means that the net debt-to-EBITDA ratio remains well within our target range of between 1 to 2x.



Moving on then to another slightly larger change in our financial reporting. And as Jorgen mentioned earlier, so based on that Gränges now has a larger production footprint and a more diversified portfolio, we have concluded that the time is now right to divide the Eurasia business area into 2 regions, Europe and Asia. So as of first quarter, we are now have 3 regions that will be presented separately then as operating segments, Gränges Americas, Gränges Europe and Gränges Asia. Gränges Americas is unchanged compared to before. It consists of the 3 U.S. production facilities in Huntingdon, Salisbury and Newport, and it has a total annual production capacity of 260,000 tonnes. The largest market for Gränges Americas are HVAC and Specialty Packaging, which represents 40% and 30%, respectively, of the Americas sales volume.



Gränges Europe consists of the 2 rolling mills in Finspång in Sweden and in Konen in Poland as well as of the powder metallurgy business unit we have in France. It has a total annual production capacity for rolled aluminum of 260,000 tonnes. And the largest market for Gränges Europe is heat exchanger material for the automotive industry, which stands for about half of the sales volume.



Gränges Asia includes then the 2 Chinese rolling mills in Shanghai and Shandong as well as the jointly owned casting and recycling center we have in the Yunnan province. It has a total annual production capacity of 280,000 tonnes. And also for Asia, the largest market is heat exchanger material for the automotive industry, which currently represents about 60% of the sales volume.



And let us now look at how each of these regions then performed in the first quarter. Starting with Gränges Americas. As you heard from Jorgen earlier, the customer demand in Americas was pretty good in HVAC, it was weak in automotive and fairly stable in the other markets. In addition to this, we saw increasing effects from the actions taken to grow sales by capturing new business in both HVAC and in other niches. And in total, the sales volume in Americas increased by 8% to just about 60,000 tonnes.



In terms of earnings, we managed to offset the negative impact of continued wage inflation and the increasing market price for the aluminum scrap. And we did this with increased sales volume, improved cost productivity and higher average conversion price. And the latter then is partly derived from improved product mix. Net changes in foreign exchange rates were positive in the quarter. In total then, the Q1 adjusted operating profit increased by SEK 56 million to SEK 323 million, which corresponds to a margin of SEK 5,300 per tonne. This is not a record margin, but it's a strong margin, and it's among the highest margins that we've seen in an individual quarter.



Leaving Gränges Americas, then moving on to Gränges Asia, where we continue to see a significant sales volume growth. And as we know, this is primarily driven by the rather successful ramp-up of our new facility in Shandong. So in total, the sales volume increased by 81% to close to 49,000 tonnes. And as I mentioned earlier, about 20,000 of these or 74 percentage points of the growth were related to the Shandong ramp-up.



In terms of individual markets, the main growth came from sales of standard products in relatively low-margin segments, but we also saw a positive development in our existing automotive business where we gained share and increased sales to EV platforms. With the favorable cost structure of the Shandong facility, we managed to reach a breakeven operating profit at 20,000 tonnes there or about 50% utilization for the quarter.



For the existing Asia business and excluding Shandong, the adjusted operating profit increased by 5% to SEK 81 million and higher sales volume and improved productivity then offset lower average fabrication price and wage inflation. The adjusted operating profit per tonne decreased from SEK 2,900 to SEK 1,700 as an effect then of the new volume in Shandong at breakeven level. If we exclude Shandong, the adjusted operating profit per tonne remained flat on a like-for-like basis.



Finally, Gränges Europe, where we experienced stable demand in all markets, except for -- within automotive, where we can say that the underlying market remained fairly soft. Despite this, we experienced a slight increase in sales volume to automotive customers, and that's driven by share gains and new business primarily to electric vehicles. In addition to automotive, we also saw positive effects from new business gains in both packaging and general engineering and distribution markets.



And in total, the sales volume in Europe increased by 4% to close to 47,000 tonnes in Q1. The adjusted operating profit increased by 11% to SEK 47 million, and the operating profit per tonne improved by SEK 100 to SEK 1,000. And the impact of lower average fabrication price and higher costs for aluminum scrap was compensated by the higher sales volume, improved productivity and positive effects from changes in foreign exchange rates.



With that, I hand back to Jorgen, who will give you an outlook for the second quarter.

[Jorgen Rosengren, executive]

Thanks, Oskar. So to summarize the first quarter then, we saw good growth. We saw an improved profit. We saw solid sustainability performance, and we had a good operating quarter as well, which maybe we should [ believe ] is out of the good integration of the Shandong facility as one of the key achievements, but there are others also.



Regarding the second quarter, we expect, in fact, strong growth in the second quarter, based on our expectation of stable customer demand, continued market share gains or rather keeping the gains that we've had already achieved and on the ambition to retain 20,000 or 25,000 tonnes in there of new volume enabled by the Shandong facility at approximately breakeven profitability.



For the rest of the group, based on the factors mentioned above, we currently expect a mid-single-digit sales volume growth for the second quarter. And those things together will -- if they come to pass, give us a good growth in the second quarter in a similar bracket as what we had in the first quarter year-on-year. For this new volume, we aim to continue to offset price pressure as we have done in the past and also cost increases by sales volume growth, cost reduction and also productivity improvement. But we do, however, expect some negative currency translation effects in the second quarter, as Oskar has already explained.



Zooming out a bit, we've had now 3 years of solid growth and solid profit growth in a very turbulent environment. And we -- as I started by saying in the beginning of the call, we're quite hopeful, in fact, that this year will also be a year of solid performance for Gränges despite the very turbulent world around us, and that is certainly our ambition to make happen as well.



And with that, I think we've concluded our prepared comments for the first quarter. And I would like to turn over to the operator now to open up for any questions that there may be.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Albin Nordmark from Nordea.

[Albin Nordmark, analyst]

Albin from Nordea here. So just some questions here from me. I start with Asia. Automotive grew there 22 to 29 kilotonnes and other niches from 4.6 to almost 20. So how much would you say that the growth here is divided organically versus Shandong? So yes, how much in the Shandong is now automotive, I guess that's the question.



And then I can also mention a quite strong cash flow with the same working capital tie-up as last Q1, and this is despite higher aluminum price, higher growth. And also, I guess you're trying to improve the mix in Shandong. So maybe if you can comment on that as well, how you manage that working capital? Yes.

[Jorgen Rosengren, executive]

Let me give some general comments first and then maybe Oskar can also comment. Firstly, about Asia, it's true we had good growth. We see now Shandong and Shanghai as one production system. And there is a lot of traffic going back and forth between these 2 production units, just as we see our 3 factories in the U.S., for instance, as production system. So it's actually hard to answer your question more in detail because the growth that we've seen is the total growth for these 2 factories and not everything is manufactured only in one or only in the other facility.



But that being said, I guess one thing that we can say is that a lot of the growth related to the other niches in Asia is related to enabled by the Shandong facility. And if you take that off, then you get, I guess, a picture of the rest of the mix, right? But it's also so that to be successful in automotive in Asia, which also means to be successful in automotive in China, which is a strategic objective for Gränges, then you have to have scale. And an important step that we wanted to achieve with this acquisition of this factory is the ability to gain scale. And that means that we're now also taking volume in automotive in segments that -- and with customers that we previously could not work effectively with because we did not have the scale. So there is growth enabled both in automotive and in other niches. And in a moment, I'll let Oskar see if he can add some color to that.



Regarding cash flow, yes, it is very positive to see a positive cash flow in the quarter for the group operating cash flow. And we also had, I guess, stable cash flow situation in Asia, which was planned, but nevertheless encouraging after we spent a lot of money, a lot of cash in the fourth quarter of last year to build up working capital. It's, of course, textbook, right? You build up the working capital first and then you get the sales. So as it should be, but it's nevertheless encouraging, I guess, to see that we're able to maintain a working capital level and continue to have the same volume then. So we're encouraged by that, and I hope that you are, too.



It's also nice because it's the first cash flow that we report in a year when we're entering a new strategic phase for Gränges, which we hope will be characterized by less capital expenditure and therefore, better cash flow. And it's always nice, of course, to start with the plus. So that's a very long answer. And now maybe, Oskar, if you will add to that, some color that I missed, if you have.

[Oskar Hellström, executive]

That was a good answer, Jorgen. I don't think I can add very much. I think you said it very well. But maybe we can say a little bit on your comment there on running the 2 plants in Asia as a system and to your comments about the different customer segments there, that it is that Jorgen said, right, other niches, that growth is driven by the Shandong facility.



When it comes to automotive, we managed to do some production steps of some of these products in Shandong. But I think it's fair to assume that everything in the automotive area has touched at least one operation in the Shandong -- or sorry, Shanghai facility before being shipped to customers. These are more complex products typically, and we have those capabilities in Shanghai. But we run it as a system, and that's a great benefit. Other than that, I don't think I have much to add there. Jorgen said it very well.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Gustaf Schwerin from Handelsbanken.

[Gustaf Schwerin, analyst]

I have 3. If we start with HVAC in the U.S., like you mentioned a bit worried on growth reverting after the pre-buy that we saw in H2. with Q1 now, do you think it actually will at some point? Or are the OEMs really ramping up production of new equipment and distribution is happy to sit on this, I'll call it, excess inventory of old equipment? How do you see this playing out? That's the first one.

[Jorgen Rosengren, executive]

Again, we'll do some kind of tag team answer here. I guess we see it as follows that we were never really worried going into the first quarter, and we thought that we were -- or we tried at least to be rather clear about that. And now we see that HVAC continues to grow well. We don't see this as a sign of somebody building up a lot of inventory in the U.S. This is demand. The manufacturers don't have room for inventory. And downstream, of course, there is always an inventory ramp-up ahead of the season. That's for sure. But that is because they intend to sell it during the season.



So what happens in HVAC really depends in the near term, I think, more on things like the weather and such things rather than on other factors such as one you mentioned. As far as it goes, we haven't seen any signs of any collapse of that market or any other market for that matter, which, of course, underpins this forecast, this growth forecast that we have for the second quarter. That may not be a satisfactory answer, but it's a truthful answer at least, and this is what we know. Yes.

[Oskar Hellström, executive]

Now maybe to add a slightly more numbers to this, if that's possible. I mean, the growth there year-over-year growth of 18% in HVAC in Americas, that's a pretty strong growth number. But there, we need to remember that we're meeting fairly easy comparables and that HVAC in Q1 '24 was pretty weak. But it is, as Jorgen says, right, when we look at the order book for the second quarter with the visibility of the quarter we have there, we continue to see good growth in HVAC, maybe not the 18%, but it's a part of this mid-single growth -- mid-single-digit growth that we are guiding for, for the second quarter.

[Gustaf Schwerin, analyst]

Okay. Okay. Maybe we can follow up on that later. Then on the 18% growth, I understand this is not perfectly correlated with the shipment data we see in the U.S. But you mentioned market share gains and you have clearly outpaced what we have seen officially for January, February. So why is this the case right now? Is this explained by the new regulations to an extent? Has tariff fear played a part here with your original setup? Or have you just done a good job? Yes, second one.

[Jorgen Rosengren, executive]

We've just done a good job.

[Gustaf Schwerin, analyst]

Very clear. Okay.

[Jorgen Rosengren, executive]

Gustaf, can I answer more fully? I think it's like...

[Gustaf Schwerin, analyst]

Yes, I thought you were done. Sorry.

[Jorgen Rosengren, executive]

I just wanted to let it sink in. That's all. But I will say this, that we have had a focus now for 2 years or so on taking market share. And that is something that we've tried in all of our regions and all customer segments. And now we're seeing the effect. We saw the effects in 2024 of that at least very clearly during the second half of the year. And of course, once you take a new customer, for instance, then you can keep that customer for 20 years, right? So then that is an effect that lingers, so to speak, which is also why it's good to focus on it.



We're being able to do that, we're enable to do that by the capacity that we have, which is not full. And now we're then gradually filling that capacity with more customers, right? So that is the reason that we're taking market share specifically in HVAC is because we have gone after market share and been successful at going after it rather than some temporary things with legislation or something like that.



Then that is also something that we have focused on for the entirety of Gränges. And if we did not -- if we had not taken market share, then our growth numbers this quarter would look very different than they do. So it is an important thing to watch, of course, and it's an important thing for us to focus on also going forward, seeing the results that it has gained for us so far.

[Gustaf Schwerin, analyst]

Good to hear. Lastly, your automotive business in Europe is flat or if it was up 2%. LVP in Europe, I think, is down 9% in the quarter. I think Q2 expected to be down 4% or 5%. You did mention new BEV platforms. I've asked this many times. And previously, it's been a bit tricky from the outside given that we haven't had the exact split between China and Europe. But with that said, I think in this quarter, it really looks like you have taken a step in outgrowth versus the underlying production. So can you confirm that? And can you help us with anything on how we should think about or call it, your outgrowth versus production, whatever that will be throughout 2025?

[Oskar Hellström, executive]

Yes. It's a very good question there, Gustaf. I can start and then Jorgen can add if he wants. But I mean, we see the same thing as you do here, right, that the underlying vehicle production is down. We are slightly up. If you think about it in a short period as a quarter, there will never be a perfect match between Gränges materials sales and the vehicle production, right? So you have probably to take a little bit of a longer time perspective to get a better match there.



But that said, I think in Q1, it's such a large difference here between our sales development and the vehicle production. So I think it's fair to say that, yes, we are taking some market share here. And it's contracted market share. Some of this is contracts that we took for quite a while ago where the start-up of the production of these platforms have been delayed at the vehicle manufacturer, and you see that coming now. And we basically have a larger share of wallet on some of these platforms than what we have on some old platforms.



And we also have the effects there of higher content per vehicle in the electric vehicles than in the combustion engine cars. And this is really what is behind it. And I think we said it before there, right, that we feel pretty good about the contracts we have taken in the automotive area, not the least in Europe. And we think that it's fair to assume that we should be able to grow our automotive sales in Europe this year, even in an environment where the light vehicle production is actually declining. And we have not sort of changed our mind on that yet at least. I don't know, Jorgen, if you want to add anything there?

[Jorgen Rosengren, executive]

No, I think that's a good answer. Thanks.

[Gustaf Schwerin, analyst]

Can I just finally follow up on that. If you can give us a sense of how much of your volumes now in Q1 are targeting electric vehicles? Because I'm a bit curious to understand if this is mainly a market share in terms of just having a good mix on OEMs that are performing well or if it's mainly the increased content?

[Oskar Hellström, executive]

I will say that it's a combination of the 2. I don't have a specific number there to give you, but I would say it's both these 2 things.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Adrian Gilani from ABG Sundal Collier.

[Adrian Gilani Göransson, analyst]

I'd like to start off with a few questions on the cash flow. You took roughly SEK 150 million in expansion CapEx here in the quarter. Is that fair to say that it's pretty much all the expansion CapEx you will have for the entire year and that will now only run on the maintenance CapEx run rate for the remainder of the year?

[Oskar Hellström, executive]

No. It would have been great if that was the case, right? We still have a little bit more expansion CapEx left. And we are in the finishing phase here of the 3 large projects here that we have left, right? It's the final expansion of the coating facility, the new cold rolling mill. It's the new casting and recycling center, the second of the 2 in Huntingdon in the U.S., and it's the battery foil production line in Finspång. All of them are technically, you could say that they are completed in the sense that the equipment is there. And we are now, together with the equipment suppliers, fine-tuning and commissioning this equipment.



The final CapEx payments for these, we will not pay them before we have basically completed the acceptance test and that we confirm that we agree with the suppliers that these machines are basically running as agreed, right? I think it's fair to assume that we will get there in most cases during the second quarter. Maybe some of this will spill over into the third quarter, but it will probably be a smaller part. And that will then also coincide when we will make the final CapEx payments there.



So now with some currency rates moving and so forth, you never know exactly what the final figure will be there. But I would say that we have about SEK 150 million to SEK 200 million expansion CapEx left for these 3 projects that will be -- the majority of it will hit in the second quarter, maybe a little bit in the third quarter. That's our current view.

[Adrian Gilani Göransson, analyst]

Okay. Understood. And on a broader note, I mean, after the Q4 report, you sounded quite confident that full year 2025 cash flows would still be very strong. And obviously, Q1 is always a seasonally weaker quarter for cash flows. But I guess, can you reassure us that your view on strong full year cash flows remains unchanged?

[Oskar Hellström, executive]

We have not changed that view.

[Adrian Gilani Göransson, analyst]

Okay. Perfect. And on that note, the natural question becomes what you will spend the money on. And I noticed that on the AGM notice you sent out, you included a buyback mandate, which is not something you had last year. So should we see this as a clear indication that you intend to do buybacks during 2025? And if so, can you say anything about the time line when that could start?

[Jorgen Rosengren, executive]

Jorgen here. No, I don't think you should interpret it in that way. It's a tool in the toolbox that we haven't had before and we haven't had it before because we had so much expansion CapEx to work on. But now we feel that the tool is something that we should have in our toolbox, but it does not signal any concrete intent to start buying back shares. But it is, of course, so that CapEx is always hard and cash flow is even harder to forecast. But it is, of course, so that we like to be a cash-generating business. And if we don't have plans for expansion CapEx, then that will become clearer. And it will become clearer by a gradual, all things equal then, a gradual strengthening of our balance sheet, which will give us the pleasant problem of talking about what we should spend that money on.



And then, of course, as you indicate, one of the things that you can spend money on is the Gränges share and that at some point, maybe we'll get around to that.

[Adrian Gilani Göransson, analyst]

Okay. Understood. I guess a final one from me on Shandong specifically, you guide for roughly what type of volumes we should expect in Q2 and then you say that you're continuously working with the mix effect. Are you able to say anything about what type of EBIT contribution you expect from Shandong in Q2 and perhaps for the remainder of the year as well?

[Jorgen Rosengren, executive]

In Q2, we expect more or less the same profitability of this additional volume as we had in Q1, right? Preferably a little bit better, but we're talking marginal effects there. And for the full year, we'll have to get back to you after the second quarter. But we will continue, of course, to work on the things that you mentioned, right? So price, mix, cost in order to gradually improve the profitability of this additional volume. So that plan remains unchanged.

[Operator]

The next question comes from Mats Liss from Kepler Cheuvreux.

[Mats Liss, analyst]

Well, a couple of them. First, coming back to the U.S. there and the tariff impact. I mean you have quite expanded your recycling capacity there. And do you see increased sort of demand for recycled material? Or is it not affecting you?

[Jorgen Rosengren, executive]

All aluminum in the U.S. has become more expensive, and that includes recycled material. The interplay between new aluminum and recycled aluminum prices in the U.S. is complex and depends on many factors. So it's hard to say something definite about that. But it is so that it has been a slight negative for us and may also be a slight negative for us going forward if the difference between recycled aluminum prices and new aluminum prices grows smaller. But that is such an uncertain part of a really uncertain environment that we can't really say for sure what will happen even in Q2, much less in Q3 or Q4.

[Mats Liss, analyst]

And the recycled and the primary metals are sort of expected by the same tariffs or are there sort of differences there? I mean the sourcing there -- well, Canada is an important exporter of [ primmer ].

[Jorgen Rosengren, executive]

Yes. The new aluminum and recycled aluminum and also complete products that contain aluminum are affected by, technically speaking, different tariffs, but in terms of the amount, similar tariffs. So there is an effect on everything aluminum, so to speak, in the U.S. has become more expensive and is also now more expensive than everything aluminum in Europe, let's say. And that is not -- as we have spoken about here, not affecting our profit and loss statement, but is part of the working capital buildup that we've made in the first quarter is related to that simply because our working capital contains the aluminum price.



And that, I guess, is also nice then to have a positive cash flow in spite of these, effectively speaking, for us then increasing metal prices.

[Mats Liss, analyst]

Yes. Sounds great. And then, I mean, coming back to automotive there and you have more limited exposure in the U.S., but some of you source from Europe to a larger extent there. How -- what impact do you see there? Is it sort of affecting your competitive situation in the U.S.? Are you able to keep the volumes there? Or what do the customers try to do?

[Oskar Hellström, executive]

I mean it's a good question. It's as you say there, it's a smaller part of our Americas business that is imported from -- primarily from Europe, a little bit from China. But I think what happens here, if you really want to go into the technical details of the tariffs, there was earlier a 10% duty or tariff on the products that we shipped from primarily Sweden into the U.S. But in reality, you could get exemptions from this if you could prove that there are no source domestically in the U.S. for that type of material.



And as you know, our material is really high value add, quite technically complex. We basically got exemptions from all these tariffs. Now the new tariff is 25% and without exemptions. So that's a quite big difference. In reality, though, it's still true that there are limited domestic supply of these type of products in the U.S. And as a consequence of this, short term, we do not expect to see any changes as a consequence of this. I mean, we have the customers and the contracts we have. And also the contracts are typically structured in a way that the customer is -- on the receiving end here is responsible for the payment of duties and tariffs.



Then you could argue that over time, if this situation remains, we could become less competitive serving the U.S. market from Europe. On the other hand, it means also then that someone needs to build capacity and capabilities in the U.S. to manufacture these type of products. And that will take time and who knows if someone wants to do this, right? So probably much less impact on this than what you might think at first glance.

[Mats Liss, analyst]

Very good. And finally there, I mean, you have these 3 platforms now, and you mentioned -- well, there was a question on buybacks. But I guess a lot to do still, I guess, to make things efficient and integrate things. But should we expect this to take a few years? Or are there more opportunities out there to grow this for us individually with acquisitions? Could you give some comments there, please?

[Jorgen Rosengren, executive]

Yes. So Mats Jorgen here speaking. So Gränges now says that we now say that we have a production capacity of 800,000 tonnes split approximately evenly across or over the 3 regions where we operate, right, Americas, Europe, Asia. We sold last year 5,800 tonnes. So we have a capacity then we say apparently of something like 295,000 tonnes of spare capacity. And that is, of course, a lot of spare capacity. And what we now intend to do is, firstly, to keep the additional market share that we've gained in Asia enabled by this Shandong acquisition and also the market share, of course, that we've gained in Europe and Americas.



And to run the full year with that so as to get up to a run rate -- well, to keep the run rate that we have, I guess. And that we think we can do without so much more working capital because of the lead time between acquiring the product and selling the product. But having that new run rate then, there is a lot to do for a long time to optimize it. You can work on the price, you can work on the mix, you can work on the productivity. And usually, when you install new equipment, you also have learning curves for that new equipment, the equipment itself, the staff, the customers, the mix, the planning, the suppliers, lots to do. And that, I think, is good news or at least we regard it as good news because it gives us the ability to improve our situation with things that we have under control for quite some time.



If we're able to do that and are able to do it without capital expenditure for new equipment, for new factories, then we also intend to prove that this can -- that this business that we're in really is a cash-generative business. And we think it's time that we prove it because we have had a long period now of capital expenditure. And then when we have the luxury problem of having too much money, then we'll start to think about that. But our focus now internally is to keep these market shares and to start to optimize the return on those market shares with the levers that I just talked about. I hope this answers your question, Mats. And otherwise, please ask it again.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] There are no more questions at this time. So I hand the conference back to the President and CEO, Jorgen Rosengren, for any closing comments.

[Jorgen Rosengren, executive]

Then thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen, for attending this first quarter presentation of 2025 for Gränges. And I wish you all a nice day. And when the weekend comes around, a nice weekend also. Take care. Goodbye.