Earnings call transcript: ASPO Q2 2025 reports record net sales and EPS beat

In the second quarter of 2025, Aspo Oyj reported robust financial results, marked by record net sales and a significant earnings per share (EPS) beat. The company achieved an EPS of €0.31, surpassing the forecast of €0.1392. With a market capitalization of €214.85M and a P/E ratio of 15.93, InvestingPro analysis indicates the stock is currently trading near its Fair Value. Despite challenging market conditions, Aspo’s strategic initiatives and operational improvements have contributed to its strong performance, reflected in its impressive 21.66% year-to-date return.

Key Takeaways

• Aspo reported record net sales for Q2 2025, with a 6% growth.
• The company achieved the highest EBITA in recent history at €9.2 million.
• EPS of €0.31 significantly exceeded the forecast of €0.1392.
• Positive cash flow of €23.5 million was generated during the quarter.
• Market conditions remain challenging due to geopolitical uncertainty and weak industrial demand.

Company Performance

Aspo Oyj’s performance in Q2 2025 was notably strong, with net sales reaching their highest level in recent history. The company reported a 6% growth in net sales, driven by strategic product and service innovations across its business segments. Despite a challenging market environment characterized by geopolitical uncertainty and low industrial demand, Aspo’s operational improvements and sustainability initiatives have bolstered its competitive position.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: Highest in recent history, with 6% growth.
• Earnings per share: €0.31, significantly exceeding the forecast.
• EBITA: €9.2 million, marking the best quarter in recent history.
• Operative cash flow: €23.5 million.
• Free cash flow: €8.8 million.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Aspo’s actual EPS of €0.31 exceeded the forecasted €0.1392 by a significant margin, reflecting a strong operational performance. This substantial beat highlights the company’s ability to navigate challenging market conditions and deliver value to shareholders.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking forward, Aspo maintains a full-year EBITA guidance of €35-45 million. InvestingPro analysts expect net income growth this year, though the RSI suggests the stock is currently in overbought territory. The company anticipates weak demand in its ESL Shipping segment to continue into the second half of the year, with a gradual recovery expected. Aspo remains focused on integrating its Telco operations and pursuing organic growth in its Leiporin segment. For deeper insights into Aspo’s valuation and growth prospects, including 8 additional ProTips and comprehensive financial analysis, explore the full InvestingPro Research Report.

Executive Commentary

CEO Rolf emphasized the company’s commitment to sustainability and operational excellence, stating, "We are making progress when it comes to science-based targets." He also highlighted the role of green coasters and acquisitions in profit improvements, saying, "Our profit improvements are based on green coasters, acquisitions, and operational initiatives."

Risks and Challenges

• Geopolitical uncertainty may impact market stability.
• Weak industrial demand poses a challenge to growth.
• The shipping market faces continued pressure, particularly in the forest industry.
• Potential operational disruptions, such as the recent fire incident, could affect financial performance.
• Supply chain optimization remains a focus area for improvement.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the sale of Leiporin and the potential separation of Telco and ESL segments. The management confirmed the sale of Leiporin for €63 million and ongoing assessments for strategic restructuring. The impact of a recent fire incident on a vessel was also discussed, with minimal financial implications expected.

Aspo Oyj’s Q2 2025 results underscore its resilience and strategic focus in a challenging market environment. The company’s strong financial performance and forward-looking initiatives position it well for future growth.

Full transcript - Aspo Oyj (ASPO) Q2 2025:

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: Welcome to the Q2 twenty twenty five financial reporting of Aspa. This time, you have an opportunity to place questions. There’s a question formula on the screen. So if you have any questions, please type them there, and we will try to address these at the end of this session. Q2 and 2025, we report that under the header continued profit improvement in a challenging market.

We have an agenda at Aspo this year focusing on improving profitability year 2025. Then we also have the long term financial targets set for each of the businesses. And then we communicated a vision to form two separate companies out of ASPO, namely ASPO Infra and ASPO Compounder. Year to date 2025, I think we made good progress against this agenda, clear performance improvement during Q2 and H1 twenty twenty five. And last week, on Friday, we announced the sales of Leiporin to Landmenen, which then means progress regarding our vision to change the structure of Aspa.

If I start with the 2025, just capture the key figures: 10% growth, EUR 18,000,000 of EBITA compared to 12.4 last year and this performance in a quite challenging, uncertain market. ESL Shipping was able to improve its profitability during the 2025, 9,100,000.0 of EBITA compared to 8.8 Telco more than doubled its EBITA, 8,700,000 compared to 4,200,000.0 and Leiporin, record high profitability, euros 3,100,000.0 against 2.5 From a management perspective, good to see that despite the challenging market, it’s clear that what we are doing, all the programs regarding profit improvement are hitting the bottom line currently. In sustainability, in emissions, we made good progress, 0.23, and this is kilograms per euro of sales compared to the target of 0.3. Two drivers behind this ASPO level growth and then the new electric hybrid vessels gradually taking a bigger share of the entire fleet of ESL and having a then positive impact on emissions. When it comes to safety frequency, we still have quite task to go in order to reach the target.

Safety frequency is six, and that includes all deviations, also those who will not impact on the sick leave. We’re continuing to work on the safety frequency, and that goes for ESL and Telco in particular. Then from an ASPR perspective, I’m happy to say that all the businesses have made good progress the ESG on the ESG agenda. Telco was awarded a gold medal by Ecovadis rating, which means that it’s ranked among the top 2% of companies within its industry. And as we communicated earlier on, ESL already achieved a platinum level ranking, which was published this year in January.

We are also making progress when it comes to science based targets. We committed to this initiative already last year, and currently, we’re detailing the KPIs and the targets and also the actions in order to reach the commission the commitments done in the Paris Agreement. If I then jump to the Q2 and start with net sales. As you see, this quarter, Q2, has the highest net sales of the reported quarters in the near term history. We had growth of 6%.

ESL shipping, though, in a decline with some 13% due to the very weak spot market pricing we had. And then particularly, when it comes to forestry industry, the contractual volumes were fairly low. On the positive side, steel industry on a healthy level from an ESLs perspective and then also good opportunities in the project cargo market, that means windmills, etcetera, where we are transporting blades and structures. Telco, solid 21% growth, primarily driven by the acquisitions. Organic sales growth in a small decline during Q2, however, positive development during the first half of this year.

And prices in a small showed small growth driven by the product and service mix of Telco. Leiporin, 15% growth driven by organic sales growth in Sweden and then the acquisition of Kebelco in 2024. Then if we look at profitability, euros 9,200,000.0 of EBITA, the best quarter in the near term history of ASP. ESL of EUR 5,000,000, a decline from the EUR 6,100,000.0, impacted by the slow market development, positive though impacted by the green coasters, clearly having a strong profitability compared to the old fleet and the time chartered fleet. And then we also, during Q2, had quite a lot of dockings, approximately one hundred and thirty days compared to thirty days last year, which had a negative profitability impact.

Telco, euros 4,300,000.0 compared with €1,800,000 driven primarily by the acquisitions made, improved margins and then absence of M and A costs. Profitability, best quarter, I think, ever in Leiporin’s history, euros 1,700,000.0. And this was really Sweden who made the difference this time. Acquisition of Kebalko and then a strong organic growth. We won some big tenders in Sweden.

And then also supply chain efficiencies clearly hitting the bottom line already in Q2, but even further in Q2 this year. And if we go to onetime items, as expected, some €300,000 during Q2. This is still related to the fraud case, basically legal costs of the fraud case, adding up then to EUR 1,400,000.0 for the first half of onetime costs. However, we will be compensated at least with close to €1,000,000 €900,000 in Q3 from insurances from this specific case. So then we see a figure in the other direction.

And last year, these one off items was primarily related to the Supramax vessels and then to the sale of a minority stake in ESL. What is good to see in these two graphs is that the dark blue bars are growing significantly versus the light blue bars are in clear decline, showing a lot stronger development this year compared to last year. Cash flow operative cash flow, better than last year, EUR 23,500,000.0. All the business is contributing positively to cash flow. Looking at working capital, also a positive impact to cash flow because of the fact that we sold one green coaster to the pool of investors and then secondly, also Telco’s inventories in clear decline.

Free cash flow on still positive €8,800,000 negatively then impacted by Green Coaster investments of close to EUR 16,000,000. And then we also still had some cash outflow from the acquisitions made, including Cartagena in Q1 and then cash inflow from the fact that we sold one coaster, which was at the end of its life cycle of ESL. Then to the big news that we announced in on Friday last week, we signed an agreement to sell Leiporin to Landmenen, enterprise value €63,000,000 and purchase price, which will be paid in cash of approximately €60,000,000 And this will then give us a sales gain of €16,000,000 and that is expected to happen during the first quarter next year. And this transaction have no impact on the guidance of ASPO as Leiporin’s profitability is still included in this guidance. This transaction gives us a clear step forward, good rationale based on the fact that we will strengthen our balance sheet, we will enable Telco to grow further via acquisitions, then I think this is also a clear step forward when it comes to our vision to form two separate companies out of ASPO, namely ASPO Infra and ASPO Compounder.

We’ve invested a lot of in ESL, in the green coasters, in the green handies. We’ve done a lot of acquisitions when it comes to Telco. And now we announced the sale of Leiporen. These are the big kind of game changing items when it comes to this vision so far. How was this then possible?

I think during the four years the four past years, Leiporin has made tremendous progress. We had a profitability level of close to zero back a couple of years back. Now the profitability of Leiporin is basically all time high, to the 5% EBITA target. We sold the equipment related businesses, Volganusen and the equipment trading business of Leiporin. We fully exited East, and at the same time, we invested in West by acquisitions, the biggest one, Cobia, but also very important, Kebeco and Kartagena, enabling us to expand into the food industry.

And Kobia actually was a market entry into Sweden, which is nowadays the largest market of Leiporen. We also sold the real estate in Sweden and Lithuania, financing the growth. And then Leiporin has executed a substantial number of activities to improve profitability in commercial supply chain and also sourcing and strengthen the management practices over the past couple of years. Big, big thank you to all of the labor and personnel for making this substantial transformation happen. What does this then mean to our vision to form two separate companies out of ASPO?

The financial ambition, the financial targets remains unchanged. ESL, more than €300,000,000 of net sales, EBITA of 14% and Telco, more than €500,000,000 of sales and EBITA of 8%. And these are the target figures for 2028. Then when it comes to the vision of restructuring ASPA, this really simplifies the kind of future assessment. Now it boils down to what is the most from a shareholder value perspective, the best alternative for separating Telco and ESL to form two separate companies.

And we still have all the scenarios on the table, being a demerger, an IPO or a full or partial sale of one or two of the businesses. But then this vision of restructuring Aspo boils down to this question, how to separate Telco and ESL from each other to create value. Then I would ask Erkat to go through the business specific financials.

Erko, CFO/Financial Officer, ASPO: Thank you, Rolf. Then going to ESL. ESL sales decreased 13% on the second quarter. The spot market was very weak from both from the pricing and the volume point of view. Also, the contractual volumes were weak, especially in the forest industry, whereas on a healthy level on the steel industry.

We made progress on the project cargo for especially for windmill projects. Our green coaster vessels are really cost efficient and capable on the project cargoes, and we have good expectations also going forward on those. From the performance point of view, the profitability of the second quarter declined compared to the second quarter last year. On a year to date basis, slightly higher Last year was quite specific with strikes and harsh ice conditionings impacting the first quarter.

We are seeing then very high demand on the second quarter, and the quarterly development was quite different than it is this year. We had a high amount of dockings this year. In general, we have two dockings for each vessel for every five years, And they are not distributed evenly between the years. And then this year, we had high dockings compared to the previous year. We sold one old the oldest coastal vessel as part of our planned renewal of the fleet.

Our fleet renewal continues with the new GreenCoaster investment proceeding and also the GreenHandy investment proceeding. And we are simultaneously then optimizing the fleet of our own and time chartered vessels. Telkom grew 21%, mainly driven by the acquisition. Acquisitions, the organic sales volumes were lower than last year. Especially the April was we saw low volumes with high uncertainty at that time driven with uncertain duty environment, and that impacted our customers’ kind of planning horizon and willingness to commit for the volumes.

Since then, we have seen the market more kind of normalizing and the volumes have grown towards the end of the quarter. Sales prices were moderately higher compared to the last year and rather stable compared to the previous quarter. Telco’s profitability significantly increased compared to last year, mainly driven by the acquisitions done last year and also the improved margins in the businesses. Also in this year, we didn’t have the acquisition related expenses, while last year, we had €1,600,000 acquisition related expenses in the second quarter. And in Leiporin, we saw 15% sales growth driven by the Gobia sorry, Gebeldco acquisition and then the organic growth in the Swedish market.

Overall, the organic volume and price development was stable. And the integration of the food ingredients business acquired in Lithuania progressed well during the quarter. And in Telco sorry, in Leiporin, we saw a record high profitability now on the second quarter at €1,770,000 And it was driven by the acquisition, the organic growth in Sweden and the supply chain optimization. And then while now we saw the improvement in Sweden, but there has been significant profit improvement efforts throughout the business. Then when we are looking a bit on a longer perspective, these figures are now on the twelve months rolling basis.

We see that the ESL shipping, the performance is stable on a lower level than previously, with the EBITA percentage around 9%, but fairly stable there at the current level. Whereas in Telco and Labouring, we have seen significant profit improvement, both based on the acquisition and margin improvement in both businesses. That has resulted on the ASPO group level profitability turning to a positive growth trend. Our liquidity continued strong on the second quarter. We had €41,300,000 cash at the end of the quarter.

We have now secured the funding for the Green Handy investment with €70,000,000 loan from Skepsupotek that is undrawn and is expected to be drawn in ’twenty seven and ’twenty eight and also the €45,000,000 loan from Nordic Investment Bank, where half of that has been drawn and the rest is expected to be drawn on 2627%. And in April, we also participated in the multi issuer bond guaranteed by Garantia for €15,000,000 Also in June, we paid repaid the €30,000,000 hybrid bond as communicated earlier. Our average loan maturity has increased now to €4.9 the long maturities of the new loans, And the average interest rate has declined with the market rates coming down. Our net debt to EBITDA ratio was 3.7%, mainly increasing due to repayment of the hybrid bond as the hybrid bond was accounted as equity, and now it is visible in our net debt. The labor in sale is expected to decrease our net debt to EBITDA ratio by 0.6% when also deducting the EBITDA of labor.

And in the beginning, obviously, the reported net debt to EBITDA will decline more as the historical EBITDA is still in our figures. We also have low CapEx commitments for ’25 and ’26, which support our maintaining a strong balance sheet. Our equity ratio was impacted by the repayment of the hybrid bond. The impact was 5.8% to the equity ratio. In addition to that, we had temporary impacts from the unrealized currency hedges and fairly high cash balance that we had at the end of the quarter.

These are temporary. The unrealized currency hedges, once hedges are rolled over, the realized part will be booked to the investment and will not impact the equity. We still see the current hedges at the end of third quarter, but in the fourth quarter, we should not expect to see a similar impact in the equity anymore. So in the kind of the normalized run rate, you can assume to be around 31% on the equity ratio currently. And the gain on labor and sale is expected to improve the equity ratio by 3.6%.

Then back to Rolf.

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: Thank you, Erko. So then a summary of year to date 2025. Good profitability in Q2 and also good growth, so EBITA of 9,200,000 And if we look at the first half of this year, all business improved their profitability, total €18,000,000 against 12.4 And we did some EUR $0.03 1 per share. That’s our earnings per share KPI. And then the big news from last week, we signed an agreement to divest Leiporin to Lundmen and then making progress on this vision to restructure Aspen.

If we then look at the guidance, first, the assumptions behind the guidance, ESL’s demand is expected to continue quite weak during the second half with low spot market pricing and fairly low contractual volumes. And we see the soft market continuing during Q3, but gradually then picking up towards the end of the year. Telco, stable overall development. And considering the acquisitions made, we’ll focus on integration, organic growth and profitability development. The acquisition related expenses will be clearly lower this year compared to last year.

And stable market development expected for Leiporin with good opportunities to grow and good opportunities to improve profitability going forward. The guidance unchanged, euros 35,000,000 to €45,000,000 of EBITA, and that is including the total group EBITA, I. E, also including Leiporen’s profitability. And we expect the market to remain challenging overall. We have geopolitical uncertainty.

We have trade tensions driving down economic growth on the positive side in Europe, possibly increased defense spending as well as spending on infrastructure will revive the economical development in Europe. Our profit improvements are based on three items: the green coasters. We have six in commercial traffic already, and the seventh will come during Q3. The acquisitions done both by Telco, three substantial acquisitions during last year and also Leiporin, specifically Kebelco and then Cartagena. And then as mentioned, we have a lot of profit improvement initiatives, specifically in operations and supply chain and then in the commercial side, which gradually will impact Aspos profitability going forward.

In order to reach the upper range of this guidance, the market needs to have a clear recovery during the second half of this year, and we need to be very successful in our profit improvement measures. And in case we will reach only the lower range of the guidance, that will then mean that the economical recovery is further delayed. Then I would like to welcome Erka back on the stage, and we are ready for questions. And I propose we start here in the audience for questions.

Jonas Ilmonem, Analyst, Evli: So Jonas Ilmonem from Evli. Telco saw some volume challenges, but I think its margins still developed quite well. And also, labor and recorded record high earnings for the quarter. So wouldn’t you say that the Telco and Labourin have developed this year maybe in line or even better than you would have expected still like, say, three to six months ago, whereas your comments regarding ESL’s H2 demand outlook seem maybe a bit more cautious than it would have been some months back.

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: I think that if you look at Telco, what is very positive is the increase in sales margins. So I think that’s clear evidence of that the strategy is paying off. So moving from volume products to more specialty products and increasing the service content of Telco as well, selling basically processed products and services. When it comes to Leiporin, what is really positive is the profit improvement in Sweden, which then delivered this record high result. I also see ESL as kind of a positive story from the perspective that our strategy is paying off.

So we see very solid profitability of the Green Coasters vessels, and that is basically these Green Coasters and Green Handys, that is the future of ESL. Then you’re right that during the first half of this year, the market of ESL has been quite challenging and that you can see specifically in the contractual volumes for the forest industry and then also on the spot market, which has very low pricing.

Erko, CFO/Financial Officer, ASPO: And then both ESL and Telco, they are impacted by the industrial demand, which has been on the market fairly low during the first half, so still impacting both businesses. But

Jonas Ilmonem, Analyst, Evli: yes. So is ESL’s H2 customer demand outlook quite similar to these compared to these Q2 trends that forest industry is still like quite soft and then maybe steel is a bit better?

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: I think you are right, but at the same time, we’re expecting some revival when we move

Jonas Ilmonem, Analyst, Evli: of the year. So quite a soft still Q3, but then Q4 gradually picking up. Okay. And a question related to the timing of the labor in divestment. I guess the price seems quite fair, but now we saw but I think labor still has quite a lot of nice earnings margin upside left, and now we saw a record high Q2 earnings from it.

And I understand that you can’t like perfectly time the exit of any of these businesses, but any comments on the timing of this sale?

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: No, very happy with the timing. So if you look four years back, we were close to zero profitability, and now we’re fairly close to the 5% of EBITA. And the strategic value for us to strengthen the balance sheet and allow further compounding of Telco and then simplifying this vision for restructuring Osprey is of clear value. But I think you’re right. There’s a lot of opportunities for Leiporin when it comes to growth and performance improvement.

But I also would like to see those similar opportunities when it comes to telco and

Analyst: Thank you.

Pasi, Analyst, Nordea: This is Pasi from Nordea. Can I start with regarding your guidance for the full year? I mean, you have steadily reported roughly €9,000,000 in the quarter, in the first half. And you are guiding a kind of stable development for the second half, and that ends up roughly €36,000,000 on annual basis, but your guidance midpoint is actually €40,000,000 And that means that you’re supposed to get €11,000,000 per quarter going forward. Regardless, you are guiding a stable development and practically quite weak market in the shipping segment.

So is there some mismatch here or have you actually taken down your expectations? And are you still confident regarding the midpoint of your guidance?

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: We’re comfortable regarding the midpoint. Maybe a couple of comments. One is that typically, the profitability of Aspos second half is better than the profitability of the first half. And then secondly, if you look at the performance improvement measures that we have ongoing, these are likely to give more and more over time, also then supporting more H2 performance.

Pasi, Analyst, Nordea: Yes. And then second topic regarding your guidance. I mean if you usually have a rather stable EBITDA per quarter, let’s say, EUR 9,000,000, 11,000,000, how come you can still have a EUR 10,000,000 kind of spread on your guidance, which is actually 25% regardless we have a four months still of four to five months left for the 25. So there is a very wide range and uncertainty is coming.

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: It’s, to me, very clear that this geopolitical uncertainty and then kind of tariffs war or tensions that we have ongoing creates a lot of uncertainty. And I think the outcome of these could have quite a significant impact on overall economical development, also short term. And that being said, also quite a lot of impact for ASPO for the remainder of the year.

Pasi, Analyst, Nordea: Yes, I do understand. And then regarding your vision to create value and to kind of divest operations, if that actually creates more value than listed entity as per share price could indicate. So is it realistic? I mean, can it even happen that you are going to sell both telco and shipping and then you are going to be a listed entity with operations regarding to net cash position without any other kind of operational activities? So is this a realistic kind of outcome from your value creation plan?

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: What is then realistic and what is not, but now this vision, it boils down to the question that how to separate ESL and Telco. And we are continuing to do that assessment as we did for Leiporin from a pure perspective of creating value to the shareholders. And then we still have all the scenarios on the table, so sale, technical demerger or then an IPO. So I wouldn’t exclude at this point of time any scenario. We’re looking to find the best kind of viable options for the owners of Aspand that is what makes sense.

Pasi, Analyst, Nordea: So when creating value, you mean kind of giving back the maximum cash from the operations for the owners? Or are you going to invest another, let’s say, new entity or new segment with the cash you might have after the second divestment?

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: It’s not purely about giving back cash to the shareholders. It’s also about the assets you own. We don’t have on the agenda currently to invest in a new business of Aspo. So what we’re aiming for is to create two separate companies, Aspoinfra, which is equals then to ESL Shipping and then Aspocompounder, which equals to Telco, and then to find the kind of best possible homes of these entities, as a listed company or then as part of some other structure, and that we then assess from a value perspective.

Kasper, Analyst, Inderes: Hi. This is Kasper from Inderes. Norwegian press report that there’s been fire in one of ESL vessels. Does this have an impact on ESL’s profitability in the short term?

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: You’re very right. There was a fire on one of our vessels. Luckily, we have insurances in place. And the fourth most luck is that no persons were injured in this occasion. There’s, of course, a certain cost, which we need to pay prior to the insurance compensating.

But my estimate for the downside of this incidence on a profitability basis is, let’s say, approximately EUR 200,000.

Kasper, Analyst, Inderes: Okay. So you expect the vessel to go back live pretty soon?

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: Pretty soon. And then as said, we have insurance compensating also for some lost days after a certain time period.

Kasper, Analyst, Inderes: Okay. That makes sense. Then you adjusted downwards the expected earn outs from past Telco’s past acquisitions. Have some of your acquisitions developed below your own expectations?

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: On an overall basis, these are extremely sensitive, these earn out models, particularly when you come closer to the end of the earn outs. So I would say that we are overall very happy, satisfied with the development, specifically regarding Sveedhandling and Optimal, which have been the major acquisitions that we made. Polymer is, to some extent, it was a smaller acquisition in Germany. There, we are a bit struggling with the performance, but that’s still of a major of a much more minor importance compared to optimal and sweat handling.

Analyst: Good markets. Maybe a couple of questions. First, what is kind of the expected time line for this ESL and Telco demerger or whatever is the best way to separate the two companies kind of what could we expect? Because I think this labor, it was a bit, I don’t know, surprised, but kind of the timing was earlier than probably Morgart expected.

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: The only thing we communicated is that we will aim to do this execute this vision prior to 2029. So no further kind of tighter schedule communicated than that.

Analyst: All right. Then about Telco and volumes, you said that organic volumes were slightly lower. What is slightly?

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: I think they were on a fairly stable basis. And still, if you look at the first half of the year, we had organic net sales growth, prices developing a bit positively driven by the portfolio of products and services and volumes then during Q2 coming a bit down. But overall, I would consider that kind of stable development.

Erko, CFO/Financial Officer, ASPO: When we communicate slightly to it in our vocabulary, means that low single digits.

Analyst: All right. Then one more regarding ESL. You mentioned that, desperately, forest industry had a kind of challenging quarter. But was it kind of temporary due to because I think there was a couple of major downtimes due to maintenances on our factories? Or was it due to the soft market conditions with this client industries?

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: I would say that actually both and the forest industry demand from ESL’s perspective has been fairly weak, weaker than expected during Q2. But I think you’re at the same time right that there are certain incidences and drivers behind this, but that does not say that kind of

Analyst: the

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: overall market cycles are not in the favor from EASUR’s perspective looking at the forest industry currently.

Analyst: And if we think about the Q4, what is the industry you’re expecting to make the kind of the recover or the improve the volumes if Q3 is still going to be kind of soft?

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: Slow, gradual revival of the overall economics. I can’t specify it by industry, but as we mentioned, there’s a significant opportunity in project cargo, steel industries, already kind of on a healthy level, and forest industry has still a lot to hope. So seeing that during Q4, there’s a positive impact from the market on volume development overall, looking at ESL.

Erko, CFO/Financial Officer, ASPO: And seasonally, summer is clearly a weaker period for us than the winter.

Analyst: You. No further questions.

Pasi, Analyst, Nordea: Pasi from Nordea. One follow-up regarding the shipping segment and utilization ratio. So you said that volumes were slightly up, but what’s the net effect to utilization ratios when taking into account your capacity? So how the utilization ratio is actually now negative on year on year basis? And then looking forward, you are going to get quite many new ships still on your fleet.

And then looking at the kind of expectations for the steel and forest sector. So do you still have the same volume expectations on the long term than you made to ship to order for these new vessels? And will it be possible that you are gradually acting to be operating with the lower utilization ratios than you previously thought before you made some kind of investment decision for the new fleet?

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: When it comes to the coaster segments, we have some capacity, time chartered capacity that will come to an end during Q3. And at the same time, we will get new coasters into the fleet, basically two still during this year. So overall, I see quite a balanced situation, of course, depending on what specific traffic we are then producing because that then impacts the ballast ratios, etcetera, and how efficient total transportation system you can create. But overall, I think it’s according to plan on a world picture.

Erko, CFO/Financial Officer, ASPO: And on the quarter two, as we had very high dockings, then our utilization while ships online were kind of on a normal level.

Jonas Ilmonem, Analyst, Evli: Great. Jonas from Evli. So you’re probably going to activate with telco acquisitions again soon going towards next year. Any hints as to what kinds of deals you might be looking for next, like in terms of size, something quite similar to the past acquisitions or maybe something larger or geographies, products, anything you could say at this point?

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: I think we’re pretty happy with the acquisitions that we have made, so we would use the same criteria for these. In case expanding into a new geographical market, we would not consider a too small acquisition. And secondly, I would rather make acquisitions closer to our kind of existing core market compared to too much widening the geographical scope at this moment, just to focus on synergies and profitability. Any questions online?

Susana Hjertan, Moderator, ASPO: There are no questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers.

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: Then I would like to ask Susana Hjertan on the stage to place any questions that we got from the audience.

Susana Hjertan, Moderator, ASPO: Yes. We actually got two. Maybe you already mentioned these a bit, but also as a recap, so here we go. So where exactly will the proceeds from labor and sale be allocated, debt reduction, Telco’s growth investments or potential new acquisitions?

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: Strengthening Ospos’ balance sheet and then making further acquisitions of Telco, I think that these would be the kind of two main topics for the released capital.

Susana Hjertan, Moderator, ASPO: Okay. And then the second one, should investors expect further divestments as part of simplifying Asper’s structure? Or is labor and sale a one off decision?

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: As I said, we’re considering different alternatives for Telco and ESL. And also sale is one scenario. And in addition, we also look at a more technical kind of demerger of the two companies, creating then, in that case, two listed companies. But also sale is on the table for our existing businesses.

Susana Hjertan, Moderator, ASPO: Okay. That is all we have from the line.

Rolf, CEO/Management, ASPO: Thank you. Thank you all for participating today, and highly also appreciate the questions.

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