SharkNinja shares soar 11% as third quarter results crush expectations
Aspo Oyj reported its Q3 2025 earnings, revealing an EPS of 0.14 EUR, slightly below the forecast of 0.1532 EUR. Despite this miss, the company’s stock rose by 3.19% in pre-market trading, reflecting investor confidence in its strategic initiatives and future outlook. According to InvestingPro data, analysts forecast full-year EPS of 0.75 EUR for 2025, suggesting stronger quarters ahead. The company has been profitable over the last twelve months with a diluted EPS of 0.47 EUR.
Key Takeaways
- Aspo’s stock price increased by 3.19% following the earnings call.
- The company is investing in sustainable shipping technology, with new electric hybrid vessels.
- Aspo announced asset sales to focus on core business areas.
- Challenges persist in the spot market and key sectors like forest and automotive.
Company Performance
Aspo’s performance in Q3 2025 was marked by strategic shifts and moderate financial results. The company’s EBITA for Q3 reached a near-term record of 9.6 million EUR, contributing to a year-to-date EBITA of 27.5 million EUR, up by 6 million EUR year-over-year. This growth underscores Aspo’s ability to adapt and innovate in a challenging market environment.
Financial Highlights
- EBITA: 9.6 million EUR (Q3), 27.5 million EUR (YTD)
- Sales growth: 6% year-over-year
- Earnings per share: 0.14 EUR (Q3), 0.46 EUR (YTD)
- Free cash flow: -8.5 million EUR
Earnings vs. Forecast
Aspo’s Q3 EPS of 0.14 EUR was slightly below the forecast of 0.1532 EUR, representing an 8.7% miss. This minor discrepancy may be attributed to market conditions and operational challenges. Despite the miss, strategic initiatives and asset sales likely bolstered investor confidence.
Market Reaction
Aspo’s stock rose by 3.19% to 6.46 EUR, reflecting positive investor sentiment. This increase aligns with the company’s strategic focus on sustainable shipping and asset optimization. The stock’s movement is significant, considering its 52-week range of 4.71 to 6.5 EUR.
Outlook & Guidance
Aspo projects an EBITA of 35-45 million EUR, acknowledging ongoing market challenges. The company is focused on profitability improvement and exploring strategic acquisitions. A potential partial demerger or sale of ESL Shipping is expected by the end of 2026.
Executive Commentary
CEO Rolf Jansson emphasized the importance of sustainability, stating, "Profitability and sustainability go hand in hand." He also highlighted the company’s proactive stance, saying, "We cannot afford expecting anything from the market."
Risks and Challenges
- Weak market pricing and demand in key sectors.
- High net debt to EBITA ratio of 3.9.
- Negative free cash flow impacting financial flexibility.
- Potential volatility in the Baltic Dry Index affecting shipping operations.
Q&A
Analysts questioned the weak Q3 performance, attributing it to reduced vessel capacity and market conditions. Discussions also focused on Telko’s potential in specialty products and the strategic acquisition landscape.
Full transcript - Aspo Oyj (ASPO) Q3 2025:
Rolf Jansson, CEO, Aspo: Welcome to the Financial Reporting Q3 2025 of Aspo. I will start by briefly going through the numbers, then I will present the progress when it comes to our vision for Aspo, and then our CFO, Erkka Repo, will go through the financials in more detail. Finally, I will sum up our presentation. If we start by looking at year-to-date performance, Q1 to Q3 this year, we have improved our EBITA with a bit more than EUR 6 million compared to last year. EUR 27.5 million of EBITA for the first three quarters. We have sales growth of 6% or close to 6%, and we also have an EBITA of 6%. If we look at ESL Shipping, what’s interesting, as I see it, is that the new vessels are clearly outperforming the old vessels when it comes to profitability. That’s a key driver of the performance of ESL.
Telko, we see a clear shift from volume products to more value-added products, which then has a positive profitability impact. Also, we are benefiting from the acquisitions made last year. When it comes to Leipurin, the transformation is moving on and a good result as a consequence. For all the businesses, we have improved the profitability if you compare it to last year. If you then look at the last quarter, Q3 2025, EUR 9.6 million of EBITA, it’s a, let’s say, near-term history record looking at the three past years. Approximately EUR 1 million improvement compared to last year. Net sales are fairly flat for this quarter against last year. We have an earnings per share of 14 cents per share, and that’s actually a continuation of Q1 and Q2. We have 46 cents per share accumulated for the three first quarters.
Cash flow on the minus side, EUR 8.5 million of free cash flow driven by the investments in the Green Coasters and also an increase in working capital because of the Green Coasters which we are producing for the investment pool. Net debt to EBITA: 3.9. No surprises there. We have a fairly high figure, and the reason is that we have a lot of growth investments which are generating net debt, but they will generate then EBITA in a couple of years when we have the vessels in commercial traffic. We communicated also earlier on after the review period of Q3 that we’ve sold one of the Handy-size vessels, Kallio, sold it for EUR 18 million with a sales gain of approximately EUR 10 million. That’s briefly the financials, and we will come back to those. We also have some news when it comes to the vision for Aspo.
If we take a step back and look at the background, we have communicated already last year a financial ambition for each of the businesses of Aspo. In this situation, it’s more worthwhile focusing on the business-specific targets due to the structural changes that we are making on an Aspo level. ESL Shipping, more than EUR 300 million. Of sales, Telko, more than EUR 500 million, and Leipurin targeting more than EUR 200 million for 2028. Our vision is to form two separate companies out of Aspo, Aspo Compounder, namely Telko and Aspo Infra ESL Shipping. Our ambition is to release a hidden value and get a more clear investment profile for the different companies of Aspo. This is why we’re going after this vision. When we execute the vision, we will focus on improving the profitability of the companies and executing the strategies of each business.
What has then taken place, kind of progress against the communicated vision over the past months and even years? I think there are three main points. One is what we communicated in August this year, the sale of Leipurin to Lantmännen. Secondly, both when it comes to Telko as well as ESL Shipping, we have pursued the growth strategies of these companies and given both companies a better opportunity to operate as a standalone company. If we look at these a bit more in depth, I’m very proud of the announced sale of Leipurin. I think we have had a very successful transformation of Leipurin. The really heading is that we are focusing on supplying food ingredients to the bakery and food industries. That means that we sold some businesses, particularly in machinery businesses. We divested the Russian business.
We made acquisitions in particularly Sweden and Lithuania, and we’ve done a lot of different profitability improvement actions for the company. Announced transaction, enterprise value EUR 63 million. That should generate a sales gain of approximately EUR 60 million, and we expect that to close during Q1 next year. This will give Telko big opportunities to invest in acquisitions, and it will also strengthen the balance sheet of Aspo. If we look at Telko, during the past approximately four years, we’ve done seven acquisitions. These acquisitions are made in market segments with higher profitability in average. Companies more focused on the technical products, on the value-added services. These acquisitions have helped us to build better local positions, not to spread us too thin over a wide geographical area. These, of course, compensate for what we lost when exiting Russia. We have acquired revenue here of approximately some EUR 120-130 million.
This also gives us a platform to come up with good synergies between these companies and Telko. Good evidence of a functioning growth strategy and a lot of learnings when it comes to M&A, and that builds the opportunity to build a standalone company of Telko. Actually, a similar story when it comes to ESL. We invested more than EUR 300 million in the next generation vessels. These are the electric hybrid Green Coaster vessels and the e-methanol-driven Green Handy vessels, putting us in a much better position to generate profitability, but also increasing our competitiveness. These new vessels are extremely energy efficient. They are flexible for different cargoes, and they have less OpEx costs compared to the old vessels. We also then, in October, as already mentioned, sold the Kallio vessel for EUR 18 million.
These investments give a good promise of ESL to generate good growth and profitability in the future and really in taking the kind of sustainable leadership role in the industry of dry bulk shipping. We communicated this morning that we have narrowed down the options for Aspo going forward. Our objective is to, by end of next year, end of year 2026, either execute a partial demerger of Aspo, basically creating two stock-listed companies, ESL Shipping and Telko, or to divest, sell ESL Shipping. As already mentioned, Leipurin we are hoping to close during Q1 2026. A bit rational why we’re thinking along these thoughts. Starting with ESL, ESL has a tremendous growth strategy, a really good position in the market it serves, very stable EBITA and cash flow generation. This also gives ESL a lot of debt capacity, which then can be translated in good return on equity.
Hence, we see ESL to be a suitable standalone listed company. At the same time, if we find an owner with better opportunities than Aspo to invest in this growth strategy, that’s an alternative path for ESL. Either a sale of ESL or ambition to create a separate listed company out of ESL Shipping. Looking at Telko, we see Telko as an ideal candidate to be a standalone listed company. A very light balance sheet, good profitability, good return due to the light balance sheet, and then very strong opportunities for growth, both organic growth as well as acquisitions in a very fragmented market. Very well positioned to become a standalone company on the stock exchange. We are proud to state that we have got approval of our sustainability targets by the Science Based Targets initiative.
There’s a lot of work involved in this, and here are some of the key targets presented. It’s all about the scope 1 and scope 2 emissions that is primarily related to ESL Shipping. It’s also related to emissions when it comes to our network, basically suppliers, and this is more related to Telko then. We are also committed to stop shipping energy coal during the next year. You might recall that this represented maybe 10 years ago some 40-50% of our volumes. Currently, it’s a fraction of the total volumes, maybe 4-5% in that magnitude. I’m very proud to say that ESL Shipping, according to our knowledge, is the first dry bulk cargo shipping operator to receive approval for these targets.
If we then look at the sustainability targets that we are following up on an ongoing basis, we have good development when it comes to emissions, driven by the growth of Aspo and driven by the investments in new vessels, and as well. Energy efficiency is very much emphasized when driving the vessels. 0.23. Emissions as part of net sales compared to the 0.3 target. Unfortunately, when it comes to safety, we have had some challenges during this year. Our safety frequency is at 9.5 against a target of 4. We have done a lot of actions to turn around this performance. We have strengthened organizations, recruited new talent into the organizations, and we are very much analyzing the incidences that have occurred to learn from these. Finally, we just got a couple of weeks ago our personal survey results.
Glad to say that our people power index is at double A. Remained at the same level. If you look a bit more into detail, the net promoter score actually increased somewhat compared to last year. Our ambition is to get a double A plus rating by 2030. I will hand over to Erkka to go through a bit more in detail the financials. Thank you, Rolf. Before starting on going through the financials, a few words about the changes in our reporting. Starting from this quarter, Leipurin is now reported as discontinued operations. The historical figures are slightly different than what reported earlier as Leipurin as a standalone segment. When you look at our profit and loss statement and balance sheet, Leipurin is reported as a one-line way of reporting, and therefore the profit and loss and balance sheet show then the ESL Shipping and Telko as combined.
For example, when you look at key figures like our cash position or net debt, you need to look at the kind of the details that what we tell in the interim, not to look directly from the balance sheet as you will find only the ESL and Telko figures reported. Also, to support the message on the strategic development of the company, we have now increased a little bit insight on the ESL and Telko segments. We are now on the segment information reporting EBITA to give a better kind of view on the cash generation capability of the businesses. There also we are reporting now the net debts of ESL Shipping and Telko separately there towards the end of the reporting there on the segment information.
Going to these numbers, ESL Shipping continues to have a fairly stable performance, which now for the last two years there when looking at this 12-month rolling basis. Telko showing an improvement for the last 12 months. The improvement is now fully organic as there has not been acquisitions included in the last 12 months. Slight organic improvement there on Telko. Clear improvement on Leipurin on the 12-month basis. Also turning to Aspo, profit improvement continues there on the rolling basis. Look at the Aspo level figures. Aspo net sales are about flat compared to the last year. There was a 1.5% decline in the net sales. 7% decline in ESL Shipping, 4% decline in Telko, and then 10% increase in Leipurin net sales. About EUR 1 million increase in the EBITA of Aspo.
With slight increase in the ESL Shipping and also in Telko, and then clear improvement in Leipurin as reported in discontinued operation. I’ll go more in detail on the segments. ESL Shipping, the EBITA, EUR 3.5 million. Decline of EUR 0.3 million compared to the last year. The like-for-like sales of the coaster and handy operations decreased by 7%. We had a smaller vessel capacity with two of the loss-making time charter vessels were redelivered during the quarter. Also we had quite high planned dockings there during the quarter. There was a fire on board of one of the handy vessels. Timeout of that from the market impacted the profitability negatively. The spot market continued weak, and the forest industry volumes were soft. Especially impacting the coaster operations. The steel industry activity continued on a high level, or healthy level.
When looking at the vessel performance on the different kind of vessel classes, we see very clearly that the new vessels, both on the new handies and then the new Green Coasters, they are performing very well even in this challenging market that we have. The new vessels are much more energy efficient, they have a better cargo load, cargo carrying capacity, and the OpEx cost is also lower than on older vessels. Our transformation to invest into new vessels is expected to improve our profitability going forward, both on the investments in the new handy size fleets and the continuing investment on the Green Coasters. Also our pooling concept on the Green Coasters is working well, providing a good return without our capital tied into the pooling concept. The older vessels, both on the handies and on the coasters, their performance is clearly lower than the newer vessels.
The time charter contracts have been loss-making with the current market conditions. We will see a positive improvement in our fleet mix. Our Green Coaster investment is only halfway through. During the third quarter, for the full quarter, we had only six vessels there in commercial operations. The seventh vessel came into commercial operations only in September. There will still be a significant shift from the time chartered vessels to our Green Coaster vessels. If the market allows, obviously an increase in the fleet size. The same with the new handy investments, expecting a significant improvement in our mix there with the new handies coming online. Telko continued positive development. Now with the organic growth there. EBITA EUR 4.8 million compared to EUR 4.6 million last year. The net sales in Telko declined by 4% with the modest demand in the most European markets.
The organic sales volumes were lower compared to previous year, and sales prices were slightly higher than the previous year, and slightly declined compared to the second quarter of this year. The profitability improvement was mainly due to the absence of the acquisition-related cost. Those we had still EUR 700,000 in quarter three 2024. We also had a positive sales margin development continued with the increased share of higher margin specialty products in the portfolio. And in Telko portfolio, the focus is on higher value-added products and services where the EBITA margin is clearly better than the average of Telko. Also, the specialty products segment is more resilient with the changes, less impact from the demand or price volatility compared to the volume products. During this year, we have been able to increase the share of the specialty products and therefore improving the EBITA percentage in Telko’s business.
We do still have also in Telko some poorly performing segments, and that we will focus on to improve those as well. Leipurin reported record high profits in the third quarter with a 10% increase in the sales. That coming especially due to strong organic sales growth in Sweden. We also continued implementing the profit improvement measures, those also mainly coming from our Swedish business. The like-for-like improvement in the profitability was EUR 200,000, and the reported profitability was boosted by stopping depreciations due to the classification of discontinued operations with the sale of Leipurin. Aspo’s liquidity has continued strong. Our cash was EUR 28.6 million, and we have EUR 40 million unused revolving credit facilities. The EUR 60 million syndicated loan was extended by one year to mature in 2027. We have EUR 92.5 million of committed unjourned loan agreements in place for funding the Green Handy investment.
Also, when looking at the maturity profile of ESL Shipping, very well visible that ESL Shipping has long maturities in use to match with the long life cycle of the assets it has. The ESL Shipping net debt was EUR 149.6 million. It’s good to note that ESL’s net debt includes EUR 64 million of investments that are not yet in our operations. Those are not yet turning any EBITA, but we have invested about a bit more than half of it is on those Green Coasters where we are halfway on the investment cycle. A bit less than EUR 30 million is for the Green Handies, for the down payment of the Green Handies. That obviously is then increasing the net debt to EBITA ratio for ESL Shipping that was 4.2. For Green Coaster investment, we do not have a net cash outflow anymore.
We do have still the investment payments going out, but those will be offset by the sale of the pooled vessels. As a net, there is no cash outflow anymore for the Green Coaster investment. For the Green Handy investment, the investment commitment for the whole four ships is EUR 157 million. The cash flow is expected to go out 10% on 26, 60% on 27, and 30% on 28. We are expecting to sell one vessel to the pool investors. Aspo’s net debt to EBITA ratio was 3.9, and our net debt EUR 233 million. Here also, the same EUR 64 million of the net debt is on the vessels that are not yet generating any EBITA. Leipurin sale expected to decrease our net debt significantly, as well as the sale of Kallio vessel that took place in October.
Still on our dividend, Aspo Annual General Meeting decided on the dividend of EUR 0.19 per share to be paid in two installments. The first installment of EUR 0.09 was paid in May, and the second installment of EUR 0.10 is expected to be paid this week, on Thursday, on November 6th. We today announced that we will start repurchasing our own shares for the share to be used for the share-based incentive plans, purchasing 130,000 shares starting tomorrow and ending latest on April 30th. Thank you, and then turning over to Rolf. Thank you, Erkka. Then finally, our guidance and the assumptions behind the guidance. First, starting with the business-specific comments. When it comes to ESL, we see that the market will continue weak during this year with fairly low contractual volumes and with low spot market pricing.
Typically, though, there’s a seasonality in ESL, which means that the fourth quarter will be better than the previous quarters. Telko overall stable market development. Still a lot of opportunities when it comes to the synergies and the integration of the acquired companies, and we expect the acquisition-related costs to remain low for this year. Also, for Leipurin, a very stable market development to be expected, and good opportunities to grow in the food industry more in general, not only in bakeries. There’s a lot of opportunities being captured when it comes to profitability improvement. If we then look at the guidance, it remains at EUR 35-45 million of EBITA. We expect the market still to be challenging during the end of year 2025. A lot of uncertainty due to trade tensions, due to geopolitical uncertainty.
At the same time, the infra investments, particularly in Europe, and also increased defense spending has a positive impact. As so far this year, the profit generation compared to last year, the positive profit generation will primarily come from the Green Coaster vessels, from the acquisitions completed during 2024, and then all the improvement actions that we have ongoing in the company. Where we will end up within this range, it’s an equation of how successful we are in implementing the profitability measures and getting the bottom line impact of these still during this year. It’s a question of economic recovery, when that will happen and what the impact is. If I then sum up the three first quarters of this year. First of all, during Q3. The announced divestment of Leipurin to Lantmännen, an extremely important strategic step for Aspo.
We are very happy with this communicated transaction and the transformation of Leipurin. We also today elaborated our vision for Aspo going forward. Where we see either a partial demerger creating two separate stock-listed companies or alternatively a sale of ESL. Which then in practice will mean a listed Telko on the stock exchange. Still, due to the market environment and the fairly challenging market conditions, our focus is on profitability improvement during the remaining months of year 2025. Good. I would ask Erkka to join me on the scene and on the stage, and we are ready to take some questions. Maybe start with questions on the floor. Hi, it is Joonas Ilvonen from Evli. If I just start with ESL first. How did ESL’s Q3 earnings go according to your expectation earlier this year?
I mean, I think I would say that the Q3 earnings were still quite soft, especially considering that last year’s comparison figures were already quite low. What is your assumption behind the guidance? I mean, right now the guidance range is still very wide for Q4, and I assume that is mainly due to ESL. Do you see basically already significant pent-up demand for Q4 this year? Can you talk a bit about this dynamic? If starting with ESL and ESL’s performance. As Erkka mentioned earlier on, we had a bit of lack of capacity, particularly on the handy-sized vessels during the quarter. We had the engine fire on board of Tali, which also impacted our performance negatively. If we look at the market conditions, spot market very weak and also less demand on the forest segment compared to expectations.
If I comment on the guidance, it is a fairly wide range, EUR 35 million-EUR 45 million of EBITA. At the same time, we see that the market has quite a good understanding of Aspo’s profit generation for this year. The uncertainty, of course, particularly regarding the market conditions, how they will evolve during the fourth quarter, and then how we are able to get bottom line effect of our measures. Okay, that is clear. What about these, if I switch to Telko, what about these so-called poorly performing parts of Telko that you mentioned? Are they all basically outside these specialty product categories, like in more commodized products? We have some poorly performing businesses in all of those areas that was visible there that needs our attention. There is a kind of same way of possibilities to improve all of the areas, including also on the specialty category. Right.
Last year, Telko acquired, I think, more than EUR 80 million of revenue. Have these acquisitions, have they already been fully integrated? Do you still see some more work to do there? The Telko acquisition? Yeah. When it comes to synergies, I think there’s a lot of upside still to be expected from the already completed acquisitions. Then, of course, we will continue to implement further acquisitions as well. We have, as communicated, an ambition to grow Telko to more than EUR 500 million of net sales by 2028. We need to make quite a lot of acquisitions still over the next years. All right. A final question about Telko.
This product mix development that drove your profitability improvement, besides the lack of M&A cost this year, was it like this increased share of specialty products, was it mainly driven by these new companies you acquired last year, or was it coming from all over the Telko business areas? It’s both. The like-for-like development also shows clearly improved sales margins as a percentage. In particular, also the acquired companies are all having good profitability, including Swed Handling, Optimol as such, and also a higher organic growth in the specialty area. You also see potential, so you also see potential to further improve your product mix organically, not just due to additional acquisitions? Yes, definitely. That is our ambition to do so. It’s, I think, one essential cornerstone of Telko’s strategy to focus on these specialty products. Better profitability and less dependency on market conditions, and that makes this segment interesting.
Okay, thanks. That’s all from me. All right, Matti Karola from OP Markets. A couple of questions first regarding the ESL. The portfolio vision you’ve been talking about, you just today announced that you are trying to either list ESL as a separate company or then sell it to a third party. Is it now the right time to do it? I’m just thinking that the cycle is probably bottoming right now. Margins are still quite weak. From the perspective of maximizing the shareholder value, is the next year and putting quite a strict timeline the best way to proceed? I think when it comes both to Telko as well as ESL, we have over the past couple of years made tremendous progress when it comes to the growth strategy.
I think we have a good showcase for Telko when it comes to the acquisitions and for ESL when it comes to investments into new fleet. That then also will generate better profitability as we showed today. There’s a clear profitability gap between the Green Coaster vessels versus the old fleet. If we look at the Green Handy vessels, we used kind of the LNG vessels as proxy, and they generate a much better profitability than the old fleet. This gives us confidence that if you look at the business in detail, you can see the kind of profit generation already now today. All right, thank you. Maybe the continuation question. Do you see any signs that the cycle would be turning better regarding ESL? Are we now seeing the kind of bottoming of the cycle when it comes to the industrial activity?
If we look at our kind of customer industries of both ESL and Telko, there’s automotive, there’s construction, there’s the forest industry. We see still kind of fairly weak demand. There are some positive signs due to the infra investments made in Europe. That generates some traffic for ESL. Also, investments in the defense industry give some positive signs for Telko. At the end of the day, we cannot afford kind of expecting anything from the market, which I think we’ve done in general, not only Aspo, for some years. We need to focus on our profitability improvement actions, and if the market conditions pick up, it will just help us at the end of the day. That’s kind of our approach. All right, thank you.
Turning to Telko, there’s the first question, like could you a little bit elaborate the product mix that was actually a bit discussed, but kind of what is roughly the share of the volume products and then the specialty products in a kind of revenue? Could you a little bit open up the share? I don’t want to give any percentages, but from the illustration that I showed you earlier, the share of the specialty products is fairly high, and we aim to increase still going forward with that. All right, then continuation question on that. If the specialty product kind of the portion is that high, why are you so much behind, let’s say, Brenntag or IMCD when it comes to the EBITDA margin? If we look at Brenntag’s and Azelis’ and these companies, the best performers have an EBITDA percentage of some 11-12%.
We still have a gap against that. We have though already above 6% of EBITDA, and what Erkka mentioned earlier on, we have some businesses which need to be fixed. They might be kind of geographically scoped or then certain chemicals, certain market areas which we will need to fix, and that already will boost our profitability. I also think we have still opportunity to kind of add the value content of our product portfolio, and by doing so, we will do our utmost to close the gap towards the best performers. Sounds good. Thank you. Kasper from Minderö. You stated that the spot market pricing was weak in Q3. Have the Baltic Dry rates been improving throughout the year? Am I missing something here? If you look from the beginning of the year, the Baltic Dry index has almost doubled approximately, I think from 1,000 to 2,000.
If you look from a long-term perspective, we’re at fairly low levels. Of course, you need to remember that it’s also a kind of regional question about the pricing, and we see. Quite weak spot market pricing, which is also to some extent related to the forest industry demand, which is quite low in the region. Okay, some regional differences there. Do you expect to further reduce the time-chartered capacity of ESL since these are now loss-making? What would have to happen in the market conditions so that these would be profit-making again? We did during Q3, we took out two of the time-chartered vessels from our capacity. I think we have approximately 10 time-chartered vessels currently in our portfolio. It depends a bit. A lot of these have a one-year rental period, but there are others as well with a bit longer period.
Depending on their cost level and depending on the features of the vessels, where they can be used, we will then make decisions. Of course, it’s no use for us to make loss-making business with these time-chartered vessels, particularly when we know that we gradually get more and more new electric hybrid vessels into our fleet, which then are very profitable in this market. Okay, and what would have to happen in the market conditions so that those would be profit-making again? Basically, demand picking up. The spot market is extremely sensitive. If you look at kind of historical data, they can change significantly over a couple of weeks. I think key drivers, of course, overall economical activity. If there would be kind of reduced uncertainty on a macro level, that will help us. Some industry-specific drivers, maybe particularly forest industry demand. Okay.
I looked through the investment plans in Northern Sweden that you talked about in your capital markets day. I observed that most of these have been either canceled or postponed. Do you still see significant growth potential in transport volumes in the next three to five years? One needs to understand kind of the details behind the plans. For example, SSAB is progressing with their investments in Sweden. They have not made any decisions when it comes to the Finnish investments, but it does not impact us that much, these specific investment decisions. If we then look in more general terms, we are not dependent on a single project. There’s a lot of good opportunities out there. For example, Stegra. For example, the investment decisions of Metsä Group, Stora Enso. There’s a lot of project transportation demand. That will then generate the overall demand of ESL.
What is also very important to understand is that this is not purely kind of a sustainability investment play. If we look at the Green Coasters, if we look at the Green Handys that we are investing, basically, profitability and sustainability go hand in hand. In any environment, we would invest in these same vessels, which are extremely competitive in any market situation. That’s overall. Okay. You allocated some costs from group functions to businesses. Could you. Maybe elaborate how big of an impact this has on the EBITDA of ESL and Telko in Q3? On a quarterly basis, there are no kind of differences on the cost allocation of the group cost to the businesses. So they have continued on the same level than on the previous quarters. Okay. Finally, you said that you expect to use the funds from Leipurin sale to accelerate Telko’s growth.
Do you think that you do not have to reduce your debt load in order to proceed with the planned demerger, if that is the way you are going to go? I think that further acquisitions, they are of course dependent on the cash generation of the businesses and the strength of the balance sheet. So they will be, of course, evaluated case by case when they come. The continuation of the acquisition is part of the Telko strategy. Okay, thanks. That was from me. We take some online questions, if any. If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. There are no questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Do we have then any other questions coming from the audience, Susanna? Yes, so we have two more at the moment. Here we go. Your EBITDA target of 8% remains distant. Is that goal still realistic in the current market? The 8% target that is allocated for Aspo Group. Currently we are year to date on a 6% level. We have shown a case already in the past that we can achieve the 8% target. However, going forward now, I would more emphasize the business-specific EBITDA target. So 14% for ESL, 8% for Telko, and 5% for Leipurin. Because particularly when the transaction selling Leipurin to Lantmännen will be completed, then of course our ambition having Telko and ESL in the portfolio will be higher due to their specific EBITDA targets. Okay. Another one. Working capital increased notably. Do you have too much capital tied up in inventories?
The working capital increase was primarily coming from the Green Coaster investments that the pooled vessels go through our inventory while they have been constructed. That was primarily it. Other than that, it was a normal seasonal variation. Okay, thanks. That is all from the line. Big thank you for everyone joining this event, both here in the Sanoma Talo as well as online. Thank you. Thank you.
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