Hi everyone, it's Juha from Metso's Investor Relations, and I want to welcome you all to this conference call where we discuss our third-quarter 2026 results, which were published a few hours ago. Results will be presented by President and CEO Sami Takaluoma and CFO Pasi Kyckling, and after the presentation we'll have Q&A.

We have scheduled 60 minutes for this call, and as a final reminder, we'll be making some forward-looking statements, and that's why we have the disclaimer in our presentation deck. With these remarks, I'll be handing over to Sami.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, Juha, and good afternoon to everybody online. Very happy to present our key figures from the third quarter.

Very strong position in the market and the activity from the customers resulted our orders received to go above 1.6 billion, growth in 24% in the constant currencies. Sales was developing according to the plan and 1.4 billion close, and a growth of 1% in the constant currencies.

Then the drop-through to margins, 230 million in the period, resulting 16.8% margin. Operating cash flow was 136 million, and in the rolling 12-month we are now in the 786 million.

Cash conversion was 85% for the 12-month period. This strong order growth and solid profitability was, as mentioned, 28%, 24 in the constant currencies.

Book-to-bill relation was 1.18 in the period, compared to 0.95 a year ago. Minerals equipment orders were strong, 79% growth, and we continue to deliver strong orders in the aftermarket, now the 11% growth for this quarter.

Backlog has increased 20% and is currently now 3.9 billion. This supports very nicely the future sales and margin generation.

Sales, as mentioned, 3% up. Aftermarket sales, 10% growth in the sales, and now in this period, it represented 57% of the group sales number.

Adjusted EBITA grew by 4%, the 230 million, and the margin was 16.8%, notch up from the year before numbers. In the period, we did good amount of activity for the future success as well.

Regarding the service capacity, we made a decision for the new service center in mining region Belo Horizonte in Brazil. Build-up is next year, and then starting from the beginning of 2028 to serve the customers.

Regarding the technology and developing our offering, few very important product launches: the Sambro cell flotation, coarse particle flotation is groundbreaking innovation, and continue to develop our mobile equipment fleet in the aggregates side with the two new products, LT400RS and LT200HPX, which has been taken very positively in the marketplace. Three AI-enabled mining digital solutions to improve the production, performance, and safety at the customer sites were launched during the period.

Then the low-emission DRI smelting technology, which is our flagship, you can say, first commercial-scale order was received now in the third quarter. Regarding the M&A, acquisition side, we closed an acquisition for the hose and progressive cavity pumps.

That was closing the technological gap in our pump offering. Then after the period, but announced now recently, was the bronze alloy component manufacturer Italbronze, and that's, again, a very strategic acquisition in terms of securing very important component for our crushing technology, both in aggregate and in minerals markets.

Regarding the outlook, we expect the market activity in both minerals and aggregates to remain at the current level for the next 6-month period. I hand over now to Pasi to go through our financials.

Thank you, Sami, and good day everyone also from my side. Let me start with orders and sales bridges.

Our orders increased by €350 million or 28% year-on-year, resulting to €1 billion and 614 million. The largest contribution came from minerals equipment, adding €258 million.

Minerals aftermarket contributed other €44 million, while aggregates also provided a positive contribution from equipment. Currencies had a positive impact of €42 million.

Overall aftermarket orders increased by 9%. Then looking at sales, our group sales increased by €45 million to €1 billion 373 million.

Largest positive contribution came from minerals aftermarket, while minerals equipment sales were below the comparison period. Sequentially, however, minerals equipment increased sales by €57 million or 17%.

In that comparison, the comparison point is second quarter this year. We are also seeing a good progress in mineral equipment deliveries and revenue.

Aftermarket sales overall increased by 10%. Overall third-quarter revenue was spot on with our plans and expectations when we entered the quarter in early July this year.

I'll come back to the timing of equipment deliveries when we look at minerals segment more in detail. Let's then turn to our profitability.

Adjusted EBITA increased by €8 million to €230 million and the margin improved slightly to 16.8%. Higher volumes contributed positively with €15 million year-on-year.

Gross margin had a €15 million negative impact, while SG&A had €5 million negative impact. Both gross margin and SG&A were affected by the adjustment items, and excluding the adjustments, these developed year-on-year in a more stable way.

Earnings per share from continuing operations were 15 euro cents. Overall profitability remained solid at group level and in both of our reporting segments.

Let's then look at cash flow. Cash flow from operations was €136 million in this quarter.

The main year-on-year difference was working capital, which had a negative impact of €140 million. The negative impact in working capital reflects higher customer activity and then the growing order backlog that we have.

On a rolling 12-month basis, operating cash flow was €786 million and the cash conversion 85%. While working capital increased as the business is growing, cash generation remains healthy over the longer term.

Sequentially, the increase in working capital is split between inventory and payables. Then if we move on and look at our balance sheet.

Overall, the balance sheet remains strong. Our net debt at the end of the period was €1 billion and 175 million, and net debt to EBITDA was 1.3 times, comfortably below our 1.5 times target.

At the end of the quarter, we had €445 million of cash and then significant undrawn committed credit facilities. Average interest rate for the period was 3.6%.

The balance sheet continues to give us good capacity to execute our strategy and to invest in profitable growth, including both organic and inorganic investments. Let's then look at our segments and start from aggregates.

Orders increased by 4% to €292 million. That represents 2% organic growth in constant currencies.

Orders increased both in North America and Europe, with a stronger growth in Europe coming from the Nordic countries. Orders in rest of the world declined somewhat.

Sales increased by 5% to €324 million. Very importantly, profitability continued to improve, and our adjusted EBITA increased to €53 million, and then the margin improved 80 basis points to 16.4%.

This was supported by higher sales, combined with solid operational execution. This was another quarter of steady progress in aggregates, with order growth both in Europe and North America and further profitability improvement.

Then let's look at minerals. Customer activity overall remained healthy across both equipment and aftermarket.

Orders increased by 34% to €1 billion and 323 million, or 31% organic growth in constant currencies. Equipment orders increased by 79%.

The quarter also included a €90 million copper-related order, but importantly, the growth was very broad-based across our product offering, with the strongest growth in grinding and crushing. Then the order growth was also broad-based when it comes to geographical point of view.

Small- and medium-sized orders also remained at strong level. Aftermarket orders increased by 11%.

This overall resulted to book-to-bill in minerals to 1.26, and the order backlog increased by 21% or approximately €580 million to €3 billion and 372 million. This backlog gives us a solid starting point for the coming quarters.

Then looking at the sales, minerals sales increased by 3% to €1 billion and 49 million, and it was stable organically. Aftermarket sales increased 11%, and it represents 64% of our minerals sales in the third quarter.

Equipment sales increased by €57 million or 17% sequentially from second quarter this year, we are seeing good progress in deliveries in sequential comparison. The year-on-year comparison in minerals equipment is mainly about timing.

A year ago, some larger orders progressed faster through customers' investment schedules, while some customer investments are currently progressing more gradually. Further, our order intake second and third quarter last year for equipment was slower.

These factors affect the timing of deliveries and the sales recognition now in the third quarter this year. Looking over longer period of time, equipment orders have historically translated into sales over several quarters, and around a year can be used as a broad reference point.

However, there is no mechanical conversion period, as the precise timing of each project depends on progress by customer investments. Then just to remind everyone that for projects we apply the percentage-of-completion accounting.

With strong equipment order intake and higher backlog, we have a solid foundation for future deliveries and growth. Then looking at our third-quarter profitability, the adjusted EBITA increased to €189 million, and the margin was 18%.

The aftermarket share supported profitability. At the same time, aftermarket margins were temporarily affected by a surge in our freight costs following the crisis in Middle East.

We have implemented aftermarket price increases to address this temporary pressure. Overall, minerals delivered very strong and broad-based order growth, good sequential progress in equipment deliveries, and a significantly higher backlog and solid profitability.

With that, would like to hand back to you, Sami, to summarize.

Thank you, Pasi. Summarizing the presentation and our Q3, customer activity was staying in a very good level, and we were able to convert that into strong orders.

Result of that is growing backlog, and that will support our future sales for the upcoming periods and 2027. Sales was progressing as we expected, and solid profitability across both of our segments.

We did the investments for our long-term profitable growth to continue this journey. Juha, back to you.

Thank you, gentlemen, for the presentation, and operator, we can now open the lines for questions.

Hi, Sami and Pasi. A few questions on my side on minerals, please.

First question, just on the order number. Clearly a very significant increase year-on-year and sequentially stronger on small-medium-sized orders from a very high Q2 level.

How should we think about this kind of base run rate now? Then also maybe you can touch on large order pipeline that you're seeing?

Yes, thank you for that question. The base orders, as we talk about now, they were high on the second-quarter order books, and the third quarter was continuing that one.

For us, that means that we, of course, know the activity level from the customer side to fill in our pipeline, and the conversion was very successful in the Q3. Activity is not showing anything drastic changes, as we have also guided in our guidance that the market activity is to be remaining.

Obviously, it's always on the customer side to make the final decision. We expect that we will see the base orders to continue to be on a good, even maybe on strong level going forward.

The second part of your question was about the larger orders. As we explained today in the third-quarter numbers, we do have one of this larger ones, €90 million copper order, and the timing of the larger ones is even more difficult maybe sometimes to predict.

From the pipeline perspective, they are there and they are moving on the customer side forward. That makes us to be quite confident that they start to also come in a certain pace.

Is it going to be one per quarter or two per quarter, that remains to be seen. For the next 6-month period and also beyond that one, there's definitely good pipeline of these orders also to start to materialize and convert to the orders.

Thank you. Then my next question was just regarding deliveries in minerals.

As you mentioned, there's a bit of timing impact and maybe a reflection of some of the order development this time last year. It feels like the backlog since then has been growing pretty nicely.

Could you maybe give a bit of color in terms of the step-up we should expect in Q4 deliveries?

That's a good question. Thank you for that.

We obviously don't provide guidance on revenue or orders specifically, and not for fourth quarter either. Like we said, we are in extremely good position to continue to deliver growth going forward in terms of revenue.

The backlog, where we have improvement both in the aftermarket side, but then also especially in the capital side, provides a good starting point for that. You may remember that third quarter sorry, fourth quarter last year, we had relatively high share of equipment in our mix.

Let's see how it plays out this year. There is order book and backlog both from capital and aftermarket side to deliver a good solid quarter.

I think I leave it there.

Thank you. If I can ask just a final question on pumps and your strategy there.

You made an acquisition in this space this quarter. At the Capital Markets Day, you said that you wanted to get to the number one, number two position in this vertical.

How many more acquisitions could we expect in this vertical? Would these need to be larger in scale?

Thank you.

Yes, we have a very solid strategy for our pumps business, and acquisitions do play a role. Organic growth plays a role equally importantly there as well.

Acquisitions are something that we work on. We have now been able to close one, and it was not the only one that we were working.

I would maybe not say that they are super-transformative, the ones that we are working, but very important, of course, from our strategy point of view that we are currently going through with the potential targets. Very difficult to guide again anything of the timing and so on, but we have a very very active work ongoing also in this front.

It's not only pumps, but pumps, of course, we have highlighted of one area that we want to be having inorganic investments done, partly to close these technological gaps and then grow the business as well.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Morning, Sami. Morning, Pasi.

Thanks for the time. I wanted to start on the crushing and grinding demand strength we've seen in two strong quarters of that now, a number included in your press releases over the third quarter.

I guess trying to understand what proportion of the orders the last six months have included products from other phases of the flowsheet which don't seem to get mentioned, cyclones, screens, pumps, and then just mechanically, when we think about these concentrator expansions at customers, how does that flow through into Metso? Is that coming in designated blocks for different product packages, or is it that the other product packages are being awarded to other suppliers at the same time as your crushing and grinding wins?

Yes,

thanks for that question. What we said was that it was driven by crushing and grinding, it didn't mean that it was only crushing and grinding as you did not expect either.

There was a good broad-based orders received from all technologies inside the flowsheet from that perspective, but the strong one was where these two. Typically, customers do behave a little bit differently, but one type of progressing with the investment is to start according to the flowsheet where the crushing and grinding is the first step, so that is kind of explaining partly of this development as well.

Then the next packages are coming then later.

What's driving that, why crushing and grinding, those are typically the long-lead items in the flowsheet, the delivery times are longest, and that could be one rationale for customers to start from there.

Thank you. Want to touch then on logistics inflation.

Maybe you can help us quantify that. How big are the increases in the costs you're getting quoted from your logistics partners?

Then when we think about the basis point impact on your actual margins in the bridge for minerals, can you help quantify that?

If we start from the increases we are seeing, there is couple of different things driving this, starting from the Hormuz and Middle East crisis. Simply, fuel prices have increased quite a bit, and that impacts on logistics.

Then the second aspect is that because of the crisis, there is overall tightness in the capacity available for certain routes. Then when there is sort of a favorable supply-demand situation for the logistics providers, they understandably take advantage of that and hike prices.

We have seen in certain routes very significant, doubling, in some cases even tripling container prices. It's very drastic.

Then at the same time, at Metso, we are in lucky position that overall logistics is a minor part of our cost footprint, so that's good to remember. Then what we have done is that already when the Hormuz started, we, of course, understood that logistics costs will increase.

We have also some other, but limited, cost increases elsewhere, and we have proactively implemented price increases. Now the impact we've seen in this quarter, and maybe not going to margins, but rather from euro point of view, we sort of see mid-high single-digit millions of extra costs because of this, just to give you an idea that what we are talking about.

Then, of course, you can translate that to margin impact.

Very helpful, thank you. Maybe if I can just a third one on your point on tightness in shipping.

Has this resulted in the revenue disappointment, or you said it was in line with your expectations, but obviously we've had three quarters now where revenues have been below market expectations? Trying to understand if that's the wrong calibration of book-to-bill conversion timings or if there's any sort of shipment issues that have happened in the quarter?

Again, like I said during the presentation already, we delivered from sort of an internal forecasting point of view third-quarter revenues exactly like we thought when we started the quarter. The logistics tightness obviously is not helping, but I think the teams have been very very successful on sort of getting goods out.

The tightness is also it's not broad-based that every route is impacted, but especially India has been impacted, and from the availability point of view. That's, of course, an important manufacturing sourcing destination for us.

There is nothing material that would have been to impact on our revenue in this quarter. However, prices, like we discussed, we see higher prices.

Very clear, thank you.

Hi guys, it's Antti from SEB, a couple of questions for me. I'll start with coming back to the minerals equipment orders on third quarter.

Sami, you talked about that kind of you haven't seen any drastic changes on the market activity, and that is what you have been guiding. Is this kind of a step-up that we've seen on the base order activity in the past few quarters, is that decision-making, is there something timing-related that has driven that increases, and can you kind of pinpoint the reason why we've seen such a surge on the smaller orders in the last six months?

It's part of this positive cycle that has started some time ago in the minerals processing, and these base orders are typically the ones that start to come through first in that type of situation. We started to see the pipeline increasing last year, and now they have started to convert then to the orders.

That's the main driver of the base order increase in the few last quarters.

Antti, maybe I can reflect on this as well. What the base orders typically are, they are either customer replacing something to continue to have operations that they can run in a reliable way going forward, or then it is opening a bottleneck in their operation.

I think when we look at the commodity price development, etc., that's certainly encouraging also customers to move forward. Gold prices, also copper prices, really healthy level at this stage.

In long term, in copper, the supply-demand situation looks very positive, like we have discussed many times, but now also in short term, the prices have increased, and that may be one important consideration at customers to move forward and either open bottlenecks or then replace their existing equipment.

Maybe, Antti, if I continue one more reminder that when we talk about this base order, they are not all brownfield either. Maybe you remember, but there was a greenfield copper case in Sweden, for example, the customer placed the orders in a two different batches in the beginning of the year and then later the second one.

They kind of go into category of this base order now in these discussions, but it was actually a pure greenfield copper case.

Let's put it in this way. Have you been kind of positively surprised on the levels of the past six months?

I'm just thinking what would need to happen for you guys to guide for improving demand, as you've been quite optimistic on the larger deals, and now there's been this kind of a sequential improvement on the base orders as well.

We are guiding how we see the market activity, and if we look now two quarters back, including the one that we just reported today, activity level is good, and we are able to convert a lot of that to the orders. This is also our guidance, how we see the future, that our pipeline tells that it will continue to stay in a good level.

Okay. Then I had a question to Pasi on the cash flow side, and I didn't fully understand the kind of the negative net working capital impact, and you were referring to growth in the business.

I would kind of assume that when you are growing on a such a good clip on the equipment orders and the book-to-bill on the equipment side is high, kind of the advance payment balance would kind of support your working capital, while then when maybe at some point when the orders start to maybe fade and you deliver more, then that's the negative for working capital. Are you happy with the working capital that we've had this year, and how do you kind of recognize that issue that I saw?

No, thanks, Antti, and that's a good fair question. If we cut it to couple of pieces, first of all, our approach on capital orders is exactly the same as earlier.

We recognize the order when we have a PO and then when we have an advance payment, and this is true also in this quarter. On those orders, we have received the advance payments that we have agreed with the customers.

Then what I sort of referred on the timing, etc., is sort of the rest of the portfolio. We have gotten orders both capital and aftermarket in the earlier periods, and sort of pushing those through our funnel continues.

That requires working capital. That's then the sort of timing element of it.

Again, part of that revenue was recognized this quarter, and then we have a lot of backlog and then related activities to deliver and recognize the revenue then in the future periods. There's those two elements, and indeed, with strong order intake, especially in the capital side of business, we have gotten fair amount of advance payments, and that's included in the numbers we have reported.

Fair enough. Thank you very much.

Hi. Hello, Sami and Pasi.

Good afternoon. Two questions from my side.

First would be on the aftermarket side of minerals orders. We've now seen levels of somewhere around 710 to €740 million over the past three quarters.

Overall, would just like to hear from you how do you see this progressing into coming quarters, and what is the main driver? Is it rather coming from the spares and wears part, or rather coming from the upgrades and modernizations?

Thank you.

Yes, minerals aftermarket is developing exactly as we want, and it's driven mainly by the spares and wears. That said, we also knew that there is going to be upgrades and modernizations, and that conversion has also happened during this year, that the pipeline, which was starting to grow quite high last year, and then it started to convert also to the orders.

We see that the drivers are, of course, customers want to operate trouble-free, so that's driving our activity on the customer side to ensure that the production continues and preventive maintenance is done on time and the shutdowns are planned properly and all that. We see our large installed base that we have out there is very much in operation, and that gives the good potential also for the upcoming quarters and upcoming years.

Now we have seen, just if I think about especially the spares and wears part, I suppose highly correlated to the utilization rates of your customers. Now we've seen already utilization rates very high in '25.

They've been seemingly even higher now in '26. How much more incremental growth into a 2027-2028 can we actually see here from utilization even increasing further, or what would be the drivers of spares and wears growth?

I think the utilization levels, of course, there is a story for each of the mining site, but they are relatively a good level, which is, of course, what our customers want to achieve. That said, there is continuous need for the spare part replacements, and of course, the consumable part is very clear that when you utilize with the high rates your equipment, you need to ensure that you have consumable parts that are doing their part in the process.

In that sense, there is potential. It's not related so much of the utilization rates to increase, it's more about customers caring about the future production as well, which they are now doing.

They want to be able to produce '27 as trouble-free as possible, and that is one of the main drivers for our business. Of course, one more area is that the capital equipment deliveries start to happen, the new installed base is also getting online, and that is always then especially from the greenfield part creating new additional installed base, which is the source for the aftermarket.

I would like to add two points.

Two

two points on this: the first one is on upgrades and modernizations, we continue to see those orders coming in at that good level. It's not main part of the aftermarket, but it's an important part, and the pipeline there is also good going forward.

Then when we talk about mining sites specifically, there has been couple of large mining sites not operating or not operating in an optimal way during the year, and certainly, we have important installed base in some of those, and that provides also opportunities in '26 to '27 type comparison.

Perfect, understood. Thank you.

Then just my second question would be on revenue recognition, or revenue outlook within the capital part of the minerals business. Just wondering here, we obviously have a very strong backlog that would provide for a couple of years of very strong revenue growth.

What do you think about the needed capital and basically capital spend to increase your own production facilities? Or secondly, would you see a risk lead times will just be elongating going forward and we will not be sticking to the traditional 12 months roundabout?

Thank you.

Yes, that's of course something that we started to see the signs of this positive cycle, and we have done those pre-actions already two years ago and continue to do so. Where we are today is quite a good situation.

We have a higher order intakes and grown backlog, but as we are today, we don't see any big troubles from that perspective. 12 month is that kind of it depends so much on the product, we have lead times from 6 month to 18 months, and from that perspective, currently things are looking normal.

Of course, if this is accelerated during '27-'28, then even our work that we have done to ensure that we are able to deliver for our customers is going to be tested once again, but for that we are also then preparing to do some actions. It's not so much of our own investment as such, it's more like our supply chain organizations to work very very perfectly in their own operations.

Great. Thank you both.

Yes, hi, thank you for taking my questions. The first one is just a clarification about the logistics inflation and your intention to raise prices to offset that.

Will you be able to raise prices quickly enough that it will offset the headwind in Q4, or do we still expect to see some near-term pressure there?

Thanks, Nick. That's a good question.

We started to work with our pricing right after Hormuz soon six months ago. In that regard, I think this sort of orders received since then will start to gradually convert.

Then where we don't have full visibility obviously is that what happens with the freight costs going forward. Currently it looks that we have reached a certain level and there is potentially some stability.

Again, we read every day new developments in Middle East and oil around 100, €110, at least over 100, let's see how it develops. We feel that if we stay at sort of current cost levels, we are relatively well positioned going forward.

Great, and then my second one is on India. Could you give us an update on how much of your manufacturing these days is actually in India?

What's the impact of the depreciation in the Indian rupee? If you're international contracts are in dollars and your costs are in rupees, I could imagine that would be good for your margins, but just curious to hear your thoughts on that.

Very good question, thank you. India is important for us at least via three different lens.

The first one is what we are discussing here, sort of manufacturing hub. Both we have some, in-house manufacturing there, but then also third-party suppliers.

Then the second lens is simply India being a large market. Then the third lens is the sort of capability and competence that India can offer to us.

We are obviously tapping on all those three three areas and developing it. Then India is on top of China the sort of let's call it the best cost country where we have manufacturing.

China is today still more important than India, but India is increasingly important. What we talk about, several hundreds of millions of our supply chain on annual basis out from there.

Then

on the currency, indeed the depreciation of rupee, at least in short term, seems to be positive, and that then provides even lower-cost cost base for us at this stage.

Great, thank you very much.

Hi, good afternoon, thanks for the time. Maybe the first question, Sami, to the bigger picture on minerals and minerals orders.

It's been quite an exceptional step-up in OE orders in Q2 and Q3, while the aftermarket is growing steadily. Just to understand how you're looking at this, what do you see that would signal that this is going to be the beginning of a long and sustained cyclical upturn in mining capex, as opposed to a cluster of project awards that have come through and will pass perhaps in mid-2027-2028?

I suppose it ties into the earlier questions about your need to raise capacity. How are you beginning to think about the durability of the cycle, and what sort of signals would you expect that would give you confidence in the longevity of what you're looking at?

Yes, excellent question, thank you for that. This positive cycle started already '25.

It was driven quite a lot by gold in the beginning, and then the copper was kind of still taking some time before it started to be visible in order books, but the pipeline perspective, it's been there. My view and our view is that this cycle is started, and it has fundamentals that are quite solid and tangible.

Electrifications, still urbanization is driving that, and then on top of these things has came the data centers as such. From that perspective, the fundamentals have strengthened here month by month and quarter by quarter.

Our view is that we do see quite a good-looking, long-lasting positive cycle here, and it's not a burst of certain things from the pipeline to be turned to the orders because the pipeline is also getting new content in every month. From that perspective, this looks very positive.

We have been able to convert a lot of that market potential to our orders. We are planning to continue to do so.

When it comes to the capacity question, of course, this is something that company like Metso has been thinking already, has been done investments, and as said, we are preparing ourselves for this positive cycle to continue in many different ways.

Thank you. Maybe building on this last two quarters of order intake and growth in backlog, what can you give us in terms of an understanding of whether you're building a more profitable backlog rather than just simply a larger backlog with regard to visibility?

How do you see aspects such as pricing, expected project returns, or shifts in the way that you're managing contract risk or payment terms into new orders as they flow into the backlog that would also be suggestive of a very favorable supply-demand balance industry?

Yes, excellent point, and we definitely have taken this very very much into account in our own processes, in our own thinking, and in our own planning. We are in a good position, we have already a good backlog to be delivered, we are not kind of short of work in different parts of the company.

That's, of course, reflecting also then in our pricing and the discipline that we have in our pricing when it comes to the capital cases as well. We are very firm believer from the customer feedback as well that we do deliver excellent value for them, not only from the capital, but the combination of our capital and then the superior aftermarket services and products.

This is something that we take into account when we set our own criteria of so-called minimum limits, and we stay very firm for those principles that we have set to ourselves.

Thank you, and maybe the last question for Pasi relates to cash conversion. We've touched on the inventory build-up and the Q2 cash development, but when you look at it, I understand you that you're building a service network and maintaining improved service levels for your customers, but when you look across the various elements of the net working capital, how much should we think is recoverable in Q4 go into the year end, and is there typically a seasonal flowback which will support your cash for the year-end numbers?

Thanks, Will, for that. If we start from the sort of seasonal build-up of our cash flow, simply looking couple of years back, it seems that or the data suggests that second second half, and especially Q4, have been the strong cash quarters.

That's the way how we are also planning for this year. Then obviously, cash flow is sort of a result of in a way one balance sheet date, let's see how things turn around.

When you talk about sort of recovery, we rather look it from the DIO, DPO, DSO lens, and what we have said earlier and continue to think is that those KPIs should not deteriorate. There may be, of course, single quarters when they move, but when we look a bit longer trends, they should be stable, and in some of them we have room for improvement.

Then when the business is growing, it may mean that in absolute terms we need more working capital, but those are the metrics we are looking on top of then also the simply working capital over sales, which is also a metric that we use in our quarterly report. That's a little bit how we are thinking about it.

Super, thank you.

Hi, thanks for taking questions. I have two.

Firstly on the aggregates outlook, is it better than it was at the time of Q2, since you are no longer flagging that European customers would be impacted by the fuel cost, and the service growth showed in improving trend? What is the outlook there, and what would you need to see to actually guide for improvement in that market?

Aggregate market cycles are faster than in the mining and also they are very regional. Very good news was that in Europe level, we started to see activity also outside the Eastern European countries, which were driver for one year almost here for the European aggregate business.

That said, it's not yet putting the Europe to the level whether it could be or has been in the back in the days. Then US, which is the largest market at the moment, continues to stay in a good level.

There is very good understanding now that quite a good amount of the business drivers for our customers in the US side has been the data center business actually. That is something that maybe continues long time or has something slow-downs, and that kind of gives a little bit of these elements that are unknown.

Overall fundamental is that the markets are solid and they continue to provide good amount of business also going forward.

Thanks. Then secondly, I wanted to ask about the minerals equipment orders.

How is the pricing of new orders developing, and is it possible to quantify are the margins in new orders now higher than they were one year or two years ago, if you think about kind of comparable equipment, for example, crushing and grinding equipment? Basically, are you able to get the margins up in new orders because the market is so good?

We do for certain amount. Maybe a reminder that we kind of have reorganized our capital business since that the Metso Outotec company was born six years ago, and then we kind of continue from that path, and already that means that before we had quite a clear principles how do we set the pricing.

Of course, this type of demand and also our good success in the marketplace, meaning that the customers do trust our technology to be the best, especially combined with the aftermarket, is reflected in our pricing principles and in our pricing discipline as we are now. All

right. Thank you.

All right, since we don't seem to have further questions, it's time to thank you for participation and discussion. This wraps our third-quarter '26 results conference call.

It'll be almost four months before we are next time discussing our results, in the meantime, I'm sure we are going to see many of you on the road, and looking forward to that. This is it for this time, and take care, goodbye.

Thank you.

Thank you.