Good afternoon, and welcome to Raute's half-year financial report session. My name is Mika Saariaho, Raute's CEO.

Together with our CFO, Ville Halttunen, we will go through the highlights of our second quarter and first half of the 2026. We also will reserve some time at the end for questions and answers.

The audience online, you can post your questions into the chat box, and the audience here can also then use the microphone at the end of the end of this presentation. Very good.

Let's get started. If I start with some of the highlights of our second-quarter events, I would maybe describe that there was no major change in the operating environment where we've been now operating for already for some time, which is characterized by quite big uncertainty and and turbulence in the in the market.

Really, the uncertainty remained elevated during second quarter as well. When I say elevated, I really mean what it means to our customers.

If we look at the customers' industries they operate and their their offering is very much to the construction industry, somewhat to transportation, furniture industry. Especially construction industry has remained very uncertain and volatile, and we've been now waiting for the recovery of that industry for some time already as an industry.

This is really let's say impacting quite a lot in our customers' decisions in terms of the new investments into technology, also services, and and other things that Raute can offer to this this industry. This uncertainty really resulted in us having not not really great order intake.

It was €18 million. It was higher than a year ago, but a year ago also first half of the year was very low in terms of the order intake.

This is this was the challenge incoming from the from the market environment. If you look at then our own operations, I'm actually very pleased what we achieved in this environment.

Despite the low order intake and also quite low net sales, which was €33 million, it was similar to what what we had in the first quarter of this year, which is low for us, and it's much lower than than a year earlier. Our profitability still was on a good level.

I would describe as as actually very good level considering the level of operations, level of net sales that we achieved. We had 12% relative profitability in terms of the comparable EBITDA, €4 million of comparable EBITDA.

This was thanks to very much to the continued good work in our customer delivery projects and savings we also achieved throughout our own operations, and then also in this these projects with with a prudent project management. Very happy with that that development and and continued good performance in our operations.

To me, this also demonstrates that also in this low volume environment, we are able to maintain quite good profitability, and and that's thanks to a lot of effort and work we've been putting to our operational excellence work during the last and past years. In wood processing, which is the biggest unit responsible for this project deliveries to our customers' big projects, especially we can see the profitability on a good level despite the reduced top line thanks to this project execution and and some some project provisions also that we were able to release during the second quarter.

We also were able to release some reservations in the first quarter of the year. This same good level of work continued now.

This, of course, is an operational achievement. It it now is visible in this second-quarter numbers, but thanks to good good work that I'm very pleased during the second quarter.

In terms of service business, we we were a little bit behind our own plans also in terms of the top line. We saw that still our customers, in this environment, they are trying to protect their cash flow, they are even saving on some quite critical small investment, services, maintenance, this type of work, which then has impacted our service business top line.

Due to the lower top line, the profitability, although it was positive, it was not on the level that we expect from our service business in in the future in a in a more normal operating environment. Then as a positive thing on Analyzers business, which is very important for whole Raute, providing really the technology edge into our offering, we saw good I would say turnaround during the second quarter.

Actually, Analyzers business did increase from the previous quarters in terms of top line, and when there was an increase, we immediately saw also profitability improvement on the bottom line. This really, to me, demonstrates the underlying potential we have in the Analyzers business and and its importance for Raute in the future.

We continued, of course, in this difficult environment focusing on our own things, things that we can impact, which, of course, is a customer work, which is our own delivery operations, cost control, efficiency improvements, and and we, obviously this is this is fully in our hands. Some of the things happening on the global industry environment are a little bit outside of our hands, we need to focus on things that we can impact, which is the good customer work, of course, trying to realize those new orders also, but then really the internal operations.

I'm happy with that performance and that development during this year as well. Now in terms of the market, we have to be a little bit cautious, but in in any statements, but I could say, and we are saying, that we have observed some signs of improving customer sentiment.

It was not realized in Q2 as a as a new order intake, but this sentiment is clearly there. Why I'm saying this is, of course, some of these projects where which we are following and negotiating with customers, they have different gates in in in the sales funnel, and we see real progress towards completion phase in some of these decisions from customer point of view.

Nevertheless, the uncertainty, turbulence clearly remains in the market, and and we still have to see when the really the sustained recovery on a broader ways is taking place. Some good signs we see there in the in the market.

Here we see some of the same messages in in numbers. Net sales, we saw clear dip from from a year-ago figures, but it was on the same level as as first quarter this year.

Comparable EBITDA, I described this €4.0 million as as a very good result. It's 12% of the of the net sales.

Our long-term ambition is to achieve 12% over business cycle. Then assuming that this is some kind of a lower cycle at least that we are now experiencing, this is actually a very good very good achievement indeed.

Order intake on a low level, as I said. The same is true now for the order book.

It's going down. I will share soon the how how the development has been over the past years.

Equity ratio is is good, we have a strong balance sheet. Obviously, we have generated profit now during the past years, we have a strong balance sheet.

We are in good position to in this turbulent market environment to manage manage this situation from that point of view, and this, of course, provides also good basis to to go forward when the market market recovers. Personnel roughly on the same level than in the previous quarter and about 700 people working working directly at Raute.

Order intake, here we see the comparison also to previous years. Obviously, low figure, although this €35 million is more than a year ago for first half.

It still is a very low figure, but we can see from this picture also that there is a huge variation between different quarters in terms of Raute's order intake. We have to admit the order intake volatility is is big for our type of a business, and and of course, if we book any bigger bigger orders for wood processing, that would have an immediately a bigger impact.

This is where we are now, and if we look at the second-quarter events, North America actually played important role on this quite low number, but still North America is an important strategic focus area for us and and very important for the whole industry as well. In terms of order book, we see here the development over the last six years or so.

Obviously, we had this huge peak into at the end of 2023 and and beginning of 2024, and and there has been more difficult time for the whole industry since that. Said this downturn in construction industry and in our customers' customers' end industries has really continued now for prolonged time.

Obviously, during these years years, I I should say, there has been expectation not only from us, but from many many many parties that the recovery would be starting. We still haven't seen that, and there still is this uncertainty in the market.

I believe strongly that the recovery will take place. We can also see from this figure that when the recovery takes place, it can also be quite fast.

We'll see what happens this time when we move to that phase. Net sales came down from year-ago figure, €66 million in total in the first half, both quarters quite similar.

Europe still playing quite big role. We still have this quite big projects which are now towards the the end of those project deliveries, and the from the accounting point of view, we are recognizing revenue from those projects.

Very much Europe dominating there, but North America coming coming second and then the the other regions. Comparable EBITDA, I'm happy, as I said, on on this level of €4 million with this volume that we now achieved on top line.

We can see here the development over over the past years as well. I would say the quite nice recovery from the very challenging years we had, 2021 and 2022 in particular.

Happy with that development and and taking we have taken Raute operations, I think, to a better level during this this time. This is even more visible in the operating profit, where where the huge losses were are visible from the inflation and and the war in war in Ukraine that Russia started.

Since that, we have had a nice nice recovery and operating now on the on a positive territory also with this lower low business volumes. Personnel, about 700 people, as I said.

The drop from year-ago figure is is due to the fact that we had close we closed the China operations a year a year ago in during Q2, there was a reduction in the personnel, and and that's the that's impacting these these numbers. Most of our people working in Europe, but we have important workshop in in North America, in USA and Canada operations there, and those are important global footprint for us from production point of view.

Then we have the sales representatives and sales offices, service centers all around the world. Couple of more words about the different segments.

Wood processing, I already said, this is the most important business unit for for us in terms of the overall volume. This represents major part of the the whole Raute volume, and I'm so happy to see the overall development from from a loss-making to profit-making unit.

Actually, this second quarter profit margin, which was close to 13%, I would describe this still as a little a little bit extraordinary. It was due to the release of some cost provisions, which, of course, might happen in the future, but you can't count on that.

We we we aim to do the accounting so that, it takes into account the whole project to the completion, and then this kind of provision releases require that then there's something better happening in the quarter than what we even expected. Good good development in the wood processing, happy with this 13% margin from from this business unit.

Services, there was 20%, close to 20% drop in the top line, and this was now then quite clearly visible in the profitability as well. Obviously, service, as our other business as well, there is quite big net sales to EBITDA lever there.

When when the top line drops, we we can see we see this unfortunate in the profitability as well. I think services, which is now close to 8% comparable EBITDA margin, is clearly not where we want to be on the service business.

I would I would, if in wood processing this was exceptionally high, this is this is a little bit exceptionally low for services. It should be much higher percentage-wise.

The reason also for this is that we haven't stopped really the development initiatives in services, there's been quite high fixed costs on services. We want to develop the new offering types, which are very important for us in the future, different type of performance contracts and and and new models serving our customers, and this development work we have continued despite this challenging environment.

Analyzers has had experienced quite tough times last quarter of last year and then first quarter of 2026. We actually had loss-making business, which is obviously not where we should be should be.

We see that this was also due to very low volumes that we had on the fourth and first quarter, if you see from this draft. Now, when the volume is up, we can quite directly then see the impact on the profitability.

This should be a very high profitable business for us. It's it's obvious, and and everybody knows that in this sort of business, the product margins are on a good level as they should be because we are putting a lot of R&D effort into this.

Then it means that when the top line increases, it get it is visible in the on the bottom line as well. This was, to us, a good proof again that this is a good profitable business which we want to grow in the future as we as we go forward.

Then I will hand it over to Ville. Some more words on the numbers.

All right, thank you, Mika. Hello, and good afternoon also on my behalf.

My name is Ville Halttunen, CFO for Raute. As usual, I'll start from the earnings per share development.

We delivered 36 euro cents of EPS in the quarter, nearly half in from a year-ago comparables where we were at record-high level. This is primarily volume-driven as our net sales came down by 25%.

Also, the operating profit came down, and as a result, then EPS came down. Despite the good margins, we relatively kept, the absolutes came down.

No big surprises in the financial items below operating profit, slightly positive financial net items and tax rate of 20%. In the comparable period, we had relatively high one-offs related to the China closure, which are then visible in the reported EPS numbers, and also the effective tax rate was higher than normally.

Looking into our cash flow performance in the quarter, our cash flow was negative €8 million in the quarter. This was now second consecutive negative operating cash flow in this picture.

At the same time, we are delivering positive EBITDA, and this is an outcome of our business model basically where the revenue recognition is much more stable, and the EBITDA performance is showing that, and then the cash flow cycles are different as primarily our customer payments cycles are very different than the revenue recognition cycles. The net working capital change was quite negative now in the quarter.

We look at the net working capital development there, we ended now the quarter at €18.5 million, which is a relatively high number in our business and actually it's the highest level since 2019. I also brought here a picture of it longer-term history, which is this smaller picture here, where you can see also that we have been historically also on these levels.

Over the long-term period, we are roughly at the zero level, but there are large swings around this one depending on the cycles of our projects where they are. At the moment, we have had very low order intake of new incoming orders, which typically have upfront payments, which are then impacting this kind of positively.

Then on the other hand, there's been some postponements of payments in our existing customer projects. Expect this to now come actually down as we look into second half of this year.

Our balance sheet remains strong, equity ratio 65%. During the quarter, we have paid dividends.

Also, we repaid the junior loan of €3 million, and then we have had also the share buyback program ongoing. Liquidity, we still have a strong liquidity of €17 million, and then on top of this, we have also €15 million revolving credit facility available, which give us flexibility.

One should also remember now that we have this net working capital being now tying the cash quite a lot compared to the history, so that's good to keep in mind. Investment level is same as last year, no big news here, €1.7 million after first six months, similar level as last year.

We continue to do some reinvestments in our operations and some R&D is also into these numbers which is being capitalized, those are the primary CapEx items there. Still the R&D what comes to P&L, we have here also similar level of R&D efforts that we had last year, minor decrease compared to last year.

This is also somewhat now increasing in relation to sales as the sales is coming down more fast. This is all from my side, and then I'll hand back to Mika to close with the outlook and guidance.

Thank you, Ville. By the way, I forgot to say in the beginning, if you want to post questions in Finnish, that's also okay in the chat box, we'll look at those after I say something about the outlook for '26.

I actually already spoke about this, the operating environment. It's been challenging environment for the industry overall, and when I say industry, I mean our customers in particular.

Of course, we are here to serve our customers, and we live and breathe together with our customers, and their investments, of course, in a market where they are struggling with cash flows and profits is impacting some of the decisions on the investments as well. We still have this sustained global geopolitical uncertainty as well, all these are impacting our industry.

We've seen also during the second quarter again changes in the tariffs which are impacting our customers, in North America in particular. There was again discussions, and I was visiting myself some of the customers there, and they are impacted quite differently, a little bit arbitrarily also, I would even say, in some of these cases.

That is making very difficult then to make investments in this environment. Then, I would say again that despite this uncertainty, we are seeing our customers in the Europe, North America, and I would also say in Asia and Oceania now, which was a little bit maybe new thing, that they have continued preparations for future investments, especially such that then improve the production efficiency and their competitiveness.

What they are really looking for is something where I think we as a Raute, we have a good fit. Our customers are looking sustainable technologies, automation levels, and really efficiency overall for the whole process, which is something where we can support, maybe also versus some of our competitors who are more focused on particular equipment when we have the overall process expertise in-house, we can serve our customers with these cases.

Of course, the major industries which are impacting us are the construction industry, but of course, some of our customers are then working in a niche areas, and it might be something on the furniture or transportation and maybe even LNG vessels or something like that, and then they have a little bit different dynamics from their point of view. Not all customers are suffering.

There are also customers who are actually having a good profitable business, and they are planning at least for the future investments. Of course, all we are waiting that some of these signs from the overall geopolitical tensions and those to ease out, this would make it easier for the decisions to take place.

Overall, I think that we are well positioned to capture these opportunities when the recovery really in a wider way takes place, and of course, service, Analyzers play a very important role in that business. Service was now down, but it's very important, our field service people and personnel who are meeting our customers literally daily.

They really know what is happening in the customer operations and makes it then possible for us to help with the investments as well. Same is true with Analyzers, digital services where we capture also with the help of AI, we capture information and manage that and provide insights to our customers.

This is where we are as an industry, and I cannot promise when exactly the order intake will start recover, but I remain confident that it will recover, and there are good signs, and someday it will happen. This is, of course, has proven now that we are living in quite cyclical environment as Raute, and because of that, we have really seriously focused on our own internal operations, and on that development, I'm very happy, and that is bearing fruit now in this challenging environment as well.

In terms of the guidance for this 2026, we have communicated in the beginning of the year that we gave actually quite a wide range for our guidance, and the idea is also that we now narrow it when we move forward. Now in the second quarter, what we did was that we narrowed the net sales expectation.

We did take down somewhat the upper limit of this range, now we are saying it's going to be €125 to €145 million for the full year. Then in terms of the comparable EBITDA, although we took down net sales guidance, at least we did not change the midpoint of the guidance for the EBITDA, we took a little bit up the lower limit and then a little bit down the upper limit, we expect now €11 to €18 million comparable EBITDA for 2026.

You can see here the figures for '25, which is demonstrating how cyclical the industry is and the business is. It was €175, year earlier it was more than €200 million.

We need to live in this kind of environment. We want to increase the share of services recurring revenue, Analyzers, and I think we are on the right path to that, but still we are experiencing this prolonged downturn in the top line, but ready to capture new opportunities when those emerge.

Very good. That was the key messages, highlights of second quarter, first half of the year.

Maybe I invite Ville on stage. Are there any questions, or maybe we start from the audience here.

Is there any questions here?

Yes, of course. It's Antti Viljakainen from Inderes.

First, could you please elaborate a bit, what is the status of these five projects that you sold in '23 and '24? Metsä is not yet in production, but how about the other four factories?

Do you still expect payments from these projects?

Yes. Actually, not not going to in to any any secrets of any any customer, but Metsä is actually already producing, so we have we have some stages have have been passed already from that point of view.

Of course, the full production is only coming online then later this year and in line with the timeline that we have agreed with them. Things are progressing very well there, no no no worries.

Then we have a couple of other projects we announced in 2023. That was in in Baltics area, in France, and then there was in Uruguay.

Those also progressing, I would say, in line with the within the normal variations of those projects in terms of timeline. Some some things are happening a little bit faster, some little bit slower, but in terms of our performance, which we can see also in the in the financial figures, we are very happy with that, and and things are progressing okay.

In terms of the payment, which is more than well, it's it's both the POC question, but also also maybe more cash flow question. There will be still payments coming from those those projects, and it's very typical for project, the last payments are at quite end then when when really everything has been accepted and and the site is really up and running.

I don't know, Ville, you want to comment? That was more the cash cash flow projects and we have, which we are not giving, but but I think you said we probably see some improvement in the situation

here. You can draw the same conclusions that also now in these big projects, we have now recognized more revenue than what we have received cash in, still we expect material payments from them, but I think it's within the normal cycles, as you said, the payments.

Yeah.

Okay. That's clear.

Then you said that orders were postponed, but they were moved to completion phase. Does it basically mean that you have won some meaningful amount of projects from competition, but the final investment decision is pending on customer?

If we look at the market, of course, I would say in the competitive landscape, maybe it would be too much to say that we have won something significant from competitors, but I wouldn't say the other way around also that we would have lost something. I would say the competitive landscape remains quite similar to what it has been.

Then in terms of the moving to completion stage, where I was maybe a little bit fuzzy what I said, I maybe remain fuzzy, which is to say that it's more like, of course, these are long negotiations with customers, and you need to understand the dynamics, and particular customers have certain gates in their process, some things have become even closer to their final decisions. Maybe they are pending board decisions or some financing bank decisions or things like that.

I would say from our funnel, more things have moved to those stages, which is very close to getting orders in, and, yeah, whether then and when we get anything bigger, I can't say, I can't promise. It can be any quarter, or it can still take a while.

Is there any kind of rule of thumb how often your customers review these decisions? Is it monthly, or quarterly, or biannually, or?

I would say it's it's maybe maybe if we need to separate into into at least two things. The kind of there's this maintenance type of a budget, which is normally very clo- local for the local mill personnel and mill managers to decide whether they buy service and whether they buy spare parts and things like that.

That's not requiring really any high-level decisions, and same is true maybe for small upgrades as well. Of course, if in our customer company, those people have gotten advice from the top that, be save save on everything, so that will impact on how they operate.

They can make the decisions without any big reviews. Then on a bigger bigger projects, I would that varies between the customer, but I would say normally, it's it's their board meetings.

Normally any bigger company has like monthly board meetings and things like that, that's typically is some somehow the cycle. Some customers are then saying that they only decide on big things like four times a year or something like that, but the board is meeting every year every every month.

We are talking about kind of monthly cycles very typically. This has happened also if I look at the past, when when we see that maybe something good happen and maybe the recovery is that, maybe maybe we have considered that the next month there is a decision again, but so far the decisions have been that let's wait still for a while before we do something.

Hopefully hopefully this is improving, and and we see some signs on that, but I can't promise that this will. It's so so much dependent on this very big big moves in the world geopolitical environment and trade politics and so forth that if that clarifies.

Okay. Then your order book is quite clearly down year-in-year and from the end of the last year as well.

How is your workload in different units as we speak?

That varies also, and this is, of course, part of the unfortunate measures as well had to be taken, which is that we have temporary layoffs ongoing now. The whole Finland operations are subject to that considerations, so that impacts different departments differently.

There is quite a lot of temporary layoffs which are taking place for us to manage this cost side because we cannot afford as a company, obviously, that those, let's say, variable cost become fixed costs, there's no other way. Workload is varying, I can say.

Then there are locations or other departments where actually it's fully loaded. We still are getting some orders in, this €18 million also was good orders for some part of the operations which we got in second quarter, they might be fully occupied to work on those orders.

It really varies. The message we can give, and that's the message, we are managing this very proactively.

That's the approach we have taken, and it also requires some tough management from that point of view.

When I look at your personnel cost figures in Q2, I see a €1 million increase in staff costs year-over-year. What is the reason for that?

That's a good question. Maybe I don't know if Ville is able to explain this.

I think it's primarily related to the accruals, and I think that the comparables in the prior year were a bit on a abnormal level because of those, and primarily the bonuses and such what we accrue on a yearly basis. The underlying development is not such what you see in the P&L.

I guess and

you can see that also in the personnel numbers. At least that part of fixed costs, it's been very flat now, the same number of people working, and they have their salaries and travels and other things.

I don't see that, and also we have continued to invest into other kind of the operations and development work in a pretty similar way, which you can see both on the R&D investment and some of the other things that we are disclosing. I don't see big difference there.

Overall, that level is I think we want to maintain the focus on the R&D and development work because we believe that for sure this market will recover at some point, and we want to be strong in this at that moment.

Okay. Thank you.

That's all from me.

Thank you, Antti. Any questions from

Yes, we have two questions, and so let me read here. "Could you give us some more color on the development of order intake during the second quarter?

Have you seen meaningful improvement in the customer activity or decision-making, particularly in the wood processing, and do you feel that the recovery is now becoming more visible?"

Maybe it's a bit of the same question, which I fully understand that this is the everybody's interested on that one, but maybe if I once again repeat, €18 million of orders in the second quarter. Things were pushed from second quarter further to the other quarters, let's see when we start realizing those.

We did see improving activity, as I said, and activity is not necessarily just the order intake, but us knowing that they have moved in our sales funnel that we have into further in the process, closer to the decision point. We clearly see that happening, and we hope that that is a sign of realizing some of these things.

As I said, we see this happening in Europe, which has been some time already the case, but also in North America. I would say as a new thing also, there's been good discussions in Asia, Oceania now in that sense.

Overall I would say some encouraging signs in the activity among our customers.

Then there's another question still: "Your profitability has held up quite well despite the lower sales volume. How confident are you that this level of profitability can be maintained going forward?"

Going forward, we hope, of course, that the top line is not as low as it is now, so that will help, of course, because we have still this profitability lever in the top-line development. I would need to say, and we are saying, that the current level of between €33 million of net sales in a quarter, normal expectations maybe shouldn't be quite that we get 12% comparable EBITDA, because 12% is the target over the cycle, which means that there are good times and not so good times.

I would still describe, and hopefully we can confirm it in hindsight in couple of years' time, that this was the downturn, and that the difficult time, and we maintained the 12%. The project releases that we've been able to do are a sign of a operational excellence and efficiency that we have, but one can't count on that happening every quarter or so.

Probably this is a little bit too high profitability with the current top line.

All right, that's all from the chat.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thanks to the audience online and audience here, and I will see you again in the third-quarter release at the latest. Thank you very much.

Thank you.