BLRDY - Billerud AB (publ) (BLRDY) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-01-25 05:54:02 ET
Billerud AB (publ) (BLRDY)
Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call
January 25, 2024 03:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Lena Schattauer - Head, Investor Relations
Ivar Vatne - Chief Executive Officer
Andrei Kres - Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Linus Larsson - SEB
Robin Santavirta - Carnegie
Cole Hathorn - Jefferies
Christian Kopfer - Handelsbanken
Johannes Grunselius - DNB Markets
Martin Melbye - ABG
Presentation
Lena Schattauer
Good morning, and welcome to this webcasted Conference Call about Billerud's Fourth Quarter and Year-End Results. As usual, our President and CEO, Ivar Vatne; and our CFO, Andrei Kres, are here to hold the presentation. And after their presentation, there will be a Q&A session.
So, after this brief introduction, we will now get started. So, please Ivar, go ahead.
Ivar Vatne
Thank you, Lena, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining. So, we will go through some of the highlights and key financials for both the quarter and for 2023 in total.
I think the headline says it all for how a summary of how 2023 has turned out. And I'll give a little bit more context. So, let's move into the next slide, please. And there is no doubt that 2023 was an extremely difficult year and a year that, in many ways, has been a bit of a hangover from 2022 and characterized by unusual high inventories across the value chain. This has led to low sales volume and in combination with sales price pressure and higher input costs, it has wiped out most of the profitability compared to last year.
Now, in this challenging market context, it is imperative to keep strong control of items we can influence. And there are two particular items that I'm proud of and how we manage to drive a good performance. Number one, keeping a continued close eye on working capital to secure a strong cash conversion; and number two, how we rallied around our efficiency enhancement program and over delivered versus the target we set one year ago....
Billerud AB (publ) (BLRDY) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript