Reports and presentations

President and CEO Pasi Laine: Orders received amounted to EUR 1,050 million and Comparable EBITA margin to 10.0% 

"Valmet’s orders received amounted to EUR 1,050 million in the first quarter of 2024. Compared to the record-high comparison quarter, orders received decreased in all three segments. Orders received in Valmet’s stable business totaled close to EUR 3.0 billion during the last four quarters, representing 67% of Valmet’s orders received. This is a clear change in the company compared to 2014, when stable business represented 34% of orders received. Orders received in Process Technologies segment decreased and amounted to EUR 1,466 million during the last four quarters. Valmet’s order backlog amounted close to EUR 3.8 billion at the end of the quarter. 

Valmet’s net sales amounted to EUR 1,212 million in the first quarter. Net sales remained at the previous year’s level in Services and Automation segments, and decreased in Process Technologies. Comparable EBITA margin was 16.5% in Automation, 14.6% in Services and 4.2% in Process Technologies. Valmet’s Comparable EBITA amounted to EUR 121 million and margin was 10.0%.

The customer activity in services has improved, and the short-term market outlook for services has increased to good. As the market outlooks for flow control and automation systems remained good, all our stable businesses now have a good market outlook for the second and the third quarter of 2024.

In Process Technologies, the customer activity is good in energy and satisfactory in tissue. For pulp, the short-term market outlook has decreased to weak. For board and paper, the outlook has decreased to weak/satisfactory, as the customer activity is weak while Valmet's capacity utilization remains satisfactory. Even though the short-term market outlook has decreased in Process Technologies, the long-term megatrends have not changed and continue to be favorable for all Valmet's three segments.

Integration of Tissue Converting, which Valmet acquired during the fourth quarter of 2023, has proceeded well. The orders received of Tissue Converting developed well in the first quarter and customers have appreciated Valmet’s combined tissue offering. We have already received synergetic orders including both Valmet’s tissue making line and the converting equipment. 

Valmet completed the acquisition of the Process Gas Chromatography business from Siemens soon after the first quarter ended, on April 2. The acquisition was completed as planned and we are very happy to welcome the new colleagues as well as the customers of former Siemens Process Gas Chromatography to Valmet. The acquired business complements our automation offering well, opening the opportunity to serve both businesses’ current and future process automation customers with a wider offering.

Valmet’s automation business reached a major milestone on April 9, when Valmet launched its new distributed control system (DCS), Valmet DNAe. The new system helps customers improve efficiency, productivity, sustainability and safety of their operations and provides a solid platform for moving towards more digitalized and autonomous operations in the future. The launch is an important step in Valmet’s strategy for growing its automation business further to a wide base of process industries globally."