Rockwool A/S (RKWBF) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

2025-02-07 12:08:03 ET

Rockwool A/S (RKWBF)

Q4 2024 Results Conference Call

February 7, 2025 05:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Kim Junge Andersen - Chief Financial Officer

Jes Munk Hansen - Chief Executive Officer

Conference Call Participants

Ephrem Ravi - Citigroup

Brijesh Siya - HSBC

Alexander Craeymeersch - Kepler Cheuvreux

Claus Almer - Nordea

Axel Stasse - Morgan Stanley

Peter Sehested - ABG

Yassine Touahri - On Field Investment Research

Kristian Tornoe - SEB

Arnaud Lehmann - Bank of America

Zaim Beekawa - JPMorgan

Marcus Cole - UBS

Pujarini Ghosh - Bernstein

Pierre Rousseau - Barclays

Presentation

Kim Junge Andersen

Good day to everyone, and welcome to ROCKWOOL A/S conference call regarding the results for the full year 2024. My name is Kim Junge Andersen, I'm the CFO of ROCKWOOL A/S. Today, I'm pleased to present the CEO, Jes Munk Hansen. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded.

First, yes, I will go through our presentation and give you an update of the results for the full year and the fourth quarter of 2024. Afterwards, we'll be ready to answer all your questions. [Operator Instructions].

Before I hand over the word to Jes, I must ask you to notice Slide number 2, which is the forward-looking statement. Please be aware that this presentation contains uncertainties. Now we can go to the next slide, which is Slide number 3.

Jes, I will now hand over the word to you.

Jes Munk Hansen

Thank you very much. My name is Jes Munk Hansen. I'm the CEO of ROCKWOOL. Welcome to this conference call. I'll start my presentation on Slide number 3. And I'm sure you have all seen our press release, but I'll add some flavor to the page numbers here.

We had a very strong growth this year. It was primarily driven by volume and took our top line up with 6% in local currencies, 7% in reported numbers. Our earnings also were in line with what we told you last time at the latest outlook for the full year ended at 17.5% EBIT.

I do want to highlight the North American performance, which is very strong, but we'll come back to that in more detail in a couple of slides. Great to notice that net profit is at the highest we have ever achieved, allowing us to declare dividends to our shareholders of DKK 63 per share, which is almost a 50% increase over last year. The strong cash flow also allows us for a new share buy program of EUR 150 million for the coming periods.

I move to Slide number 4. If I look at, again, Q4 highlights. The weather was with us. It was much asked and discussed in the last call, but the weather turned out in our favor and we had a normal end to the year with no major disruptions to construction activity. So in Q4, we grew 4% on the top line, 2% of these are acquired growth, so 2 percentage points of the 2 acquired companies we had; hence, 2% organic growth. We saw a very good growth in the U.K. and again, in the U.S. market, which was partially offset by a decline in France, Poland and in our Russian arena. In the quarter 4, we ended our EBIT at 16.7....

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