Stora Enso Virtual Capital Markets Day 2020

Stora Enso arranged a virtual Capital Markets Day 2020 for investors and analysts on 11 November 2020. The CMD programme provided an update on Stora Enso’s strategy and financial review. Presentations by President and CEO Annica Bresky and CFO Seppo Parvi were followed by a Q&A session. A recording of the event can be found here: https://storaenso.videosync.fi/2020-cmd.

Highlights of the CMD for investors

More than 400 investors, analysts and other participants joined Stora Enso’s virtual Capital Markets Day (CMD) on 11 November 2020. The presentations of President and CEO Annica Bresky and CFO Seppo Parvi covered Stora Enso’s three focus areas for growth, market growth drivers and a review of all our divisions.

Stora Enso organises Capital Markets Days regularly to provide our investors and analysts the opportunity to get more information about our strategy, performance and businesses. This year the focus was on the Group’s updated strategy and revised financial targets.

Annica Bresky started the presentation by describing megatrends changing our business and society.

“We are the solution for consumers’ new demands for eco-friendly and circular solutions. Our key competitive advantage is substituting materials from finite resources. Our promise to the world is that everything that is made with fossil-based materials today can be made from a tree tomorrow. This is also the foundation of our entire innovation agenda, she highlighted.

Next, Annica Bresky presented Stora Enso’s three new focus areas for growth. These include Packaging Materials and Solutions, Building Solutions and Biomaterials innovations.

“We expect high demand for plastic-free and eco-friendly circular packaging and we hold leading market positions in packaging businesses. In Building Solutions, we see attractive growth opportunities and have ambition to triple our sales. In Biomaterials innovations, we focus on lignin and target strong growth in new applications and markets”, Annica Bresky listed.

Substantial forest assets, sawmills in the Wood Products division and our pulp mills are the foundation for our value creation and support our three key focus areas.

“We want to be the leader in sustainable forest management and increase forest growth with innovation, such as precision forestry and digitalisation. Paper is the cash flow generator to fund our growth, and we will adapt to structurally declining markets.”

Seppo Parvi talked about value creating capital allocation, supported by strengthening balance sheet. Stora Enso recently announced changes to its forest assets valuation method, which Seppo Parvi explained in detail for the CMD audience. He also presented the Group’s revised long-term financial targets.

“Our focus is on cash flow. Strong cash flow is the key to capital allocation, and capital will be allocated to capture the growth opportunities in the identified three growth areas. We will accelerate our growth by selective M&A especially in packaging businesses,” Seppo Parvi said.