Stora Enso's wood division doubled EBIT margin

Stora Enso's solid wood division "Building and Living" achieved a turnover of € 1.87 billion last year – 10% more than in 2012. For one thing, this is due to the quantity supplied which climbed 4% to 4.78 million m³ in 2013. In addition, the Swedes managed to raise the average price by 6.6% to € 391/m³. All this raised operating EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) by 159% to € 75 million. The EBIT margin has more than doubled from 1.7% to 4%. This reflects the decrease of roundwood costs in Scandinavia, significantly higher sawmill product prices and higher sales volumes across all products.

Across the Group, however, Stora Enso's sales slightly decreased by 2.5 % to € 10.5 billion last year. Operating EBIT fell by 8.3% to € 578 million. Only € 34 million remained as operating profit (IFRS standard) in 2013. Thus, the profit of the Finnish forest-/timber-/paper group dropped by 95%. This can mainly be attributed to the high-selling "Printing and Reading"-division. Their sales fell by 11% to € 4.32 billion. The EBIT margin of 4.8 % plunged to only 0.8%.

The most profitable division was "Renewable Packaging": With € 3.27 billion it sold 1.7% more products last year. Of that, 9.7% (2012: 8.5%) were retained as EBIT. Finally, the "Biomaterials"-division sales stagnated at € 1.01 billion, its EBIT margin fell from 8.1% to 7.6%.