Metso's Interim Review January 1 - March 31, 2017 - Seite 2

President and CEO Matti Kähkönen:

We were pleased to see the market activity in our customer industries improving in the first quarter. This could be seen in an increased order intake for both Minerals and Flow Control compared to the first quarter of last year as well as quarter-on-quarter. In aggregates, we continued to see good activity in the United States and Europe, and other markets recovered from the low levels seen in the previous years. Flow Control services saw increased activity in both oil & gas and pulp & paper. The mining market has recovered gradually and we saw a better activity in the services business during the quarter. The somewhat brighter outlook in the mining industry is less visible in the equipment business, even though there is some optimism in discussions with customers.

Our sales grew 8 percent during the quarter, which resulted largely from the equipment business in the Minerals segment. Higher services orders will support sales during the next quarters. Profitability of the Minerals segment improved, but was somewhat diluted by sales mix and increased raw material prices. Flow Control's performance was good and this is expected to continue going forward.        

This year's big themes for Metso are growth and digitalization. All of our businesses have robust plans to accelerate organic growth and our financial position also enables us to actively explore acquisition opportunities. During the first quarter, we launched the Metso Digital Program, which is designed to take us to a new level in the digital capabilities required to succeed and grow in our businesses. We focus on digitalization in very practical ways, for instance, using the Internet-of-Things (IoT) and analytics-based tools to help our customers make the most of their assets and improve performance.

Key figures

EUR million	Q1/2017	Q1/2016	Change %	2016
Orders received	733	663	11	2,724
Orders received by the services business	496	433	15	1,741
% of orders received	68	65		64
Order backlog at the end of the period	1,396	1,300	7	1,320
Sales	648	601	8	2,586
Sales of the services business	423	409	3	1,703
% of sales	65	68		66
Earnings before interest, tax and amortization (EBITA), adjusted	66.4	55.7	19	274.0
% of sales	10.2	9.3		10.6
Operating profit	59.4	50.4	18	227.1
% of sales	9.2	8.4		8.8
Earnings per share, EUR	0.23	0.18	28	0.87
Free cash flow	39	62	-37	339
Return on capital employed (ROCE) before tax, annualized, %	11.1	9.4		10.4
Equity-to-asset ratio at the end of the period, %	43.7	43.9		48.0
Net gearing at the end of the period, %	-4.7	6.9		-1.8
Personnel at the end of the period	11,453	12,386	-8	11,542

Metso is a world leading industrial company serving the mining, aggregates, recycling, oil, gas, pulp, paper and process industries. We help our customers improve their operational efficiency, reduce risks and increase profitability by using our unique knowledge, experienced people and innovative solutions to build new, sustainable ways of growing together.