Metso's CEO comments on Q1

Metso’s President and CEO Jorma Eloranta comments: "In the first quarter most of our markets and customer industries continued to recover. It seems that the recovery is gaining momentum, and is today broader based than during the past six months. Our customers' higher capacity utilization rates have boosted the activity level of our services business and since our customers are regaining their confidence the demand for new capital equipment and project business has also improved. Price competition in the markets seems to be easing up as the trading environment is getting stronger.

The measures we have carried out in the past few years to develop our operating models and to adjust our cost structures have supported our first-quarter profitability although net sales were still relatively low following modest order intake levels in 2009. Assuming that we continue to win new, profitable orders, net sales for the coming quarters should also be picking up. The first quarter confirmed that due to our decisive and quick response to the market turmoil in the second half of 2008 through 2009, Metso is today a more competitive company than before.

We have gradually started ramping up the engineering and manufacturing capacity to match the improved demand but there seems to be some slowness in our component supplier and subcontractor base to ramp up their capacity. Likewise we are also continuing to further develop our services business and global presence as well as our solutions based on environmental business.

Based on the recovery in order intake during the past 6 months and the current market outlook we are somewhat raising our net sales guidance for 2010. We estimate that our net sales will be over EUR 5 billion. We expect our 2010 profitability to be satisfactory."