Greetings from Wärtsilä's headquarters in Helsinki. Wärtsilä released their Q3 report today, and that's why I'm here with the CEO. Håkan Agnevall. Hello, Håkan.

Welcome back.

Thank you. So let's start with the quarter. Can you summarize it in a few sentences?

I think it's a very strong quarter. We continue to see very strong momentum in our order intake, especially on the energy side, and then we continue the journey of improving profitability.

Sounds good. You recently announced an innovative generator set operating model for use by data center developers in collaboration with Schneider Electric and Stanley Consultants. How does this coordinated approach change your competitive position?

So basically, we are very active in the data center market, and there is a strong focus on delivery times and trying to reduce cost. So the three parties play different roles, and Stanley is the overall engineering consultant. So they do the general layout, the design. Schneider provides equipment, medium voltage in the data center, also outside of the data center, and we provide the power generation. So, to say it, it is a very simple logic. If these parties, because the equipment is combined and the design is combined, if these parties work very closely from the very beginning, it should be possible to save time and cost. That's what the cooperation is about. Now, we have only just started it, and we are at a very early stage, so we are not sure how far we will get. We don't know that, but we do think that there should be potential when three parties work together.

You are undoubtedly facing strong market demand in energy, which has led many energy equipment providers, including you, to increase their capacity. Are you worried about the long-term price competition in the sector if the demand falls back to historical levels one day?

So first of all, we see increasing demand in energy, and there are several growth drivers. Yes, we talk a lot about data centers, but it is a much, much broader growth narrative. It is a structural growth narrative. The narrative is because, first of all, more and more industries are electrifying their processes, saving energy. You have transport that is getting electrified. We have air conditioning, a big topic in Southeast Asia, maybe also in Southern Europe. Going forward, we have a lot of renewables coming in. When demand is growing like that, you need the balancing power that we are providing. We have an aging energy infrastructure in the US. So it's all those factors combined that drive the general demand. That's why we have a long-term positive, general demand outlook.

And, you know, what will happen when the market balances back? I think we are also rather confident there, because if you look at our technology, it is very competitive technology in terms of fuel efficiency, in terms of emissions because of that, in terms of we consume very little water compared to gas turbine technology. So we are very good at flexibility, ramping up and ramping down. And in the medium-speed engine segment, where we are a big player, we are ahead of the competition. So we think that we will be competitive also in a situation where the market normalizes. And I forgot to mention our service. We clearly have the leading service network, so we think we will be competitive in a normalizing demand situation.

Good. And then if we move on to marine, you recently have been very vocal on very weak market activity above marine service demand and outlook. Is that somehow stemming from the geopolitic situation?

So, I mean, if we look at the marine service order intake and revenue growth, it's rather flat, as has been there for a couple of quarters. And there are several drivers, but some of the main drivers are related to bunkering prices. Fuel prices have gone up. That is a consequence of what happens, and when the bunkering prices go up, we could say we have two types of customers. One type of customer has a budget, and when they need to allocate more of that budget to fuel, they will allocate less money to maintenance. So they take a risk on that. Then we have another type of customer. They are operating with very high rates, attractive rates, like container vessels, and then they also postpone maintenance because they can make a lot of money and take a little bit more risk on that. So this is also impacting. Then we have, you could say, another phenomenon that we talked about in the previous quarters, which is that we have seen, because of the IMO regulations, slowing down. We have also seen that impacting our retrofit business a bit, so those are the drivers. Why the services are flat. But long term, because our order backlog in services in marine is building up, we continue to have a positive view on growth in the marine service business.

And then finally, you also updated your financial targets today. Which measures and factors are most crucial to lift profitability to the targeted levels?

That we have to come back to next week. When we have the Capital Markets Day, we're going to do it. But, I mean, just looking at the press release and the numbers that we have released, clearly the energy profit margin, more EBIT margin, to 8%, marine to 7%. Margin to 8%, marine to 7%. So there is increasing profitability in both businesses. If we look at the growth target, high teens for energy. So there is significant growth on the energy side, fueled by the drivers we talked about. And then it's mid-single digit for marine, which, considering where the marine industry is developing, is actually pretty good as well. So those are the drivers, but as we talked about, we will talk more about it at the CMD next week.

So we have to look forward to that then. Thank you, Håkan, and good luck with the final quarter of the year.

Thank you. Thank you very much.