Stora Enso Reports Q1, Plans Restructure

Stora Enso: "First quarter performance as expected - time to rethink structures": Stora Enso CEO Jouko Karvinen comments on first quarter 2013 results announced today:
“The first quarter of 2013 was, as expected, clearly characterised by weak markets and profitability for our Printing and Reading and Building and Living Business Areas. The combination of continuing structural decline in media-driven paper grades and economic weakness in Europe led to year-on-year declines of 9% in the Group’s operational EBITDA and 21% in operational EBIT despite the solid performance of the other two Business Areas. Seasonality also reduced the cash flow to an unsatisfactory level.

http://www.pulpapernews.com/2013/04/stora-enso-rethinks-business-structure-and-organisation

Stora Enso plans to launch a Group streamlining and structure simplification project intended to achieve annual fixed cost savings of EUR 200 million, including the earlier announced EUR 30 million in the Building and Living Business Area, with the full impact starting from the second quarter of 2014. The project is planned to include all Business Areas and corporate functions. In addition to reducing costs, the planned project would reduce interdependencies between businesses and enable a stronger focus on growth in value creating businesses.