Stora Enso CEO Jouko Karvinen's message at Annual General Meeting
“The year 2007 was a challenging year for Stora Enso. The financial performance of the Company was burdened by extremely high fibre costs and further weakening of the US dollar. Nevertheless, we were able to maintain our earnings per share excluding non-recurring items and forest valuations year on year. We took several decisive actions to tackle the challenges the Company faces: we divested our North American operations, we responded proactively to the rapidly rising cost of imported wood fibre and we continued to invest in low-cost fibre in emerging markets,” said CEO Jouko Karvinen. “Our objective is to become strategically independent of Russian roundwood imported into Finland. Our starting point was that in 2006 a third of the wood processed in Finland was imported. Not a single one of our integrated pulp and paper mills had to curtail production because of fibre shortage in 2007, and we will expect to be able to keep them running through 2008 and beyond. “We are also planning an investment at our Imatra Mills that will enable us to use short and long fibre flexibly to minimise our costs. We may exercises temporary production curtailments at our smaller line in Enocell pulp mill and our Sunila joint-venture pulp mill based on our marginal wood costs. However, we have not made any decision on permanent pulp capacity reductions at the moment.In case the proposed Russian wood duty is imposed in full in early 2009 and persists we will need to consider our options. A compromise on Russian wood duty would be an up-side for Stora Enso. “Our planned and announced restructurings, mainly in Finland and Sweden, are proceeding well in line with plans. With our partners, we have developed new business ideas to provide alternative employment. The restructuring has affected 1 453 employees. However, 293 of them have been or will be offered employment by a new employer at the affected mill sites, 154 have external employment opportunities, 140 have been offered redeployment within Stora Enso and 268 are retiring. In eight weeks we have found solutions for 855 of the employees affected, and we are still striving to find solutions for the other 598. At the Annual General Meeting, CEO Jouko Karvinen also gave an overview of the Company's strategy in growth markets in Latin America, Russia and China, and reported on the growth opportunities in bioenergy and innovations in various types of consumer packaging, such as intelligent pharmaceutical packaging, fibre-based disc packaging and paint cans. In his closing remarks CEO Karvinen said, “I appeal to all our stakeholders to support the Company in the current challenging environment and help us find concrete re-employment for the remaining personnel affected by our restructuring measures.” For further information, please contact: Kari Vainio, Executive Vice President, Corporate Communications, tel. +44 77 9934 8197 Ulla Paajanen-Sainio, Vice President, Investor Relations and Financial Communications, tel. +358 2046 21242 www.storaenso.com www.storaenso.com/investors STORA ENSO OYJ p.p. Jussi Siitonen Jukka Marttila