Billerud's net sales amounted to 6,549 million Kronor in the first nine months of the year (5,700), an increase of 15 percent. Profit for the period amounted to 480 million Kronor (5). Earnings per share was 4.66 Kronor (0.07). "We are very pleased with the results as well as the underlying earnings for all our business areas. The strong development for Billerud's main area, packaging paper, led to an improvement in operating profit to 276 million Kronor for the third quarter. This result corresponded to an operating margin of 12 percent, compared with the eleven percent average over the last three quarters," said Billerud's CEO, Per Lindberg. "This improvement is due to good demand and continued efforts to improve margins and value creating packaging paper solutions.""We have just launched our first product, where we combine two renewable materials; paper and bioplastic," Lindberg added.