Good afternoon. Welcome to the conference call on the results for the Q3. Lorea Aristizabal will be with us. At the end of the presentation, there will be a round of questions, and the questions can only be asked by the tool provided at the webcast. Now I'll hand over to Lorea. Go ahead, please.
Buenas tardes a todos.
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the conference call on the results of the Q3. And we can begin by reviewing the market situation, a situation which, again, this quarter has not been at all homogeneous with markets like the Mexican, Indian, and Brazilian markets, with a much better trend than the average, and markets like the European, U.S., or Chinese markets evolving more in line with or even worse than the average. Let's start with Europe, which is the geography with the worst performance, with a drop of 7% in the Q3 and 5% in the first nine months of the year. A fall framed by a context of inventory normalization, undecidedness by the consumer regarding which vehicle to buy, lack of incentives, etc.
Moreover, uncertainty about import regulations and the new tariff measures for Chinese vehicles worsened the already complicated market of electric vehicles in Europe and have slowed down the growth of this segment. According to ACEA data, the penetration of electric vehicles in Europe dropped to 21% during this Q3 and 20% during the first nine months of the year, below, in any case, the 24% penetration recorded in 2023, a reduction that suggests that the current measures are not working. The Q4 doesn't seem any better, with an expected decline of 11%, which would represent a drop of 7% in Europe for the year overall. Moving on to North America, a drop of 5% in vehicle production during this Q3, with very uneven behaviours between our geographies. On the one hand, Mexico is standing out because of its growth, and the United States because of its decline.
The Mexican market continues to show a very positive trend, with a growth of 7% in the quarter and 6% in the first nine months of the year, a growth driven by the increase in vehicle production, both for the local market as well as for exports. As a figure, vehicle exports have grown by 7% year-on-year during the first nine months of the year, which reflects the growing importance of Mexico as a production hub. On the other hand, the United States has suffered a fall of 5% in its production in the quarter and 1% during the first nine months of the year, affected to a large extent by the destocking initiatives at Stellantis, and as part of their inventory reduction strategy, Stellantis has reduced its production by more than 100,000 units in this Q3 in comparison with the Q3 of 2023.
Added to this is the political uncertainty around the presidential elections next November, and this has curbed investment and discretionary consumption decisions in the sector. For the Q4, a drop of 3% is expected in North America due in part to the continuation of the Stellantis destocking strategy, Hurricane Helene, which has also affected production in the month of October, and all this would represent a moderate drop of 1% for the year. We switched continents to talk about China, a market where, in spite of the significant subsidies for vehicle scrapping, which offer up to EUR 2,600 for electric vehicles and EUR 1,950 for internal combustion engines, neither sales nor production are bouncing back. Production has fallen by 3% in this Q3, although in the cumulative total until September, it's still positive, with a growth of 2%.
The effort of many OEMs to maintain their inventories under control after months of very high inventories, and this explains to a large extent the production trends during this Q3. In fact, at the closing of September, inventories in the Chinese markets are below the so-called warning level of 1.5 months and are currently at approximately 1.3 months. That is somewhat below 40 days. Again, this quarter, we have to highlight the trend of the electric vehicle in the Chinese market, which has surpassed the historic figure of 1 million electric vehicles sold both in the month of August and September. A fall of 1% is expected in vehicle production in the Q4, but at the same time, it is the quarter that is expected to be the strongest in the year, with almost 9 million vehicles produced.
This would imply a growth of 1% for the year overall. We continue with India, a market in which passenger vehicle production has remained steady during this Q3 but has grown 4.5% during the first nine months of the year. This stability comes after several quarters of continuous growth in a context of slight overstocking before the Diwali festivities. However, other segments have shown diverse behaviours. On the one hand, two-wheeler production, motorbikes, which represent approximately 25% of our sales in India and which grew by 13% in this quarter, driven by the strong rural demand and also by growth in urban areas. The truck segment, however, fell by 11%, and tractors recorded a growth of 3%. In the short and long term, the prospects for the automotive sector in India remain very positive.
In the Q4, it is expected that the passenger vehicle segment will grow by 1% and reach 4% for the whole year, and also, if we extrapolate the historical trends of the festive temporary Diwali, if the sales pattern remains the same as today, the year-on-year growth during this year's festivity period would be a 10% growth in the motorbike sector and 4% for tractors, which is very positive, consolidating India as a production and export hub and strengthening their growth expectations in all segments. Finally, the market, which has been clearly better than the average, Brazil, a market which has seen a growth during this Q3 of 17% and 5% during the first nine months of the year.
A very significant recovery in this Q3, driven by factors that have hampered the Brazilian automotive market during the first half of the year and which in this period have had a better trend. On the one hand, a boost in internal demand, vehicle sales in Brazil, which have grown by 11% in the quarter, reaching a total of 670,000 units sold, and an upturn which has been driven to a large extent by the good performance of the market in the month of July, recording record sales of 230,000 units. On the other hand, growth in exports. Brazilian exports have shown a considerable growth during this Q3, with 115,000 vehicles exported, which represents an increase of 30% compared to the same period last year and 45% more than during the Q2 of this year.
All this in the context of an improvement in access to lending in a country where over 50% of automobile purchases are financed. The drop in interest rates from over 13% in September 2023 to the current 10.75% has been key. As a figure, in 2024, the demand for financing for the purchasing of passenger vehicles has increased by 15% compared to last year, with a total of 1.5 million vehicles financed up to the month of August, which represents the highest financing level since the end of the decade. To finish with Brazil, 2024 is expected to show a growth of 5% during the Q4, consolidating an annual increase of 5%. We close the chapter on markets, referring to the global markets, where vehicle production fell by 4.6% in the quarter and 1.6% in the first nine months of the year.
A fall is expected of 4% in the Q4, a Q4 with 23.3 million vehicles produced, and with that drop of 4%, in spite of being the quarter with the highest growth in the year thanks to the drive in India. In China, this would represent a fall of 2% overall for the year, with very different dynamics in different markets, as we've seen. Let's focus on CIE in a quarter where the turnover at a constant exchange rate grows by almost 2%, which represents a very significant outperformance of around 6 points, in which North America and India are the geographies that have accelerated their outperformance growth compared to previous quarters, while Brazil and Europe remain at very high outperformance levels, and China continues with its underperformance trend in a market engulfed by a fierce price war.
During the first nine months of the year, sales at a constant exchange rate have grown by more than 2%. This represents an outperformance of 4 points distributed in practically all geographies, and which is recurrent over time. If we look at the main magnitudes in the income statement, the main headline this quarter refers to the significant improvements in EBITDA and EBIT, which have grown respectively 2% and 3%, up to margins of 18.6% and 13.8%. We're talking about a significant expansion in the operating margins on a consolidated level in a quarter where there is a special contribution to that improvement from Brazil, Mexico, and India.
If instead of the quarter, we talk about the first nine months of the year, we could summarize this in three headlines that cover the excellent performance achieved: an increase in sales of EUR 38 million, which translates into an increase of more than EUR 20 million in EBIT, operating margins in the various geographies, with very little dispersion between them versus the consolidated operating margins, which proves their quality with no geography lagging behind the rest, and an increase of 2% in an accumulated net profit, which, for a comparable perimeter, without bearing in mind the activities that were discontinued during the first nine months in 2023, represents an increase in net profits of more than 6%.
If we talk about cash flow and the evolution of the net financial debt, the keys to this quarter could be summarized under the following points: a high EBITDA to operating cash conversion rate close to 66%, a growth in operating cash flow by more than 3% compared to the same quarter the previous year, a close and optimal working capital management, an element that at times has consumed cash during the Q3, but we have managed to keep it at practically neutral levels, a CAPEX which is somewhat higher than in other quarters, as occurred in the Q2 of this year and as occurred because of the impact of the new plant we're building in the north of Mexico, a growth CAPEX that is going to play a very relevant role in the future in providing sales and results, and a growth CAPEX that we continue to concentrate in strong growth markets such as the already mentioned market of Mexico, Brazil, and India.
The fourth or fifth point, rather, the final dividend for 2023 paid out in the Q3, EUR 54 million, and which implied having distributed more than three quarters of the quarter's cash flow, but even with the dividend, with the increase in financial expenses or the increase in CAPEX, we have deleveraged our balance sheet by EUR 15 million in the Q3, leaving the net financial debt in barely EUR 1.06 billion, with which our leveraging ratio continues to be reduced one further quarter and is left at only 1.43 times net financial debt over EBITDA, a historically low leveraging ratio at CIE, which is way beyond our comfort zone of two times and enables us to comfortably cope with future investments in cooperative operations in line with the strategic plan, and we come almost to the end of the conference call to briefly comment on our expectations.
If we talk about the Q4, it's important to remember that it is a quarter that is positionally volatile, and we should always be especially prudent since our customers adjust the number of vacation weeks or the number of plant shutdowns at the last minute based on how the year has gone and based on their own interests. And this Q4 of 2024 seems to present itself with special uncertainty, which has been reflected in the various profit warnings that you've seen published by manufacturers from the sector in recent weeks. In any case, the snapshot for 2024 at CIE is going to be that of another excellent year where, as we had already mentioned, you're going to see sales and market share growth, you're going to see an expansion in margins and results, important cash flow generation, and a significant or very significant deleveraging.
Of course, based on that excellent 2024, you're going to see we again reconfirm today our commitments for 2025. With this, we come to the end and move on to the questions. Thank you very much. The first question related to sales is the increase in combustion engine vehicle parts. In India, is this also happening in other markets? I think I've given a figure that says that the penetration of electric vehicles has fallen in Europe. I've mentioned how in 2023, Europe had an electric vehicle penetration of 24% for the whole year, which grew over the quarters and which exceeded 24% in the final quarter of 2023. Yet, in the year 2024, we've seen a drop.
With the exception of China, where there is an increase in production and sales of electric vehicles, and I mentioned that they've exceeded for two months 1 million electrified vehicles sold on the market. In the rest of the geographies, it's true that we haven't seen major electrification data, and we have seen better figures for internal combustion engines. A question on the evolution in margins, mainly the improvement in Brazil, whether there are any non-recurrent issues, and the slowdown of improvements in China and the improvement in North America. By geographies, can we review those variations in the quarter? There's nothing unusual, nothing extraordinary. When we're at such high margins as this, we've seen it before. Little ups and downs in a specific quarter don't mean anything. I think that we have to look at the trends.
The example, North America, well, what we've seen is a Mexico where our aluminium plants are onboarding more added value products, and therefore the product mix is better. We're seeing a Brazil where we have the contribution from Iber-Oleff, which we integrated several quarters ago, which continues to provide improvements and good news. So I think that we're talking about slight ups and downs, but I think the important thing is the initial message in my message. There's nothing extraordinary. There's nothing that's non-recurrent. The global effect is recurrent, a point here, a point there. If you've seen the conference call for CIE India, we're still committed to the margins that you've seen again this quarter, and we should be expecting to have in the future. So we're very pleased about the contribution of the different geographic areas that drive the CIE global results.
Related to margins, there's a question about whether we see a floor in the drop in sales in China and whether we are considering the need to implement more profound restructuring measures in Europe. If we see a floor in China, I think that this is a question that we ought to pass on to our Western customers if they've reached their floor, and I think they're taking all the measures they can to bring that floor closer. We've seen Volkswagen fighting with new models, creating a new R&D center in China. I think that Western customers are fighting to bring that floor closer. And if their floor is closer, so is ours, because the underperformance we have in the Chinese market has to do with our customer mix. What was the other question regarding Europe? Sorry. Whether we see the need to implement more profound restructuring measures.
I think we have to ask the suppliers that are losing market share, the suppliers that are facing commercial success problems in Europe. I don't think it's our situation. Our situation is a gain in market share in Europe quarter after quarter in a context of an extremely complicated Europe with a lot of available capacity. And as we've said during many quarters, market shares are being concentrated. We're one of those players, and therefore, I think that talking about major restructuring, as we've seen announced, doesn't make any sense in our case. Related to Volkswagen, a couple of things. How the possible shutdown of capacities can affect us and the strike expected in Europe. Well, it's true that this week we keep hearing news about Volkswagen. Yesterday, there was a meeting between the unions and the Works Council and the company.
The employees of the Works Council were explained the measures that Volkswagen has said that they want to close three of the plants, three of the ten plants Volkswagen has in Germany. They spoke about tens of thousands of jobs that are going to be cut back, and they spoke about cutting back wages by 10% for employees in Germany with zero increase in years 2025 and 2026. It sounds like radical measures. They contextualized it a little. Volkswagen contextualized it. They said that the German Volkswagen plants have a much higher cost than their rivals, than the competition. The reaction from the Volkswagen unions has been radical. They've given them two days. You have 48 hours to withdraw this or we'll go on strike. I think we'll probably see strikes. We have to wait. Tomorrow, Wednesday, they have the second round of talks.
After those 48 hours, they have the second round of discussions, and I'm sure that in such a complicated context, the politicians will get involved, etc. It seems that Volkswagen is starting with very hard negotiations and probably end up in an intermediate scenario, but this just reflects a situation that is really complicated and which will probably end up with part of this becoming a reality. Let's not forget one thing. Germany produced six million vehicles, and today they're producing more. This has an impact on Volkswagen, and it makes certain common sense to shut down part of the surplus capacity. Regarding the effect on us of the total CIE sales of approximately EUR 4 billion, barely 1% goes to Volkswagen plants in Germany, and if we annualize the figure, so an impact of a one-week strike, I think we're not talking about a significant impact.
But in any case, if it happens, we'll monitor it and we'll tell you about it. And the profit warnings in the sector in more general terms, how do they affect you? Well, it's true. We've had a month of September and October that's been non-stop. We had the first one at the beginning of September, BMW, then Mercedes, then Volkswagen, Stellantis. And yesterday, to go no further, we had Ford. I think that all of the profit warnings we've seen have a sequence. On the one hand, they all share in common that they all refer to macroeconomic issues, to a situation of deterioration in the macroeconomy, etc. Secondly, they have in common that several of them refer specifically to the negative impact they're having in China, BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen. We're talking about manufacturers that have a tremendously important impact from their results and sales in China.
We're seeing a BMW with discounts of more than 30% in their vehicles in China, Audi with 20%, a situation that's really complicated for them. And the second point, apart from the macroeconomy, is those affected by the Chinese market. And thirdly, in most profit warnings, there's a specific issue that affects each of the manufacturers. In the case of BMW, for example, it was the recall associated to Continental and the brake system. In the case of Volkswagen, they talk about some write-offs. Also, in the case of Mercedes, Ford spoke yesterday about the impact of the hurricanes. So they all have their specificity. Point one common to all of the macro, point two common to some of China, and thirdly, specific points that affect each of them.
But I don't want to forget that there are as many or more OEMs that haven't given profit warnings, and they have the same macroeconomic situation, and some have exposure to China. And I've heard comments from some automotive analysts that have said something that I think is very right. Apart from all the elements that obviously have an impact on everyone, part of these profit warnings have a context and a framework that has to do with the buffer with which each company budgets and the buffer with which each company gives its guidance to the market. If you give a guidance to the market for a budget, we assume that everything's going to be brilliant and the sun's going to shine every day. Well, probably something will go wrong and you'll have to revise it.
If you come out with a certain margin in your guidance, you're ready for negative things to happen. So the commercial diversification of CIE protects us from this. And again, I insist that part of it is as it is, and part of it has to do with how they each handle their guidance and their communication with the market. A question as to whether we're seeing any speed up in the decisions of the Chinese OEMs to enter other markets. Are their decisions speeding up? No. On the one hand, we have the European market where they were all going to disembark, and all of a sudden, there's little news because of the tariffs. I think that the only two projects that continue with a certain delay are BYD in Hungary and Chery in Barcelona, which has been delayed a year.
It's true that perhaps in other geographies, there's still a news, but there's nothing concrete in all of them. As far as I know, we have BYD in Turkey with a plant in Turkey. We have conversations with Chinese OEMs in Mexico, not to use it as a backdoor to the U.S. market, which is what Trump says every day, but with the intention of serving the growing internal demand in Mexico. We have Brazil, where we have a little bit of everything, but I think that there are several geographies like Brazil and Europe and the U.S., obviously, that are reacting with tariff issues, and until the tariffs are clarified and the sustainability of those tax barriers is made evident, some investments will be left in limbo and we'll have to wait and see.
But we shouldn't forget that Chinese OEMs are reporting quarterly results where we only know one Chinese OEM, BYD, that is showing a profit. So running at a loss and investing a great deal abroad is not an easy combination. There's a question now on India. How do we plan to tackle the loss of market share in India we've seen in recent years? Perhaps after seven years without M&A? Surprised by the question, because in India, as far as I know, both compared with the passenger market and with our mix there, and you know that we have 50% of our passenger vehicle sales, but the other 50% is related to other segments such as motorbikes, tractors, and trucks. And the figures I have in my head don't show a loss in market share at all.
There's an outperformance, and you have it in the presentation for this quarter and also previous quarters, but it's over 4% every quarter this year. So I don't quite get the question. But in any case, M&A in India, without a doubt, it's an important strategic option. It's one of our strategic priorities. We're having conversations in India as we are in other parts of the world, and we have a lot of open M&A projects also in India. And without a doubt, a market with one of the biggest growth rates we're going to see in coming years is very attractive. So we're definitely trying. And we asked specifically about India, again, the roof systems in India. Why doesn't it come under the umbrella of CIE India?
I'm going to ask the person who asked the question to listen to the audio from the conference call the Q2 where this question came up, and our CEO explained the subject. I'm going to repeat it, but I'd like to use the words of our CEO. And he explained that the roof system world is a Tier 1 world, a world that is completely and totally different to the rest of CIE, CIE's Tier 2 . It's a CIE division, Tier 1 , that's global, that has its headquarters in Germany, and it doesn't make any sense to make a mix of that with the rest of our Tier 2 business to bring it together under the Indian listed company where we'd have a mix of a piece of that Tier 1 , etc.
But in any case, again, I refer to the words of our CEO, who I think explained it perfectly well. And we move on to debt cash flow. And there are questions on the financial expenses in the Q3 and what we can expect in the future regarding financial expenses in this interest rate scenario. I suppose the question comes from the fact that apparently the financial expenses in this Q3 have increased. The fact is that we have to deep dive into the global figure in total financial expenses, and let me simplify this under three concepts: pure financial net expenses, expenses minus earnings, the equivalence earnings, and the rest. And the rest is made up of financial expenses or income that is non-recurrent, including the impact of derivatives or the impact of foreign exchange.
If we analyze the first, second, and Q3 of the year 2022, we see that the pure financial expenses in the Q1 were close to EUR 21 million, EUR 20 million in the Q2, and EUR 20 million in the Q3, and we see that we have recurrent income of approximately EUR 2 million, and it's in the third section in that others, non-recurrent others, where we have the big difference in the Q1 and the Q2. There was a positive contribution from derivatives and FX. However, in the Q3, there has been a negative contribution of derivatives, and especially from foreign exchange, and what can we expect?
I think that the recurrent part and the part that we can budget more accurately, which is pure financial expenses. I think in the short term, I've mentioned that stability and a little bit further down, drops in interest rates to continue and to be able to apply them little by little to our P&L. CapEx in the Q3, a little bit higher. What can we expect in the future? Amounts, geographies? Yes, it's true. I think in general, what can we expect from CapEx in the future well, maintenance CapEx that we're seeing in the various quarters around 1.2% of sales and a growth CapEx that is clearly concentrated in certain geographies. We've been seeing it in recent years with a lot of greenfields in India. Now we're seeing it with a very large greenfield in the north of Mexico.
In other words, a growth CapEx that we are referring to geographies with strong growth. We expect to finish the 2025 strategic plan with approximately EUR 2 billion in CapEx or a little more. There's been a little bit of general inflation in the CapEx, and it's true that the new plant in northern Mexico wasn't budgeted, and it's a plant with an investment close to EUR 100 million. The context is that we're being very successful commercially in North America, a lot of onboarding, especially in Mexico, and this has taken us to build this enormous greenfield because it's a very big greenfield in northern Mexico that's going to contribute a lot of growth as of 2026 and onwards gradually.
But in any case, I think that in spite of this little CapEx peak, I think that you'll see that we're managing the cash flow very seriously so that even if there's a slight deviation, a little bit in financial expenses, a little bit in CapEx, we're offsetting that with other savings and we're maintaining. I think that this is the key message because it's the fundamental guidance. We're maintaining generation and deleveraging. Working capital, its evolution, and whether lower factoring or less factoring is a structural thing. The figure in absolute value of factoring doesn't say very much because it's been 325, I think it is, which in fact is slightly over 8% of sales, but sales have been a little bit lower than the previous quarter, which was also slightly over 8% with a factoring that was a little bit higher in absolute value.
I think that in relative terms, we practically have the same factoring penetration with which we've had in recent times. And regarding the working capital, there's little to be said. This year, it's fairly neutral. Last year, for example, if I remember correctly, there were quarters with EUR 20-some million or EUR 30 million up or down. But in total assets of EUR 6 billion, I think it's practically like being at zero. I think that the message is the close management of working capital. We move on now to another subject, the guidance. A double question. Do you see sales growth in 2025 and the margin expansion from here to 2025? Does it come from several geographies, from a specific geography? Well, I think we've said it every quarter, and I'm going to repeat it now. We see a gain in market share. We see sales.
We see an expansion in margins. We see growth in profits. We see cash generation. We see deleveraging. All this in 2024. The strategic plan was developed five years ago at the end of 2020 with a five-year horizon, and almost 30 million more vehicles were estimated for the five-year period than are actually going to be produced. Not to talk about the cost of materials, inflation, interest rates, etc. The variables have changed, and even so, we confirm our commitments. We've got here with an extremely high compliance with each of the guidances. We have a little over a year to complete the strategic plan. How are we going to end up complying? I think we see organic growth in most geographies for next year. We see a continuous operating margin improvement in many of the geographies. Obviously, some go further than others.
North America or Brazil already have very high margins. India has the capacity to grow, etc. So a growing top line with operating leveraging plus our own leveraging in certain geographies. Well, I think that all that put together is a scenario that contributes to give us confidence in meeting our strategic goals in 2025. And we're asked another question regarding the guidance: With the 2025 goals almost attained, without taking away any of the merit, any idea as to whether we'll have a new short-term guidance? I love the comment without taking away any of the merit. There's a lot of merit in it, in fact. But we're going to have a new guidance. Well, since we haven't yet reached the current guidance, it seems a bit premature. Let's go step by step.
Let's first reach the guidance that's been published, and then let's talk about whether there's going to be another one or not, but we haven't reached it yet. We move on to the M&A subject. There are several questions here. The first one is why aren't acquisitions being made in spite of the historically low leveraging? And can we describe the pipeline a little bit, the M&A pipeline, and what are its qualities? I'd love to be able to say a lot of things about the enormous M&A activity we're having, even though it's not always fruitful, and we're not announcing a new deal every day, but there are a lot of things underway. Why aren't they fruitful? Well, for various reasons.
Because of a gap between the vendors' expectations and the buyers, something that I think is quite generalized in the world of M&As today, including specific market issues in specific markets and specific difficulties in specific markets. For example, buying in Europe to consolidate a certain market share. These are conversations that are really complicated. When we talk about M&A today, in the complicated situation of the sector, and especially in certain geographies like Europe, the negotiation tables aren't a table with the buyer and the seller as they have been traditionally. Around the negotiating table, you have the banks, the customers, and it's important for them to be involved. So these are long tables with many parties involved that complicate negotiations, that make them longer, and when they're fruitful, they're a great success.
As you saw, the little acquisition we made here in the Basque Country a few quarters ago. But these are complex conversations and negotiations, and I attribute that as the reason why they're not fruitful, but I'm positive. I think that before the end of the strategic plan 2025, we're going to see M&As. I can't help being structurally positive. Two more questions on M&A that can be joined together. With what maximum leveraging level are we comfortable? And if M&As cannot be done, and with the cash flow you're generating, are you considering an extraordinary dividend for next year? Sorry, I forgot the first question. Maximum leveraging level, we're at 1.4. We've always said that our comfort zone is around two times. I think that it could make sense at a given point in time.
I think Jesús María Herrera has said it at some conference calls when the question has been asked. We've internally discussed even reaching three times. Why? Because we have a significant generation capacity that leverages relatively quickly. Once you parallelize M&A and corporate operations, this would enable us to get back to the comfort zone relatively quickly. And I said it when I answered the previous question. I'm positive I think there'll be an M&A before the end of the strategic plan. So that's my answer. There are no more questions. It wasn't bad. Great. Thank you all very much. But in any case, we're at your complete disposal if anything is still outstanding. Thank you.