I'm Alexandre Leroy. I'm Investor Relation. Today with us to comment these results, Guillaume Paoli, co-founder and co-CEO of the company, and Fabien Geerolf, Group CFO. Before handing over to the top management, just a few reminders. This conference is recorded, accessible both over the phone and internet. A replay will be made available on the company's website at www.aramis.group. Let me also remind you that today's presentation contains forward-looking statements, and that future results may differ materially from the statements or projections made on today's call. In particular, the risk factors that could affect those statements are described in our 2022 universal registration document, recently filed with the French Financial Markets Authority, AMF. This presentation will be followed by the usual Q&A session.
Finally, I remind you that Aramis Group has a non-calendar fiscal year with annual results closing at the end of September. As a consequence, the Q1 2023 activity we are going to report on today refers to the calendar period from October 1st to December 31st, 2022. I now leave the floor to the management that will drive you through the main business and market highlights for the period. Guillaume, please go ahead.
Thank you, Alexandre. Good morning, everyone. During our fiscal quarter one, 2023, so the last three calendar months of 2022, the market environment was in line with the last months, meaning it was weak, and it was challenging, with inflationary pressure leading households to adopt a more wait-and-see attitude. These conditions are really unseen. Total 2022 used car market in France, for example, is the lowest of the last 20 years, and all the European markets are down, linked to the global macroeconomic and geopolitical situation. On the positive side, regarding the market, the pre-registered car market may have bottomed out, and we have been able to source some more cars in the, in the past weeks and months.
In this context, Aramis Group is continuing to execute its strategy, of organic growth, of inorganic growth, with both revenues and volumes growing, as we will see later in the presentation. In terms of priority for 2023, given the market context, of course, our team remain fully engaged to serve our customers, in particular, to propose them cars that are adapted to their budget, their new budget, and the whole Aramis Group structure is ready to accelerate even more when the market conditions will improve. We remain tight on costs, tight on inventory management, but giving us the possibility to continue to grow, both in our historical countries and in the new ones where plans are being rolled out.
In terms of outlook, despite some positive signals that we start perceiving, visibility is still insufficient for the coming quarters on the new car production, on car prices, on customer demand, and as a consequence, we will reiterate our 2023 guidance as stated last month. If we take a look now at the market on slide four, as you see on the left-hand side of the slide, prices remain high. Prices are still growing or flattish, except in the U.K., where the prices are decreasing since the beginning of 2022, but they remain high even in the U.K. This contributes to further fueling the decrease in used car passenger registration with extra -10% year-on-year in Aramis Group six geographies in Q1 2023 versus Q1 2022. This is the total used car market.
This total used car market hide differences because this -10% is an average of all types of cars used in the six countries. In reality, the most recent used car segments decreased much more. We don't have the figures in each geography, but just to give you an order of magnitude, in France, which is around 40% of the business of the group, for the full 2022 year, the used car market is an unseen -13%, but the segment of cars of less than 10 years is down by -20%. Of course, we operate on this market. This dynamic is related to overall inflation, of course, and specifically automotive inflation.
If we move on to slide number five, despite this unfavorable market environment, we have a very low used car market, a very low new car market, probably the lowest since the end of the 70s. Aramis Group has continued to grow and has continued to grow qualitatively, as we'll see, with our unique vertically integrated business model. As we speak, we have eight industrial-scale refurbishing centers. Our teams, as I said, are fully committed and challenged to satisfy more and more European customers despite the market conditions. These customers recognize the value and distinctiveness of our offering, with a very high NPS score, which reached 69 at the end of the quarter. This results in quality growth, not at the expense of customer satisfaction, not at the expense of employee commitment.
We've reported revenues of EUR 449 million, up by around 11% compared to Q1 2022. Valérie will give us more detail later on. The context is there. If we move on to slide six, given the more challenging environment, we are maintaining a tight cost structure while trying, as you know, not to compromise our ability to take advantage of the market rebound when it will materialize. On the marketing side, for example, we significantly reduced our cost of customer acquisition, bringing it down by almost EUR 200, thanks in particular to a more efficient approach to our marketing costs, more discipline, and of course, a little less investment in brand development. We are in most countries in a good situation regarding the brand.
If we move on now to slide number seven, one of the milestones for Q1 2023 for Aramis Group is the opening, as planned, of our second industrial-scale refurbishment center in Hull. This is a 5,000 square meter facility, which in the future will be able to handle around 20,000-25,000 cars at full capacity. Of course, we have adapted the ramp-up to the current market environment, and only one team is currently operating the facility. I would like to remind that the U.K. is by far the largest European market, and we believe that we have a very large potential to grow. This new unit will help us to deliver in the coming years.
If we move on to the most recent geography, as you know, we have acquired Onlinecars in Austria, the leader of the used car retail in October 2022, and Brumbrum, the only digital player in Italy, on the first of November 2022. We have started to roll out the respective integration plans. At Onlinecars in Austria, our main focus for the moment is inventory management. The company has a high operating debt due to the way it operates. We are working with the local team to accelerate lead times, to adjust some processes, and review the refurbishing process, which will gradually decrease their working capital requirement.
At Brumbrum in Italy, the top priority is to turn the company around, to restart the business that was shut, virtually shut down by Cazoo when they launched a strategic review of their European operations. The plan to streamline the workforce has been completed. We have rebranded and relaunched the website, and we are relaunching sourcing, marketing, and basically restarted the business, beginning of January. With that, I will hand it over to Fabien Geerolf , who will present the financial performance of the quarter.
Thank you, Guillaume Paoli. Hello, everyone. We are now on slide 10. Despite the unfavorable market environment, we continued to grow in this first quarter of 2023 with overall revenues of EUR 439 million, up 11% year-on-year on a reported basis. All segments were up again, with the exception of the B2C pre-registered that are down -44% year-on-year on a reported basis to EUR 48 million. The sourcing difficulties in the pre-registered cars market have gradually increased over the months in 2022, so the base effect for Q1 2022 is particularly high. Just as a reminder, no pre-registered cars are sold in Italy, neither Austria, so there is no scope effect in this performance. On the other hand, B2C refurbished revenues are up 25% year-on-year on a reported basis to EUR 340 million.
The volumes are up at 17%, average selling price +7%. On a historical basis, without taking into account the two recently acquired companies, volumes are up 7%. As during the previous quarter, France and Belgium have fueled this growth, switching massively from pre-reg to refurb. B2B revenues reached EUR 53 million. They are up 37% year-on-year. As you already know, besides the price increase, this is due to the rise of vehicles sourcing from private individuals, part of which we decide not to refurb and retain again, and we just resell them to professionals. Revenues from services finally increased 16% to EUR 24 million. The penetration rate of financing solutions remained around 50% on a consolidated basis over the quarter. Sorry. If we move to slide 11.
As mentioned earlier, we focus our efforts on profitable growth of the company with refurbished cars only. However, we have seen in the recent months an encouraging trend on the pre-registered car market. Compared with the Q4 2022, our pre-reg volumes are up 35%. It is, of course, too early to claim victory, but we are seeing small improvements here and there on the, on this pre-registered market front. Hopefully the market may have bottomed out, and this positive trend will continue, and certainly give us additional opportunities. Moving to slide 12. As previously mentioned, total revenue growth was + 11%. Organic growth at constant scope was 3, + 3%, leading to EUR 406 million revenues in our historical scope.
In these historical markets, we managed to generate growth despite the strong decline in the U.K. market, minus 18% compared to the previous year, which impacted our group. On the other hand, the other three countries grew to some extent due to price increases, but mainly due to the combined acceleration of the used car segment and sourcing from individuals in France and Belgium. Activity in Italy in the first quarter of 2023 was close to zero as Cazoo virtually stopped operations last summer, which we restarted earlier this month. With that, I'll turn it over to Guillaume for the outlook.
Thank you, Fabien Geerolf . Now we're on slide 14. In terms of outlook, although we can see the first signs of some encouraging trends, visibility remains limited by the macroeconomic, geopolitical, and automotive environment. We know the refurbished car market is resilient, as three out of four Europeans go to work every morning with their car, and car mobility is at the heart of Europeans' lifestyle. It is also dependent on the level of household consumption, and therefore on the budget, which is currently limited by inflation. The market for pre-registered cars is highly dependent on the production of new cars, which is far from being normalized. Prices remain high, although in some geographic areas they are leveling off, and in the U.K. they are decreasing. Even in the U.K., they stay high, with prices that are over 20% higher than pre-crisis.
Consequently, we are reiterating our guidance for the FY 2023 and expect positive organic growth in B2C recovered vehicle volumes and a gradual improvement of Adjusted EBITDA over the year, not taking account the fuel surcharging cost. This is it for this Q1 2023 presentation. Thank you for your attention. With that, let's open the question and answer session. Operator, let's start with the question by phone.
Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please use the Q&A box available on the webcast link at any time. We will now go to our first question. One moment, please. Your first question comes from the line of Catherine O'Neill from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Great. Thank you very much. I have got three questions in total. The first one actually is on the U.K. market. I just wondered if you could talk about that market in a bit more detail in terms of why it's looking... or, what you're seeing in terms of why it's looking softer than other markets in terms of the supply and demand trends. Cause I know pricing came down off a much higher peak, but I guess volumes were worse as well. Secondly, on used car pricing and how you're sort of seeing that trending as we go into calendar year 2023, cause I know you previously said you expected it to fall. And I just wondered also if you're seeing any impact on the Tesla price cuts.
Does that feed through more broadly to the used car market in terms of pricing? Then finally, I had a question on GPU. I think previously you talked about GPU for early in FY 2023 being broadly in line with what you saw at the end of FY 2022. Is that still a consistent message? Could you maybe talk about some of the areas of pressure you're seeing, and in particular the logistics costs, where I think you said at the end of last year, and that had risen quite considerably.
Okay. Thank you, Catherine. I'll answer the two first questions, and I'll let Fabien Geerolf finish with the third one. I'm not sure I caught the end of the second question, I'm sure I'm going to miss something. Please don't hesitate to tell me. Regarding the U.K. market, our performance in the U.K. is not good. It's not a good performance. There are two main reasons. First is the market, and second, it's a number of things from an operational standpoint. Regarding the market, and we believe our performance will increase in the coming months. Regarding the market. Well, the market, we don't have the exact figures for the U.K. market.
The very last ones we had were - 12%, but that's on the overall figure. As I said, we believe that it's much more on the most recent used car. There were a number of, I would even say internal political factors during this quarter that scared off customers when they saw their mortgage that were increasing. Of course, the energy bills that were increasing. I mean, from a massive, at a massive level, very different from here in France, where there was a lot of money put by the government. Anyway, between the political local turmoil, the hike in interest rates, the energy crisis, the U.K. was in a very particular situation.
Plus, it was, at the time, the country where the prices were the highest. All this combined had a very strong impact on the most recent used car market. That's for the market. We have first signs of demand picking up now, or I would not say going back to normal, but I mean, kind of normalizing. Regarding the internal performance, there was a number of changes that have been made during the last year, and there was some operational changes that needed to be digested. We also opened this new factory, and these are factors that are that also can explain a bit the performance of the last quarter. Things are picking up. Regarding the used car prices, if...
I believe that in the past we said we were expecting the prices to go down at one stage. I don't think I was.
Perfectly specific on the timing, because it's still a bit blurry. We believe that these levels of prices are not sustainable. We see the U.K. as like an advanced indicator. The prices in the U.S. as well, the prices are decreasing, we believe that the prices will reach a maximum. Are we there yet on the continent? I'm not sure. We believe that they will start to go down in the course of this calendar year. We're not sure when. We have a few signs, these prices are not sustainable, we believe. Plus, there are some also signs that the OEMs are normalizing their production, which would, you know, give some air on the most recent used car and enable the prices to go down.
I'm not sure I caught the end of your question, so please, if you can reiterate if I didn't answer you.
Yeah, the last bit of that was just related to, we've seen quite a big price cut from Tesla. I know it's very specific to Tesla. I just wondered if that's feeding through more broadly to used car pricing. I know it probably is for Tesla used cars, but I didn't know if it was having sort of broader impact.
I mean, not on the used car market as a whole. On Tesla used car prices, for sure, it had an impact. I won't specifically comment on Tesla, but yes, it had an impact on the Tesla prices. Maybe I'll hand it over to Fabien Geerolf,.
Yes. Thank you, Guillaume. Yes, regarding the GPU, well, if I give you the trends for 2023, indeed our GPU would be impacted by the inflationary environment. We do have increasing transportation costs. There is the legal obligations to increase salaries according to the inflation level in some countries. Yes, we have that increase. Also more internally, we, as Guillaume was mentioning, our lastly open refurbishing centers are still in the phase of ramping back, so it's momentarily an additional cost. On the other hand, we continue to make progress in the way we select our cars and build our sales offers in line with customers' expectation, and this has a major impact on the GPU.
Our assessment of selling price and refurbishing costs is always more accurate and this is puts our GPU under control. We also are, you know, as a company, really engaged in the continuous improvement mindset and dynamics, and this really helps us in finding all necessary savings to keep our GPU under control. We I will not give you precise numbers, we are not there yet, but we are of efficient operations, and we continue to monitor and focus on the GPU improvements.
Thanks. I just wanted to follow up actually on the transportation cost point, 'cause I think we're seeing more broadly sort of logistics and freight costs coming down. I just wondered if that's something you're seeing at all, whether those costs would have peaked at the end of last year?
still see, we're still very high, and we don't see down on the international transportation. There is still a shortage of available transportation, still high, and so on this international transportation for importing cars, we are still at a high level
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please use the Q&A box available on the webcast link. We currently have... Oh, we've just got one more phone question in. One moment. Your next question comes from the line of Christophe Cherblanc from Société Générale . Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hello, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I had three. First one was just a follow-up on prices. I just wanted to clarify. It seems to me that, Guillaume, you just said that prices in continental Europe had not started to go down, which I think is, I'm a bit surprised by this because it seems the average selling price did go down in Q1 versus Q4. So that's first question. Maybe a sub-question is how much do you believe we need to see in term of price decline for cars to be affordable again and to see demand coming back? The second one is on Italy. Can you give us an update on the process of resetting Brumbrum, and maybe some visibility on the cost associated with reorganizing Brumbrum?
Is it a single digit amount, a mid-single digit amount? Any clarity would be welcome. The third one is a very small one. It's on Austria. Fabien , you said that they were not doing pre-reg, of course, but is there any impact on B2B and services revenues? Thank you.
Okay. Regarding the prices.
Of course, you know, there is no official indicator for prices. We generally use not only this, but we generally use the data from Indicata to give us, you know, some insights. I'm looking at the figures right now. Apart from Germany, which has lowered by two points, in all the other countries, apart from the U.K., yeah, they are either increasing still by one or two points or flattish. Right as we speak right now, we have a few signs in France that the prices are starting to go down. As for the quarter, the data we have, and by the way, our own sales price show that the prices are still increasing or flat.
Regarding one room, it's a bit soon to give you a number, but probably we will give one at a later point. What I can say is, versus what we perceived from other companies, there will be probably less talking cost and maybe a little more time for the data pickup because the situation is not hard. But it's a bit early to give you a number, but it will not be something that has a huge impact on the company, more like in the bottom of the range that you have mentioned. And maybe for Austria, I like to answer the question much
Well, well, maybe first one point on price, if I can just come back one minute on it. There is also a mixed price, a mixed impact on the pricing for our own average price as we are adjusting our offer to super cars. This obviously has an impact on the average price. This is not only market price evolution, this is also due to the mix of our sales portfolio. To come back to Austria, well, on the service side, we know that we have potential there. Clearly this is a good point, and we start to work on it with the Austrian team. This was not the country where it is the most developed and, you know, we can accelerate.
Yeah.
There is no B2B activity, i.e., resale of excess cars, in Austria?
Well, there is historically there was some, but at low levels and during the quarter, it might be, but it was marginal. I don't have the elements right now.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. There are currently no further phone questions. I will hand back to Alexandre for web questions.
Thank you very much. We have one question from Dominic that would like to come back on the U.K. performance. Dominic, you're asking for more color in terms of relative performance of Aramis versus what our competitor Cazoo published a few days ago. You would like to understand why such discrepancy.
Yeah. I think that we're in a very different place with Cazoo. What we're looking for, I mean, I won't comment, we are looking for consistently to have qualitative sale, i.e. sales with margin, sales with customer satisfaction and preserving the commitment of our team. I don't think it's really comparable at this stage, comparing the evolution between a company that still has very low GPUs and Aramis Group, which has, I mean, a leading amount of GPU, and some good signs even in the U.K. on the GPU front on the last quarter.
Yeah, there is a discrepancy, but it's probably due to the difference of approach in terms of how we look at growth.
Thank you, Guillaume. A second question from Dominic. Dominic, you ask if we can be more specifics. Sorry, specifics, so I understand quantitative on the trend in GPU in H2 2022 versus what we see in Q1 2023. I guess, Fabien Geerolf, the answer is no.
I'm afraid, yes. I will reiterate and I won't repeat what I said previously to the GPU. We are keeping the GPU under control and all the efforts are done to improve it over time.
We don't have any other questions so far on the internet. Operator, on your side?
There are currently no phone questions, sir.
Okay. Okay. Well, thank you very much for your attention. Happy to talk to you again for the H1 results, which are May 24th. Happy to give you more color on FY 2023 at this occasion. Thank you very much, everybody.
Thank you. Goodbye.
Have a good day.