Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us today for Aramis Group Q3 2022 revenues presentation. I'm Alexandre Leroy, Head of IR. With me today to comment these results, Mr. Guillaume Paoli, Co-founder and Co-CEO of the group. Before I hand over to Guillaume, just a few reminders. First, this conference is recorded, as you just heard. A replay will be made available on our website. A slide will be there also. I would also like to remind you that today's presentation contains forward-looking statements, and that future results may differ materially from the statements or projection made on today's call. In particular, the risk factors that could affect those statements are described in our universal registration documents filed with the Autorité des Marchés Financiers. This presentation will be, of course, followed by a Q&A session.
Last but not least, I remind you that Aramis Group has a non-calendar fiscal year. Given our annual results close at the end of September, the Q3 2022 we're going to comment today refers of course to the calendar period from April 1st to June 30, 2022. Now I leave the floor to Guillaume Paoli that will drive you through the main business highlights for the period. Guillaume?
Thank you, Alexandre. Good morning, everyone. Moving on slide number two. We founded this company to revolutionize the way people buy cars, and during this quarter, we have progressed on this journey to deliver great experience and great products to our customers. The teams have done an incredible job to deliver the growth whilst continuing to satisfy our customers, and this in an automotive market that has become more volatile and uncertain, much more than what we had anticipated. The pre-registered car segment worsened more than we expected. Low availability of new vehicles, given there is no improvement to date on the front of the production lines. We know this situation is temporary, but it will last some more well into 2023.
On the refurbished car segment, we kept on performing well with a solid growth, thanks to the quality of our products and services and the underlying structural need for mobility. The used car market has nevertheless slowed down over the last couple of weeks and months with some wait-and-see attitude among consumers in this context of high inflation rate, particularly on cars. Given the environment, we work harder than ever to maintain our offer in line with what customers want, and affordability is battle number one. We will also accelerate our inventory rotation and keep our cost structure in control in order to protect our balance sheet and profitability. We did achieve major advances in the Q3 in terms of execution of our strategy.
In particular, the acquisition of Onlinecars in Austria and the inauguration of our 2nd refurbishing center in France in the south of Paris. Our objective remains the same, gaining market share on the absolutely massive and fragmented used car market and become the preferred platform for Europeans willing to buy a used car online. Moving now to slide number three to slide number four, sorry. Once again, our Q3 2022, our unique vertically integrated business model delivered. Despite the challenging environment, we delivered a high level of revenues growth with over 20% growth year-on-year, reaching EUR 458 million. Let me remind you the three unique features of our company in our industry. First, we are truly, fully vertically integrated.
Second, we have chosen to empower multi-local team as close as possible to the customers with group support and knowledge sharing. Third, we are finally 100% customer-centric, enabled by digital platforms and big data expertise. Concerning the vertical integration, you will see that we continue ramping up our refurbishing centers, including Antwerp, which opened at the end of 2021, and the new one, and inaugurated a new center in France. Regarding the teams, they have showed continued high agility in shifting our sourcing toward significantly more C2B, as Alexandre will tell you later. We also set up transversally across the group new international guilds aiming at sharing faster different best practices in our business. Third, we further innovated during this quarter to ease the purchasing journey for our customers with the e-signature on financing application in some geographies.
We broke down some pain points on the delays needed to register a car, enabling us to serve always faster our customers. Typically in Spain, our teams are now able to deliver a car in under two hours in the Madrid area. Our NPS remains high at 69, proving that our growth is healthy, meaning here not at the expense of customer satisfaction. Moving on to slide number five now. A significant achievement is the acquisition of Onlinecars, once minor conditions precedent will be lifted, mainly merger control. We are very, very happy to welcome Onlinecars in the Aramis Group family. We'll start consolidating the company into the group from the beginning of our next fiscal year in October 2022.
Onlinecars is a leading independent B2C used car retailer in Austria with EUR 200 million of sales, profitable, selling more than 10,000 used cars on this market, created 17 years ago by a true professional of the business. It has refurbishing capacities, the brand is locally known, and the culture is customer-focused, and the management team is eager to grow and has an entrepreneurial spirit. Said differently, Onlinecars characteristics are criteria for acquisition, and as we stated earlier, we have a disciplined methodological approach to M&As. There are some exciting synergies to come with Aramis Group, starting with a dense sourcing network for German vehicle brand vehicles, and we work with them on their refurbishing capabilities to optimize the flow and push them at an industrial scale. Integration plan is ready, and it will be led by the current management team.
Last but not least, we have the full support of Stellantis for this acquisition, both with regarding the strategic rationale and the financing, given that the deal is financed with a new credit line from Stellantis. Moving on now to slide number six. A few words on the new refurbishing center we opened one month ago in the south of Paris region, 80 km from Paris. This will help us network the territory to manage better delivery times and logistic costs, while also re-lowering the carbon footprint of the company. Once fully ramped up, the capacity of Nemours site will be in line with the Donzère in south of France, the original refurbishing site that we developed and that we are kind of copy-pasting in different countries. The nominal capacity will reach in the medium term 25,000 cars per year.
With the center opening in the U.K. by the year end, and the one from Onlinecars in Graz in Austria, at the end of the year, we should have seven in-house refurbishing centers strategically placed over Western and Central Europe. We wanted to take a few minutes to give you some examples of how digital and tech and data is helping us moving our business forward. As an example, our data team worked during the last months at enhancing our price prediction algorithm with machine learning systems.
On the sourcing front, our teams now have a new powerful live suggestion tool telling them precisely for a given car, what is the current price on the market, how many of them are on sale, how strong is the demand, how fast are they selling on average on the market and at Aramis Group, and ultimately giving a precise selling price recommendation. With this new tool, we doubled our transformation rate on dry trade-ins from customers versus one year ago. On the right-hand side, on the inventory management side, our people review the cars that we have in stock to understand why some of them don't sell quickly. There can be many reasons for that, including price, of course, but not only.
Our new e-merchandising internal tool allows our teams to have, at a glance, all the info on the car, how many people looked at it, how is it priced, et cetera, et cetera. It's very helpful, and particularly right now, as price volatility has increased, and we are working at bringing down our inventories to sounder operating levels. Our stock of cars older than 60 days has already halved versus the picture at end of March 2022, and this tool has contributed to that. This was a few business highlights. Now moving on to some context on the market. Moving on slide number nine. I'll now say a few words on the automotive market before handing it over to Alexandre, that will drive you through the Q3 financial performance.
The automotive market environment remained very challenging in Q3, and even deteriorated much more than what we had anticipated. On the left-hand side, as you can see on the chart, the new passenger car market has decreased versus the last normal year, which is 2019, by over 37%. On the right-hand side, the used car market, that is very resilient, has decreased in the context of high inflation on basically everything, and in particular on cars, where the price in one year have increased by between 10% and 30%, depending on the geographies. The market has been slowing down, and of course, we have been impacted by this as well. With that, I will leave the floor to Alexandre to give you some highlights on the financial side.
Thank you very much, Guillaume. We are now on slide number 10. Given the market dynamics Guillaume just depicted in Q3 2022, we logically 1st of all further accelerated on the refurbished car segment, which reached the 89% mark of our volumes in Q3 2022. As a reminder, in full year 2021, we were at 62%, meaning 27 points lower. The 2nd thing we did is in terms of sourcing channels. We of course further accelerated on C2B2C sourcing, meaning sourcing from private customers. This channel fueled 62% of the refurbished cars we sold in Q3 2022, and as a reminder, in full year 2021, C2B2C sourcing represented 35%.
Second point without surprise, the contribution from Stellantis, as you can see here on the right-hand side, is very low at two percent in terms of sourcing, of course. Given that, like the other OEMs, Stellantis has a very limited number of cars available for sale right now, either new or 2nd-hand, and sizable order backlogs in front, as you likely know. In full year 2021, Stellantis represented 13% of the refurbished cars we sold. If we translate all this in numbers of cars, it is easier to measure the extent of the logistical effort and the operational performance that switching from pre-registered to refurbished cars, or switching from professionals to private owners when sourcing, means.
As you see here on the right-hand side, we bought 11,400 cars in Q3 2022 from private customers, hand-picked one by one. For the full year 2021, it was 17,648 units. What I mean is that in Q3 2022 only, we bought 2/3 of the total number of cars we sourced in 2021 from private customers. It's quite impressive. Moving to the next slide, we are now on slide 11. If we now look at the details of revenues per segment, Q3 2022 revenues, we see that all segments are up year-on-year, except of course, B2C pre-registered. Altogether, our B2C revenues reach EUR 374 million, up +13% versus Q3 2021.
B2C refurbished revenues are up 67% year-on-year to EUR 228 million, with volumes increasing 28%, which is a pretty solid achievement in the context of used car market slowdown. Prices are up 30% year-on-year, reflecting, as you know, the widespread increase in vehicle prices across all the segments. I just highlight that sequentially, we noticed the beginning of price stabilization. On the B2C pre-register part, revenues are the other way around, down -66% to EUR 46 million. Volumes suffer of course from the lack of product available for sale. It's very hard to find cars to sell, to source. Decreasing a massive 75% in volumes.
Prices are up +36%, reflecting here also the price increase and particularly the scarcity of this kind of product. As for B2B, revenues quickly, they reached EUR 61 million, nearly doubling year-on-year. You know that, the growth is a result of the increased sourcing of vehicles from private owners, some of which we resell to professionals. Finally, revenues from services increased 20% to EUR 23 million. Financing solution penetration rate improved in France. It fell somewhat in the U.K. due to the rising interest rate. Overall across the group, the penetration rate for financing solution continued to rise over the period and is now close to 50%. Moving to the next slide.
We are now on slide 12. Quickly, a few words by country now. France, 1st of all, revenues are up +1% to EUR 197 million. The geography is of course hardly hit by the collapse in pre-registered car volumes. The dynamic on refurbished car partly compensates only the overall B2C volumes being down at the end of the day -29% year-over-year, and up just a shy +2% QoQ. Moving to Belgium, revenues are up +16% to EUR 62 million. Same patterns with volumes of pre-registered cars down sharply. Here, this move is more than offset by the increase on refurbished ones with volumes multiplied by 3.5x year-over-year.
It benefits of course from the opening of the Antwerp Refurbishing Center last November, but also from the pooling of Belgium and French car inventories. Overall in Belgium, B2C volumes are up +5% year-on-year. Staying quickly, revenues up 50% to EUR 87 million in Q3 2022. The Netherlands sells virtually no refurbished cars or remainder. Volumes are up 5% year-on-year. U.K. finally, revenues are up here also +50% to GBP 112 million. Here also, no pre-registered cars sold in this geography. The growth is explained half-half by the volume and by the price effect. With that, I hand over back to Guillaume for the outlook.
Thank you, Alexandre. Now moving on, slide 14. As stated today, the automotive market environment is more than ever volatile and uncertain. There are massive sourcing difficulties for pre-registered cars, and a certain wait and see attitude among consumers for 2nd-hand cars. Nevertheless, underlying fundamentals remain a huge EUR 400 billion market, B2C, fragmented under digitization, and automotive mobility is absolutely not an option for Europeans. In this context, we make sure that our product and service offering fits with what the consumers want. As I have said, affordability is battle number one. We are accelerating our inventory rotation and keeping the cost structure under control in order to protect our balance sheet and profitability, focusing on cash. In terms of outlook for the coming quarters, our pre-registered volumes will likely remain low due to the difficulties in sourcing.
We remain confident on the fact that our refurbished vehicle segment will continue to grow, thanks to the underlying market trends, independently from the potential deferral of certain purchases by households. Sales price will remain durably high, potentially until the new car market normalizes. The GPU finally will decrease around 10% in H2 2022 versus H1 2022, and stabilize in 2023 around the EUR 2,150 per unit average level we set at an objective at the time of the IPO. We revise our full-year 2022 guidance, as shown on the slide, with unchanged revenues targeting over EUR 1.7 billion, a growth in refurbished used cars of around +40% versus over +45% previously, and a negative adjusted EBITDA between -EUR 10 million and -EUR 12 million versus a positive figure expected previously.
Well, despite the short-term bumps, I would like to reaffirm our confidence in Aramis Group mid and long-term prospect. The group that we founded exists since 21 years. It has a business model that has proved its resilience during several previous crises, and we have the strategic and financial support of our majority shareholder, Stellantis. As a consequence, we move forward with our strategy, continuing to ramp up our refurbishing facilities and maintaining an eye on external growth opportunity. We are convinced we will get out stronger from this down cycle and closer to our ambition to become the preferred platform for all the Europeans willing to buy used car online. We actually see this crisis as an opportunity. With that, thank you very much. With that, we will open the Q&A session.
Thank you, operator. Let's start with the question over the phone, please.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to slowly press star one and then one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please use the Q&A box available on the webcast link to submit the question. We have the 1st questions coming from the phone line. The questions come from the line of Catherine O'Neill from Citi. Please ask your question.
Hello. I've got a couple of questions, if you don't mind. The 1st one is on the 3Q volume trends. I just wondered if you could provide a bit more detail on the phasing of that as you went through the quarter, so we could understand what the exit rate looked like in June, and whether the sort of roughly 20% year-on-year growth you're implying for the Q4 looks conservative or optimistic. The 2nd is on the GPU trend, where you talked about the 2nd half GPU being down roughly, or you expect it to be down about 10% versus the 1st half and then FY 2023, 2050 onwards.
I just wanted to understand some of the drivers behind that in terms of what's bringing that GPU trend down, especially if you're sourcing more cars from consumer. I thought that may be more efficient for the margin. And then linked to that, could you maybe give a bit of detail on what you're assuming on pricing in the market and what happens? I know you said it's started to stabilize. Are you assuming it continues at an elevated but stable rate, or are you assuming it comes down? If there is quite a rapid normalization, what kind of risk could we be looking at to your GPU?
Okay. Thank you, Catherine. I'm not sure I understood your 1st question. I understand you would like some more detail inside the quarter. Is that correct?
Yeah. As the quarter progressed, April, May, June, how did those trends develop? 'Cause actually, your 2Q volume growth for refurbished was really quite strong, and then it's much softer in the 3Q. I just wondered if there were any big differences between those months as the quarter progressed.
Okay.
You want to answer that?
Come on?
I answer that?
Yeah.
I'll start with that question on the sequential evolution of the volumes, Catherine. Basically, if you do your math, you're going to see that, I'm talking about full B2C deliveries, so pre-reg plus refurb, having in mind once again the pre-reg. We don't sell pre-reg in Spain and the U.K. Commenting Q3 2022 versus Q2 2022, in France, we are at +2%. In Spain, you'll have noticed we're at -15%. In U.K. and Belgium, -3% to -4%. The point is that in Spain, which I will comment, we reengineered some flows at the factory.
We knew that there were some flows generating to at some moment or risking us to generate some mixed quality. We already have some of that in the quarter. The inflow of demand and of cars was so huge in Spain on the back of a very dynamic demand that we had to push that down the road. Now that the demand is a bit softer, we actually work at reengineering the flows and to some extent also refurbishing, I would say, better car but a bit less, and hence the slowdown in the volume specifically in that geography.
As for the countries that are exposed to pre-reg, you can imagine that there is a massive impact of pre-reg, both in France and in Belgium. I mean, in France, Q1 and Q2, we lost an extra - 24% of volume from pre-reg. In Belgium, we are even way higher than that because we lost more than 40% of the volume. Of course, reserves partially compensate. I mean, in Belgium, more than compensate, and in France, partially compensate. This is what you see in the figures if you study them, let's say, sequentially. Does this answer your question?
Yeah, sorry. I didn't quite understand. I think when you were saying France +2%, Spain -15%, what's that referring to? Is that referring to a particular month within the quarter, or?
I mean, we've been seeing like, it's more. In pre-reg, let's say in pre-reg, if I'm a bit caricatural, month after month, we've been able to source less and less cars because there are less and less cars available. I mean, if your production doesn't normalize on the new car market, the scarcity increase. This is mechanical. Let's say the trend. It trends downwards since the beginning of the year. On the refurbished cars, so not the pre-reg, the refurbished cars, here, it's a few weeks that we see more wait and see. There can be several factors on that, in particular, the materialization of the inflation rates, maybe a speech that is overall in the media, et cetera, more worrying. The gasoline price seems to be durably high. Yeah, to some extent, it can maybe erode somewhat household confidence and generate less demand.
So t he beginning of the quarter was better than the end of the quarter.
Yeah, that's the point on this market.
Continuing to your question, regarding the GPU. Well, there are different reasons to the stabilization, the decrease of the GPU. I'm going to list them. First, as you understand, we had really increased our inventory to be able to deliver the growth, and we accepted some risk from the discipline that we had in previous years. As the demand has slowed, we have adjusted our inventory, and this had an impact during the quarter on the GPU.
Second, in some geographies, the contribution of services has been a little less good even though our penetration is increasing at group level, due to a hike in interest rates that has kind of impacted. It's momentary, it's temporary, the revenues from services. There is also inflation on some aspects of the business, between EUR 60 and EUR 90 depending on the country, in terms of logistics costs of fuel, of a slight increase in spare parts prices. Finally, there is kind of a mixed effect. Some geographies are not as mature as others and have a lower GPU. So this has globally an impact on our GPU. So it's partly internal and partly external.
Regarding the pricing, what we see is that if index 100 is January 2021, our geographies are between 112 in France and 127 in the U.K. In the U.K., it has actually decreased since the beginning of the year by 5%. We think we reached a plateau, but in the other countries, it's still continuing to increase. It's difficult to forecast the price level. We assume that they will remain high in the near future, at least as long as the new car production has not increased. There is a level at which it's just not possible to sell cars anymore, and probably we have reached this level in the U.K. In terms of risk, it doesn't represent necessarily a big risk for us, as we have a relatively quick turn of the inventory. I hope we answered your question. Otherwise, you can follow up.
Yeah. No, that's helpful. Thank you.
Thank you, Catherine.
We have no further questions on the phone line at the moment.
Okay.
Once again, if you want to register a question on the phone line, please slowly press star one and then one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Thank you.
Maybe we're going to take a few questions from the internet. Okay. We have a question from Alexandre [guess] from Kepler. When do you expect to reach adjusted EBITDA breakeven again? Is the 3% margin in 2025 still valid? It's the 1st question. Second question, can you please give us some color on the working capital impact expected for the full year in light of the system issues in the proc segment?
Okay. Maybe I do the two 1st ones, and you do the last one, Alexandre. Regarding EBITDA positive, I would like to stress that the company has 21 years of existence and one year of negative EBITDA, which is 2022. We expect we will be EBITDA positive in fiscal year 2023. Reaching that in the months during the next fiscal year. Regarding the 3% mark in 2025, now is not the time to give you guidance, updates or not updates in 2025. I would also like to say that this mark has been achieved already last year. Not last year, we were at 2.7%. We're not very far the year before and the year even before. I think sequentially it was 3%, 3.4%, 4.4% and 2.7%. This is a mark that we have achieved in the past. Regarding the working capital, maybe Alexandre-
Regarding the working cap, as you know, the working cap is mostly in inventories. We reached what we said to be a high water mark of 48 days of sales at the end of March 2022. As we already said, we started to work hard on that topic. One, because we need to right size the inventories versus the new market environment. Two, because there is seasonality in the business. Three, because in general, we consider our business being a fast rotation inventory one. If you want to be disciplined and to have a healthy management, it needs to rotate fast. Why?
Because longer you keep the car, in general, empirically, smaller is the margin we generate. Because it means that there is something in the car, is it the pricing, is it the features, et cetera, that doesn't perfectly match the market need. Second, if you rotate fast, you get a natural hedge versus price fluctuation. It means that you are, like, buying and selling at a market level that are fairly consistent. You have a hedge against the volatility that once again has increased over the last weeks. Our point is that at year-end, we will be meaningfully lower, meaningfully below the 48 days of revenues in terms of operating working capital. We can't say more.
At this stage.
At this stage, of course. Still no question on the phone, so I move on with the internet question.
Christophe Cherblanc from Société Générale. Christophe, you highlight the fact that Q4 2022 refurbished implicit volume seems to be stabilizing around 18,000 cars. You ask how we should think about the beginning of next year and the full year 2023. Is it challenging to see a 30%-35% volume growth for next year? Yeah. Next year, I mean, our strategy is to grow refurbished cars, so we expect to continue to grow next year. At this stage, we will not give targets for next year. It's within the strategy to grow on this huge market.
Another question from Christophe, asking where is the absolute bottom on pre-reg? Do we believe it's around like 1,000 cars per quarter? In the long run, the new distribution channel? Can the pre-reg opportunity structurally decrease?
There will be a bottom, but at this stage, we will not be planning to sell more than, or probably even less than what we have sold during the last quarter. It's very difficult to anticipate because we have been wrong several quarters in a row, so on that. There will be a minimum level, but I am not sure that we have achieved it yet. That's for pre-reg. When we talk to OEMs, the most popular opinion is that this pre-reg market will come back. It's a temporary situation. Because right now, the OEMs are constrained, so they are arbitraging in favor of price to increase their margins.
As soon as the factories will be able to produce as before, probably the prices will come down. They expect to reach pre-COVID level of production. Right now, the discussion we have with OEMs, and particularly one we know very well, is that they anticipate that they will come back to the pre-COVID situation, which means that there will be a pre-reg market that will increase again. Right now we're not counting on it, but we believe and other professionals believe that it, this will come back. The question is when. Right now we will not include this hike of pre-reg in our forecast.
If I follow up on that, next question from Christophe. Basically, I'm going to reformulate. Can we do the 3% 2025 and 10% long term margin, EBITDA margin, even in pre-reg without pre-reg rebounding? Let's say it like that. I'm going to answer that. Our aim, Christophe, is to have a positive EBITDA company that is self-sustained even without the pre-reg. I mean, the shift to refurbished cars already started several years ago. Given the market context, we strongly accelerated on the refurbished car, but the aim and the big market and the deep market is on refurb.
We need to be able to achieve our EBITDA ambition, even if pre-reg volume don't come back or don't come back as much as they were in the past. I just changed the question. The speaker will come back to you, Christophe. I saw you have a few more questions, but in the queue was after you, Paul [guess]. Paul, you are asking more color on what actually are the factors that bring EBITDA down from 0 to -10 and -12 precisely. I'm going also to answer that. As we saw in H1 and that brought us last April to lower our EBITDA, we are missing volumes.
The pre-reg volumes are even more depressed than what we had anticipated. We are really talking about a collapse of the market because we are at -75% in Q3 2022. If you had on top of that a bit of GPU erosion, you have less volumes, less GPU per unit. A total gross profit that is somewhat lower than what we anticipated at the beginning of the year. You have the P&L negative operating leverage that plays fully on the EBITDA. This is the reason why we cut again about EUR 10 million the EBITDA guidance. If I move forward with the question, Christophe, you're asking, you're talking about Cazoo. Basically, you ask if we expect them to reduce their investment in France and the U.K., and if does it make any difference to us. Guillaume.
The market conditions are, I assume, difficult for everyone, probably more even for people that have less experience on the automobile market. As we know, stock market conditions are not exceptional as well. We don't know what Cazoo is going to do. If we draw two hypotheses, either they will maybe reduce their ambitions on the continent, then it would not change materially what. Because right now, the volume that they are doing are very low on the continent, so it doesn't really impact us. It might a bit reduce the pressure because they have been headhunting here and there and spending a lot of money in media. It might reduce some pressure here and there, but it's not, for us, it's not a material aspect in our growth plans. I mean, whether they stay or whether they don't stay.
Okay. If I move forward with the question, Valérie Scheller is asking, and this will be the same question that Edouard Aubin, you asked from Morgan Stanley, which triggers we intend to use or to activate to go back to a higher level of profitability, let's say it like that, on both top line and cost side. I mean, basically, on the top line, we continue to grow, which will allow us to, I mean, continue amortizing mechanically the cost structure. This is the 1st point. Our strategy didn't change. As you know, it's the growth of volumes, is improvement on the service front.
The rotation aspect of the inventory is absolutely critical, as I said before, because from an operating point of view, this is what assures or warrants that our margins are at the level where we want. In terms of cost structure, as we already said at the time of the H1 results, there is no reason why COCA, so marketing cost per unit, to significantly increase because we are currently at a level generating traffic on our website and building our brands. That's the 1st point. The 2nd point, on the fixed part of the G&A, there is no reason either why this should increase meaningfully. This is, say, more or less how the top line and the cost structure should move going forward.
As for the extra question on the working capital, the levels, et cetera, et cetera, and this is a Q3 2022 trading update. We will stick, sorry for that, but as of today, at the level of information we provided. As for the guidance for next year, the same. Really, we come back to you in December on the with the more precise figures, both in terms of volumes, where the margin could stand, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
If I go down the list. You asked a question regarding the refurbished volumes, and you're asking if there is a country that sees the refurbished volumes slowing down more than the other, and what could be the main driver for that. We don't give details per country. The answer I did before on the sequential evolution in terms of percentages give you some, let's say, flavor on where there are potentially weaker level in Q3 versus Q2. For instance, in Spain, I told you that there are also some internal factors.
Overall, when we look at the figures on all the markets, there is some more wait and see. Internally, we can have, for instance, I was stating before, in Belgium, volume is still up significantly, sequentially, because they are fed by the new refurbishing center and the pooling of the inventories. I won't comment much more on that. Sorry for that. If I move forward, we have a couple of small questions from Paul. Paul comes back to the competitive landscape, and would like to know if, given some financial difficulties at the competitors, we see a competitive landscape that is, like, somewhat less aggressive since a few quarters.
Yes, we're seeing here and there a decrease in media investment from some competitors. Again, the market is absolutely. Paul comes back to the competitive landscape, and would like to know if, given some financial difficulties at the competitors, we see a competitive landscape that is, like, somewhat less aggressive since a few quarters.
Yes, we're seeing here and there a decrease in media investment from some competitors. Again, the market is absolutely huge, 46 million cars at the European level, and all of us combined, if you take our previous guidances, at mid-term, it represented only 2% of the market. We are seeing some reduced investment here and there because of the market and current market conditions, I think. For us, most market conditions, but some other players have different needs. As I said, this decrease or increase will not materially impact our performance, apart from maybe less pressure on marketing costs here and there. It's marginal, and some people recruitment.
Follow-up from Paul, but on another topic, refurbishing center. He'd like to get more color on the impact of profitability on profitability of the ramp up. You're asking if it's a J curve and when exactly on how, let's say, the fixed costs are absorbed. To be a bit more specific on that, basically, to ramp up a refurbishing center, you need a good year, let's say, one year. One shift requires about four months to ramp up. Means that when we opened Nemours, for instance, last June, so we had all the 1st team to make the 1st shift that was already employed. Of course, these guys start to work and to refurbish cars, always more.
At a certain time where they are well in place, where their automatism are good, when they are, like, confident enough in their job, then we need, we implement the 2nd shift that will require an extra four months to ramp up, while the 1st one also keep on learning, basically. The breakeven of refurbishing factory is between the 1st and the 2nd shift. This means that in general, you require two shifts, 16 hours of work per day to pass the breakeven, to start to make money from there. The 3rd shift, in general, is implemented, so let's say, more from month eight onwards.
In the specific case of Nemours, and given the current context, we will review the calendar of when it makes sense or not to put the 3rd shift. It's going to be the 3rd shift, the night shift. With the constraint of the night work, both from a labor law point of view and organization. In general, this is a bit how it spreads. First shift, four months. Second shift, after the four months. Hitting the breakeven point in between, somewhere between the two. Then, 3rd shift when it's useful. This is for the refurbishing center. So far I think we answered all the questions on the internet. I reworded a bit, but I hope everything of the answer he was looking for.. [crosstalk] The phone, right?
No further questions on the phone at the moment. Thank you.
Okay. If there are no more questions over the phone, no more questions online.
Thank you. Thank you very much for your attention and for your time. We wish you all probably happy holidays and looking forward to speak to you at the end of the year.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
Yeah, bye-bye.