Ladies and gentlemen, good morning, everyone. We are pleased to welcome you at the Q3 2022 Revenue Conference. This conference will be hosted by Thierry Piéton, our Group CFO, and will be followed by a Q&A session. Thierry, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much, Philippine, and good morning, everyone. This morning, I'm happy to report that Renault Group continues to deliver. Q3 is yet another illustration of the successful journey that we've started two years ago. While our value-focused commercial policy is yielding increased benefit, these are now further boosted by the effect of the renewal of the range, with the successes of Renault Arkana, of Dacia Jogger, and the promising start of Renault Mégane E-Tech, to name only a few. Now our eyes are all on Austral. All this led to a revenue growth of more than 20% versus Q3 of 2021, thanks in large part to the best pricing effect that we've ever recorded, and despite an environment that remains challenging.
Indeed, in addition to the semiconductor crisis in Q3, the industry had to face tensions in energy supply, in logistics, as well as a tough macroeconomic environment. In this context, Group registered 481,000 units in the quarter. Excluding the impact of Russia on Q3 2021, this represents a 2.4% decrease. Renault Brand, still the most impacted by supplier situations, sold 321,000 vehicles, down 4.8%. Dacia recorded 4.5% growth with 145,000 units, proving the success of its value for money positioning in a context of inflation. Dacia is once again one of the only brands in Europe to experience growth. Alpine sales, supported by the launch of limited editions around its iconic A110, have increased by 18%.
By region, Group sales were roughly in line with the market in Europe at -3.6%. International sales, which represent 37% of our volumes, were flat. Let's take a look at the Renault Brand launches on slide five. Renault is clearly making its comeback on the C-segment. As you know, it's a strategic segment for us and represents a major profitability lever for the coming years. Arkana continued to be a success with more than 100,000 cars sold since its launch. Since the beginning of 2022, we had 60,000 orders with a retail mix of 60% and 60% of E-Tech powertrain. Mégane E-Tech performed very well with 37,000 orders at the end of September, since its launch in Q2, and continues to be strong in October.
Here again, the highest equipment and the most powerful powertrain versions are favored by respectively 75% and 85% of our clients. Orders just opened on our C-SUV Austral. Although it's very early, Austral is getting great feedback from the journalists who ran test drives in Spain. Its 200 horsepower, 1.2 L, three-cylinder engine is one of the most efficient hybrid engines in the world, with 41% energy efficiency and 102 g of CO2 per kilometer. 102 g, this is 14% less than the best competition. Austral will also feature the OpenR display and Google Automotive Services environments, first launched on Mégane E-Tech, which our customers have already come to love. We expect to sell Austral at a transaction price of 25% higher than Kadjar, which it replaces. It will deliver multiple times the margin per unit.
If we focus on the Dacia brand, Dacia Spring, the most affordable European EV, continues its momentum with about 5,000 orders per month on average since the beginning of the year. The vehicle is now number one electric vehicle for retail in France, number three in Europe. Dacia Jogger is leading the brand's C-segment offensive with more than 65,000 orders registered in nine months, more than half of them being LPG and seven-seat versions. I'd also like to highlight the long-standing success of Sandero, which remains the best-selling vehicle for retail in Europe, and of Duster, which comes in second place and has reached 2 million sales since its launch. The new Dacia brand new identity launched in the third quarter boosted orders in September, which are for the first time higher than in 2019. Last but not least, Alpine.
As mentioned earlier, the A110 sales continue to expand. In a similar fashion to the Jean Rédélé edition in H1, the first A110 R's for Radical were sold in less than two hours. To directly address the question that you will have, at the end of Q3, I confirm that our order book is still at a record level. In fact, it's stable in volume compared to its level at the end of June. Slide six illustrates some of the key results of our commercial policy and product offensive. C and above segments now represent 41% of our passenger car sales worldwide in Q3. For the Renault brand in Europe, C-segment mix rose 10 points compared to last year, reaching 36%. This is consistent with our Renaulution ambition to increase our presence in the most profitable segments.
As you know, C-segment margins are double in value compared to B-segment. As already mentioned, our new model launches also come with richer trim levels. High-end versions represent over 75% of Arkana, Mégane E-Tech, and Spring sales. We continue to religiously improve our channel mix. In Q3, retail accounted for 56% of Renault Brand's total sales in our top five European countries, up seven points from a year ago, and actually up three points versus H1. This is the best mix for at least five years. Dacia remains more than ever focused on retail, with a mix of around 85%. Dacia and Renault are respectively number two and number four passenger cars in retail in our top five countries at the end of August.
Finally, after a first quarter posting a net pricing effect of 5.6 points and a second quarter at 8.4 points, we recorded 12.8 points in Q3, which is our best performance ever. Slide seven shows the E-Tech performance over time. As you know, our ambition is to be 100% EV in 2030 for Renault Brand passenger cars in Europe, with an intermediate milestone at 65% of electrified sales by 2025. With hybrid and BEV sales representing 38% of our volumes in Europe after nine months, up 12 points versus 2021, we're perfectly on track to reach this objective and significantly ahead of the market, which stood at 28%. It was even stronger in Q3 as our electrified mix reached 42%, an increase of 13 points versus the same period in 2021.
By the way, pure EV sales represent 18% out of that percentage. Let's now see the contribution of our different segments to Q3 revenue compared to last year on slide nine. Just as a reminder, the revenue of continuing operations presented on this slide no longer includes the Russian automotive activities, and 2021 has been adjusted accordingly. The impact of this adjustment on revenue was -EUR 0.9 billion for Q3 2021. Group revenue was up 20.5% in Q3 at EUR 9.8 billion, while automotive revenue stood at EUR 9 billion, up 21.7%. The mobility services contribution amounted to EUR 9 million versus EUR 6 million a year ago. Mobilize Financial Services revenue increased by 8.4% compared to 2021 Q3.
I'll now continue the analysis with a review of the automotive revenue on slide 10. Reading from the left-hand side of the slide, as mentioned, Q3 2021 has been adjusted from Russian activities. On the automotive revenue, it represented -EUR 867 million. The Forex impact was a positive one point, mainly thanks to the Brazilian real, which more than offset Turkish lira and Argentinian peso devaluations. Volume impacted by 12.5 points with a lower level of inventory drawdown in the network due to a lower year-over-year impact of the components crisis. As you will see further in the presentation, however, dealer stock levels remain very low. Geographic mix was negative one point. Product mix contributed 1.7 points, mostly driven by the strong start of Mégane E-Tech.
This level is slightly lower than in the first half of the year because Arkana, having been in the market for more than a year, is therefore in the comparables. Product mix will continue to improve in Q4 and into 2023, in particular with the launch of Austral. The price effect was once again the strongest positive in the quarter with +12.8 points. It reflects our continued actions to improve the quality of our sales and the pricing of our vehicles, but also the optimization of our discounts, as well as actions to mitigate cost inflation and Forex impacts. Again, this effect was the strongest ever. The impact of sales to partners was -2.3 points.
As in the first half, it's due to the decrease in production of diesel engines and vehicles for our partners, notably linked to the end of production in Q4 2021 of Opel Movano and Fiat Talento. The last item, others, showed a negative contribution of three points due to lower contribution of our own network, sales, following the sale of branches and the drop of used vehicle sales, which have become increasingly scarce on the market. If you turn to slide 11, global inventory stood at 421,000 units versus 340,000 units a year ago. Independent dealer stock at 184,000 units remains very, very low. Group stock at 237,000 units reflects higher production levels in the summer to prepare for the Q4 demand.
I'll now comment on Mobilize Financial Services' commercial performance. New contract volumes decreased by 11.9%, reflecting the power of the lower level of registrations and market conditions in Russia in particular. However, thanks to the group's pricing policy, new financing have increased in value by 1.9% over the quarter. The average performing assets follow this trend with a 1.4% increase at EUR 45 billion. Mobilize Financial Services revenues were up 8.4% to EUR 823 million.
On the following page, as regards our guidance, I'd like to reaffirm the guidance that we gave you at the end of July, with an operating margin above 5% and an automotive free cash flow above EUR 1.5 billion. Now, we look forward to seeing you on November 8 for our Capital Market Day. It'll be a great opportunity for us to showcase the in-depth transformation that we started two years ago with the arrival of Luca, and to present the chapter two of the Renaulution plan dedicated to the Metamorphosis of Renault Group. We'll also present new midterm financial guidelines. This concludes my presentation, and I'm now ready to answer your questions. Thank you.
Thank you, Thierry. We now have a first question from Pierre Quéméner, Stifel. Pierre, could you open your mic, please?
Sure. You hear me?
Yep. Hi.
Hi. Bonjour, Philippine [audio distortion] . When this is the Renault story with investors, I guess the typical pushback we have is the odds we are heading to a recession next year, and that your robust pricing tailwind you currently enjoy should not only fade into 2023, but reverse. I guess my question is twofold. First, how would you address the kind of pushback, and second, how should we think about the direction and the size of the price mix components into 2023 and 2024? Thanks.
I think it's important to understand where the pricing improvements have come from for us, okay? There's the first component, which was just aligning our pricing policy to the competition and not going after the least profitable channels. What we did there is very clearly, we took model by model in our range, and we looked at the gap that we had versus the competition, and we took action to close that gap. You know, if you look at where we were on Clio, for example, we were 11% lower than the competition two years ago, 7% a year ago, and we're about 2% lower today.
You know, if you look at Captur, same figures about 8% lower than competition two years ago, 4% a year ago, in line with competition today. Same thing on the Dacia brands. You know, we looked at the positioning of Dacia, generally speaking. We were roughly 25% below the competition back in 2019. You know, we went down to about 18% at the end of 2021, and now we're at 15%, which is roughly where we want to be. We want to maintain an advantage for the consumer so that the offering is very clear, but we don't want to leave any money on the table, right? This alignment is not something that we need to go back on, so it's here to stay, right?
Second item is we reviewed our discount policy with the network. You know, whereas we used to be remunerating the network on volume, we're now remunerating on quality and on margins, right? This is not gonna go backwards. Third item, we frankly reduced the amount of sales that we're doing to the least profitable channels. Now, at the group level, we're at about 70% in total in Europe on the retail channel, okay? The reason we're able to do this is at the same time we focus the business on the high quality sales channels, we took over EUR 2 billion of fixed cost out of the system.
We no longer have the incentive or the obligation to go after the least profitable sales, and you know, we just have to stick to where we're going. We're not gonna go backwards. At the same time we took the EUR 2 billion of fixed costs out, we removed about 1 million units of production capacity. You know, what we plan on doing in the future is to stick to that policy in a religious fashion. If the demand were to go down, obviously, we'll continue to adapt the production capacity. Our goal is to always be at the level of the demand minus one car, so that we don't have the incentive to go get the least profitable cars.
I think more importantly, as you can see in the communication here, as we're launching the new cars, there's a shift that's going to operate between the pure pricing actions and discount actions, et cetera, which we're going to continue to push towards the benefit that's coming from the new models. I'm not gonna come back on all the success of the new vehicles, but as you can tell, in some of the figures that I mentioned, all the new launches that we've done recently are ahead of the plan that we had set to ourself, right? For us, going into the fourth quarter, and in particular going into 2023, it's no longer a question of just pure pricing actions, it's a question of getting the full benefit of the new models that we're launching.
In 2023, we'll have the full first year effect of Mégane E-Tech, we'll have the full first year effect of Austral, we'll have Austral seven-seater coming out. Arkana continues to perform. All these cars are gonna be what's driving the boost in profitability over 2023. One last thing is, as I mentioned in the discussion, we still have a record level of orders portfolio. We do sensitivity analysis and stress tests. If the demand were to remain very low, say 20% below last year, it would still take us well into mid-2023 before we get back to an order book coverage, which is our target of about two months, right?
We think, well, between the strong order book short-term and the very high product activity that we've got going on, we think we have a really good opportunity to be counter-cyclical.
Many thanks. Just to follow, that means that the mix component for the product side should be very positive into the next year, 2024.
Absolutely. I think, you know, we'll have a similar equation of price plus productivity offset the cost inflation, and mix, but mix becomes a massive lever of our profitability into 2023, and it will remain that way in 2024 and 2025 as well.
We now have a question from Horst Schneider, Bank of America. Hi, Horst.
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions, too. Want to come back on this trade-off between inventories and pricing because inventories actually have gone up a bit, right, in Q3 versus Q2. Could you maybe provide more color to what extent, then, Q4 is really stronger? In that context, can you keep up the fast-track program given that now the inventories are up that much? If the shortage is easing, you have to cut back on the fast-track program. Could that implies then also for 2023 that we see a negative price impact from that, which could more than compensate, and also the positive product mix effect? And the last one is on this pricing again. I mean, you have not changed the earnings guidance. I think you never do that in a Q3 call.
Could you maybe make some qualitative statements to what extent now the earnings guidance is more cautious than it maybe was at the end of Q2?
Thanks. Hi, Horst. Nice hat and nice picture in the background as well. That seems.
That is for Wednesday.
Oh, oddly familiar. Yeah, I was gonna say. All right. Hey, look, on the inventory levels, you know, I think the way to look at it is, it's a lower decrease of inventory compared to what we had last year. If you look at the inventory of the dealers at the end of September, it's still significantly lower than what it was at the end of June. But the drop between June and September is about 90,000 vehicles lower than what it was last year. Because last year was the peak of the electronic components' first impact, right? We're drawing down less on dealer inventory. However, we remain at a dealer inventory level that's very low.
In terms of coverage, it remains, you know, in line with the end of June. You know, when you look at the OEM side of inventory, so the inventory that we carry on our books, the increase comes from the fact that we've had higher production. I think we've gotten better at managing the electronic components crisis by, you know, taking some risks on incompletes and things like that. We do see, you know, strong demand for Q4, and the backlog is high. I think what we anticipate from, you know, sort of our sales growth in Q4 is roughly similar to what you're seeing here for Q3. We built up some inventory at the end of September to prepare for that, right? That's really the dynamic.
Yeah, strong Q4 ahead. From a guidance perspective, I would say, you know, no massive change in terms of the situation. I think, as time goes by, you know. It confirms the guidance that we had laid out at the time. We have a Q3 that's very much in line with the goals that we had set to ourselves. Pricing is in line. You know, and volume came in pretty strong, thanks to the production actions that we took. For us, it's a confirmation of the plan that we had set to ourselves.
Since pricing is stronger than in Q2 or H1, usually the margin should increase in H2 versus H1, right?
You're right, at the same time, though, it's the same on the cost side. Because we do have, you know, we worked, and the purchasing team did a fantastic job with our suppliers to try to mitigate an impact of the cost inflation as much as possible. In fact, we did, you know, push towards the end of the year some of that phenomenon by negotiating. You do have, in a similar fashion that you have an increase in price, you do have a catch-up on the raw material price.
We had given, you know, a guidance on raw material, which was a split of roughly 40/60 between first half and second half, and it's just about right? You still have a big, a significant peak in cost towards the second half of the year.
Okay. Thank you.
We continue to cover our cost with pricing, no problem.
Okay. Thanks.
You're welcome.
We now have a question, from George Galliers, Goldman Sachs. Hi, George.
George, your mic is off. We can't hear you. Sorry. The mic is off, I think. Maybe we can come back to George afterwards.
Yeah. Thomas Besson from Kepler Cheuvreux. Thomas, do you want to ask your question? We will go back to George.
Sure, yeah. George seems to have an issue with his mic. It's Thomas from Kepler Cheuvreux. I have two questions as well, please. You've mentioned several times your order intake and the fact it could take up to the, maybe the middle of next year, to go through it. Could you give us an idea of the magnitude of that order intake? Is it now four, five months, six months? And can you talk mostly also about the incremental order intake? I think investors are concerned that, yes, automakers have large order intakes, but there seems to be much fewer people coming to order new cars now. Can you comment on that? The second question, I mean, financial services were quite strong in Q3.
Can you comment about the average amount financed now at Mobilize Financial Services, and discuss the share of leasing and the potential risk we could see from residual values if they were to start pulling? Is it still purely a U.K. issue or is it a rising risk for the group? Thank you.
Sure. That sounds like three questions to me. Hello, Thomas. On the first part on the order intake, you know, it's stable in terms of value versus the end of June. The way we calculate the coverage is based on forward-looking sales. And we have a view of Q4, which is larger in value than Q3, and therefore you kinda have a mechanical effect on the coverage in months. We were at 4.1 months at the end of June, and we're roughly 3.5 months at the end of September, with a very strong quarter ahead of us. We are still very healthy.
The kind of rule of thumb that we work with is to have two months of stock in the dealers and two months of order book. Here we're very, very significantly above that. In terms of intake, I think the intake, you know, remains, you know, low in absolute value because the market is still depressed, versus 2019. What we do see is an improvement in the month of September. I mentioned Dacia. Dacia was actually for the first time, in September above, in terms of sales, where we were in 2019. It's higher than the pre-COVID situation, which is encouraging for us.
I would say in addition to that, you know, the content of the orders is what matters. What we're seeing is, you know, a high level of content towards electrified vehicles. People who buy electrified vehicles typically go for the higher trim levels, so we see a very healthy level of trim. For us, you know, I would say the dynamic is pretty strong. Again, it's carried to a large extent by the new products that we've launched in the last year or so. On the financial services side, you're right. You know, the activity is pretty strong. The impact of the pricing policy that we're having on the new vehicle side is having a direct impact on Mobilize Financial Services, right?
We've got, you know, sort of, you know, around 18%-19% of average vehicle financing amount increase on a year-over-year basis, which, you know, is good news for the future and the buildup of the portfolio of MFS as well. From a residual risk perspective, it's still for us, you know, we have a relatively limited amount of exposure. It's still mostly a U.K. PCP type of exposure, so we're talking slightly above EUR 2 billion off the top of my head, full exposure. We've always had a very prudent approach towards you know, calculating the residual value of the vehicle, so we don't see that as a major risk going forward.
Thank you very much, Thierry.
We now have a question from Richard Carlson, Credit Suisse. Richard, the floor is yours.
Sure. Was George in front of me, though?
I think no. George is not here.
Okay, sure. Question. Interest rates on your customers, are you starting to see any impact from the higher financing cost? Maybe to what degree can Mobilize help with that, you know? I guess really, at what point does financing get locked in by our customer? Is it as of the time the order gets placed, or is it when they take delivery? My second question is just with your inventory levels, is Austral already in that? Are you already building Austral vehicles, and is that already a meaningful piece of the inventory?
On financing cost, I think clearly it's going to impact Mobilize Financial Services and the business overall. Just in terms of financial policy, you know, our captive financing has always been financed in a way that privileges the security of the financing on the midterm. Therefore, we have quite a significant amount of deposits, and deposits are, you know, less prone to the interest rate fluctuation, number one. We also have a financing that's more skewed towards fixed rate. There's not, you know, a direct correlation between increase in interest rates and the financing cost of RCI, of MFS. There's a lag in time.
We try to hedge the positions when we do have variable costs, variable interest rates. However, there will be increases, and we'll have to pass a portion of the increases to the customers. You know, that will be part of the price increases that we'll have to do in 2023. We're used to doing this. I would say, though, that you know what we see at the same time is residual values that continue to improve. For the customer, since the customer essentially pays a combination of the interest rate, but also the difference between the new car value and the resale value, there's kind of a buffer effect between the increase in rate and the increase of the residuals.
That should help a little bit with the external pricing, in a way. That's how I would frame it. On Austral. Sorry, second part of your question. Yeah, there's a limited number of Austral at the end of September in inventory. You know, the start of sales for Austral is fiscal week 42, so it's basically now. The shipments are only just starting.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you.
We now have a question from Barclays, Henning Cosman. Henning, the floor is yours.
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to come back to the inventory situation and some moving parts related to that. I think it's not often that we've seen such a large discrepancy between retail and wholesale. I was just wondering how you see that developing into Q4. The wholesale volume and revenue component, of course, was driven by the wholesale exceeding the retail. Do you see that reversing in Q4, with inventories potentially coming down? Is that even necessary to support the free cash flow guidance? If you could remind us if you're budgeting quite a large working capital inflow to support the underlying free cash flow in the second half year, the volume effect related to potentially a reversal retail versus wholesale.
Thank you very much.
Hi, Henning. Thanks for the question. Look, on the inventory at the end of September, there's two components, right? There's the dealer side, where I think clearly, it's a non-repeat of what happened in the previous year. I, you know, going into Q4, I think you shouldn't see that type of movement anymore. You know, the electronic components crisis really hit hard in the third quarter of last year, and what you're seeing is the non-repeat of that primarily, okay? I think things should normalize at the end of Q4 with the dealer inventory, which shouldn't be very different from the level that we had at the end of 2021.
From an OEM inventory, so the part that we carry on our books, as I said, you know, we did at the end of Q3 build out some incomplete inventory to prepare for the Q4 demand. We're not talking, you know, hundreds of thousands of cars, but a few ten thousands, let's say, or tens of thousands. And it's important for us because it can boost the customer satisfaction part of the business without being a massive, you know, negative impact on our financials. At the end of Q4, you should have much less of that. The goal that we have is to reduce the amount of incompletes to the maximum level possible.
Again, it will be a balance between the guidance that we've given and the financial inflow and the wish to protect our customers and to be able to keep you know delays at a reasonable level. We'll have to manage that based on the inflow of components that we see towards the second part of the year. On working capital, we should see a positive in Q4 because volume is higher than last year. But we're not talking billions, right? We're talking a few hundreds of millions. We were negative EUR 275 million in H1. Net over the year will be slightly positive.
Thank you. Just to confirm, these incompletes, they are counted in the inventory level that you're showing in the presentation, right?
We don't record revenue on incomplete sales. What we do is we build a car, maybe it's missing a component. We keep it in inventory. It's not recorded as a sale. Then when we get the missing part, we complete the car, we ship it, and it becomes a sale, right? It would be inventory at the end of Q3 and hopefully all gone to customers during Q4.
Very good. Thank you.
Okay.
We now have a question from José Asumendi, JP Morgan. José, could you open your mic?
Good morning, Thierry. [audio distortion] .
Hi, José.
Good morning. Can you please comment on the balance between pricing and maybe raw material inflation that we saw in the first half? How do you see that going into the second half? Pricing is very strong. I think, you know, raw materials came around EUR 800 million in the first half. How do you see this balance between pricing and inflation costs going into H2?
H2, huh?
Yeah. For the full year. Yeah.
Sorry. Sound quality is not great. First, as we had said at the beginning of the year, pricing and productivity will more than offset inflation very clearly. It was the case in a very strong fashion in the first half of the year. It's still the case in the second half of the year, okay. We're still covering inflation in H2 standalone versus last year. The balance of the two is better in H1 versus H2 because we had anticipated price increases in the first half, seeing the tide coming in on the inflation side.
As I mentioned previously, on the flip side, we had tried to, you know, manage the inflation as much as possible during the first half. In the second half, you've got a rise of inflation that's quite significantly above first half. Again, you know, if you look at the split of the inflation between H1 and H2, it's about 40, 60, right? 40% in H1, 60% in H2. Really, no big surprise. It's more or less what you know, what we were seeing in the first half, and it's panning out the way we anticipated. For going into 2023, what we're seeing is being able to continue to manage that in a similar fashion.
You gotta have in mind, you know, there's about a three-month lag between the moment the inflation happens and the moment we feel it in the P&L because of the hedging contracts, because of the contracts with the suppliers, et cetera, et cetera. There's three - four months of order backlog. It's quite, you know, let's say, transparent for us to be able to see what's going to happen for the coming semester. We have a pretty clear view that we're going to be able to continue to offset that into 2023. You know, as I mentioned previously, the new product activity is going to help.
You know, this year we essentially have seven months of Mégane E-Tech, really, and really, you know, less than five months at full speed, given the rollout of the launch that we've done. We will have, you know, very little activity on Austral at the end of the day in 2022. These two cars will have, you know, full year impact on 2023. Both of them, you know, have, again, you know, unit margins that are multiple times the cars that they replace, right? So for us, that's really the game. You know, regardless of what happens from a pure pricing, et cetera, we're talking a few points, which we'll manage, obviously, but this is the game changer for us, very clearly.
Okay. Now we have a question from RBC, Tom Narayan. Tom, could you open your mic, please?
Hi. Yes, Tom Narayan, RBC. Thanks for taking the questions. The first one, you kinda just answered it, but maybe a follow-up to it. The three-month lag between raw inflation and the impact on the P&L. Just wondering if you could comment specifically on the price concessions to suppliers part. You know, Volvo Trucks yesterday reported a bigger price concession than they were expecting. Just trying to understand that dynamic better, how that's contracted. Secondly, you know, I just took a look at lithium prices, and they're at stratospheric levels right now. You know, in the event a battery price escalates to, you know, $200, even $300 a kilowatt hour, what would you do as a company, given the European CO2 regulations?
I know it's a fantastic car, but I don't know if consumers will be willing to pay EUR 60,000 or EUR 70,000 for a Mégane E-Tech. Thanks.
Okay. Hey, hi, and thanks for the questions. Look, on the supplier concessions, you know, for us, Renault comes first, right? We're pushing back on the suppliers as hard as we can. Look, you know, I think the purchasing team's done a fantastic job of managing that level of pressure, and I think you saw that in the numbers of H1, and they're going to continue to do so. I would say, you know, in the industry, although our performance is improving, there are still people that have deeper pockets than us, right?
We actively encourage the suppliers to go talk to people that are maybe doing double-digit margins, because maybe they'll be more open than we are to that type of discussion. The third element that I would say is, you know, we obviously have very close relationships with the suppliers and, we don't want any of them to have financial trouble, et cetera, that would cause disruption in the industry overall. We work with them, you know. Our purchasing team, it's not only a negotiation and a challenge, it's also working together to find productivity actions. You know, I'll give you the example of energy, right.
We were lucky enough to look at energy as a productivity opportunity very early on, about 18 months ago, before energy was even a problem, before it was on anyone's radar screen. We put a system in place where we can monitor energy consumption at a very detailed equipment level in our plants, okay? Thanks to this, our energy consumption will be down, was down 10% in the first half, will be down 12%-13% this year, and we've got a roadmap to being down 30% by 2025, and 40% in France, right? What we're gonna do is, if customers have problems and want, and come to us to have a discussion on, "Can you pay for my energy increase?" The first discussion we're gonna have is, "Well, look at what we've done.
Can we help you do the same? Try to help them out. Look, that's the way we're managing it today. You know, as I said, Renault's pockets come first. Now, on raw material. First, the overall raw material situation, I would say you're absolutely right, lithium is the main headache that we've got today. The rest of raw material seem to be on a slightly decreasing trend. We've seen prices go down sort of, you know, mid-single digit now. When we look at a macro level, 2023, we're talking net-net, a slight increase in our raw material cost. We're talking a few tens of millions, so nothing close to what we've experienced this year.
With everything but lithium going down and lithium going up, right? There is an effect on the price of the battery. First on Mégane E-Tech, it would take a very high lithium price increase for Mégane to become a EUR 60,000 or EUR 70,000 car. We're not at that level of pricing yet. The reality is today, it's a very attractive car. People want it because it's got good performance, it's got good range, it's got an attractive connectivity environment, and you know, our order book is very strong. You know, at this point, we don't see a change in the dynamics of that car. Obviously, we'll have to manage it if our prices continue to increase.
Fabrice, you want to add something specific on Mégane?
No. I would like to say that, in this very volatile environment, our advantage now is to bet on two pillars. On the one end, EV with Mégane, and on the other end, Austral. We've also a very efficient consumption, but without this price raw material increase problem.
Thanks, Fabrice.
Thank you.
We now have a question from Daniel Roeska, Bernstein. Daniel, could you open your mic, please?
Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe first, you just emphatically promised that you would lower production if demand goes soft. Could I just ask operationally, how fast can you adjust capacity? So, you know, can you lower capacity 10% by a quarter? What's kind of the lead time to adjust that production footprint? And could you comment on the content mix in the cars currently? So not the segment mix, but really what's the average uplift from options and trim on the base price right now, for Renault and Dacia? And how do you think about that content mix going into next year? Isn't that where the key risk for you sits, that people pressured from leasing, pressured from household income, still buy a nice car, but don't buy the sunroof or the big nav or other options in there?
From a capacity management perspective, I think the first thing I'd like to say is, we're running at about 100% capacity today. It's not like, you know, we have a lot of spare capacity. Typically, you know, we could take short-term actions within a few weeks to make a change in shift pattern in the plants. It takes something like, you know, three months to three months and a half. Obviously, if we were to take more drastic action, it would take a lot longer than that, right?
We can adjust capacity in quite a significant fashion, with a sort of 13, 14 weeks type of lead time. Yeah. On the options and trim, if you look at the pricing, the pricing bucket, this quarter, at a very high level, it's roughly 60% pure price, 20% discount management, and 20% trim level. Right? That gives you an idea of the magnitude. Right? But, hey, look, I think, for what it's worth, I think there is a sort of tendency towards electrification, right? And people want to go for these cars for many reasons. I think we've seen that evolve over the last two years.
Our view is that it's gonna continue to do so. Again, typically these vehicles come structurally with a higher trim mix.
Thanks.
Okay.
We now have a question from Tim Rokossa at Deutsche Bank. Tim, the floor is yours.
Yeah, good morning. Thank you very much. I'd have two questions, please. The first one, I feel like we're dancing around this a little bit, and you kind of answered it, but not really. You were very clear on your order backlog question, that that is basically unchanged. Is the pricing on this order backlog also unchanged, in particular for the new orders that you take on board? Or do you see some softening on that side? And then as a second question, when we think about you being so successful to push into the retail channel, which is obviously great to see, and finally an OEM who really understands this, what do you think is the max for retail penetration levels for the group, and maybe specifically for Dacia? And Renault Dacia, obviously we know, but for Renault.
Do you see more reluctance in the retail channel right now to put orders in or more reluctance in the commercial channel? Thank you.
Okay. The pricing on the order backlog it continues to be very strong. I think what you should expect in terms of the pricing effect in Q4 is similar to what we had in Q3. Right? No material change for the moment. On the retail channel, I'll maybe give the mic to Fabrice for a moment. Look, I think we're at a good level now. I don't think there's a view that we should increase it massively further beyond where we're at today. Fabrice, you wanna comment?
No, I would say that now the point is to be balanced segment by segment, channel by channel, and market by market, and to have a level of profitability which is equal all around all above the channels. Now my point is to limit deviation country by country. It's more a qualitative job.
On Dacia, we're structurally very retail, but Denis or Xavier, you want to comment?
Good morning, everyone. Dacia remains quite you know the same, let's say, structural structure of sales for months or even for years. I mean, 87% retail right now in Western Europe. We continue to have so extremely high retail mix. We still extremely high trim mix, and we're keeping on taking 70% of Stepway orders on the Sandero. We're still at 60%-70% of let's say upper trim on the Duster and Jogger. We continue to have this. We don't see any slowdown. As you might know, we've launched an Up & Go program, which is let's say highlighting the highest trim of our vehicles on many markets.
The number of orders we're getting from this program is higher than ever. We don't see any change at all in the recent months.
Thanks, Xavier. Maybe back to the question from Daniel before, you know, on the risk of the trim level going down. Again, in a high inflation type of environment, Dacia is a super attractive value proposition as well. It's also great to have it in the portfolio in this type of environment.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We now have a question from Stephen Reitman, Société Générale . Stephen, could you open your mic, please?
Thank you, and good morning. I have two questions.
Go ahead.
First, the technical one. First, could you remind us on the revenue contribution from Renault Russia for all of 2021, just to help us to get an idea about the full year 2022. Second question is, could you comment on the kind of like the build rates you have on certain products? Because obviously, you've given us some order figures of your backlog figures, for example, the 37,000, I think, on the Mégane E-Tech. How many will be building a month? Just to get an idea about, and really, maybe you can give us an idea of the sort of book to build. How many are you booking compared to what your build rate is? I would like to get an idea on that, please. Thank you very much.
On the impact of Russia, on a full year basis, the impact is EUR 4.5 billion, right? In the third quarter, it was roughly EUR 860 million. That's what you would adjust for. On the build rate, you know, I typically don't go into the volume discussions on the cars. I would say that we're getting to a level on Mégane, which is, you know, pretty stable now 'cause we've rolled it in the key countries. The dynamic for us, it's still, you know, we're still in a demand exceeds supply type of situation, very clearly.
If we get more components, we'll build more, and if we can build more, we can sell more. No question about it.
Thank you.
We'll take a last question from Philippe Houchois, Jefferies. Philippe? Philippe, could you open your mic, please?
Did we get back George, or did we lose George?
We lost George.
Philippe? We're sorry, we can't hear you.
Okay, if Philippe has no question or he's not able to ask his question, we'll have a follow-up call. This is the end of this Q&A session. Thank you so much, and we are all available to answer your offline questions, if you have any.
Thanks very much, everyone, for attending this morning, and I look forward to speaking to you on the eighth of November with the team. Thanks very much, and have a good day.