Hello, good afternoon, and good morning, and good evening to international participants. Welcome to the AUTO1 Group First Quarter 2025 Results Presentation. I'm Philip Reicherstorfer, Group Treasurer. As always, I'm joined today by Christian Bertermann, our Co-founder and CEO, and Markus Boser, our CFO. We will start with a presentation followed by questions and answers. If you would like to ask a question, please raise it via the usual Zoom Q&A tool at the bottom of your screen. We will then call on you to ask your question directly after the presentation. Before I hand over, I must make you aware of the safe harbor provisions at the beginning of the presentation. These will apply to any forward-looking statements made today by management. Now, over to Christian.
Thank you, Philip. Hi, everyone, and welcome to this AUTO1 Group Q1 earnings call. Q1 was a very strong quarter across the board. We followed our strategy of maximizing value for our customers closely. We generated the highest demand for our products we have seen so far, and this led to double-digit unit growth for the group alongside new records for gross profit and Adjusted EBITDA. Our teams are delivering excellent work, and we look forward to unlocking more of the massive growth opportunity in Europe's used car market going forward. In Q1, we sold a record 204,000 vehicles to merchants and consumers, and we crossed the 200,000 quarterly units sold mark for the first time in our history. This strong result represents a 25% year-on-year unit increase.
We also generated record gross profit of EUR 236 million for Q1, surging by 45% year-on-year and EUR 35 million more than in Q4 of last year. Group GPU also hit a new record of EUR 1,160, a 17% increase compared to Q1 of last year. We achieved our highest ever Adjusted EBITDA of EUR 58 million. This is a 3.4-fold increase or EUR 41 million more compared to Q1 of last year, and our Adjusted EBITDA margin climbed to 3% for the first time. This is a 1.8 percentage points increase compared to the previous year. Our teams are dedicated to building products that deliver outstanding value to our customers. By listening closely to them and understanding their needs, we advance solutions that make buying, selling, or financing vehicles with us easier and more convenient.
As a result, our products benefit both our merchant partners and consumers alike by offering better prices, lower cost, more choice, greater convenience, highly motivated staff, increased trust, fast delivery, and competitive financing. In Q1, we saw growing customer interest in our products, and that was the driver behind this strong set of results. Let's go into merchant performance, and let's look into some of the details here. We made excellent progress in merchant in the first quarter. We achieved fresh records across all metrics. We sold 182,000 units to our partner dealers. That represents an increase of 24% year-on-year, and we achieved a record merchant gross profit of EUR 180 million. That is EUR 51 million, or 40% more than in Q1 of last year. Merchant GPU was EUR 990 in Q1, a seasonally outstanding result representing a 12% increase year-on-year.
This growth is driven by accelerating demand for our B2B offering, showing a record number of partners purchasing on auto1.com. We have now achieved six consecutive quarters of growth in merchant bias, supported by continuous platform improvements, new features, great prices, industry-leading financing, and fast delivery. In Q1, 29,500 partners purchased vehicles from us, representing a 20% increase compared to Q1 of last year. Additionally, the average basket size grew by 4% year-on-year from 6 - 6.2 cars. Our sourcing network expansion is going also very well. We opened 61 new branches in the first quarter across Europe. We believe that a bigger drop-off network increases convenience for our selling customers and increases selection for our buyers. Hence, we will continue the build-out of our purchasing network further. AUTO1 merchant financing had a great quarter as well. We keep receiving extremely positive feedback from our partners.
Our product enables them to conveniently finance vehicles they purchase on auto1.com with one click, allowing them to grow their business organically together with us. In Q1, we financed EUR 326 million of merchant sales. This is 2.6 times more than in Q1 of last year, and the number of financed units grew to a new all-time high of 30,000, and that is a 2.7-fold increase compared to Q1 of last year. Our merchant financing portfolio grew by EUR 173 million year-on-year, from EUR 85 million in Q1 of last year to EUR 258 million. We continue our growth track and will roll out merchant financing to more and more partners and also some more markets over the course of the year. Let's switch to retail, which had a strong quarter as well. In Q1, our retail business grew strongly across all metrics, so in unit sales, GPU, and total gross profit year-on-year.
AUTO1 delivered a record 22,000 units compared to 17,100 in Q1 of last year. That is an increase of 28% year-on-year. We had the highest ever retail gross profit of EUR 56 million, and that grew significantly by 66% year-on-year. Retail GPU was EUR 2,569 in Q1, an increase of 31% compared to Q1 of last year and setting a new high. Offering fast delivery times continued to be a top priority for us in the last quarter. We were able to reduce the average delivery time from just over 13 days in Q1 of last year to 10.4 days in the first quarter of this year. That is a 21% decrease year-on-year. With now 37 express hubs across Europe where cars are available within 72 hours, we are offering express delivery benefits to customers across all nine AUTO1 markets.
We want to finish with taking a look at our long-term targets. We can say that start to 2025 was very strong. Our teams delivered outstanding performance in Q1. We made a good step forward towards our long-term group margin target of 5%-9%, reaching 3% in Q1 for the first time. We are pulling more and more transactions onto the AUTO1 platform, while we also keep working towards our long-term market share target of 10%. We know that we're just at the beginning of capturing this massive market opportunity ahead of us. Let me now hand over to Markus for some detailed financial updates.
Thanks, Christian. 25%, and with Adjusted EBITDA at EUR 58.1 million, representing an increase of over three times our Adjusted EBITDA from one year ago. As you can see in our Q1 report, we also had net income of EUR 30 million, larger than the full year of 2024. Our first quarter success is indicative of the power of our unique business model and its long-term potential. Nonetheless, as we said during our year-end call in February, Q1 is always our seasonally strongest quarter, and this year particularly benefited from a more aggressive purchasing approach in building up inventory in Q4, resulting in more and younger inventory at the beginning of the year, and therefore extremely strong Q1 sales and margins. As we've shown in previous quarters, we continue to have significant operating leverage, both in terms of units as well as increasing GPU.
Increased marketing costs are primarily an investment into the Autohero brand. The EUR 2.6 million increase in logistics is a reflection of more cars bought and sold, and finally, the EUR 6.2 million increase in payroll reflects our ongoing investment into our growth focus areas, namely additional branches, additional refurbishment, and sales. Our cash position continues to be strong, with EUR 601 million of total cash and no corporate debt. We continue to invest in our growth. Over the course of the quarter, we invested EUR 24 million into inventory and a further EUR 44 million into our merchant finance portfolio, as well as EUR 36 million into our consumer finance portfolio, demonstrating the growth of these terrific products. Now to guidance.
We confirm our guidance of 650,000-700,000 units in merchant for the full year and 85,000-95,000 units in retail for a group unit expectation of 735,000-795,000 units for 2025. We increase our gross profit guidance to EUR 845 million-EUR 905 million for the full year, up from EUR 800 million-EUR 875 million, reflecting on the one hand a higher GPU across our segments than assumed at the beginning of the year, but on the other hand lower than what we achieved in Q1. For Autohero, we believe GPU should likely temper to slightly below EUR 2,500 for the remainder of the year, which we believe is the right level to achieve our growth expectations in Autohero.
With respect to merchant GPU, while we think that this has long-term upside with further merchant finance penetration and additional products, our guidance assumes that we'll moderate downwards in the mid-single digit after the current Q1 outperformance. We have increased our Adjusted EBITDA guidance to EUR 150 million-EUR 180 million, up from EUR 135 million-EUR 165 million for the full year 2025. This 10% improvement at the middle of the range reflects our strong trading results, as well as increased investment in OpEx as we drive Autohero further for 2025 and beyond, resulting in a higher OpEx per unit for the remainder of the year. Lastly, a short word to Q2. Seasonally, Q2 has generally been a weaker quarter, and we don't expect this year to be an exception.
In contrast to last year, Easter has fallen in the middle of April, and there are multiple holidays across Europe in May and June. As a result, while we continue to expect strong year-on-year merchant unit growth in Q2, we expect a sequential decline in merchant units in the mid-single digits and a sequential decline in group profitability for that quarter. Overall, we are extremely proud of our first quarter results and believe that it demonstrates the power of our unique business model and a strong step toward our long-term financial targets. I'd like to now open up for questions.
Thank you. Before we start with the Q&A part of the call, let me review a few technical points. If you have not already done so, please submit your questions via the Q&A tool at the bottom of your Zoom screen. Philip will then call on you to ask your question. I will then unmute you, and you can ask your question. Please ensure that you are also enabled to talk on your device. Philip, back to you.
Thank you, Sam. We will start with Christopher Johnen from HSBC.
Yes, hi. Hope you guys can hear me. Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. If possible, I would like to do them one by one. First, I would like to pick your brain a little bit about the GPU performance at Autohero. Maybe you could just help us understand a little bit what some of the drivers were in the quarter. I take from your comments you do not necessarily expect this to be the new normal, so maybe you could help us just understand some of the moving parts that have led to that number in Q1.
Yes, sure. Hi, Chris. Thank you for your question. It is pretty much a similar driver with the merchant. We saw good levels for Autohero demand in Q1. More demand obviously increases turns a bit, and that is positive or accretive for Autohero GPU. At the same time, it is other, let's say, more underlying drivers that are constantly present and constantly being optimized by us, which is the selection of stock that we offer, the discounting algorithms and the discounting intelligence, like which stock gets discounted at which day based on which type of events. It is also like the incoming margin of cars that we buy. All of this has seen an improvement in the last quarter, a strong improvement. We do not want to overdo it with the GPU for now.
We want to keep it what we would at the current level assume to be an optimal level for further scaling because that's our priority.
That's clear. Thank you. My second question with respect to the comments around the additional OpEx spend. Could you just help us understand a little bit where is that spending going? Is there anything you can really pinpoint out? Is there a maintenance component to that? Is there just rollout with branches at Autohero pickup points, drop-off locations? I mean, just trying to understand a little bit where that money is going. I guess my real question is, does that incremental spending actually lead to higher unit growth down the line?
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a very important question. There are multiple, obviously, there are multiple elements of increased OpEx spend. Yeah, most of them, or let's say a major part of them, will occur in Autohero. It will be, of course, Autohero marketing to enable future higher level of growth and build up the brand. It will be investment into production center staffing. You know that we have good capacities in most of the markets, but those capacities need to be staffed. If we are not staffing them fast enough, we might, for instance, need to rely on temporary workers, which are more expensive, and then we'll replace them once we find the proper staff for that. That's a built-up process.
It's also in logistics in the sense that when we buy, and that's a very important point, the bigger the difference between the amount of units that we purchase in Autohero versus the current selling volume of a month, then obviously the higher the OpEx investment will be. Just to illustrate in simple terms, if we buy, or let's say if we sell a current volume of 1,000 cars in Autohero, and we choose to increase by 300, which would be like an illustrative 30% growth month on month, then of course we load the current P&L of this respective month where we just sell, in quotes, 1,000 with additional sourcing cost of 30% because we want to grow in the future in demand by, let's say, 33%.
The faster we want to grow, the bigger the difference between those two elements will be, and therefore it will be a short-term negative for profitability in Autohero and also then group profitability. That is why it is an investment. Lastly, multiple parts of the OpEx spend in Autohero have a multi-month cohort effect. The marketing that we do to a certain point is creative in the short term, but it also, to a large extent, has some multi-cohort positive effect in the months to come. Yeah, we are really building up the demand base, yeah, if you want, for a certain part in the short term, but then there is always a component of that which is long-term investment. Similar also on the merchant side, when we are investing into branches, those branches also need to get staffed correctly.
That staff needs to learn and be trained. It needs to be there. We have a couple of branches, for instance, that we signed, but that are not staffed at the moment. All of these effects, I think, illustrate quite well why investments in OpEx, yeah, will on the one hand have a short-term beneficial effect, but then also bear some of a multi-month cohort effect that will play out into the direction of or into higher demand for the future. We have to take that investment now, and we feel very comfortable out of our current position to take that opportunity and to take that investment in order to seize the opportunity, especially in Autohero that we see ahead.
That's clear. The final one from me, if I may. I do not think I have heard the word tariff, but I guess a lot of market participants are quite eager to assess risk around tariffs. Can we just get your guys' view on the whole tariff situation? I assume there is a reason why you did not mention it, which I assume is that you do not see yourselves as very much affected, but yeah, maybe you could give us your view on what is going on macro-wise. Thank you.
No, I mean, macro-wise, we see pretty stable conditions. The German used car market is roundabout stable, which shows you that we are taking market share, big-time European used car market, while some of the data is not perfect yet, but German data is. That was viewed by us as stable based on the data that we have. We are really gaining market share here. The tariffs itself, from everything that we can estimate at the moment, will not have an impact on AUTO1 business because we are not, the U.S. imports of used cars, which would, or new cars, because that is a real driver, the U.S. imports of new cars from other markets are not an input factor to our business.
Also, size-wise, let's say half of the U.S. imports would fall away because of tariffs, which I think would be a pretty extreme assumption. If you take another extreme assumption, you say all of those cars that are not half of the cars that are usually being exported to the U.S. out of the EU new car market view would all have to be sold in Europe, which also is a very aggressive assumption because they could also be sold somewhere else. This is only 3%-4% of the EU new car market in additional volume. We don't think that this would, if anything, short-term put only slight pressure on new car prices, and slight pressure on new car prices is actually good for volume. In summary, no, we don't see an impact.
We actually see prices rising a bit at the moment, which you can also see in our April price index. We do not assume this has anything to do with tariffs. You see a similar movement in the first half of April in the U.S., which is caused by tariffs in our point of view. In Europe, where we see prices increasing, we assume that the reason for this is kind of the higher price new car cohorts from the year 2021 that is step by step now arriving in the market. Yeah, overall, to sum it up, we're not concerned about macro, and it shows you that our unique vertically integrated business model is able to capture high market share also in periods of, let's say, macroeconomic instability or uncertainty like we see in Germany right now.
Stable volumes, but we are growing double-digit, north of 20% also in Germany. Yeah, we're not concerned about the macro for now.
Perfect. That's very helpful. Thank you very much.
I do one other, just one additional point between the difference between the U.S. and Europe, which is, of course, the U.S. has tariffs on car parts or has imposed tariffs on car parts, whereas Europe has not. I think that just to underscore, I think what Christian was just saying, why we see that sort of divergence, if you will, on the potential impact.
That's helpful. Thank you.
Thanks, Christoph. We are now going to Marcus Dibiel from JP Morgan.
Yeah, hi everyone. Yeah, just wanted to also follow up on Christopher's question. I mean, clearly you, I think, changed, at least from my field, the rhetoric a little bit, more investments, which makes perfect sense where you want to get the business to in the next couple of years. Makes all the sense given what, I guess, the shares have done. Marcus, when I look at the number and look at the Adjusted EBITDA, we can assume, I guess, that the percentage margin will be the highest in Q1. If we get some incremental revenues and obviously volumes from these investments, would you say that also in absolute term, Q1 2025 is likely the peak? And when do you think in absolute terms the EBITDA can be higher than in Q1?
Yeah, just to want to understand kind of like the magnitude of the OpEx in the next couple of quarters, if that makes sense. Thank you.
I mean, we do not provide kind of quarter-by-quarter guidance. Obviously, I think did so for Q2 just because we are sort of seeing that entire holiday dynamic. I think, as you say, I think our current guidance would imply that Q1 would be the highest, would be the highest EBITDA margin. We think we are making those investments not just for this year, but also for the coming years. Clearly, as Christian said, I think there are kind of two different dynamics. I mean, on the one hand, as we invest more in Autohero, you have that sort of mixed impact because Autohero has somewhat higher OpEx than merchant. You have, on the one hand, kind of the inherent growth lag that Christian was talking about, which is you buy now for profit if you want kind of one or two quarters later on.
Of course, kind of in parallel to that, we also expect over time just to have more efficiency gains as the business, as we just get better and better at what is still a relatively early business. We expect that to happen as well. I think it's very difficult today to sort of say, hey, those efficiency gains are going to land in this particular quarter. Obviously, we're making these investments because we believe that they're good and they're smart and that we will get to our 5%-9% EBITDA margin over time. I think it's a little bit hard for us right now to sort of exactly pinpoint when that flows through.
Yeah, okay, fair enough. Thank you.
Thanks, Marcus. Now over to James Tate at Goldmans.
Thank you. Thanks, Philip. I've got two questions, please. I guess firstly, again, just to follow up on a couple of previous questions. Autohero units grew 28% in Q1, and that is the growth rate that's in line with the top end of your four-year guidance. Should we really expect Autohero units growth to accelerate from this level onwards in the coming quarter, given the increased investments? Secondly, can you confirm that Autohero has reached segment profitability? Are you budgeting for this to remain the level or to remain profitable on a segment basis in the coming quarters? Thank you very much.
Maybe you want to take that one or Christian?
Yeah, maybe you want to take the first question with this. Will Autohero units accelerate?
Yeah. No, I mean, I think as you see from our guidance, at the midpoint, we're at about 20%, and at the high end, we're just around the 28%, shy of 30%. I think we're very happy. I mean, there's always a little bit of a, with that growth, I mean, there's always a little bit of a delay. I think in Q1, we had a particularly high utilization, as it were. Now we need to continue to invest to maintain that. I think happy with our guidance right now. Yeah, Christian, you want to take the second half or?
Yeah, on the segment profitability. In Q1, in at least one of the months of Q1, we reached segment profitability in Autohero. That is, yeah, was a really important milestone for us because we wanted to see it once. Now we actually go into higher investment mode because Autohero overall, yeah, is still quite small compared to the merchant business, compared to the opportunity. We want to increase the level of investment with the goal then over a couple of quarters later to, yeah, to let Autohero grow faster and reaccelerate growth. Yeah, it would be, let's say it would be nice if we could do it at a breakeven. It does not look like that right now because of the cohort effects that I illustrated at the beginning to Chris.
Yeah, the faster we want to grow, the more pre-investment is needed. We're okay to take this growth investment at a slight negative Adjusted EBITDA level because we think it's the right thing to do and it will pay off in the future.
Got it. Thank you.
I think you had a follow-up question, James.
Yeah. And just thirdly, I guess on merchant GPU was very strong in Q1 at EUR 990. So even if this was a seasonally stronger quarter, is it fair to assume that perhaps the mid-900s is the new normal? And then could you just help us think, how should we think about the cadence of improvement over the next few years in merchant GPU?
Yeah. So I mean, I think, again, you can see, I think from our guidance that the mid-900s is pretty much what we're assuming for the next couple of quarters. As I said, I think there's still longer-term, more opportunity to grow that. I don't think the 980 is the end by any means. I think the drivers of that would be just ongoing continued penetration of the merchant finance business. I think we still see a lot more opportunity there also beyond just the sort of standard product. I think there are also additional products that we can look at and are thinking about. I think for the next couple of quarters, we're going to stick with that, as you said, those sort of mid-900s.
Thanks, James. Over to Andrew Ross at Barclays.
Hi guys. Good afternoon. I've also got three. Maybe I should go one by one. First one is to kind of double-click on some of these points on Autohero reinvestment. You've obviously been pretty clear about OpEx investment. Could you just fill us in on any investment into CapEx and leases that are going to be required to kind of grow the capacity for Autohero? I guess as an extension to that, you sound very confident in demands. What volume of units will the group be capable of fulfilling with acceptable unit economics in, let's say, two or three years once you've made these investments to kind of give us a sense of where you see the business going?
I think in terms of on the CapEx side, we've talked about around EUR 22 million of total CapEx for the year. Some of that is actually in some internal logistics trucks, which is kind of really shared between the two businesses. But then a portion of it, I mean, at the end of the day, the refurbishment centers do not use up huge amounts of CapEx. I think it is a fairly efficient kind of part of the business. I think if we then look at leases, I think we kind of, if you look in the report, we had about EUR 12.5 million of depreciation and amortization. About EUR 9 million of that is IFRS 16 leases.
I think I would expect that to, just now on a quarterly basis, I would expect that to grow around about 10% or so over the course of the year, just rough order of magnitude. That is a combination of both branches and across the two different businesses. Not specific to Autohero, just to be clear.
Yeah. I mean, what unit volume can we do in a couple of years? I mean, our ambition is really high, right? We want to invest into Autohero to be able to sell multiple hundred thousand units over the course of the coming years. Obviously, we have to take it in smart steps. Now I think it is like one major growth step that we want to do and we want to invest in, and then we will push it further. The potential of the business is a multitude of what we are doing today.
That's helpful. Maybe second and third question together. In terms of the consumer finance proposition, you've kind of alluded to taking that outside of Germany and Austria. Could you update us on where you're at, any new markets, and how that's going? The other question is, you've also had a lot of success in driving incremental demand on the merchant side with rolling out more drop-off points. What's kind of the end game in terms of where you see the number of drop-off points? Just to give us a sense as to how much of a lever that still is over the balance of this year and into 2026 from the kind of 609 you have right now. Thanks.
Maybe I take the first one, and Christian, you can talk about the second. I think in terms of, I think Christian had talked about in our year-end results that we were looking to launch one other market. I think that's something that we're kind of on the verge of doing and would expect to do. I mean, that would be Spain, which I think he had talked about, and I think we would likely do over this quarter. I should say we will probably start relatively slow, one, simply to get the product right, but also, of course, do not want to dilute the GPU impact from doing that. And then maybe, Christian, if you can talk about the drop-off points.
Yeah, sure. Yeah, we see a lot, like a lot more potential with the drop-off network. I mean, one thing is the branches that we're building are not the same size, right? We go more dense. We go more outside city areas. The branches will incrementally be contributing a bit less. That is the absolute number that we're building. Nevertheless, there's some other interesting dynamics there as well with what type of cars we're buying and kind of what kind of incremental demand they get. Also, it's like challenges that we're solving, which is kind of, hey, how do you do the logistics if you're getting smaller and smaller? Overall, I would say, yeah, I think 1,500-1,800 in the long run should be doable.
Thanks, Andrew. For the time being, last but certainly not least, Nizla Naizer from Deutsche Bank. Nizla?
Yeah, I hope you could hear me.
Yes, we can hear you now.
Excellent. Thank you for taking my questions. I have two remaining. The first is on the seasonality that you've sort of outlined for the rest of the year and Q2 in particular, where you mentioned that sequentially the number of units could decline. Given how strong Q1 was, would this still imply that Q2 could be a double-digit growth quarter on a year-over-year basis when it comes to units? Is that the right assumption? Some color there would be great. My second question is on your merchant financing business. It's been several quarters now already. Could you remind us what the impact of the merchant financing is on your merchant GPU? Are you seeing a step up in more merchants approaching you because of the financing facilities? What are those attachment rates like?
Has the loan default risk, for example, increased in the current environment in any way? How are you managing that? Some color there would be great. Thank you.
I mean, the number of units we sold in the merchant business in Q2 2024 was 148,000. Yes, I mean, the short answer is, yeah, it would still apply double-digit growth with the guidance that I provided. I think in merchant finance specifically, what we've said is the actual net interest income is in the low to mid-20s % at the moment, in terms of its contribution to the merchant GPU. To that extent, it's not, in and of itself, a massive contributor, but clearly we see it as very helpful in terms of increasing the demand on cars. To that end, I think there's an unknowable impact, as it were, in the sense that, of course, or at least non-demonstrable for this kind of call, impact that in terms of what that directly would be.
Clearly, merchant financing does help in terms of improving demand and GPU. I think more overall, I think it's less about having new merchants approach us because of merchant financing. We have existing KYC requirements, and the merchants to whom we offer merchant financing are customers who we've already had. We know their payment history and so forth. It's less about that than really about enabling them to buy more cars, to do so in a much more convenient and better way than it is about necessarily approaching brand new merchants.
Great, Nizla. I think in the meantime, we also got one question from Wolfgang Specht at Berenberg. Wolfgang, I do not know whether you can ask your question.
Yes, hello. Good afternoon. Can you hear me?
Yeah.
Yeah. Maybe in addition to the colleague, you explained quite well the impact of the financing to the merchant side. Could you also elaborate a little bit on default rates? That was also a question from the colleague, how that has changed. From my end, it would also be interesting to hear something about the tax rate on the consumer side of the financing business. That would be very helpful. Thanks.
Sure. The default rates in the merchant finance side at the moment on a kind of gross or before any recoveries is around 2-3% or so. I think we're quite sort of comfortable with where that's going. Obviously, there's always a lot of learnings, and I think staying very much on top of that with those. Attach rates in consumer finance, so just specifically around the attach rates for our internal consumer finance is in the sort of mid to high 40s, so 40-50% in the countries where we do internal financing.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you. I think that brings us to the end of the Q&A element. Thank you, everybody, for dialing in. I think we have quite a packed conference calendar the next couple of weeks and call set up, but always feel free also to reach out to Maria and the IR team if you have any follow-up questions or calls. Otherwise, also thank you very much, Markus and Christian, for your time.
Thank you, everybody. Bye-bye.