Hello, good afternoon and good morning and good evening to international participants. Welcome to the AUTO1 Group third quarter 2025 earnings presentation. I'm Philip Reicherstorfer , Group Treasurer. I'm joined today by Christian Bertermann, our Co-founder and CEO, as well as Markus Boser, our CFO. I'm also very pleased to welcome Christian Valentin who will be succeeding Markus in stepping into the role of CFO effective January 1, 2026. We will start with the presentation followed as always by questions and answers. If you would like to ask a question, please raise it by the usual Zoom Q and 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 to Christian, I must make you aware of the safe harbor provisions at the beginning of the presentation. Here.
These will apply to any forward-looking statements made by management today. Now over to you, Christian.
Thank you, Philip. Hi everyone. Welcome to this AUTO1 Group Q3 earnings call. Our business performance in the third quarter has been very strong. We sold 219,000 vehicles. This is a new quarterly record and an increase of 24% year on year. Total gross profit surged by 38% year on year to EUR 258 million. This is EUR 71 million more than in Q3 of last year. We grew adjusted EBITDA from EUR 34 million in Q3 of 2024 to EUR 52 million this year representing a 51% increase. Our adjusted EBITDA margin increased to 2.4%. That is 30 basis points of increase compared to last year and the highest Q3 margin we ever achieved. These great results reflect the effectiveness of our strategy, our discipline and targeted investments in key areas, strong execution and above all the dedication of our teams.
We are pursuing a value first strategy across all segments. We are strongly focusing on the drivers that create value for all of our customers. While we have been executing this strategy since our foundation, we constantly take steps forward in understanding our customers' needs, expectations, and priorities even better, resulting in superior demand levels across segments. Value in our business can mean higher selling prices, lower buy prices, lower processing cost, greater selection, greater convenience, highly motivated staff, increased trust, fast and reliable delivery, and competitive financing. Let's start our deep dive with the Merchant performance update for the third quarter. In Q3 we sold 192,000 vehicles to our partner dealers. This is a new all-time quarterly record and represents a 22% year-on-year unit increase. We also generated record Merchant gross profit of EUR 185 million for Q3, increasing by 29% year-on-year.
On year, Merchant GPU was EUR 966, a 6% increase compared to Q3 of last year. We sold 550,000 Merchant units in the first nine months of 2025. That is 22% more compared to the same period last year. Gross profit increased by EUR 125 million- EUR 535 million compared to the first nine months of 2024, a 31% increase. The strong growth in our Merchant segment is driven by constantly rising demand for our B2B offering. This momentum is reflected in yet another record breaking quarter for the number of merchants buying on auto1.com. For the first time ever, we surpassed 30,000 active Merchant buyers, reaching 31,100 in the third quarter, a 22% increase compared to Q3 of last year. Our average basket size per Merchant remains stable year on year with each Merchant purchasing an average of 6.2 vehicles per quarter.
We are very happy with these strong results while we continue to expand our buyer base further. AUTO1 Merchant Financing delivered another strong quarter as well. We continued the successful rollout of our financing solution for partner dealers, expanding into Poland in Q3 and most recently launching Sweden just a few weeks ago. Our Merchant Financing portfolio grew by 60% year on year, increasing from EUR 178 million last year to EUR 284 million for the third quarter. We financed EUR 359 million of Merchant sales, a growth of 63% year on year and the number of vehicles financed grew to 33,000 units, a 65% increase compared to Q3 of last year. We continue to be very excited about AUTO1 financing and plan to bring it to even more markets and partners in the future. Our sourcing network expansion continues to go very well too.
We opened 42 new branches in the third quarter and closed the quarter with 690 drop off locations across Europe growing. Our drop off network increases convenience for our selling customers and increases selection for our partner dealers. Now we will take a look at Retail which had a very strong quarter as well. In the third quarter our Retail business grew strongly in unit sales, in GPU and in total gross profit. Autohero delivered a record 27,000 units compared to 19,100 in Q3 of last year, an accelerated increase of 42% year on year and a reflection of our ambition to build a bigger business faster. We generated the highest ever Retail gross profit of EUR 73 million, growing significantly by 68% year on year. Retail GPU was EUR 2,664 in Q3, representing an increase of 18 compared to Q3 of last year and setting a new record.
Q3 Retail GPU was positively impacted by EUR 12 million of benefit. In the first nine months, gross profit increased by EUR 76 million- EUR 190 million and GPU increased by EUR 490 compared to the same period of last year. We take a look at production, we continue to expand our production center footprint across Europe. In the third quarter we announced three new production centers located in Italy, in Austria, and the Netherlands, bringing our total to 12 centers across 10 different markets. With these facilities, our total production capacity has increased by 38%, rising from 179,000- 248,000 cars per year at full utilization. Collectively, the three new facilities span a total of 184,500 sq m and have a combined annual production capacity of 71,500 cars at full utilization.
Our new facility in the Netherlands is already operational and we expect the locations in Austria and Italy to open before the end of this year. Today, approximately 95% of all Autohero cars are refurbished in our own used car production centers. By operating our own facilities, we maintain full control over every step of the process, which remains a key driver for car quality and optimizing unit economics. While we support the continued growth of Autohero, we are constantly building out our fulfillment network for Autohero across Europe to speed up delivery and increase comfort for our Retail customers. We aim to provide our customers with the fastest delivery of their new car at great rates or in many cases already for free.
We aim to build our network in a way that supports this effort as best as possible, supporting pickup or home delivery depending on our customers' preferences. We were able to reduce the average delivery time from just under 12 days in Q3 of last year to 9.5 days this year. That means we deliver 20% faster year on year. Finally, let's take a look at our long-term goals. Our unique vertically integrated business model is providing the foundation for our future growth and margin expansion. We aim to capture a market share of 10% of the European used car transactions in the long run and combine this volume with 5%-9% of adjusted EBITDA margin depending on the relative size of the Merchant and the Retail business.
With total units growing 24% year on year and EBITDA margin improving by more than 14% quarter on quarter to 2.4%. Our Q3 results mark an important further step towards both long term targets. They are also demonstrating first and early returns of the increased investments we made since Q2 of this year. Most of those investments, however, particularly the increased investment into the Autohero brand building, are strategic multi quarter investments that strengthen our market position and drive long term value and margin expansion in the future. We expect the full impact of these efforts to become increasingly evident in the quarters and years ahead as our vertically integrated business continues to scale. I'll now hand over to Markus for a detailed financial update.
Thanks Christian. Q3 represented yet another record for us in terms of units and with 219,000 units sold beat our previous quarterly record by over 7% as well as achieving 24% year on year growth on a group wide basis. It also represents the first time that we broke the EUR 2 billion barrier for revenue achieved in a quarter. We're definitely back in growth mode. We achieved this growth with record group GPUs at 1,176 reflecting the mix effect from the higher GPUs in our Retail business as its higher growth at over 42% in units means it becomes a larger portion of our business. We also incurred EUR 206 million in OpEx to support this growth, resulting in adjusted EBITDA of EUR 51.9 million and a net income of EUR 19.2 million.
If we go.
Through our OpEx quarter- over- quarter. We have been investing to accelerate our growth and increase the moat around our business so that we can grow to a bigger business faster to reap the scale effects once we get there. Gross profit has grown by 38%, the majority of which has been a result of higher units over time. Higher units also help drive higher GPUs as the more data we receive the better we can price cars that we see on both the Merchant and Retail parts of the business. We increased marketing by EUR 7.6 million of which the overwhelming majority was in Autohero marketing as we invest to create a strong pan-European brand while the cost of wkda marketing per purchased car has been steadily declining.
Likewise, we see positive scale effects across both logistics with only EUR 1.6 million increase and as well as payroll with EUR 2.2 million in additional costs. Despite significant quarter- over- quarter and year- over- year growth, moving to the balance sheet, we maintain a strong balance sheet increasing cash with no corporate debt. Total cash increased quarter- over- quarter to EUR 628 million as a result of increased profitability and the public securitization of our consumer loans, which we conducted in September. We continue to build inventory to support our growth with EUR 879 million at the end of Q3. By way of reminder, 80% of the inventory and its growth is financed through our inventory ABS.
Lastly, we continue to invest in our captive finance assets with quarterly growth of circa EUR 76 million consisting of EUR 20 million growth in the Merchant loan portfolio and EUR 55 million growth in our consumer loan portfolio. The growth in both portfolios are a reflection of the ongoing growth in sales of both our Merchant and Retail units. In September we issued our second public securitization Finance Hero 2 of our consumer portfolio. This was a unique transaction that combined consumer loans from both Germany and Austria, the first ever public auto ABS combining assets from different countries. This transaction enables us to both increase the loan to value on the portfolio as well as achieve a reduction in our net interest margin. With a blended spread of 87 basis points, this transaction further represents significant validation of the quality of our consumer finance portfolio. Lastly, we come to guidance.
We are increasing our expectation for Merchant units from 680,000-720,000 to 715,000-745,000 units for 2025, representing 19% year-on-year growth at the midpoint, and our expectations of Autohero units from 92,000-97,000 units to 96,000-100,000 units for the full year, representing 32% year-on-year growth at the midpoint. Together, this results in 811,000-845,000 units for the group. We expect that we can maintain this increased growth in Retail at a GPU of around EUR 2,500, as Q3 Retail GPU had a small one-off effect with respect to Merchant GPU. While we continue to be confident in the long-term upside, our 2025 guidance assumes it will be around EUR 950 for Q4. Together, this leads to an increase in our gross profit range to EUR 940 million-EUR 975 million, up from EUR 890 million-EUR 940 million.
Our previous guidance, we believe that we will continue our current level of OpEx spend, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA guidance of EUR 180 million-EUR 195 million for the full year, up from EUR 160 million-EUR 190 million guided previously. As I have mentioned previously, Q4 is generally the quarter with the highest volatility as dealers tend to slow down their purchases as we approach the end of the year, the extent of which is hard to predict. While we normally make no comment on the forward year until we are in that year, I would like to make a few comments to frame our thinking for 2026 in light of the extraordinary growth that we have achieved at our previous commentary. Last year at this time, we believed that Merchant would grow in the high single digits, and clearly we have been able to out achieve this.
We believe that we can continue to grow Merchant in the low to mid teens over the next year while achieving marginal improvements in GPU year- over- year in Autohero. We aim to achieve 25%-30% growth next year on our updated 2025 guidance reflecting the strong growth and progress that we're achieving this year as well as ongoing marginal improvements in GPU.
With respect to OpEx, our baseline assumption is that our OpEx per unit will be similar to the circa EUR 940 per unit we achieved in Q2 and Q3, though this may edge higher if we achieve much higher Autohero growth than mentioned. We see an incredible underexploited opportunity in front of us and believe these increased investments, primarily in Autohero marketing, will enable us to achieve our long term 5%-9% EBITDA margin expectations as we scale to Autohero faster, enabling us to reach the scale benefits in logistics, techinvest, branding, procurement and operations.
In the meantime, we will compensate this additional investment through higher profitable Merchant unit growth so that overall we believe that we can maintain the current consensus adjusted EBITDA expectations for 2026. Before we move into the Q and A session, I'd like to take a moment to share a few personal reflections. As you know, this will be my final earnings call as CFO of AUTO1 Group as I will be stepping down at the end of the year after ten truly memorable years. It's been an extraordinary journey from our early days as a startup to becoming a publicly listed company and building a business that is not only financially robust but also incredibly positioned for sustainable, profitable growth in a huge market.
I'm deeply grateful for the trust and support I've received from Christian, Hakan, our Supervisory Board, our customers, partners, the entire AUTO1 Group team, and all of you on this call. Thank you for your collaboration and partnership throughout my tenure. Starting January 1, Christian Valentin will be stepping in as CFO. Since early October, we've been working together closely to ensure a seamless transition. Christian brings a wealth of financing experience to the team and I'm genuinely excited to watch both Christians lead AUTO1 Group into its next chapter. Christian Valentin joins us on the call today and I would now like to hand it over to him for a brief introduction.
Thank you very much, Markus. Hi everyone. It's a pleasure to join you on this call. I'm truly excited to be part of AUTO1 Group's management board and to take up the role of CFO at the beginning of next year. Working long time with Markus and Christian, the past few weeks have only reinforced my enthusiasm for this opportunity. I'm very much impressed by the disciplined, forward-thinking way the business is managed and I'm, most importantly, very thrilled by the significant opportunities that lie ahead. With over 20 years of experience in banking and finance, I look forward to contributing to AUTO1's journey and driving growth and profitability together with Christian and the entire team. With that, we are very happy to open now the floor for your questions.
Before we begin with the Q and A portion of today's call, I'd like to go over a few brief technical points. If you haven't already, please feel free to submit your question using the Q and A tool located at the bottom of your Zoom screen. Philip will call participant in turns. Once your name is announced, I will unmute your line and hand over the floor to you. Kindly ensure that your microphone is enabled and that you're ready to speak when prompted. Our next question will come from James Tate. Please unmute your line.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Yeah, it's James Tate from Goldman. I've got two questions please. I guess firstly you touched upon the strategic shift towards growth over the past couple quarters and you've already started to deliver an acceleration in units growth and the color on next year was very helpful. You commented on total group OpEx per unit sold being at the same level as Q3, but I guess within the mix. How should we think about auto segment profitability specifically? Do you expect Autohero EBITDA loss per car to stay stable at current levels or perhaps slightly worsen into next year as you increase reinvestment? And then secondly on inventory, noticed that grew EUR 60 million quarter on quarter. Could you give some color on which segment drove this growth? Was it more skewed to Autohero or Merchant?
Last year you flagged that you're particularly aggressive in purchasing and building inventory in Q4. Should we expect a similar strategy this year? Thank you.
Marcus.
You want to go ahead on the segment profitability.
As we've talked about in the past, Autohero, you know, on an adjusted EBITDA or segment basis is still a loss making segment. Having said that, we, you know, believe that overall those losses are relatively small in light of the growth opportunity in front of us. We also see improving unit economics except in marketing where we continue to invest precisely because we want to grow that business and really, as we talked about, accelerate the growth of that business as we've been able to do so far. I think going forward I would say overall I think a lot of those improvements in overall unit economics I think we would expect to continue, which is, I think, why we're happy to have.
The.
The existing OpEx cost per unit delivered to remain the same even as we grow and have basically given accelerated growth. I think do not see that dramatically changing. Obviously the more scale we get I think the improvements we are going to continue to see and certainly want to see them because we really want to kind of get to the point where we have the scale where we start really seeing dramatic improvements across brand data, ability to use AI, a lot of the logistics items that we have talked about that we can really get the benefit of scale. We want to invest now so we can see an expansion and an improvement in those unit economics in the coming years. I think 2026 is going to be one where we are going to see steady OpEx per unit as we have seen for the past two quarters.
I think your second question on inventory, I would say the growth that we've seen kind of into Q2 into Q3 has been more on the Retail side than on the Merchant side. I think we generally only in the half year report and the full year report is, I think, where you got a full breakdown of it. I think in Q3 we tend not to, but we've really seen, you know, as we continue to invest in Retail, and Retail obviously has longer days outstanding, we're growing that relative to Merchant much more.
Thanks Mark.
I think there's a third question on Q4. Maybe Christian, you want to talk about Q4 strategy.
Yeah. In general I would say we will follow James, like a similar strategy. I think inventory and Merchant is in great shape, especially if we look at the trajectory from Q2 to Q3, and then in Retail we are building up selection for further growth because that needs to go hand in hand with this, yeah, elevated brand build out and elevated kind of session visit, session visitor, session growth that we see in Autohero.
Thank you. Thanks, James. And now over to Joe Barnet-Lamb from UBS.
Our next question comes from Joe Barnet-Lamb, please unmute your line.
Maybe as Joe does not seem to be able to connect, I think he had a couple of questions. One was how he should, we should think about Merchant GPU into Q4 and then into 2026. He wanted to know in merchant, he said the upper end of the Merchant guidance implies 21% year-over-year growth in Merchant cars in 2025. Can we share any color about 2026? Can we deliver double-digit growth in 2026? Also, question on Autohero GPU, given that we are already at EUR 2,700 , do we still think that the long-term guidance of EUR 3,000 GPU in Autohero holds?
Yeah, maybe. I'll take those. I mean, I think my prepared remarks answered all those questions. I would hope so, but I would simply repeat. I think for Q4 we are expecting roundabout EUR 950 as we talked about euros for Merchant GPU. As talked about, Q4 is always a very volatile quarter because of the kind of dealer behavior as we go into the end of the year, and likewise we would expect some improvements of that into next year. I think some, but I, you know, more marginal kind of improvements as we go into next year. Likewise, can we deliver double-digit growth in merchant, you know, I think again, you know, talked about low- to mid-teens growth in the Merchant business for next year and believe, yeah, we can do that while having some improvement in Merchant GPU.
Lastly, I think onto our, if I understood the last question, our long term guidance of EUR 3,000 very much still holds as again as we talked about I think into 2026 believe that we can continue to see marginal improvements in Autohero GPU. I think all the drivers that we have talked about in the past.
Around.
Really speeding up sales, faster turns again, more finance, reduced costs, I think all still stand and I think we feel very comfortable with the EUR 3,000 GPU that we can achieve that.
Thanks Markus. And with that, Andrew Ross from Barclays.
Our next question comes from Andrew Ross. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Hi guys, good afternoon. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Yeah, perfect. I've got three if that's okay. The first one is to dive a bit more into the extra brand marketing that's been going in in the last couple of quarters and you're assuming it's going to continue. Can you give us like a couple of numbers around the metrics that you track around the payback of our brand marketing to give us comfort that you're definitely getting the returns that you would expect.
I don't know how you think about that but you know, it'd be helpful for us to try and quantify that in a bit more detail, and then as you kind of think about that payback model into 2026, what are you kind of assuming continues? Because on the face of it there seems to be quite a lot of brand investment that's embedded in your outlook for 2026, but then only, in inverted commas, 25-30% unit growth for Retail. Just kind of what's the trade-off between those two numbers and how could Retail be better, I guess.
The third question is for, I guess, both Markus and Christian Valentin and that is, you know, a bigger picture question about the financing of the balance sheet and your attitude to kind of keeping consumer receivables on the balance sheet longer term as that business gets more material versus, you know, the option of potentially selling them off to third parties at some point down the road. Would be curious as to how you see that over the medium term. Thanks.
Yeah, thank you, Andrew. Yeah, of course we're tracking a couple of metrics and cannot go into all details here, but for instance, of course we're tracking brand health stats. So brand awareness, brand consideration, also brand image. That's one part of it where we are really double checking. Are we, are we building the brand into a more known brand, into the leading pan-European brand for selling used cars that we strive to be. At the same time, we're also looking at performance data, which ranges, for instance, from sessions that we see on the platform into kind of lead generation. How many people are interested in a car? Obviously, looking at the different channels and the non-brand channels, we're looking at financing shares that people ask for and then finally get.
Yeah, the level of brand advertising that we're spending here, you can think of on the one hand, let's say maybe 40%-50% of having a more direct effect into the quarter and then 50%-60% being a multi-quarter cohort payback. Obviously, we're tracking also the cohorts and how they're paying back. That's why it's a ramp game, it's building a base. Some customers are deciding quickly and some others are in the market for six to nine months or even longer. It's about building penetration into both of these segments over time. That's why we feel quite comfortable with the stats that we have, given that level of investment. Is there further upside?
There might be, but I think it would not make sense to commit to that right now because we need to see the performance as we go.
I think maybe I'll start with the second question, which is with respect to our, you know, consumer loan strategy. I think we've, I think in a sense, always been open to kind of whether we have it on balance sheet or opportunistically look, whether or not there are other structures to have it off balance sheet. I think so far, you know, we're still relatively early in that, in that journey.
Right.
This is only our second public securitization while we continue to also go into some new markets. I think we've never, in a way, kind of said that we wouldn't want to do the other one, but I think haven't quite seen structure or pricing that would really work for us. Maybe, Christian, if you want to say a few words, obviously you've only been here for a few weeks, so it's maybe, I would say, maybe a little bit premature to put you on the spot. Clearly you have a huge amount of experience in the space. I think it would, I think, be good to have people hear your position on it.
Absolutely. Thank you, Markus, and thank you for the question. I mean, the public securitizations are a robust funding source and with a good risk profile as well. Given the pricing of these structures, it is difficult to match as a funding source. I would see ourselves continuing with this and maybe then building scale quicker for these securitizations and doing them more regularly. That remains to be seen. Clearly, in general, I mean, I am new, so I will review most things and understand many things as we go over the next few quarters. I do not see any reason to have any news on this. Clearly, I come from a banking sector and I like having a diversified funding structure. No news on that front. I see. That is a robust funding source.
Thank you. And with this over to Nizla Naizer from Deutsche Bank.
Our next question comes from Nizla Naizer. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Great. I hope you can hear me. Let me start off by saying all the best to you, Markus, and it's been great working with you. Thank you for all your time in the past and I wish you all the best. Christian, looking forward to working with you going forward as well. I have three questions from my end. Firstly, could you just maybe give us some color as to how the overall used car market performed in Europe? When you think of your own business in Merchant and Retail, were there certain geographies that were performing better than others in terms of growth? Some color there would be great. Secondly, I mean the step up in your Merchant customer numbers is quite meaningful.
From Q2 to Q3, was there a push in some geographies over others or what really drove that level of growth in the, in the customers that you're seeing on the Merchant side? My last question, I think Markus, you mentioned that when it came to wkda marketing, the marketing cost per acquired car has been decreasing quite meaningfully. You are sourcing more cars, so just wanted to understand what's helping here in this world where people are worried about sort of traffic coming from AI. How are you seeing your sort of online traffic sources evolving and do you not see this as a risk or is it an opportunity? Some color there would be great. Thank you.
Thank you. Yeah, in terms of used car market overall environment, I think we're in a more or less stable environment. Yeah, nearly all of the growth that we are realizing here is homemade and drives up the corresponding market share. We will announce our official annual market share then during the next quarterly call, which I think is scheduled for sometime in February. Overall, we see, with some variation, pretty much all of our geographies growing. It's not one market and one area or region in particular that makes up this growth. Obviously there's some shifts here and there where merchants can substitute certain inventory, also through other markets' inventory, and then there's certain shift. Overall we're operating a very efficient market platform.
I think just to correctly understand your second question, it was about the growth in Merchant buyers that we had reported. Or did I get this wrong?
Yeah, I think the question was whether we saw a particular push in particular markets or whether it was fairly universal growth.
Yeah, I think similar to my comments around the used car market, we did not see particular segments where we had over average growth or other areas where we reduced. We are investing into all demand basis in all markets. Yeah, you can see that this goes fairly well again in Q3 and then on wkda sourcing cost per unit. Markus, maybe you want to start and then I can finish.
Yeah, I mean, I think overall, I mean, I wouldn't say. I mean you said meaningfully. I think the point I was trying to make, they have come down. But almost all or a huge percentage of the increase in marketing is really coming from Autohero. I think broadly that reduction, I think is sort of a validation of our strategy both in terms of just getting more efficient branch growth and just getting better on the purchasing side. That will continue to flow through also for things like Retail unit economics. Yeah, I think that was the commentary on the reduction of purchase side spend.
Maybe.
Christian, you can talk about kind of AI and impact thereof.
Yeah, so I mean we're for instance on the, on the CW side and we have built out very strong brands, very strong brand awareness with us, decade and more. Nevertheless, I mean we're also running a high frequency advertising setup across all the different channels. We are for the moment not seeing that in our setup AI has any negative impact. Of course we see I think like most of the companies a little bit lower SEO traffic than what maybe has been there like two years ago. Yeah, we're able to more than compensate that through other channels. You can see that in the results.
For us it's more an opportunity because also if we speak and if we speak about selling, but also about as well, of course buying cars, we have the unique chance to position ourselves in the respective AI platforms to the customer. We are starting to look into how to best do this, which is kind of how I would call it, the new SEO that is coming up. It's something that is in motion. We're looking into this while we grow the business.
Thank you. And with that to Wolfgang Specht from Berenberg.
Our next questions come from Wolfgang Specht . Please unmute your line.
Yes, hello, good afternoon. Two additionals from my end. First, on your refurbishing capacities, the 248 probably means you got to run two or probably three shifts in at least some of the centers. Is that right? Related to that, it would mean you got to work with a broader workforce. Is it possible, or let's say payable to onboard new mechanics in the amount you need them for the growth next year? On bad debt expenses, have there been any changes to the figures you told us recently or is it just stable?
Thank you, Wolfgang. Yeah, on production, I mean, to go to the full 248 produced volume per annum would indeed require, I think, some of the centers to have two shifts. I think some of the centers that we operate already have two shifts. It is not something that we experiment new. We do not have a center that has three shifts, so without operating a night shift. We are operating a morning and an afternoon shift in some of the centers. That has proven to go quite well after some initial learning time, obviously, because it is about the handover of the unfinished cars between the two shifts. As we also continue to express over the, I think, last couple of quarters, this is one of the hardest roles to hire the mechanics for Europe.
I think the team has proven to be able to achieve the high numbers that we need. Do we need more than we currently have? Yes. Would this be a further cost benefit to Autohero if we were able to staff up fully? Yes, because some of the roles are filled with temporary workers at the moment, which are of course, far more expensive. I think we're on a good track there. We're learning better and better how to fill up those roles. This is also one point where Autohero profitability has still a good amount of upside.
With respect to bad debt, there hasn't been any, you know, any changes. Both on the consumer and the Merchant side, it's been consistent over the last few quarters.
Thank you, Markus. That concludes our Q and A session and the earnings call for Q3 2025. I think, as most of you know, we have quite an active IR program for the next week. Hopefully we'll see quite a lot of you in Madrid next week or subsequently in Barcelona or in Weybridge with Berenberg. Thank you very much and hopefully see you soon.
Thank you so much, everyone. Take care.
Thank you.
Thank you.