The conference is now being recorded. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Continental AG Analyst and Investor Call Q1 2023 Results. At our customer's request, this conference will be recorded. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. Let me now turn the floor over to Anna-Maria Fischer, who will lead you through this conference. Please go ahead, madam.
Thank you. Welcome everyone to our Q1 2023 results presentation. Today's call is hosted by our CFO, Katja Dürrfeld. Small reminder that both the press release and presentation of today's calls are available for download on our investor relations website. Before starting, we'd like to remind everyone that this conference call is for investors and analysts only. If you do not belong to either of these groups, please kindly disconnect now. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session for sell-side analysts. To provide a chance for all to ask questions, we would ask you please to limit yourself to no more than three questions. This will help us conclude the call on time. With this, let me now hand you over to Katja.
Thank you very much, Anna, and a warm welcome from my side also. Despite a continued challenging environment carried over from 2022, we have set a good pace for our Q1 result, and we are confident that we will deliver as guided for 2023. Let's look together at the details starting on slide 3 with the most important KPIs of quarter 1, 2023 and Group highlights. Group level Q1 2023 sales came in at EUR 10.3 billion, 11.1% above the last year's comparable quarter, and organic growth was 10.1%. Adjusted EBIT margin was 5.6%, 100 basis points higher than Q1 2022, with all sectors positively contributing. adjusted free cash flow came in strongly negative at negative EUR 949 million. Inventories continue to remain high and receivables weigh on working capital.
March, being the strongest sales month in the quarter, is reflected in the receivables, as well as the latest price agreement, which are not cashed in yet. With our actions on working capital, we are confident to achieve our guidance here also on adjusted free cash flow. Let's have a look at our highlights in Q1. In Automotive, ongoing price negotiations are progressing. At the end of the Q1 , we've already first sustainable agreements in place, while improvement measures show also good effects. We see also first benefits from supply chain stabilization, less premium freight, and efficiencies through R&D. Building on our strong Automotive order intake in 2022, Q1 2023 continues the trend at EUR 6.6 billion lifetime sales, reinforcing that we bring the right solutions to meet our customers' future needs.
Tires, an Adjusted EBIT margin of 13.5%, just above our margin corridor, has set a good pace for the year, with strong price mix overcompensating decreasing volumes and inflation. Despite this positive start, we do expect market dynamics to become even more challenging. In ContiTech, the combination of actions undertaken last year to improve operational efficiency and a favorable price portfolio have contributed to the improved Adjusted EBIT margin of 6.4%. Overall, I am pleased the measures we are running to improve our plant operational performance are already sequentially impacting the bottom line. Additionally, now the strategic side, we have news from two of our sectors. Firstly, in Automotive, where we have entered a strategic partnership with Aurora, which I will highlight on the next slide.
In ContiTech, we have achieved the next milestone in the acquisition of Trelleborg's printing technology business with the closing on May second, further strengthening our industry focus and supporting our midterm targets. On personal notes, firstly, we have the great news that our supervisory board has extended the appointment of our CEO, Nikolai Setzer, by further five years. Secondly, Niko and I are handing over the Automotive management to the new CEO for Automotive, Philipp von Hirschheydt, and Sector CFO, Claudia Holtkemper. This will free up time for Niko and I to focus even more on the Group. On slide four, I would like to highlight in more details this exciting partnership with Aurora. We combine our Continental systems expertise with Aurora's industry-leading autonomous technology for our common goal to jointly realize the first commercially scalable autonomous trucking systems.
Continental will deliver the entire hardware set as well as a new fallback system. The partnership is based on a completely new business model for Continental, hardware-as-a-service. Different to traditional supplier business, we will generate revenue for every truck mile driven. With Aurora, our planned start of production will be in the U.S. in 2027. Here we will bring increased safety, reduced fuel consumption, and faster delivery times to this important industry with a total U.S. addressable market of approximately $700 billion. Together, we will realize the first commercially scalable autonomous trucking system, paving the way for broad adoption of autonomous mobility in the commercial trucking sector. As another autonomous mobility partnership update, I'm also pleased to announce that we have now confirmed a first delivery for our jointly developed stack with Aurora as a complete Level 4 fallback system.
Let me now move on to the Q1 performance by group sector on slide five. In Automotive, we see a strong increase of 17.1% in the year-on-year organic sales growth and margins improved by 490 basis points to positive 4.8%. Both effects were supported by the first signed price contracts and focused operational efficiency actions also supported the EBIT margin improvements. In Tires, organic sales growth of 4.9% as mentioned, underscored by price mix overcompensating volume reductions. The Adjusted EBIT margin decreased by 360 basis points to 13.5%. At ContiTech, the organic sales growth of 7.8% and Adjusted EBIT of 6.4% show that our actions deliver results. Let's look into the Automotive on slide six.
Automotive sales have started strongly with a total of EUR 5.0 billion and as mentioned, a strong 17.1% organic growth. The effects of the first new price agreements in place and increasing volumes were the key drivers for the solid organic growth as well as the Adjusted EBIT margin of 4.8%. We are not without challenges, especially in inflation, where headwinds totaled approximately EUR 250 million. For further insight into our results, let's look at the organic sales performance of Automotive versus regional vehicle production in Q1 on slide seven. Segmented by region, Automotive organic growth significantly outperformed vehicle production again, prominently in our important European market, which was supported by our pricing activities as well as in China.
Our development in North America in Q1 was below the market, mainly driven by lower customer call offs, which we anticipate will recover during the year. Overall, in Q1, Automotive outperformed its regionally weighted average by around seven percentage points. Again, a very solid start. On slide 8, we confirm our competitive market position by finishing the 1st quarter with another strong order intake at Automotive of EUR 6.6 billion lifetime sales. Major contributions came from autonomous mobility valued at EUR 1.7 billion, including awards for 360-degree radar coverage consisting of front, rear, side, and long-range radars. They ensure a holistic environmental perception of vehicles and thus greater safety in road traffic. Further, our user experience team continued their success achieving EUR 1.6 billion lifetime sales, of which almost all was attributed to new awards in innovative display solutions.
Furthermore, the first augmented reality head-up display was awarded. Both acquisitions will strengthen our leadership position in delivering solutions to meet our customers' future cockpit needs. Another strong result was also achieved by our safety and motion team, who locked in new business totaling EUR 1.9 billion lifetime sales, mainly deriving from awards for integrated safety sensors as well as hydraulic brake systems. In addition, we achieved business and air supply systems, which will increase our stable market leader position. Moving from Automotive to Tires on slide nine. Although volumes declined by 8.6%, our Tires sector was still able to achieve EUR 3.5 billion in sales and an Adjusted EBIT margin of 13.5%.
Our sales performance was underscored by our strong price mix with more than half of the increase attributed to mix, which overcompensated for the volume reductions and the inflation of labor, logistics, and energy costs of approximately EUR 85 million. Raw material remained a headwind in Q1. For the entire year, we expect these headwinds to reverse. Tires has had a good starting pace. As I mentioned before, we do expect market dynamics to become even more challenging during the year. Now let's review our final sector, ContiTech, on slide 10. As we have seen in the other sectors, volume volatility also played a role in our ContiTech business. For ContiTech overall, we saw positive effects from pricing that compensated volume changes and inflation impacts of approximately EUR 75 million.
Our price improvements were mainly from carryover of 2022 agreements, while we continue on new price agreements for 2023, which we expect to see the effects from Q2 onwards. On this basis, ContiTech delivered an organic growth of 7.8%, leading to EUR 1.7 billion sales and Adjusted EBIT of EUR 109 million or 6.4%. A 110 basis points increase from Q1 2022. Our targeted measures, including our key focus on improved plant performances, begin to deliver results as seen here in Q1, highlighting our ability to deliver in this sector on our commitment. Let me continue with the overview of adjusted free cash flow for Q1 2023 on slide 11. Our adjusted free cash flow came in at negative EUR 949 million.
This reflected the higher inventory levels needed to secure our supply chains and a higher level of account receivables, mostly due to stronger sales in the final month of the quarter, as well as price agreements concluded in the last minute of the quarter, both of which could not yet be cashed in and therefore still wait on working capital. The investing cash flow of EUR 355 million property, plant, and equipment supports our product mix needs and capacity expansions. For example, in UX, to meet new business volume demands. We are confident that through our key focus programs in 2023, we will achieve our guidance. Looking now to our market expectations for 2023 on slide 12. Our expectations are based on current foreseeable effects. Given these assumptions, we confirm our guidance across all industries and regions.
For our final topic today, let's review together our outlook on slide 13. We can keep this short as we confirm our guidance without changes. That is not to say the road will be easy, but the combination of our strong team and our deliverables to date, we are confident that we will achieve our guidance for this year. This was my part of the presentation. Now it's your turn. Operator, could you please open the line for the question and answers?
Yes, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press nine and star on your telephone keypad. In case you wish to withdraw your question, press nine and star a second time. The first question comes from Sanjay Bhagwani from Citi. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi, thank you very much for taking my question also. I've got two questions. My first one is on, pricing pass-throughs. Hello? Yeah.
Yes, we can hear you.
Okay. Okay. First one is on pricing pass-throughs. Could you maybe explain a little bit on the mechanics of these price increases? All I'm trying to understand is, let's say, when will the majority of these price increases will be effective from, and when do we see these lump sum payments for the Q1 under-recoveries? That is my first question. If you can provide some color on these mechanics around the timing.
Okay, I'm sorry, I have some breakups in the line, maybe I think I understood that you would like to understand a little bit about the mechanics on our price pass-through, and how much the effect was in the first quarter. I think that kind of was it. Maybe first of all, with regards to the mechanics. Just to make that clear, there is no real mechanic. It's not that we have, especially for the electronic components, some price adjustment clauses in the contracts. That is not the case. We do have some contracts, more on the metal piece where this happens. In general, on the Automotive side, we do not have any pass-through mechanisms, which means we do negotiate with our customers.
To do these negotiations, we create the necessary transparency on the price developments that we are facing or the cost developments that we are facing here in Continental, which comprise more than pure material prices, by the way. We also have effect from wages and salary. We have logistics and energy costs, for example. All that is part of the negotiation which we have with our customers. No price through mechanics. We have, deviating from last year, we already were able to conclude some of the negotiations during the first quarter. Which is great. In general, what we try to achieve with each and every negotiation that we have is to achieve a sustainable and also retroactive price adaptation.
We are not running for one-time payments. What we are looking for are real sustainable price adjustments that we negotiate with our customers, which means, if we would enter into new agreements in the second quarter, our target is to have them retroactively applied to January first, 2023.
Thank you. That's, that's very clear. That, coming on to the second question, that is, if I extrapolate that to understand the sequential improvement in the Automotive margins into the coming quarters. Quarter 2 could have additional pricing and some retrospective payments for under-recoveries in Q1. Then in H2, you also see a step up in the margin, not only from the pricing, but also from the product launches and from R&D. Is that correct interpretation?
That is perfectly correct interpretation. We are looking for a sequential improvement on Automotive quarter by quarter during the course of this year to also be able to meet the guidance that we have laid out. This does not only include the improvements to not only rely purely on price negotiations, but we also have initiated multiple measures in-house, like our R&D Excellence program, the Transformation 2019–2029 program. We also have effects from more stable supplies, supply chain, which means we have less disruption in the plants and therefore better operational performance.
Thank you. That's very helpful. I just have one follow-up on the outperformance, if I may.
Yes, sure.
When we look at these outperformance of 7 percentage points over and above the regionally weighted, is this fair to say maybe somewhere around 500 basis points comes from the product and mix, given that you have all these new launches and SOPs coming into 2023? If you could provide some more color on that, will be very helpful.
In general, the outperformance is A, on different products, on the product mix which is clear, and it's not necessarily only linked to start of production, but also due to the change in the product portfolio that is required and requested by our customers. Another part of the outperformance comes from the regional mixes. Yeah. I think that's also very important part of it is also pricing. Yeah.
Okay. Thank you. That's very helpful.
The next question comes from Giulio Pescatore, BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. The first one on the trajectory for margins in Automotive. Some carmakers are suggesting that they want to pay as late as possible this year when it comes to pricing negotiations and they want to pay in one-off payments. You clearly said that you're asking for sustainable prices. If you think about the margin trajectory for the coming quarter, should we expect similar margins for the first 3 quarters and then a big step up in Q4, or you think more of a gradual improvement quarter after quarter? Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for the question, Giulio. We are looking for sequential price increases. When you remember our call journey during the course of last year, yeah, we had nothing in Q1 last year, then we had something in Q2, the majority in Q3, and a smaller amount in Q4. For this year, we've started stronger compared to last year, so we already have some price agreements now in Q1. We do expect that to continue to improve during the course of the year. Our Q4 usually is quite strong just due to the fact that we do have R&D reimbursements mostly in the fourth quarter. That was not driven by price increases.
Perfect. That's clear. Now.
Concluded.
Okay.
Sorry.
Sorry. Perfect. Now, just moving to tires, briefly. I very good results. I'm just wondering, are you seeing any pricing pressure in the market? Because the pricing... Mix was very strong, but the pricing was a bit softer than I'd expected. I'm just wondering, are you taking advantage of some of the relief on the raw material side already? Are you seeing pressure in the market that would suggest that you will have to do more of price taking in the coming quarters? Maybe just a breakdown of the components of mix would be very helpful, because mix was obviously very, very, very important. Thank you.
In general, on the pricing side, I mean, for sure we are observing the markets at the moment, quite closely. We currently do not see any price wars that have started, especially on the premium side so far. Maybe some selective price adjustments are not included during the course of the year. Europe and North America were quite low in demand in the first quarter on the replacement side, or lower in demand on the replacement side. There are multiple reasons for that. Pricing is not necessarily the main driver here, but it's because we still have some stocks at the dealers.
We have some of the dealers expecting some movement on the pricing side, so this is why they are not rebuying or stocking up early this year. We will have to see how this goes with regards to pricing. We currently don't feel a lot of pressure on that side, especially on the high performance piece. With regards to the mix, I think it's fair to say that we still feel very strong on the UHP tire side. That's what also helps us a lot. We had last year our value over volume strategy. We're looking for the high value tires instead of the high volume budget tires.
This is where we still feel quite comfortable with on the UHP side.
Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from Horst Schneider, Bank of America. Please go ahead with your question.
Good afternoon, Katja and Anna, thanks for taking also my questions. The first question that I have is number one on these price increases again and how sticky they are. Is the assumption right that when you now agree new prices, they refer them to the rest of the contract lifetime, so they're also valid for 2024? Basically, they're gonna be a setback again in 2024 and you got to renegotiate everything? I think my suspicion is when we talk about semiconductors, these should be sticky price increases, but correct me if I'm wrong. The other question is related to the order intake, because we see that now for some quarters that you report actually a pretty strong order intake.
Therefore, question from an analysis perspective, how should we look at that? It's lifetime sales, that means we divide the number times seven, and start of production has been something like three years. Then, that you now basically agree on these new contracts, is there a high level of competition, or have you got a general return hurdle that is higher than the contracts that you have got at the moment in place? Thank you.
Okay. Let me start with the price increases and the question on the sustainability or stickiness as you called it, Horst, on the prices. As we said, we were also last year looking for sustainable price increase, which also means that we had some carry over effects from 2022 to 2023. Nevertheless, we are facing new price increases, especially on the electronics part. Those we address again with the same understanding that we are looking for sustainable price increases. In case prices for electronic components will someday go down again, this will probably then trigger new negotiations, but for the time being, as long as pricing stays solid on the procurement side, also prices on the sales side should stay sustainably.
On the order intake in general, your assumptions are right, just as you described them. On an average, probably seven years of lifetime, probably start of production around three years, yeah. That can be different from product to product, from product group to product group. On the average, I think that's kind of a fair assumption to take. Your third question was.
Return hurdle.
About the competition, right?
Yeah.
You asked if our, if those, if the competition is more aggressive on the new order intakes, right?
Correct.
Yeah. I think as we try to describe and also with setting up Automotive the way that we have decided to set up Automotive, we are quite well-positioned. We address the needs of our customers also with the new technology that we have developed during the course of the last years. We were always challenged a little bit because we invested quite some amounts into the R&D side, yeah. I think we've done it at the right points and also at the right product levels, and this is why we are currently able to win in some of the new technologies quite nicely.
Can I sneak in just the last one, Katja? That is, basically the tech day that you host on the 13th of June that has got no CMD character, I presume. Is there gonna be a second event, a kind of CMD that you're gonna host after the tech day?
I kind of expected someone to ask the question. The Tech Day is a Tech Show. We will present our latest technology at the Tech Show, and it's a first or a second event. We started at the Consumer Electronics Show, our journey to bring our technologies closer to our investors and analysts. It's the second event in that row, and you can stay tuned for a Capital Markets Day, which has not been announced yet.
Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from José Asumendi, JP Morgan. Please go ahead with your question.
Thank you very much. Hi, Katja. Couple of questions. I think on the Automotive side, I would love to understand a bit better the level of our performance to global car production you are expecting through the year or you're seeing through the year. That would be great. Also maybe a little bit your thinking in the light of the strong first quarter, why did you not think about upgrading the Automotive margin guidance for the year in the light of the strong start? The second bucket would be, will be on tires, please. Do you think volumes can turn positive in Q2? Also, how do you think about pricing for the tire revenue bridge for the second quarter?
I believe you had about 7% in Q1, should we expect a similar level of pricing in Q2 and Q3? Thank you.
Okay. Let's start with the Automotive performance or the outperformance of the sales. You know that we have guided for 2%-4% Automotive production increase for the year 2023, you also know what we have laid out as a sales guidance. This implies, sales guidance, this implies an outperformance on the Automotive side, which we still definitely think that we will be able to deliver. This is why we have also confirmed our guidance again, yeah. I think that's a fair point. The second part was about volumes and the difficulties on the tire side, so to say. Volumes and tires had been a headwind during the course of the first quarter.
As I said, replacement volumes in Europe and North America were weaker. We did see on the other side were quite positive OE volumes. Yeah, on the tire side. We also do think that China should recover, which you can also see when you look at our guidance, that we do see a strong improvement on replacement in China, which also is a quite relevant market for us on the replacement side. Overall there, we also do see that volumes will come back or should come back in the second half of the year. Yeah. About pricing, as I tried to say, so far, we don't feel the need to adjust pricing in general.
We are looking at selective markets, I do not exclude the one or the other price adaptation in the understanding of the raw material price development.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
We still have some questions in the queue. Maybe for those who have joined later, the combination to raise a question is nine star on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Philipp Koenig , Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead with your question.
Hey, Katja, thank you for taking my questions. First one is just a very basic one on the Automotive guidance. I guess when you set the 2%-3% at the beginning of the year, you sort of had some cost recoveries in mind to reach that level. Now that the first quarter is over and we are in May, have the recovery sort of tracked in line for you to reach that margin level? Or are we better or are we slightly below where you aim to be? That's my first question.
In general, I would say that we are on track with our cost recoveries. You know that we are facing EUR 1 billion on the Automotive side, we have to work hard on the cost recovery side. We are, again, in positive negotiations with our customers, but so far I'm satisfied with what we have achieved so far.
Okay. my second question is on the R&D efficiency that you mentioned earlier. I guess is there any sort of absolute level of R&D spend we can expect for the Automotive business at some point where we can see a leveling off of the investment? Clearly in absolute terms, the R&D spend in the Automotive business continues to increase. Is there any sort of guidance you can give us for this year?
What we always said is that you should not expect them to go down on absolute levels, but what we also said is that the level and % of sales will definitely decrease despite the fact that we are investing so strongly into the new areas there. I think that is what you will also see during the course of the year.
Okay, thanks. That's very helpful. Lastly, just on the free cash flow, clearly big step up in the, in the receivables. Can you ever sort of describe the dynamics? Is that more driven by later payments from the OE? Is it tire dealers? Maybe sort of a bit more color on those dynamics and what makes you confident that you can sort of reach a guidance with a reversal of that by the end of the year? Thank you.
I think, with regards to the receivables, I'm sorry, there are three driving factors, or there were three driving factors at the end of the first quarter. First, a positive one, we had really strong sales on the Automotive side in March, which are not due for payments yet, but which have increased the receivables for sure. Second, we have concluded negotiations different from quarter 1 last year, 2022, regarding the price adjustments, which are also not due yet, and both are not cashed in yet. That is a way on working capital. Last but not least, exactly what you said. What we're also experiencing are delayed payments from our OE customers, so on the Automotive side.
I know that we are not the only ones facing this development at the moment, and I think some others have also spoken about it before or talked about it before. That's the second point. What we have done, really is we've also set up a project team also during the course of late last year, from the learnings of the last quarter, that we are really tracking and following up much closer on these sites, that we are definitely managing our overages, very strong and strictly trying to really get it down. I'm positive to see further effects there.
Okay. Maybe just a small follow-up on that. By the end of the year, do you generally expect an improvement in working capital compared to last year, or do you still expect an increase just given how the dynamics that you just laid out?
I would say, let's see an improvement in the working capital. Just look at the guidance, I would say. I mean, we are guiding EUR 0.8 billion-EUR 1.2 billion positive cash flow for this year, which is better with than what we have delivered during the course of last year.
Okay. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Thomas Besson, Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead with your question.
Thank you. Hello, Katja, Anna. Starting with your comment on tires, and listening to what you said afterwards, I'm not sure I understand. I think you said you expect market dynamics to be even more challenging during the rest of the year than what they have been in Q1. Can you elaborate on that? Because you had basically a high single-digit decline in volumes, which likely doesn't repeat in the rest of the year, and you don't seem to expect pricing to explode. It would be helpful if you, if you could clarify what you, what you mean here.
Second, on the Automotive, I understand R&D in absolute terms is not falling, but do you have a percentage of net R&D for Automotive in mind for this year or a number of basis points of decline, or is that dependent on Automotive revenues? Thirdly, could you remind us your combined exposure to two automakers, which are Tesla and BYD? I have just a side question because I'm French, I never understand what German companies do. Could you explain why you did not pre-release this time because your Adjusted EBIT was largely above expectations, your free cash flow was worse. That would be interesting for me, just pure interest to understand why this time you didn't pre-release. Thank you.
Okay. Those were four questions in total. I will try.
Yes, sorry.
Try to help as I can, Thomas. Okay.
Sorry for that.
First question on the tire side. You know that we said that we are in a challenging environment and that we also do see the challenge to continue to a certain extent. So far, we are still on the sales side, we are still within our guidance. This is also what I said. We feel still quite comfortable there with the assumptions that we have taken when we laid out the guidance at the beginning of the year. The market is tight and is difficult. Why is that? As I just tried to explain, we did see the dealer topic, and we do see more competition from the Asians coming back, yeah.
I would like to say coming back because it's something that we are not really used to see. They are coming back, and they are putting more pressure, especially on the quality and the budget brands, yeah. That does not affect our major brand, Continental, and it does not also affect us on our ultra-high performance tires, for example, or the EV tires. On the quality and budget, that definitely is a topic. This is why we're observing the market and why maybe selective price adjustments during the course of the year might happen, yeah. Still, when you look at last year, you saw that last year we had a very stronger sales in the first half of the year, and then weakening sales in the second half of the year.
This year we expect that to turn a little bit around. Just in general. On the R&D and % of sales for Automotive, I have to say I'm sorry, Thomas, you know that we don't guide on the R&D and % of sales. I also will not give you a figure that I expect for the end of the year, but expect the figure to look, I call it better, and clearly better than what we saw last year. That is what I can say. With regards to our exposure to Tesla or to BYD, sorry, we don't openly talk about specific sales with one or the other customer.
Just let me say that we are doing business also with these new, I don't even want to call them new anymore, with these new customers worldwide. The question on the pre-release, I think that comes back to my visit in France when we tried to explain why this is. We received some feedback from the market that we were maybe issuing the one or the other ad hoc too often. We are learning in general, and I think when you look at the reaction, usually you should say something when you expect a very strong reaction of your share price due to the release of your figures.
We thought that the release of our figures would not overly drive the share price this time, and this is why we decided not to do it. I think when you look at the share price development today, our assumptions were correct, yeah. Positive surprise on Automotive and tech. Some negative on the free cash flow. In total we were okay.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Katja.
The next question comes from Christoph Laskawi, Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead with your question.
Hey, thank you for taking my questions as well. Three quick ones, I would say. The first one, sorry to come back to that, on the pricing in Q1 and Automotive. Sorry, if I might have missed it, are there any lump sum payments that you booked in Q1? Could you quantify them in case there were? Second on the momentum that you see in Q2. You already highlighted that you need better volumes, a bit better efficiency from better call off from the OEMs. Is this already something that you see in Q2? Are you trending sequentially up with regards to utilization and on better call offs and efficiency?
Lastly on the underperformance in North America, could you just roughly outline what was driving that and when do you expect that to improve in 2023? Thank you.
Okay. First question was on the pricing for Automotive again. It was if any of the effects included lump sum payments. I'm personally not aware of any bigger lump sum payments because this would also not fit to our strategy to really have the price increases sustainably into our systems, yeah. I'm not aware of any major lump sum payment in the Q1. For the Q2 question, I have to admit that I did not really understand, get your Q2 question too well. I'm kind of in between call offs. If the call offs are coming, are increasing or going down, or if you asked about the efficiency of our operations.
Yeah, I can repeat and rephrase. Sorry if I wasn't clear.
Thank you.
Essentially what I'm trying to get to is do you see that the customer call offs are becoming more reliable, and that allows you to manage the operations more efficiently? Are you in general seeing the volumes trending up in a way that you described that you needed to meet the targets?
Okay. No, I, now I have it. Thank you, Christoph. The challenge was not necessarily also during the course of last year, the customer demand and the customer call offs. It was more the supply side that was really putting a lot of issues on us and on the operational performance. The availability of semiconductors and therefore the subsequent changes also our customers had to make in their purchasing behavior, yeah. It was not only Continental where there were some issues in the supply chain, but that was more or less a general industry topic.
With the better, and I just try to say really carefully, better availability of semiconductors, we also do see there less interruptions in the supply chain, and this is across the entire supply chain from our suppliers to our customer side. There we do see some improvements, but please do not think that we are already at a normal mode. We are not. We still have impacts from semiconductor shortages. Personally, we do not expect that to be fully normalized for all semiconductors until beginning of 2025. We will still see some selective shortages in the one or the other chip family.
We do see a more stable possibility on the supply on the production side, which is also due to the fact that we have built up inventories, yeah, to stabilize our supply chain internally. I think the last question that you had was on the North America's performance. We saw selective customers where we saw some volume drops, but we think that these were just really on short term. That was really an unhappy mixed event for us, yeah. To say in North America, but we don't expect that to be a sustainable topic and this will come back during the course of the year.
Thank you. Understood.
At the moment, there seem to be no further questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press nine and star on your telephone keypad.
It seems Katja has answered all the questions, so thank you so much everyone for participating in today's call. As always, should any further questions be left, please do address them to your investor relations team. With that, we'd like to conclude today's call. Thank you everyone and goodbye.
The conference is no longer being recorded.