Good day, and welcome to the HELLA Investor Update Q1 FY 2022/2023 call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Michel Favre. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I am Michel Favre, the new CEO of HELLA since the 1st of July. I will make this conference call with Bernard Schäferbarthold, that you know all, our CFO, and Kerstin Dodel, the IR. As the first introduction, it is the Q1 in our business, I will say, yeah. As you know, we are changing to calendar period. We have a seven months period this year, so we will have as well a publication end of November. After that, we'll go to a more classic, if I can use this expression, we say publication. Second thing, if I compare to last year, the pattern has drastically changed.
If you remember last year, we were with IHS, taking, I will say, the result of a very difficult end of August, September. October was on the same pattern. Big drop of volumes. They were correcting by more than 4 million cars, if I remember. We were completely uncertain of what is happening. This year, when we see the good volumes of this summer, we are in a very different, I will say, pattern. I will not say that things are completely finished. I say that the semiconductors story is smoothing, but still erratic, as you will see that on our inventories. Still erratic because when we take the collapse of the first week of the month and the collapse at the end of the month, we have still a lot of corrections.
If we take a magnitude, it will be between 25%-30%. Still a big difficulty to plan. Now why? Because customers wants to recover. Customers have a, I will say, a deficit of inventories, because you know they have very big waiting time. The market is, today, for the, I will say, demand, disconnected with the production. Production has to recover, and it's complicated for a supplier like us to see really what is the situation. What I can tell you is that demand for us is very high. I will comment now on the slide show, that you can find on Internet, and I will start, with the page four. In this period, compared to last year, which was partially damaged, by the semiconductors, but of course figures should be much better, for the next quarter.
We posted, I will say a growth of sales by 21.6%, 16.3% if we exclude forex. We have a very good performance in Asia, mainly China for us, with ramp up of new projects and of course you know that, very good demands. What I can tell you as well, our two automotive business are taking advantage of that. More electronics because we have new ramp ups as, made in Asia, but lighting as well. You see the figures, but Bernard will comment them afterwards. Life cycle, which is for a part after market, for the other part special application, less cyclical, but anyway, posting a very satisfactory growth.
On results, margin at the same level of, I will say, value and in percentage at 5.1% is not a bad result, I think, in the current period, but it is demonstrating. The one key point is inflation. We have a strong inflation, of course, as a supplier. Inflation of, I will say, raw materials, including semiconductors, inflation of wages. We start to see some inflation on energy. This will accelerate. We can mitigate a part of it thanks to the hedging, but of course, not all of it, as we are, I will say, strongly based in Germany and East Europe, in countries which are consuming gas. So this capacity to pass through inflation, we are accelerating. I can tell you, we've continued to make our homework on that. It's key to defend our profitability.
Cash flow, slightly negative, which is a topic. This is the impact of inventories, because we have, on one side, commitment on semiconductors to buy semiconductors. It is, I will say the paradox. We have now a strong, I will say, inventory of semiconductors, not always, unfortunately, the right SKUs. We are suffering from that. We have launched a task force in order to recover in the next weeks, next months, with, of course, a basic, I will say, objective is to post a positive net cash flow for the seven months period. Moving to page five, we want to illustrate, I will say the success of the order intake. I can tell you that we have, in this period, like as the previous period, a very strong order intake.
We are very successful with some new products. Potentially, I will say some products where we are really in advance. We have mentioned as a Smart Car Access for premium in electronics. The c onverter high voltage, you know that it is key for the car makers. On lighting, we have this fantastic innovation at the front, we call the Front Phygital Shield. We will have the opportunity to present you that in the Investor Day. We have the headlamps, the new HD headlamps for premium or the crossover rear lamp for mass market. A lot of new innovation. We have made different publications.
HELLA is demonstrating day after day that we are a leader in technology. We are mainly focusing on China, where we have a fantastic growth, we have a new lighting plant, with a joint venture partner for lighting, and we have the famous extension of electronics plants, and we have, as you know, very big growth in electronics. Page six, going back to the day-to-day business and how we want to secure our performance. Of course, again, to continue to improve operations, we have some zones where we are not completely at the benchmark or at our standards, so we are accelerating our plan on these zones and pass- through is the motto of all the company. We will accelerate the cost reduction.
We have the program called Phoenix in HELLA. We have, as always, the synergies, and one of my duty with Bernard is to take advantage of the synergies to clearly feed a quick recovery on the margin. Inventories, no discussion. Task force in order to reverse the trend. We have, in the last 12 months, a big increase of inventories. We have really to find the way to reverse that. Last but not least, of course, we continue to be selective. We will be selective on the portfolio management and portfolio of our business, but this is, I will say, what HELLA has always made. Now, I will give the floor to Bernard for the financial results.
Thank you, Michel. Also, from my side, good morning to all of you. Thank you for taking the time for this call. I would continue on page eight of our presentation. You here see the bridge of our reported sales in comparison to last year. We are at EUR 1.8 billion compared to prior year. The FX effect is EUR 78 million in comparison to last year, mainly out of the U.S. dollar and renminbi effect to the euro. The organic growth is at EUR 240 million and comes out of all three segments. All in all, a decent growth slightly above our internal expectations.
Important to note is that the reimbursements, and especially on tooling and D&D, were very high in the previous comparable quarter of last year. The effect out of that is around EUR 50 million as a difference. We expect a normalization comparable now if you would look at a full year perspective, so that should be a comparable level overall to last year. Looking only at Q1, this had a significant effect. If we look at page nine, electronics and lighting are growing significantly compared to previous year but by 28% respectively 22%. Both segments were benefiting from FX effects of around 6% in terms of the growth mentioned. The organic growth in electronics is at 22.5%.
In comparison to LVP growth, the outperformance in electronics in Q1 is at 1%. Lighting growth is at 16.3% in comparison to the LVP growth of 21.5%. As said, one main reason for the lower growth is that reimbursements and tooling but also developments were over proportionally high in prior year, and this relates especially to lighting. Due to that, the outperformance in Q1 of last year was over proportionally high. We expect higher levels as set in the following quarters. With that, also looking at our sales predictions going forward, we expect also a normalization of our outperformance again to comparable levels you have also seen in the previous periods.
If we look at page 10, regionally, we have a very decent growth in NSA and Asia- Pacific. Both of these mentioned regions were outperforming significantly. Overall, NSA and Asia account roughly to 50% of our sales. We are again strengthening our global footprint and getting further more balanced throughout the regions, which is our clear ambition, what we already also stated some times. Europe is lower in terms of sales growth, also due to the mentioned lower tooling and D&D sales and still also impacts out of the bottleneck situation mentioned by Michel, which had eased but somehow impacted Europe in the first quarter. If you look at page 11. EBIT in absolute terms is at prior year level.
The EBIT margin is at 5.1% in comparison to 6.2% in prior year. The gross profit ratio decreased in Q1 in comparison to last year by three percentage points. The main reason are higher material costs, energy cost and logistic cost compared to last year. We expect in the months to come higher compensations also from customers which will be then P&L relevant. In addition, the reimbursements, which were lower in comparison to last year, had also a negative impact on our gross margin. On the positive note, we have significantly improved the gross margin, again, in comparison to previous quarter.
We would and should see with higher compensations, higher reimbursements, and expected volumes somehow a positive trend also going forward. R&D ratio and SG&A ratio have improved also with the improved volumes. Reported EBIT is at EUR 75 million. EUR 10 million out of the negative adjustments we had are related to the fair value valuations of our financial equity participations on three startups which got stock listed via SPAC IPOs last year. If we look at the cash flow on page 12, the adjusted free cash flow is at EUR -82 million. Main reason is a further production stock increase of around EUR 80 million in the first quarter.
Michel mentioned the volatility in customer demand, which remains at very high levels and makes it very difficult to manage stocks. In addition, hard committed volume contracts on electronic parts suppliers especially agreed around one year ago on 2022 volumes contribute mostly to this high increase. We have established a task force on all business segments to work on reducing the inventory levels. We are in discussions with all our customers, but also with the relevant suppliers to be able to better manage the situation also in 2023 in terms of higher flexibility also in the supply chain and also towards our customers to come back then to normalized levels we had also in the past.
CapEx was relatively high in Q1. We expect lower levels also in the upcoming quarters, which should support also our cash situation and should improve, as Michel was mentioning, to the end of the year with positive free cash flows now in the months to come. Reported free cash flow is at EUR -6 million, considering a new factoring program we have set up in Europe. EUR 97 million of factoring is including in that number, and we had some restructuring costs related to our execution of our Phoenix program. With that, I hand back to Michel on the outlook, and happy to take your questions afterwards.
Thank you, Bernard. Outlook, page 15. There is no truth, you know that, on the volume, but volume is always a key driver for us to estimate our profitability. We have put on this page what is the last IHS, if you prefer S&P Global, estimation. In this period, a previous period, you have the deep impact of semiconductors. Of course you can be surprised as a +12%. But anyway, it is something that we experience. We have to say that the current months are quite good. We have decided to make anyway cautious estimation with respect to the trend because of course uncertainty remain. It is why HELLA between 80 million and 84 million is clearly, I would say, lower than IHS.
On the risk, I will say semiconductors we don't see for the moment a big risk with respect to this volume. I will say this is our bet, huh? Gas supply, same thing. Measures have been taken, and I can tell you that HELLA has taken as well the measures to secure everything this winter, huh? I know that people are more and more speaking of the winter of 2023. Well, we will address point after point, but we have, I will say, an active energy plan. Last but not least, there's a famous corona.
Here I will avoid to comment, you know, like, that it is remaining some things that I will say I am not sure that people are understanding why we have a one moment pandemic and when, at some moments like today, we have almost nothing. Today, almost nothing with people. There were some people announcing some big disaster for the end of September, so I don't know what will happen, but of course, I am forced to mention it. I will say volumes today are with us. On this basis, we can confirm our previous guidance for the 12 months, EUR 7.1-EUR 7.6 billion of sales and adjusted EBIT, taking advantage, of course, of the pass-through of inflation, I will say resulting between a level 5.5%-7%.
Page 18, I propose you to make the conclusion. We have today a strong sales momentum. We are improving profitability. We need to accelerate, and synergies will help. We are globalizing the business. I think it is quite visual in the figures. We are more, I would say Chinese, we are more as well North American. If you take the powerful JVs not fully consolidated, it is furthermore. We are improving, but we continue to accelerate the improvement of the performance. We have definitely to make the breakthrough of the cash generation. I will say we can commit to a strong growth and stronger performance, thanks to the order intakes of the last years. I will say synergy, pass-through of inflation, performance will be key, and we have no problem today to confirm the outlook given mid-August.
What I would like to add, there will be with FORVIA Faurecia a Capital Markets Day, the 3rd of November. Now it will be as well, of course, the HELLA Capital Markets Day. We will have the opportunity with our business group leaders, with Bernard, to illustrate all our goals and guidances. There will be the day after the 4th, a focus on ESG. Faurecia was probably one of the best advanced. HELLA is catching up, I can tell you. I think with our portfolio of business, we have a lot to say about ESG. Please reserve these dates. I will be very happy with all the HELLA management team to receive you at this HELLA Capital Markets Day and of course, FORVIA Faurecia Capital Markets Day.
Now, I propose to go to the question session. Operator, can you launch the question session?
Certainly. If you would like to ask a question, you can do so now by pressing star one on your telephones. That's star one to ask a question. There will be three questions allowed per person. We will now take our first question from Pierre Quemener from Stifel. Please go ahead. The line is open. Please go ahead. The line is open.
Yes. Good morning. Could you hear me?
Yeah. Good morning.
Good morning, Michel. Pierre from Stifel. Just one question on the organic growth. You've got a positive EUR 240 million, so that's EUR 40 million of positive organic growth in the first quarter. How much is the pass-through of inflation in that component? Is it significant for your first quarter?
Of the pass-through inflation?
No, it was not significant. As I commented, it was under proportionally. The main reason also on the drop of our gross margin. We had an increase in the material ratio of around 3%. If you only look at, let's say, material prices only, and there is some mix effect also. The bigger part, 2% is coming out of inflation in material. It's by far under proportionally. There we expect much higher proportion now in the coming months.
Okay. Thank you. Another one, if I may. The proportion of R&D has significantly dropped in the first quarter. Is the 10%+ sustainable into the remainder of the year?
The run rate of R&D should not increase in absolute terms. No, it will increase slightly, but not very much. The ratio decreased significantly also with the better volumes and the increase in sales. With the volumes we now see, we should even see a further slight decrease in the ratio. We should come close to the 10% level, where, as you know, we are still above our internal target where we want to be between 9% and 10%. This until, let's say, end of the year at least, we should reach close to around 10%. Hopefully next year, if volumes stabilize a little more, then come a little bit more down.
We will be more talkative at the Capital Markets Day because it's a key question. How much R&D can we spend by activity.
Okay.
Clearly, electronics is minimum 10% and no discussion, but the rest of activity should be below, sometimes really below other 10%. We will be more illustrative.
Okay. Very clear. Thanks, Bernard. Thanks, Michel. See you on the 3rd of November.
Very good.
Thank you. We will now take our next question from Giulio Pescatore from BNP Exane. Please go ahead. The line is open.
Hi. Morning, everyone. Hi, Michel.
Morning.
One question on the divestments. I mean, on the last call, you hinted to the fact that you thought you were gonna be able to share something more by the end of September on the divestment plan. It's the 29th of September. Just wondering if there had been some delays and what potentially is causing these delays.
Firstly, we have our own decision to make, yeah. The second thing, you know that for M&A with the current period is not completely the easiest way to do. I repeat that. It had a decision, I would say, the current pattern, so we need more time. Anyway, potentially there will be some decision by the end of the year, but I don't want to be more illustrative. We have to take the right time to make the right decisions and to optimize the balance sheet.
Okay. You can confirm that you still have offers on the table and that these offers have not been withdrawn or anything like that?
I don't confirm anything for the moment. If you don't mind, I cannot. I will say, we will do something probably by the end of the year. Yes.
Okay. That's good to hear. The second question on energy. Can you give us some numbers to work with? How much is the cost of energy in percentage of sales, and how much are you hedged on 2023? What is the percentage of energy costs in Europe? I mean, anything that can help us model the energy headwind next year. Thank you.
Bernard, you want to give some figures?
Yeah. We expect energy costs to increase around EUR 40 million-EUR 50 million on a 12-month perspective on 2023, in comparison to the let's say the full year 2020, 2021. It's a two years perspective, no? Coming from basically a basis where we were around EUR 90 million, we expect energy costs to increase to EUR 140 million.
Which means slightly below 2% of the sales?
Yeah. Most of the energy cost increase now we see is hedged. We have basically reached a certain, let's say, security, at least on the levels I mentioned to you know, with that number. Basically there will not be, let's say, big changes, at least from what now, how now we see it, no, as it is hedged, no? For sure, it's difficult to consider, no, any risk if there will be more disruptions, no? Let's say this number is now quite clear for us.
Okay. That's super useful. Thank you very much for that. Maybe one last one, if I may. Is there also, like, a big component of inflation coming from the rising energy costs for your suppliers? So I'm talking about energy costs rising for your tier, for the Tier 2 , Tier 3 suppliers, then flowing through to your, to your cost of goods sold as well. Is that easy to pass on to the carmakers, or it's, so an ongoing discussion?
It is an ongoing discussion. You have the same for the raw material. We are tracking this. We have for the synergy, the fact that we, in some cases, avoid the cost increase, but anyway, we have to pass through because we have no reason not to give these synergies to the customers. It is, I would say, the ongoing part that Bernard was mentioning to clearly I will not say that we will pass through 100% . I don't think so, moreover. To pass through at least 80% cost to our customers because we have no alternative. To defend our profitability, and you have understood that 5% is not our target, and we target much more. We need to accelerate this pass-through.
I think we are on a good way because anyway, we are strategic for our customers, and anyway, it is a good balance of relationship.
Okay, great. Maybe just one quick follow-up. This 80% compares to what today? Is it, 30%, 50%?
Yeah, more than 50%.
More than 50%, going to 80%. Okay. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Thank you. We will now take our next question from Sanjay Bhagwani from Citi. Please go ahead. The line is open.
I thank you very much for taking my question as well. First of all, gentlemen, congratulations for the strong order momentum, particularly on the DC/DC converter side, on the high voltage. It's really interesting to see those clients are now coming into orders. With that, I've got most of my questions are just around the material cost as well. Could you please maybe provide some color on, let's say, what's basically been the gross material cost headwind. I guess you mentioned three main components of the gross margin headwind. That is materials cost, energy cost, and logistics. Of this, for the full year, what is the gross impact you're expecting from material costs? What is the kind of net you are expecting?
More importantly, when we think of the next year, because the picture seems to be quite mixed, at least for your bucket of material costs, given that, let's say the prices of electronics probably are already normalizing, so that could be some tailwinds. Indirectly, your suppliers are also going to see energy cost headwinds, which will reflect again in the price of the, for example, glass. How should we think of these offsetting factors for the next year? That is my first question.
Thank you, and good morning. It's a very good question. If I can add, in the inflation, we have the wages as well. You know perfectly well that means that Germany is more above 4%. When I take some East European countries, we are between 8% to double digit. This is a critical point as well to manage with customers. The last part, you know that the customers, they are increasing. They have the, I would say, pricing power, and they have all increased at a significant part their pricing. Taking, of course, the fact that inflation is a factor. It is what I said, it's normal that we will pass through inflation in the sector.
I think for raw material, what we can give as a figure currently for the quarter is 3%. Something like that. 3% increase. Energy is coming. This was not the case until now, but energy is coming this quarter. Of course, we have wage coming because you know that trade unions are coming back, saying like the inflation of early this year was not the one expected. When we will take it is what we are doing currently. It is to take 2023 and to compare to 2021, roughly, in order to have, I would say, fair basis, and to be sure of how much we will pass through.
Probably, we will take all these figures, we have to pass through something like 5% inflation to customers, which is a big figure cumulated on different timing. That's a very big figure. This, it is a famous, I will say, more than 80% we want to pass through. This will mean that altogether inflation will have a negative impact between 100-150 basis points globally on our P&L if you compare to 2021. That is what we want to limit with Bernard, the impact. It is today, our view and how we manage carefully, this inflation gap with customers.
Thank you. That is very helpful actually. 100-150 basis points impact this year in 2023 versus 2021. Is that right? That's the kind of-
We compare. As in now, we have a 12 months, effectively from the exercise close, end of May this year with the 2023 expectations. Because we need a 12 months basis to simplify the calculation. If we have an impact already the first half, we correct it with the figures. It is like this that we work in all our business group, including aftermarket. Because aftermarket, they have inflation. Now in your question, there was, sorry, suppliers. Of course, we try to estimate and to integrate with other claims from suppliers that we try to postpone sometimes, but with other claims to suppliers, because of course, we have to claim that to our customers.
Thank you. That is very helpful. Right now the agreements, let's say you are entering into with the OEMs, these. How does it work? Let's say if there is a further cost inflation from your Tier 2 suppliers, is the agreement already allow you to pass that on? That will again require a renegotiation?
It depends on the countries. I think IG Metall is quite talkative, so you understand what it means for Germany. It depends on the countries. Often for the other countries it will be early next year, some negotiation. There could be some one-off end of this year, but mainly early next year. We have this positive between premiums to bonuses to compensate if you will, the actual salary increase will happen 1st of January. Anyway, the pressure everywhere is increasing.
Thank you. Just one last question on this one. So let's say on the positive side, you also see the electronics prices of the electronics starting to normalize. Also the freight seems to be also rates. I mean, at least the port rates for the last three to four months have been going down drastically.
These tailwinds, these are more going to be reflecting maybe after this May year end. Is that fair to say?
There's a kind of mixed picture if we look at electronic parts, no? Because on some parts we see no price drop, huh, as of now. On some microchips especially, you know, where we look at let's say specific generations, no? Still the demand is very high and prices are not dropping so much, no? You have partially prices which go down, but some prices also continue to stay at a very high level, no? It depends really on the part. In general, we expect let's say the peak of the price increases as of now to let's say to the end of this year, no? Also going into next year, partially. In the logistics, you are right, we see some price drops.
Also besides electronics, we also see some price reductions, no? Fair to say that our base assumption now is still overall slight continuing inflation if we take everything into the beginning of 2023, and from there, we assume that it should not further go up.
Thank you. This is very helpful.
Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take our next question from Akshat Kacker from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Morning, Michel. Morning, Mr. Schäferbarthold. Akshat from JP Morgan.
Morning. How are you?
Morning. Just two left from my side. The first one on end markets and automotive production into the last three months of the year. Can you just talk about your expectations for Q4 versus Q3, and what are you seeing in OEM production schedules, specifically for Europe? I'm obviously seeing IHS forecasting 17% higher production in Q4, Q3, which is obviously because of seasonality, but then they are also forecasting a higher production versus Q2. If you could just give some comments in terms of what you're seeing in Europe going into Q4, please. That's the first question. The second one is on cash flow. First, can I understand the net CapEx increase of more than 30% year-on-year?
If you could just tell us what elements drive that CapEx number in the first quarter, and if you could also discuss your adjusted free cash flow forecast for the full year, what are you projecting for the full year, and if that includes any contributions from the higher factoring levels? Thank you.
We have a four months exercise because, as you know, Q1 is ending end of August. So the four months, including the fact that September was totally depressed last year, is probably, I don't have the figure with me, but probably a 10% increase that we're expecting. It could be, I will say, today, I have no reason not to say that IHS is right for the last quarter. But as you know, we are delivering not all the customers. We are much more focused on the German customers, but I will say today, the call off we are receiving indicate this kind of figure, even better. That is what I can tell you as an approach.
For the cash, there was, according to the closing, probably some cutoff, which means that we have a small acceleration of the payment of CapEx in this first quarter. We'll go back to normal in the last four months. I don't think that CapEx cash out will be, I will say, a big trigger. Anyway, we have some active CapEx due to the enlargement of the plant in China. We will have an enlargement as well in special application in Romania for the last four months. CapEx for me is not a big trigger. The big trigger will be our capacity to recover on inventories between September and October.
Of course, the fact that we have to, I will say rebalance EBITDA with respect to CapEx and R&D, with the goal that ex factoring, we don't take the factoring into account, will be positive or at least close to zero, for the seven months.
Understood. Thank you so much. Any comments on free cash flow for the full fiscal year 2023?
This is what Michel mentioned. Factoring is not in the adjusted free cash flow, no? As I said, it's in the reported free cash flow, but adjusted factoring is not considered. And on the adjusted free cash flow, we think, on one hand side, higher profitability, but also, let's say, a lower run rate in terms of CapEx and the reduction in working capital, no? This should lead, let's say, to break even our free cash flow and recover our adjusted free cash flow. The biggest risk comes with the inventory level, no? Because, also, if we look at. You ask also for the production, for our production view.
If we look at customer demand, i t's at very, very high level in our systems, so it's increasing it. Or it's much higher than it was in Q1. The point is the reliability of these data is now. In the last months, the deviation was 35% to the, to let's say, what really was then picked up by the customers, no. Basically what we see as the highest reliability actually is in China, and also then second in NSA, and the highest volatility comes from Europe. This is why prediction to Europe is most difficult. If I compare to last month, Europe should increase volumes. As Michel said, no, we would not say that IHS would be wrong, no.
With this risk I mentioned. Coming back to the inventory topic, with these very high volumes, if the deviation remains so high, it's very difficult to manage the stocks. We are working intensively on it. To come back to break even cash flow, we need to reduce inventories. This is the risk we have.
We need to reduce by the end of October. Because fortunately or unfortunately, what we will do afterwards will be for the cash of next year.
Definitely. Thank you so much for all the details.
Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take a question from Philipp Koenig from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, guys. Also thank you for taking my questions. I wanna come back very briefly to the energy topic, but not on the cost side, but rather really on the supply side. If we think about the chemical industry, we're seeing shutdowns on some chemical plants, especially in Germany, just given that the companies are no longer able to produce under the current cost environment. How much visibility do you have in your upstream supply chain in terms of some of your key inputs? So even if the costs are going up, just rather around having actual supply coming on stream. And just generally across your, you know, Tier 2, Tier 3 suppliers, we are also starting to see some getting into quite heavy financial distress.
Are you thinking about supporting some of your suppliers in certain ways to secure the supply? Thank you very much.
Thank you for the question. Firstly, in Germany, but not only, you see some switch from gas to electricity, and we are an example. We had, we still have a gas power station in some of our plants. We have stopped them. We're switching to electricity, which has a cost, but whatever. It is why the gas supply is less and less important, at least for us, and potentially for the country. On the opposite, as you say, some suppliers are struggling. We have a specific, I will say, analysis and of course work on that.
We have in some cases, it will be very little, but we will have unfortunately some inventories to make, on some, I would say, components, to be sure that with respect to this potential energy shortage, we'll have no problem, mainly in January, February, to be blunt. We have not identified in the automotive business, because it is, what is important, the automotive business, suppliers today showing signs of big problems. Of course, difficulties, but not big problems. Financial-wise, not at all. If there is a need, of course, we'll do what we have to do to secure the supply. But it is automotive. We work closely with the suppliers, and of course, we have revised their plan on energy, and of course, we're on top of the situation, supplier, key supplier, per key supplier.
Thank you. That's very helpful. Then my second and last question is just on the wages. I think, again, in Germany, IG Metall are asking for an increase in 8%. How do you think about labor costs into next year? Are you factoring that 8% increase into your guidance? Or do you think you sort of meet them halfway? What are your sort of expectations in our labor costs, probably together with energy, probably the biggest item in your cost headwinds as we think about next year?
It's a very good question, but as you know, as the German companies are in negotiation, so I cannot completely answer. Of course, we are tailoring some increase in the budget of next year. As we are in negotiations, please, if you don't mind, wait for the final result of negotiations for the sector, for the different companies. This will be mainly October, November.
Thank you.
Any other question?
Thank you. There are no further questions in the queue at this time. I will turn the call back to your host.
Okay. First I would like to thank you again for your presence this morning. As you see, the team, the management team, Bernard and myself, we are fully committed to continue to improve the performance or to restore a cash generation. It will be one of, I would say, a focus on the model of HELLA. If you will have a big rendezvous with you, please reserve as of 3rd of November. The 4th as well for ESG. The 3rd, it will be in Paris. We will be very happy to meet you in Paris if possible. In the meantime, I wish you a very good day. See you soon.
Ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude today's conference. You may now all disconnect.