Good afternoon, welcome to Kamux's Capital Markets Day. My name is Katariina Hietaranta, I'm Head of Investor Relations at Kamux. Before we kick off with the full program, I'd like to take you through a couple of practicalities and the agenda. We have scheduled a break in between the two parts of the program, and we have also scheduled some time for questions, both here from the audience as well as via chat from our webcast viewers after each presentation, and then we will also have some time for questions at the very end of the presentation. Time-wise we expect to be at the break around 3:30 P.M., but we shall see how the program goes. Now I would like to welcome Tapio Pajuharju here to introduce the rest of the, or the whole, Kamux Group Management Team.
Thank you, Katariina. Welcome also on my behalf for the Kamux Capital Markets Day. I would like to kick off with introducing the team. It's not a one-man show, this is a team effort, and I may ask you to jump on the podium. We do this so seldom that we thought we would bring everyone on board, so we will get the feel and touch of the people, and here we go. I will start with the ladies as usual. We have Marjo Nurmi, our VP of HR and Sustainability.
Nice to meet you all.
We have a newcomer, I think Aino joined us in the month of January, and is in charge of the marketing and concept work
Yeah, nice to meet you all. Hello.
Then we have Vesa, and I think Vesa is in charge of the strategy, development, and then always when we are in doubt we ask Vesa.
Good afternoon.
He has also the data and good insight to the industry, and I think has a great presentation later today on the markets. Then we have Jani Koivu. Jani is the Managing Director for our Finnish operation.
Good afternoon all.
Then we have the man who is in charge of all the sourcing.
Hello, Juha Saarinen.
He is all the way from Hämeenlinna, so. We have Andy Rietschel, our Managing Director for Sweden.
Good afternoon.
Also, a new beginner, started in December the 17th and learning very fast. We have one of the juniors, luckily to present our CFO, Jukka Havia.
Hi, good to see you all.
Then we have Jarkko Lehtismäki. He is VP of Digital, IT, and everything in between and has also very good insight into the business, so very happy to have Jarkko on board.
Thank you all.
Then we have the small market, Germany. We have Martin Verrelli, our Managing Director of Germany. So this is the team, and then within this team you have people who are really making it happen, so that's why I wanted to introduce everyone on the podium. Later on most of you will have something to say, and all the day people are here for the questions and comments, so please use the opportunity. Thank you.
Thank you.
Then Vesa will continue with the markets.
Yes, indeed. Next we will jump to the secrets of the European used car market to give you some helicopter perspective on the field where we play and the area that we operate, and to give some of our view as well where the markets are going in the future, in the strategic period. I want to start with the market size, because this is a fact that surprises many. We are operating in the EUR 500 billion market, the European used car market, EUR 500 billion annual turnover. So really a big opportunity and very fragmented. There are 35 million or more than 35 million cars sold in Europe as used every year, and the top 5 players only sell less than 500,000 of those. So 1.something%.
Very, very fragmented landscape across Europe. And when we go to our home markets of Germany, Sweden, and Finland, the same story continues. Very big markets and still very fragmented. And Germany here, of course, is the biggest opportunity with itself close to EUR 100 billion annual revenue potential. And also the by far the most fragmented of our three countries. The top five players are only 2% of the market. And the rest is covered by 37,000 other players that operate there. Mostly small and medium-sized companies. Then in the other end of the spectrum we have Finland, largest of the three markets but still quite sizable, EUR 5 billion market. Finland might be the most consolidated used car market in the world, at least in Europe.
But still here the top five command only 25% of the market, which is really small compared to almost any other retail business that you could imagine. And then Sweden then comes in between. But in all countries really we have this huge opportunity to grow, to gain share of the market. The consolidation is something that has also happened strongly and steadily. Here are Finnish figures. Bottom one showing the top five market share from 16% back in 2019 to 25% today. And the upper line is the consumer business, which has been steadily declining, meaning that the business is getting more and more professional and established, as is typical for any retail market.
What is interesting, the consolidation has not mostly happened through M&A, but rather through organic growth of the biggest players, meaning that the big ones that have found the winning concept, they are gaining market share and then the weaker ones will lose ground. By the way, in all our markets we see similar graphs than this. The current stage is just somewhat different. It's been a very stable market, especially if you compare with, for example, new car dealing. Back in 2022 we had the biggest dip since at least early 1990s. There were several big macro events happening at the same time. The interest rates shot up very rapidly in the euro area and Sweden as well. Then we had the Ukraine war that caused first the diesel prices to skyrocket and then the electricity prices followed then in the autumn.
So that was clearly a shock to our markets. But then we've seen the rebound. It has been fastest in Germany. In Sweden last year was still quite stable versus previous, but in the beginning of this year we have seen double-digit growth figures versus last year. So I suspect that market also to rebound back to the EUR 1.3 million-EUR 1.4 million annual number of sold cars that has been now the kind of level for the past decade. The next question, of course, what is driving this market? What is causing it to be this resilient and stable and still growing on a long-term perspective? And I think the main driver is the sustained need to move. For people to move from one place to another. And it turns out that still for most people who can afford it, the car is a preferred way to move around.
People need to get to work, they need to take their kids to the school, they need to go to their hobbies or they want to do so. The car just happens to be in many cases the vehicle of choice. If you can afford it, then you will likely have one or some people have two. You can see from the German statistics here that as wealth has increased and maybe the amount of people has increased, the amount of cars has also been going up. Same thing in Finland and Sweden. One interesting aspect is also the age of the car park. It has been going up steadily in Germany. It has been also going up steadily in Sweden and in Finland and, for example, in the U.S. This is a global thing.
The age of the car park goes up and that actually increases the share of the used car business of the total car market. What is driving this? Many things, but I believe the main thing is that unlike you might hear at the local bar, the cars of today are actually better engineered than cars of the past. If you take, let's say, a German premium car that's been driven 100,000 kilometers, it's still a pretty nice car. It's almost the same experience as with a new car, but the price has come down by 40%. I guess many people have figured out that with their budget they can have a better driving experience by going to the used side. Cars are clearly used for a longer period of time.
Then thinking about the market size, of course, the price factor is important in addition to pieces. Especially now in the past years with the pandemic and supply-side constraints, prices shoot up quite rapidly. Now it has come down to closer to, let's say, the long-term trend of increasing something in line with the inflation, roughly. There are several other trends as well. The most powerful one we already discussed and there are other positives as well. Of course, there are trends also that drive to another direction. And what we see and what I believe that in the most urban areas, in the centers of big cities, likely the private car will decrease as a share of transportation. There will be more solutions driven by lack of parking space or higher pricing charges or regulation.
But when you go a little bit beyond the central areas, the story continues and that's what also all these combined factors have been driving the total market and number of cars upwards. So all in all, I believe that as a market this continues to be a big opportunity. We are not limited by the market potential by any means. There's lots and lots of revenue to be done there by taking market share from the weaker players and that's what we have been doing. And of course, that's what we are going to continue to do. My colleagues will tell a bit more about the actual plans there. I would then next jump to the different business models. We, as you probably know, are omnichannel operators, meaning that we serve the customers in the channels that they prefer.
We have a store or showroom network to back up all the operations and also as a purchasing and sales channel. Then we have a substantial remote sales operation and then we are, of course, present in the digital channels as well. But we have that all. We are not, let's say, pure play digital or just stores. We have all options available. It turns out that in all our markets the largest local player is an omnichannel operator. That's us in Finland, Riddermark Bil in Sweden, and then in Germany we have a company called Autoland. All of them are omnichannel operators. In the pandemic years, of course, we had a big buzz about pure play digital players. Being doing a little bit less well in the past years, one of the largest players in this field in Q4 lost some revenues versus previous years.
So this is the model we operate now. Of course, the digital part has increased all the time and will increase in the future, but seems to be working well in all operating countries where we are and that's where we want to, that's how we want to play as well. The competition dynamics are a bit different or the field of competition is a bit different by country. In Finland we are mostly competing against companies specialized in used cars. They might be pure play operators like us or they might be used car subsidiaries owned by branded dealers like K-Auto or some others. And in Sweden we have a big mixed bag. In top six players we have three pure play used car players and three franchise dealers that consist of the top six of that market. And you know in Germany the competition is mostly branded dealers.
You have very few actually specialized used car dealers that have more than one or two locations. This is a pretty fresh landscape from that perspective. You know, I would argue that in the development phase maybe Finland is furthest and then probably Sweden and Germany will follow in the sense that the specialists will take more and more market share as we have seen to be the case in many other retail markets as well. Two more trends shaping our business. Electrification is, of course, an interesting one, a lot in the news. In the new car side that's very evident. When you look at Sweden and Finland, last year more than 50% of the sold new cars could be charged so that they were either 100% electric or plug-in hybrids.
Germany is clearly lower and actually last year with the ended subsidies the graph points downwards. But anyway, the overall trend is clear. The speed is a bit uncertain in the used car market, new car market, sorry. But you know the trend that will continue on the new car side and then used cars will follow by a few years' lag. Here in the past years in Finland and Sweden the lag has been around four years of the electrification share. And right now in the used car side in Sweden we are at 20% electric rate and Finland is 10% and Germany is a few percentage points. But that's a game. That's increasing relevance and, of course, we want to be on top of that game as well and we already are in many respects.
The good thing is that fundamentally buying and selling electric cars is a similar business to buying and selling any other powered cars, petrol cars or diesel. It's the same business, but of course we need to have additional know-how to help us in purchasing and producing and selling these cars and some infrastructure to keep them charged. But you know this is clearly also an area where we have some development steps ongoing. And then the last trend highlighting here is a preference toward fixed-price car services, whether it would be leasing or some other type of an arrangement. These are on the rise. Still quite small, a few percentage of the market total, but growing quite nicely. The reason for that, many reasons probably, but I would argue two most important ones are first of all consumer uncertainty about the future of different fuel types.
So you know before investing considerable money in a car you might think that, "Okay, is it already the right time to buy an electric car or should I wait for a year or two or whatever?" And then you have, especially among the younger population, you have a general preference of buying services with a monthly fee instead of buying stuff. So these two combined are driving the monthly fixed-price car market. And, of course, we also want to be and are in that scene. A bit over a week ago we announced a cooperation with the operator Beely that allows us to serve our customers with a wider solution in this area. And then we have some plans in our pocket for Germany and Sweden on financial leasing and so forth. So going also with the trend here.
That was my presentation, and now we have some time for questions on the topic. Thank you.
Now, time for questions. We have no questions from the webcast audience, so whilst they're thinking, perhaps we have some questions from the audience here. We will have microphones if you just maybe raise your hand and you'll get a mic. Anyone? Very clear. Pia, please.
Yes, hello Pia Rosqvist from Carnegie. Regarding your last point of Kamux joining forces, for example with Beely and you also mentioned some plans in Sweden and Germany regarding financial leasing. So if I start with the Beely cooperation, what kind of value creation potential do you see in that business? And thinking about Kamux's shareholders, how do you drive value with that cooperation?
I think that's a cooperation that allows us to serve a wider consumer audience than before. In that sense it's a positive also for the shareholders. Essentially somebody who wants to go for this new type of a service can now access also our car fleet and get the service that they want.
In the financial targets you published today, do you include some potential from this cooperation?
That's inbuilt there as is every other development plan we have.
When do you plan to start offering financial leasing in Sweden and Germany?
Maybe that's something that I leave to my colleagues from Sweden and Germany.
Thank you.
Rauli?
Rauli, you are from Inderes. Hello. You mentioned the trend that the consumer-to-consumer trade is decreasing as we know in the used car market. So if and when that continues, does that mean that also you need to sell more of the older cars that are now sold from consumer to consumer?
Well, I think the shift is mostly from a bit more expensive and newer cars being sold less and less from consumer to consumer and the cheapest cars still continue to be sold mainly between consumers. I don't think that trend will necessarily mean that we would have to go lower. We would gain the market share basically in the segments that we prefer from the consumer-to-consumer trade.
How much would you estimate that is the kind of share of the section of the market that this is kind of too low for to be interesting for you and which we would assume that remains in the consumer-to-consumer market?
Well, I would say that there's a difference whether between the cars that we take as a trading from a consumer and the cars that we buy directly from the market. So as a trading we are flexible. We want to help the customer to basically switch to a newer car that they prefer and then we will help them with the trading situation. But then you know we would not buy, let's say, several thousand euros' worth of a car from the market. That's not our segment. And yeah, there's no clear line, but clearly you know need to be a bit newer, fresher cars that we buy directly from the market.
All right. Thank you.
Any further questions from the audience here?
Jussi Koskinen, there was a slide where used car prices in Germany were increasing. How about then the margin that remains or margin that Kamux enjoys? Is it then percentage-wise remaining at the same level or decreasing?
Our business model is, in one sense, a trading business and we take a fairly short position to the cars that we buy. So for us actually the absolute level is not very meaningful in the price levels. We can operate on a low-price environment and a high-price environment because then the purchase price will also adjust if the sales price adjusts. So this has no direct impact on the margin potential. Then if we have quick changes, very rapid changes in the market, then it might happen that we have either negative or positive impact from the price changes. But let's say that the normal fluctuations will have very little relevance.
Very good. Thank you. Now it's time to move forward with the presentation and we welcome Tapio on board next. Thank you.
So thank you, Vesa, for a very comprehensive presentation and also thanks for excellent questions on the topic. Next we will jump on the strategy as such and I think this is teamwork. We've been doing this together with the team and I think we will entertain details as we go. I will do the overall pitch and then we will do country by country. I think the way we've been doing it, it's in a three-year plan and we've done a roadmap for each individual country. We're going to follow it on a monthly, quarterly, and annual basis to make it work. I think we will keep you on board on the progress on that. First of all, I think it's a team effort. It's a team who is making it or breaking it.
I think now we have a team who can do it, that will execute, that will implement. That's what is the most important thing. That's what the team is working on day by day. I think some of you who already had the first opportunity to see the stores, you can see some gradual changes on the stores and the way we behave and how we work with the customers. Those are going to be entertained more today. I think one of our guiding lights on the strategy as well. As we, it's a people strategy and we need to have happy and motivated people on board. I think on the performance of last year we are extremely happy how we rated on that one. I think we even raised the bar going forward.
So our ENPS was very good last year and we aim for even higher on that respect. So we are on a good go on that. Then I think we still do the basic things. We are very good in buying and selling cars and on top of that we try to do other things and I will learn what type of other things we've done. We are already of some size. We passed the benchmark of EUR 1 billion. We were slightly shy of 70,000 cars and then we operate in three markets. And like Vesa explained, our position in Finland, we've been the innovator. We've been changing the game. We are the market leader over here. In Sweden we are not. We are a challenger, but we are among top six and we have a good room to grow.
And then Germany, it's a huge market and we are a tiny, tiny player over there. But even though we are tiny, there are not too many of the big players. So I think we have a good opportunity on that one as well. The trend has been rather stable and when you look at backwards, Kamux has been growing rather fast. We've been doing also good volume growth. Okay, then we got a bit of a hit with the pandemic, with the interest rate, war in Ukraine and all of that. And then the showrooms have been now flat on the go. But as you will learn today, we're going to open more showrooms. We will have a fully omnichannel approach and we will grow on top line and also profitability going forward. Then maybe on the previous strategy, I will not go too deep on that one.
But it was not badly wrong. It was actually rather good and well done. Some of the execution was hampered by the conditions in the marketplace, and now we will take a recap. I will start implementing once again back to basics on that one. We'll do that. Omnichannel will prevail. We'll strengthen that. The process, I think you will learn today, we will have even more diligent and more efficient process taking it forward. And then the data, I think our own ERP, which is by the name of Kamux, we've been investing quite a bit of time, effort, and also money on that one. And we feel that we have the state-of-the-art ERP in our system. So we can do wonders with the system.
We still need to learn how to make it simple and visual for the people to make the right decisions with the data we have. Then Vesa and Vesa's team have the good insight on the marketplace. We have all the... This is an interesting market because all the data is available. It's almost online and it's also in the regional, even on a zip code in Finland. So you can follow what's happening rather intimately in that respect. By doing the right conclusions on that one, you can win the game. I think we are on that path. Then I think I will jump on the next one. Like Vesa explained, the markets are going to go polarizing and I think the big players are going to win. In the middle, it's going to be rather difficult.
And then in the small end, it's going to be very challenging unless you are specialized. If you are specialized in classic cars, sports cars, maybe utility vehicles, you can be successful. But on the upper end, with the volume, you need to have scale and scope in order to manage that one and that's where we are going. Kamux has been maybe even the most economical in terms of the pricing. I think that position is maybe something which is not defendable. We need to be good value for money, but we need to offer also to the other direction a bit of scale and scope on the portfolio as well. We will have a more segmented approach. On top of the lowest priced car, we will have the medium and even to some of the upper end cars available and also in the utility vehicles.
That's why instead of a very sharp bullet, we draw more of an oval or ellipse positioning for Kamux going forward. Still, I think our vision is unchanged, becoming the number 1 in Europe. It's rather high flying. We are now number 5, number 6, depending on how you count. But as Vesa already stated, we've been doing this fully organic without one exception where we bought a very small local operator in Espoo. And that's mainly buying the inventory and getting the location. So I think we have still room to do on this one. And as the market is consolidating, I think Kamux has a role on the consolidation and I think we will be proactive on that area as well. Then this is a busy slide, but I will take it in a very slow motion and take it easy.
But I think we are part of the circular economy. That's in a way clear. And go greener and there's a Green Heart. It means we're going to be not only for the more sustainable option, but it's going to be more like Kamux used to be. Keep the customer in the epicenter of everything. Deliver what the customer wants and likes and then we're going to be successful. And it starts that we, I think already in the past, we've been proven that we can improve our customer service. And we're going up on the ladder and I think we are already quite okay in multiple areas on that respect. But our aim is to be the most friendly, the easiest one to work with, and then to be the most trustworthy car retailer in the used car market. And I think we're going to be active.
We're going to be proactive, but we're not going to be aggressive. I think that's where the limit is. We try to help the customers to have the right solution. I think the price setting with the old data we have, the system we have, we will go for centrally driven fair pricing in everything we do. I think with the data supported with the KMS we have and maybe even some support from the AI, we will have an excellent price setting both when selling the cars, but also when buying the cars. That's where we can be mastering the game. I think the trustworthiness is in a way a prerequisite if you need to have transparency on what you sell. We are selling used items and they have had a different type of usage in between.
And if you want to sell it on remote, on a digital platform, you need to be utmost transparent. That's what we are trying to do and highlight everything we can. And then people can have a look and they can buy it on the remote and they can trust it's going to be good. And if not, we will help them to make it good on that respect. Then all the channels, I think this will not become fully digital. It's going to stay omnichannel, but the roles will change. And I think the new generation is more for the almost digital, if not the fully digital, and the in between, they do both. Like today we were in the stores, didn't see too many people over there, but some people are coming in. When they come in, they come for a purpose. They are not kicking the tires.
They are not just daydreaming. They have something to do and then we're going to help them. The same applies for the digital world. When people go on our website, they are on the chat. They are already into something and then we need to help them to make the right choice in that respect. Then I think when the company was started, Kamux used to be the innovator of the industry. I think some of that we have left on the table. Now we will bring back on the table and do it step by step. Not all of those are going to work and fly, but I think some of the ideas we have are really breakthrough ideas and we'll bring them to the marketplace. That's in a way the soft side with the customer.
Then how we're going to do it, that's on the more operational side. On the operations, this is like an industry and you need to be really running the productivity and doing it the processed way. I think that's something where we can improve and we've been improving, but we'll still have quite a long leeway to do that. Then on the sourcing, I think the sourcing, and now we've been seeing that Finland, the number of new cars has gone down and maybe even further going down. Sweden, roughly the same. Sweden even has been exposed with a big amount of cars being exported out of Sweden. So then our choice is to go to the European marketplace, go and buy directly from the fleets, the makers, and in between. I think you will entertain more on this area.
And that's where we can make a point of differentiation. On the refurbishment and the reconditioning and documentation of the car, in Germany, we'll already be working some time with two partners who've been helping us to industrialize the process. The similar pattern we have now piloted in Finland and I will share more about that. And I think when Andy is on the podium, we'll learn something about Sweden, which is all pointing to the same direction. The pricing, and I think that's where... And things do change rather fast, like we saw in the German situation. The prices on the EVs, prices on certain brands. Then you need to be utmost active and proactive. And like Vesa said, we have the position only a very short time. So then you need to act. And the earlier you act, the better you are.
I think the speed is part of the Kamux DNA and we'll bring back the speed on that one as well. Then it's people. I think we now have a good team of people. I think we will hone, we will help people to train and learn new tricks so that they will have all the focus on the customer at the other end and on the other end improve the process and productivity. So that's what we're going to be doing. Teamwork. I think one of the Kamux strongholds has been being utmost cost-efficient. But during the pandemic and during a couple of other things, they were hampering the cost efficiency. Now we will bring it back on the track as well and do the productivity. Then I think the speed. Speed is something where we can be better than anyone else.
With the data, with the knowledge of the market, with the insight, we can do fast decisions. That's how you're going to win on this market. Then a very, very thin line on the right-hand side of the slide, that's the M&A track. I think Kamux will be part of the consolidation one way or the other proactively. We may have a look on the car trading as such in our existing markets, potentially new markets. It doesn't have to be always a full buy-in of something. It can be also teaming up, partnering, strategic partnership, or co-owning, or then buying. I think that's something we will learn. We've done our homework. We have long lists of what to do, how to do. Then we also have a list on the adjacent services, what to have a look on.
But there is no guarantee that they're going to be available today, next week, or even next year. But at least we know what we are looking for and what to do on that respect. Then I think the friendly, convenient, trustworthy customer service, quality, transparency, and then the add-on services. The one who were already on the earlier tour today saw that we don't only sell the car. That's only half of the meal. Then you sell the finance. You sell the Kamux Plus in a way of warranty or guarantee. You sell the insurance and you can also sell other services. And I think in our innovation platform, we have some ideas what to do on top of that. And even today you will learn some of the things we have coming up on the table. Then standardized operations.
I think today I will share some of that, and Juha will share some of that sourcing. I think having a look maybe for last year, we've been really sales-driven. It's important. Equally important is to buy well and buy smart. I think today we're going to be hearing about how to buy smart, how to have a smart supply chain and what to do. I think that's going to be also an added-on opportunity for us. Processing and logistics, I think it can be also somewhat industrialized, not always, because you don't know what is available next week in Germany. You don't know what is available in Sweden. You don't know what's going to happen in the eastern part of Finland this week or next week.
They will come when they come, but you need to be prepared and you've been planning for how to do things forward on that one. Fixed pricing, maybe not, but centrally driven fair pricing. So prices are fair and people who come to us, they know that, hey, these people, you cannot get the incremental EUR 1,000 away. You may do a bit of discussion, negotiation, but it's always fair and right price. But we're not going to go deep discounts and you cannot negotiate. And the people who are not intimately familiar with the car industry, they never know whether EUR 63,999 is the right price. They think, could it be EUR 59,000? You just got sold. Yeah, this one is sold and we didn't give any penny for discount. So that's our idea. It's what it is.
And then if time tells that it's not going to be sellable in a certain time, then we change the price. But we do it with a centrally driven model and make it work. So everything is sellable, the price has to be right. And then the people, these are the people who will do it. We will train and focus on people being highly performing on all of the markets. M&A, like we discussed already, B2B, it's more or less bolt-on opportunity. Car trading, maybe on the acquisitions and related services. And can be partnering, can be strategic alliances and all of that. And I think, like Vesa mentioned, we have not seen a lot of mergers and acquisitions on the used car business. New car business, Hedin has been rather proactive and active. Some others have been following. Now I think there's a bit of a transition.
What's going to happen and how it's going to happen? Some of the families who've been a long time in the business, they consider, should we invest or should we step out or what should we do? And I think that's creating opportunities for our type of a player going forward in that respect. Then I think sustainability and ESG. And it's not by accident we have the green color. I think we are part of the circular economy. No matter whether we like it or not, we are part of that. And we've been executing rather well on that area. The things we decided to measure is trustworthiness. And we follow that with the NPS numbers. And I think today you will learn how we've been doing that.
Then I think we will not, in a way, oblige people to buy EVs or hybrids and low emission, but we will help them to make the right choice. And always to help to find the lowest emission car available for their needs. And that's what we are doing. And then we are, as this is people business, it has to be driving inclusive and also diversity in our way of operating. And a small detail, I think most of the, half of the customers in theory are ladies. When we look at our people who do the customer service, we don't yet have 50% of the people helping the customers ladies. So I think that's something where we need to improve and will improve. And that's in a way the industry, when you go to any of the conferences in the automobile industry, it's rather male-driven.
I think we can also make a point of difference on that direction going forward. Then long-term targets. And I think Jukka will have a deeper dive on those later on. They are, easy to remember, 100,000 cars, equaling roughly EUR 1.5 billion. And then a profitability, which is adjusted EBIT margin of 4%. And those, you may always ask, is this at the end of the strategy period? It's not. It's a couple of years thereafter. But on the other hand, if the M&A opportunities come, it can be also earlier. But that's roughly where we are. And then on the non-financial things, we have the NPS for the group. And we had a very nice number. We've been raising the bar now to 60. And then on the ENPS, we've been now raising it also substantially.
But we're already very good and very happy for our past performance in 2023. Now I think we are just recapping and then Katariina will come and help me with the questions.
We are ready for questions to Tapio. Perhaps we'll take questions from the audience. I would expect there to be some. Can be.
Yes, Rauli from Inderes again. A question on the targets and the vision, which you reiterated to be Europe's largest. So do you expect to, both in respect to the financial targets and that vision, do you believe that the current markets are enough or would it require for you to expand to new markets as well?
I think, especially when I'm being the number one in Europe, these three markets are clearly not enough. You need to go beyond that. And then you also need to have means how to do it.
By organic growth only, you cannot do it.
What about the financial targets? Are those for the current markets?
These financial targets are mainly for the current markets. It's basically without any major M&A activity. It can be something very small, but not nothing major.
Yeah. Do you have any time frame when you would be seeking to expand to new markets? Is that possible in the strategic period you now outlined or is that further away?
I think first we need to make these three markets work, strengthen our position in Finland and be the clear market leader. Increase profitability, make Sweden profitable, make Germany profitable, and then we will take the next steps. C
lear. Thank you. Further questions?
Hello, Pia Rosqvist.
Regarding your growth target, you don't open up much about your ambitions now, how to speed up growth in Finland versus Sweden and Germany. Can you shed any more details on this regional split?
I would maybe not like to steal the thunder from Jani, Andy, and Martin. I think they will come. But I think we may come back to this one after the whole presentation, because then we got the highlights of Germany, Finland, and Sweden.
Okay. And then regarding the different revenue streams, I mean, the split from used car sales versus other services. The other services or integrated services have represented some 5%-6% of sales. The other services you plan, should we think about you reaching 10% of the total sales? Or do you have any details on this?
We have not put it in that type of perspective, but it's going to be gradually increasing part of the revenue stream. And especially in the margin area, that's enhancing the margin.
Thank you. Then, if I continue still on the mergers and acquisitions, can you help us imagine what kind of businesses you are looking at? Is it used car retailers in your current operating countries? Is it companies offering something completely different within your parts?
I think we try to keep us close to home in any case. Something we know and we understand and can do. In that respect, it's very close to home. And then it's also the adjacent services.
And I think on top of the used car retailing, I think ideas which will keep our customers in the epicenter and have a contact with the customer and dialogue with the customer, even between the time when they are exchanging the car. So something which will keep the customer in the loop.
So could it mean car services, car maintenance services?
Maybe that as well, but I think that's not our stronghold and we don't know it so well. If we would consider something like that, maybe then through a partner or alliance than something else. But we could also sell the services on behalf of someone. I think that's in a way where we think.
Okay. I'll continue with questions later.
Thank you, Pia.
Hi, it's David Kantola from eQ. About the organization and the leadership group, you have a quite new group.
Is it now structurally ready or is there some areas you still want to strengthen?
No, I think it's structurally ready. Even though some of them have been only a short time on board of Kamux, they have a long experience in other businesses where I think the analogy is roughly the same. And I think we've been, with this team, we've been working since January 1st. And it feels longer and all of those have been part of building the strategy. And in that respect, I feel rather good on what we have. And by the way, rather good is a Finnish understatement.
[audio distortion] from [audio distortion]. I'll continue on the topic that Pia just touched upon. It's interesting regarding this M&A track. So, and Vesa just pointed out the over time decreasing part of C to C businesses.
So consumers selling their cars on platforms and more and more going to professional dealers. So in terms of M&A, I understand that you want to keep at home, you know, in omnichannel. But is there anything on these C to C platforms that you look at and think, that would be nice to have in terms of the Kamux concept? Or is the C to C kind of AUTOTALLI.com and these platforms, are they completely out of scope in terms of interest for Kamux?
I think our logic on those ones has been that if we would be deeply involved, even maybe potentially a major owner of some of the platforms, that would turn off quite a lot of traffic and a lot of attention on that one. So in that respect, we would be maybe partnering.
We could be co-owning, but we would never be a majority owner of any of those. It's our current read.
Okay. And then you clearly just mentioned the additional services that might be of interest for you in terms of acquisitions. But if we just think about buying a mirror picture of Kamux just on a smaller scale, is there anything in addition to buying the inventory, you know, the cars?
Excellent question.
That you are kind of looking for in such a player?
Especially in entering areas where Kamux has not been, then you acquire also knowledge. You acquire know-how and you acquire contacts. And I think that's still clearly more valuable than the inventory only. And this is people-to-people business and people appreciate brands. And when you have reputation, the reputation you can build and you can, otherwise you start from zero.
Good.
Any further questions from the audience here?
I'll be back. I'll be back.
Good. We do not have any questions from the webcast, the chat. So I'm counting on them to leave all their questions till the very end. Thank you, Tapio. Now it's time for Aino to come on board.
Okay. Aino Hökeberg and I'm responsible for marketing and concept here at Kamux. And like Tapio told, started first of January. And excited to be here today to tell about our new strategy. We celebrated last year our 20th anniversary, as you can see on the Helsingin Sanomat first paid ad here. And if we go back the 20 years to 2003, there were no smartphones. There were just the sliding Nokias and the BlackBerrys you should remember. So how did we engage with our customers?
Well, it was mainly the showrooms and then the interactions with the showroom personnel. But fast forwarding for today, the showrooms are still very important for us. But more than nine out of ten customers start their purchasing journey online. We get more than 1.2 million visits monthly to our web pages. And that is how we engage with our customers today. We also do social media, of course, whether it's proactive advertising, extending our brand, or reacting to customer questions or issues we want to take care of. Both online and remote channels are increasing, like Vesa told here in the beginning. And digitalization enables us to show our attractive assortments. It also enables us to show a lot of information about the cars, the enormous number of pictures, and soon the videos. And all of this attracts more customers to our industry and to Kamux.
Imagine the 1.2 million monthly visits to our web page. If we would translate that figure into what it would mean to showrooms, it would actually be 513 daily more visits per store. So that would actually keep our store personnel very busy. Despite the fact that digitalization is increasing and more and more customers are moving to the digital channels, they will not replace the showrooms today. The majority of customers still want to see, touch, and test drive the vehicles. How would you otherwise know how much headroom there is? So customers want the digital-first experience combined with the online convenience, but then combine it with the reassurance of the store personnel. And there's a lot of things going on in the market. Vesa presented a few macro trends.
And looking at from the consumer point of view, one big shift is that the customers are no longer looking just one industry or one category. So, for example, candy bags. We used to look at candy bags and tell, okay, which one is the best one? But now the shift is towards looking at the industry pan, like cross industries. And if I have a great experience, for example, in a coffee shop, I expect the same experience from all the brands that I engage with. So the customer focus is going from one industry to pan industries. They also have higher expectations of the buying journey these days. They invest a lot of time in researching, comparing, and deciding which brand to interact with. And this is what we have to deliver. They also have increased expectations of customer service.
Customer service needs to know the needs of the customer, be empathetic, and be friendly. This is what we will deliver in our customer promise. Customers want all of this in a seamless omnichannel way and experience. Some customers prefer digital channels, some remote, some showrooms. A whole bunch of them want this in combinations, in their own unique way. Technology is also driving the transparency in the market. Customers want to know more about the car, the history of the car, the condition of the car, the service records of the car. This is what we will deliver. To be able to deliver the customer promise presented here earlier, and to be aligning with the market trends and the changing customer needs, we need to move from this multi-touchpoint model to a true omnichannel experience.
Customers are always connected and they expect the brands that they engage with, like Kamux, will always be connected. We need to offer a hybrid of online and remote and showrooms to our customers. Well, to be able to deliver that, in marketing we need to focus on five key areas. One is the seamless omnichannel experience that I opened up. In that, we place the customers in the middle and also bring the omnichannel elements to all of our channels. We'll also renew our store concept and our web concept. Again, customers in the middle. We need to find a way to have a unique experience and a unique look across our channels. This will also drive customer loyalty and trust. We will do store specializations, either whether it's a store or part of the store.
So, for example, we can focus on EVs, utility vehicles, or premium cars. We have a new flagship coming up in a few weeks in Tampere, in Finland, in Lakalaiva, which we are very excited about. It will already have some of these new elements from the new store concept. A third area is trust and building transparent quality. This is paramount in our business and in our markets. Customers are sometimes pretty insecure. They make a big investment. It's an emotional purchase. Imagine when we can say that, hey, all of our cars are inspected by the third party. You have all the information of the car online available and we can also go through it together with the customer. So this decreases a lot the increased riskiness that is combined with buying a used car today. The innovative services discussed earlier today.
On top of increasing penetration of our current services like Kamux Plus, we will also introduce new services and new add-on products. For example, tire sales or charging boxes, all the way to these services in the mobility area. Customer-centric service and customer satisfaction is a focus area for us. We measure customer experience closely and systematically and develop it based on the feedback we get. Today we do it through NPS or Net Promoter Score. The target is to reach 60 during the strategy period. We also want to focus on customer relationships and customer retention. To be able to deliver the meaningful experience with the trustworthiness, it will drive a longer and stronger customer relationship for us. We started to change the industry 20 years ago and we have now the great opportunity to continue to do so.
We'll continue innovating with our services and with our offering and making our experience better and better all the time. This is done by delivering a unified, transparent, more personalized experience. We really tailor it to the customer needs and no matter how they choose to buy or sell the car to us. This is what we call the true Kamux experience.
Aino, we are now ready for questions. Pia, please.
Thank you. Regarding the transparency, so these full reports you talk about, can they be monetized or is this something consumers expect as an add-on free service?
Consumers expect to get a lot of information about the car fully available online and also something that we can discuss and go through in the stores.
Okay. So it's not a service.
It's not like EUR 10 you can add on to when you make a deal or sell the car.
No, they expect this information to be available.
Okay. Thank you. Then can you reflect upon the differences between the Finnish and the Swedish consumer? Have you met any or experienced any differences in how you need to market and reach out to the consumers in these two markets?
Yeah, I think we need to have a quite unified Kamux experience. So the cornerstones of the experience and how we want to sell or buy cars are quite similar across markets. So we want to be the transparent, the friendly, the reliable partner across the markets.
So just to specify, I mean, you meet or this works in both countries. So you haven't experienced any no need to alter the message.
Yeah, of course there will be some market localizations that our managing directors for each country can comment on. But the cornerstones apply for all markets.
Thank you. And then finally the NPS and the target over 60. So what was the level in 2023?
The level is around 60 depending on the market, or 50 depending on the market.
Okay. Thank you.
Yes, thanks. One of your points was this seamless omnichannel experience. So what are you currently missing or what do you what's the main things you want to improve or add there to the kind of things you have as of today?
Yes, so becoming this seamless omnichannel company, it's a journey. And we have started working on it a few years ago.
What it means for us is that we need to know where the customers are and when and be there together with them and always be connected. So not just through the showrooms or telephones, but for example, through the chat, which we have now established in all markets.
So does that mean some kind of new systems or new data for you or is it more just kind of more of the way of operating and how are you contacting the customers?
Well, it's about being able to provide a wide variety of touchpoints to the customers and being available so that they can engage with us in the way that they want to.
Okay. Thanks.
Mattias?
Just want to make sure I understand. The Net Promoter Score, the 60, how is that measured?
Is it basically like 6 out of 10 from customers or how is that defined?
Yeah, the goal is the 60. But at the moment, the last year it is around 50 depending on the market. So Net Promoter Score is based on the question that how likely is it that you recommend Kamux either to a friend or a colleague? And then it is calculated based on a scale from 0 to 10. And 0 to 6 is the detractors, 9 to 10 are the loyals and promoters, and then we have the middle people there from 7 to 8. And then it is a number where the loyal ones are subtracted from the detractors. So that is the number.
And it is basically a set of questions which are ranked from or that can be pointed from 0 to 10?
Yes. Yeah. And based on the question, how would you recommend Kamux?
Okay. Any further questions from the audience? No further questions from the audience. And I'm starting to think that our webcast lines need to be checked. So if maybe someone on the webcast can just post a note saying, "Hello," so that I know that you guys are there and that the questions are coming through, if any. But again, expecting them at the very end. Thank you, Aino. And now we welcome Juha to the stage.
Hello, Juha Saarinen from Sourcing. I'm going to walk you through how we are going to take Kamux sourcing to the next level by strengthening our international sourcing and supply chain management. And how we're going to build trustworthiness in the eyes of the customers with standardized and industrialized processing of the car, meaning inspection and preparing the car for sale. And thirdly, how we're going to go to original sources of cars.
We buy cars from 16 different European countries, so basically all over. There are three main supply categories that cars are purchased from: professional channel, meaning leasing companies, rental companies, other car dealers, auction houses, auction platforms. So basically business-to-business type of purchasing. Then directly from consumers. Thirdly, the trading of the cars. So meaning that the customer comes to us and wants to buy a car from us and brings his or her old car to us as a trading. In Kamux operating countries, actually the main channel is different in each of the countries. In Finland, most of the cars that come in are tradings. When in Sweden, we do direct purchases from consumers and that is more than 50% of the cars. In Germany, it's dominated by B2B purchases, so those professional channel cars.
All of the cars that come into Kamux point of sale go through processing. Processing means preparing the car for sale. So washing, cleaning the car, inspecting the car, doing needed repairs, being big or small, might be paintwork, might be some tire work, and doing needed repairs. Of course then modeling of the car, which includes also taking the photos. So that's what we mean with processing. We can do processing either centralized or locally in stores. Process is the same no matter where we do it. We do have processing centers at the moment in Finland, in north, in Oulu, our own operated hub. Then we are just piloting in southern Finland operations with the outsourced model, supplier there is SE-Mäkinen. In Germany, we are having two hubs, the other one nearby Düren and the other one in the Hamburg area.
Both of those are operated as an outsourced model. In Sweden, we are looking for options still that how we're going to be doing it. But these are the kind of like the main options there as well. So the five strategic priority areas for our supply chain in this strategy period are here. So cross-border collaboration utilizing Kamux presence and footprint in three countries more. We saw in Vesa's presentation that the market in Germany is huge comparing to what it is in Finland. So we will go to the market where the cars are, so to Europe. And we will invest on that in the purchasing team. Also strengthening the purchases from original sources. So minimizing the margin loss with those intermediate players who are there taking their share from the value chain, but not necessarily bringing the value as much as they could.
So we aim to go directly to the original sources. Meaning also opportunity to purchase from bigger fleets and larger batches of cars. Then the centralized hubs for standardized quality. So increasing that. As mentioned, we have this pilot ongoing now in southern Finland and planning to also do that in Sweden and already operating in Germany. But that really is about ensuring the standardized quality and also enabling certain maneuvers in supply chain like using them as a delivery center for logistics, routes, etc. Then this active and smart supply chain management. So we already have good ways with our current ERP to see where our cars are and how we manage the supply chain. But we will also there take a next step to really see where our cars are and make sure that they are at the right place at the right time.
And, importantly, reducing the lead times with continuous improvement methodology. Because time is money in this business, meaning that the stock rotation, stock days of the cars, it's in essence. So also in the supply and inbound supply chain, every day that we can squeeze out will be good for us. And this active vendor management, we are also taking steps to take on the stronger grip also to so-called indirect sourcing at Kamux. Meaning like maintenance work, tire work, repairs, fixing of the cars, etc. And then about this quality and transparency for the customers. Actually, maybe I go to the next slide. So in Finland, Kamux.fi, you can already find for some cars examples of condition reports. So they are, as seen here, certified by Kamux.
A customer can in Kamux webpage give their email and then they will get back the condition report of that individual car. We're going to be increasing the share of that in the future. Also we are planning to have at some point a third party doing the inspection to also, again, increase the trustworthiness in the eyes of the customer. So to summarize, so it's about industrialization and standardization of the operations and processing. We're going to be putting more effort on cross-border purchasing and international sourcing, going to original sources and bigger batches. Also using these hubs as bringing the trustworthiness and quality, similar way of working everywhere at Kamux. Also then improving the visibility on our supply chain in a smart way and shortening the lead times.
Thank you, Juha. Again, time for questions.
Let's begin with the audience and be hopeful for the webcast. They're live. We've got several messages. Thank you for those.
Thank you. Regarding your sourcing strategy, I hear you loud and clear about centralizing the operations and making it efficient from that perspective. I'm not quite sure I understand the advantages of kind of outsourcing that inspection in comparison to keeping that fully in-house. Can you explain tha t to me?
We have defined in very detail how the inspection is done. Whether it's outsourced or insourced in our processing center, it will be done in the same way, in Kamux way. That inspection report will be also entered in our ERP in a similar way whatsoever.
The value add then, if there is a third party inspection report, like I think Andy will be talking today about, in Sweden we have today announced that we started a collaboration with a third party inspection, is that a customer might also value more if there is a third party stamp on the inspection report.
Yeah, very interesting topic. You mentioned that you source cars from 16 different countries. I assume that you have your kind of favorite trades, so to say, picking from one country, selling to a specific one. What can you say about, you know, assuming that the margin on a car obviously depends on the car, but it's at some range. Just thinking that you will bring a car from, I don't know, Central Europe with the ship to Finland and all the processing and stuff like that.
So can you say anything about how much of the margin that goes to these kind of logistical costs? Because for an outsider, at the first glance, you feel like almost the whole margin is eating up by all the logistics. So what can you share and say about that?
If I give you a very rough and rounded number on how much the transportation of the car, let's say, from Germany to Finland is, I use, okay, I round it up, so EUR 1,000. That's a ballpark that you can maybe use.
And maybe I ask that question later on the data.
I can continue on a bit of the same topic. You mentioned that you want to increase or improve further the cross-border sourcing. And then I have thought that you have been already doing quite a bit of that earlier.
So are you looking to really significantly increase the quantity of the cars or the share of the cars being sourced cross-border? Or is there some qualitative elements you want to improve?
Yes, we have been doing it for a long time. And it's one of the, I think, strong points in Kamux and has been. But we are looking to increase it. And what can you say? How much will that be? It depends also on the market situation. So for example, now when the Swedish krona has been weakening, Sweden has been actually the main channel to purchase cars to Finland. And if you go some years back, Germany might have been the main channel. So it depends on how also the market develops, what are the prices of the cars in different markets. Like how does the EV market in Germany behave? All these impact on it.
Okay, good. And then you also said you want to decrease the amount of intermediaries or whatever in the sourcing value chain. So can you say some ballpark number on how much of your current purchases are coming through such intermediaries?
I don't think we have given that number out. And I probably don't even have an exact number for that to give. But that's our target, that we have those suppliers who add value there. And if there clearly is just a middleman putting a markup on the car, then not necessarily our supplier.
Yeah, okay. And then finally, you said that the sourcing channels in the different countries are pretty different. So does that itself have an impact on the margin levels on the various countries? Or is that just the way that the markets operate in various countries?
Not that much that I see that it would be impacting margin levels. But it's more impacting how we do the sourcing work and how it's conducted, the transactional purchases, but also how we source for the channels.
Good, clear. Thank you.
But we have questions from online. So we're going to take those here in between. Thank you, Mark Lehtonen. How many days do you currently need to turn stock on average? And where do you think you can be in the future after the improvements are implemented? And connected to that, how can this improve your overall working capital?
We aim at 45 days of average stock.
And when we improve? That's after the improvements, 45 days. Okay, thank you. Pia, did you still have a question?
Yes, thank you.
Thinking back on Kamux to when you were listed, I'm trying to paint a roadmap now in my mind on how your purchasing or sourcing strategy has looked like. So can you remind us how much is purchased locally at the showrooms, say in Finland, versus or has it changed in any way? Are the ratio unchanged compared to, say, when you were listed?
I've been in the company two years, so it might be a question that I necessarily don't remember that far. But during my two years, it has not significantly changed. The share of the, and we call them door purchases, so it has been pretty much on the same level.
Okay, thank you.
Mattias?
Interesting topic. Yeah, on the sourcing still. So just in terms of car dealership, it's been taken a while to understand the competitive advantage that a firm like Kamux can have.
But in my mind, of course, a data-driven approach with a large volume is something that you could think that would have clear benefits. So in terms of buying cars with the increased volumes that you now have, help me understand how much sense it is in assuming that with data and large volumes, you can kind of notice situations where a certain model, for example, I just throw this out, Volkswagen Golf 1.4, year model 2015, is for some reason spiking in demand in a country or in a city. And you are able to source it all of a sudden very cheaply in another location. So this was just an example. But identifying these situations based on large own volume, sales volumes, and data, how much of a reality is this? Or is it just like imagination in my mind? Is this actually happening?
And what ways do you use in order to kind of find these lucrative situations, so to say?
It's everyday business for us. We do it every day, every week. And we also have a process called demand supply planning, DSP, where sales, purchasing, our data guys, and management come together. And we look at the data and we see these changes. But it's daily work that we look at the data. What is selling in the market? What is selling in our own stock? So it is very much reality what we do.
And in those situations then that you would find like a large batch, for example, from a professional dealer or something, isn't it then the case that you have a few number of fierce competitors that squeeze the margin?
I can just imagine this professional dealer calling through all the 5 and just best price wins. So is this on a daily basis the case that you have this fierce price competition on those batches? Or is there any way that you can kind of get on top of the deal, so to say?
Yes, there is no way that there would not be competition. There is always several others who are bidding. So we just need to be the one who then gives the best offer. And it's kind of like fitting our need, what's there in the batch. Because of course, the batch also is consisting of individual cars. And car is sold, then we sell it as an individual car. So we need to really look into details of what cars there are in the batch.
Maybe if we have a mic for Martin as well. Yes. So I want
to make a comment on your question, Martin Verrelli, the MD from Germany. What we are currently doing and what the advantage of Kamux is, is our international presence. Right at this moment, you may know that the used EV market in Germany is more or less not existing, whereas it is existing in the Nordics. So in that regard, we have a huge advantage with this international organization. We can buy the EVs for low prices in Germany and get them to Finland. And that's
what brings us ahead of a lot of competitors. Great. Thank you for great questions. And now I think it is time for a break. We will be back at 3:45 P.M. So 20-minute break. And look forward to seeing you back then. Welcome back.
We are ready to continue with Kamux Capital Markets Day. Next we have the country presentations. I welcome on stage Jani Koivu, who's the Managing Director for Kamux Finland. Welcome.
Hello everyone. My name is Jani Koivu. I'm the Managing Director for Kamux Finland. In Finland, we are the market leader what comes to the volume, number of sold cars, and also what comes to the revenue. We have 46 showrooms nationwide in the whole Finland. We are also, that many might not know, we are also the market leader in utility vehicles, clear market leader in utility vehicles. We are a processing center in Oulu. Also Juha mentioned earlier that we have a partnership with the SE-Mäkinen on piloting processing center in the southern part of Finland. You can see here the revenue and profitability numbers.
As you can see in the numbers of cars sold, you can see after a difficult 2022, we got back to the speed on Q2 last year. Then the second half was already somewhat better. The direction is good. Our aim in Finland is to strengthen the position as the market leader, both in volume and also in revenue. It's twofold. It comes with that we grow the volume, i.e., the sold cars. But also that we shift the business a little bit towards the more expensive cars like EVs, hybrids, and so forth in order to drive the average price of the sold car. Also, we will scale up the commercial utility business, commercial vehicle business. We have a lot of services around that one. We measure that business separately, have our own staff for that one and own locations as well.
Then we have a lot of add-on sales. And historically, Kamux has been pretty good on integrated services. We will push that one even further. There's much more growth to be done. And also we will have new services such as accessories, EVs, charging kits, cables. And also we will take a little bit back that innovating theme what was originated from Kamux's history to piloting new services to the market. We will have something around tires and so forth. On network optimization, we will move towards the large showrooms. You have already saw today, some of you saw today our Koskela store what was upgraded. We have done quite a few in the Helsinki capital region. Aino was mentioning that we are opening our flagship store over 400 cars in Tampere Lakalaiva in early April.
And also we will build the dedicated sections in our showrooms towards the EVs, hybrids, premiums, and so forth. Centralized standardized inspections, we have started piloting the condition reports. We have now cars over EUR 50,000 available online. Our aim is to bring it down to all the cars above EUR 15,000. Furthermore, on pricing, I already mentioned earlier, we will have a central-driven fair pricing. Either you buy or sell cars, the consumers know that they get the best price from us. Strengthening the leading position comes from the Rework Retail Network. We will have a more focused showroom concepts, upgrade large stores, new flagship stores. And also we will be building the stores in Jyväskylä, Turku, northern Finland, Helsinki region. Then smaller stores, we either upgrade them or close them.
As said earlier, improve the offering on EVs, plug-in hybrids, and a more focused approach on the Kamux concept in mind. We see a lot of potential on the commercial vehicle concept and offering. We will drive that one even further. And the whole idea behind all of this one is to drive the profit orientation, how we lead the business in Finland, and also enhance the productivity because we do have the scale. Customer is always the king in the center, epicenter, as you may say. And this is what we will take a huge focus on going forward now in the strategic period. And then the new services, like mentioned earlier, when the owning, for example, owning a car is not an option, we have services around that one going forward.
Excellence in customer experience with transparent omnichannel concept, as Aino was explaining earlier. You need both the brick and mortar, but also the online. We have a selection of cars and services to build to match them on customer needs in Finland. We have the largest car selection in Finland. We got currently 5,100 cars in country for sale. And then we will plan to, and already started to utilize more our cross-selling opportunities. We have 1,600 cars in Sweden, just over 1,000 in Germany. We have altogether 7,000, nearly 7,800 cars today what is available for our customers in Finland. If that is not enough, we can find you one.
We are ready for questions. And Pia begins.
Thank you. You talk now a lot about centrally-driven fair pricing. So can you give me some concrete examples on how you change your way of working now?
How does this differ from your previous way of pricing cars?
We have a lot of data, as has been mentioned earlier. Both our own data, but also in Finland there's market data available as well, as Juha mentioned earlier with the ZIP codes and so forth. We also have data about the, you know, repair cost, after cost, something related to cars' lifecycle already from our own data. And then we have data what cars are selling very fast. You know, for example, that BMW over there that we got it in here and now sold. So then it might, that might mean that we need to a little bit maybe have a different kind of pricing approach on that one or buy them even more or something like that.
So our idea is that with our ERP, which is called KMS, Kamux Management System, we will bring a tool to help our sellers and purchasers to have the data both in the market, but with our own to support the pricing decisions.
Okay. Thank you. Then regarding your showrooms, you have 46 now. So the net level after the changes of increasing the size of some and closing some smaller, so is 46 kind of the level where Kamux will be now during the new strategy period?
That remains to be seen. We are working on it.
Okay. Thank you.
I had pretty much the same question, but I'll continue on it. So I think you have quite a lot more stores than your main competitors. So do you think you have some advantage on your wide store network?
Or do you think that if the customers go more and more online, you could do with like clearly fewer number of stores than you have today?
I think we have, if you go to the smaller cities and smaller locations in Finland, we are clear number one over there as well by country mile, if you may say. We definitely need to beef up our store network in the capital region area, Turku, central Finland as well. And we shall see how it goes. But the whole idea is to move to the larger locations in order to have a better offering of the cars for our consumers at the one location when you come over there. We might have a few less during the three-year period, if you may say. But that needs to be seen. Good.
Thank you.
Any further questions from the audience?
Our webcast audience seems to be very satisfied with the delivery. Again, no questions. Thank you, Jani. Thank you. We are ready to move forward with Sweden and Andy. Welcome.
All right. Hello everyone. My name is Andy Rietschel. I'm the new, I would say, Managing Director for Sweden. Today we will talk a little bit more about how we will strengthen the Swedish business to ensure profitability in the new strategic period. As mentioned before by Tapio, Kamux is a market challenger. We are the number six in Sweden at the current time. We have approximately 26% of the consolidated group revenue. We have a more or less nationwide presence with 23 locations as of 31st of December 2023. We have grown really fast in Sweden in the past years and consolidated that growth a little bit in the past couple of years.
But we also need to look forward. And we will take a lot of interesting steps in the strategic period to actually grow further again, both in terms of revenue and in terms of sold cars. Maybe this is the most interesting slide. A lot of information, but also a lot of the focus on a lot of the information where we will focus on in the coming two years. What we had noticed when I came in as well and even before that is that since we grow very fast in Sweden, we had more or less 23 separate units not really currently working as one team. And this is obviously a really important part of strengthening and streamlining all the core processes to enhance the customer focus, to rebuild the teamwork and the confidence that comes with working as a team.
With that, obviously, also comes the productivity improvement and how we can improve cost control by setting the right processes and make sure that we have the right resources in place. At the same time, as also Tapio mentioned in the end-of-year report, we noticed a little bit of misconduct, which we have corrected. Going forward, I think if we set the right processes and routines on how we do things, that will also be a thing of the past. Overall volume increase is really important, as we mentioned, in terms of revenue, in terms of growth of volume. It has been mentioned many times before today, but the focus of having the right cars in the right place is key to that. But also how we increase the add-on sales and the new products in terms of, for instance, tire sales implementation.
So tire sales, obviously, in the Swedish and Finnish market is really important to have an extra set of wheels for the winter season. That is a really important thing that we will push much harder going forward. Also, financing. I can answer the question regarding financial lease already now. When is it coming to Sweden? It's already there. It has been. We are working together with two of the main partners of financing, DNB and Santander, for financial lease. That is something that we already have in place. But that level needs to increase. We need to also increase the level of insurance and Kamux Plus warranty services as well as adding even more things such as leasing and private leasing options for the customers. With growth also comes increasing the store network. Really important to have the right places, the right locations.
Jani was talking a little bit about it for Finland. Obviously, it's the same is true for Sweden. We have to adjust the network as we become more unified. We need to have a countrywide presence in the right locations and to give the right opportunities. Part of this whole centralization theme is also obviously to clarify the Kamux concept for all the stores in Sweden. We need to make it clear what values are the Kamux values for both internal and external to grow the brand awareness in Sweden where we have a little bit further to go. It's not as commonly known as in Finland. This is really important as we move into this strategic period as well. Also, as Juha mentioned previously, we are also looking at establishing this hub concept. But more importantly, to build the trust for the customer, the trustworthiness.
It's super important to have the third-party inspections for all the cars sold in Sweden. I'm really happy to announce, actually, today that we have signed partnership agreements with two of the main players for this in Sweden, Opus and Svensk Bilprovning. They are super excited to get started with us. Also, this feels really good for us as a retailer to be able to tell our customer the built-in added value into this in our products. Same concept goes for pricing as all the other countries, obviously. Centrally-driven and fair pricing is a key. I know from previous experiences that this is something that is definitely possible. This is something that will improve the customer experience, but also our margins going forward. We spoke a little bit about adding and looking at the network.
Something that is very clear looking at Sweden as a very, very long country and big country is that we are currently not present in the northern, further northern part of Sweden. We know that there's a market there, in particular along the coastal regions. And also in the really far north, there are cross-sale opportunities with Finland. So this is something that we are planning to enter within this period. And we will get back to you when we open those showrooms. We also need to look at the current locations. How are they today? Are they too small? Are they in the wrong locations? Can they be upgraded in some way to improve the efficiency and productivity of the current showrooms in the key cities?
So there will be some adjustments, but they come natural as we grow and look how we can be more efficient in the network. And last but not least, it's important to say as well that the market is, in some sense, it's a lot of dynamics happening in the market. So we need to be ready to catch opportunities if they arise, whether it is to buy competitors when they close. There has been a couple of closures for new car businesses, particularly for the private leases coming back where they have taken residual values and they cannot sustain that in their balance sheets. Those opportunities could be very, very interesting for us, both in terms of buying fleets, but also in terms of looking at new locations. Going back to the profitability, super important, obviously. You cannot build a house without a good foundation. This is the core.
So we need to strengthen this a little bit more with the processes and the policies. And we make sure that we need to make sure that also the corrective measures are being done with the productivity improvements and the cost control, as mentioned before. The showroom upgrades is also very much part of this, as mentioned before. What we saw, some of us saw earlier today, will obviously also come to Sweden to upgrade the showrooms in a good way. We will also expand home deliveries, really important with such a big country as Sweden, to give the absolutely best customer experience. And then, obviously, car offering. I come from the EV industry. I think that's quite clear as well from those who have spoken with me before. And I think this is a really important thing. It's a natural transition, as we've shown before.
Vesa showed a nice graph of the growth of the new car market also happening in the second-hand and the used car market. It's a natural transition that we will grow EVs and plug-in hybrids also here. And once again, the add-on services and increase the tire sales penetration is also a really important key to the profitability in Sweden. Last but not least, the competitive advantage to ensure profitability, obviously. We have the fantastic opportunity of a nationwide, more or less, coverage and the cross-sale opportunities that give. We have the expansion of a very clear omnichannel concept. And obviously, the international sourcing and availability of cars from Finland and Germany will also support this competitive edge. So happy to take any questions.
Yes. So we will begin taking questions from the audience here. Go ahead, Pia.
Thank you. You did not mention a lot about sourcing in Sweden.
Sweden has been a market where all the players have sourced cars. So do you see this sourcing as a challenge or an opportunity for you to grow?
I mean, sourcing is always on top of our mind. I told the team that it's one of the most important things. It's how we do business. We need to buy first to be able to sell. But also, as Juha showed, I think there are different channels we need to look at. And we need to look at the most efficient ones. Currently, the main channel is from private individuals that we're buying. But we need to look at how can we expand that into other channels as well. But this is also a group effort in many ways. We must not forget that we have the competitive advantage of getting cars from other countries as well.
And whether it is that we give cars to not give, but that we transfer cars to Germany or Finland or the other way around.
Thank you. Then regarding the volume increase, can you quantify the volume increase you look for now during the strategy period or to meet your long-term financial targets?
Well, it's obviously a good question. And I understand that that's something that would be interesting to hear. But of course, we have our targets and how we will move forward with those. But I think that also depends on how we execute on the network growth and how we adjust that part.
And regarding the network growth, I think during the past two years or last year, at least, it has become evident that Kamux has the network but lacks the volume.
So do you really need to expand your presence with more showrooms, or can you just grow happily with the current network?
Well, I think once again, we grew very fast in Sweden. And with that came the fact that maybe we didn't actually grow the showrooms in the absolutely right locations, maybe in the right cities, but not in the right locations and with the right sizes. So some of our showrooms are fairly small. Obviously, they can be larger. And we can get some benefit of scale by essentially switching houses.
Okay. And then you discussed the brand awareness. So what kind of marketing investments, or how do you plan to step up the marketing to get Kamux more visible in Sweden?
Well, I think today is a great start, right? We can finally start to talk about our new brand concept.
We can show what we want to do. I think these are key ingredients to really step up the marketing efforts and to show where we want to go and how we want to do it. Once again, as Tapio mentioned, it's about trustworthiness. I think that's a big key to everything that we will do going forward in Sweden, in the used car market. Also, Swedes, they want to have a very trustworthy car deal when they buy a car. Everything that we do now and going forward will point towards that direction.
Okay. Just in terms of euros or Swedish krona, so I mean, what kind of investment levels? Is this significant or business as usual?
No. This is a group effort, right?
I think you can do a lot with little, so to say, as long as you have the right message.
Thank you.
Yes. Thanks. A couple of ones from me. You mentioned that you have been operating more as an independent store than a unified country company. So where do you think you are in kind of that process?
Because I would imagine that changing that kind of way of working and culture is not an overnight process. So are you in the beginning or closer to the end of changing that? No. But I think that the common way of doing things and the culture has always been there.
I think it's just a matter of making sure that we are aligned fully on the processes and the routines and exactly how to do things and how we meet the customers and what the store looks like and that a customer would feel at home, whether they come to a store in Stockholm or in Gothenburg or in Örebro. I think that's really what the main point here is.
Are those types of changes that should happen during this year or during the strategy period, or what's the time frame?
It's a continuous work. But definitely, that's our aim.
Yeah. Okay. Then regarding the integrated services, I think if I look at your numbers, your penetrations are actually fairly okay in Sweden if we compare it to Finland.
But my understanding is that your contracts are such that you are making clearly less money on those kind of similar penetrations. So do you think there's a chance that during the strategy period, you are starting now, you would be able to make significantly better contract terms for you in terms of integrated services, I guess, mostly financing?
No. But this is obviously something that we're reviewing constantly and looking at the market offer and how we can make our add-on services as attractive as possible. I think in general, in Sweden, it's very clear that you finance your car in some way, in one way or the other, independent if it's a new car or a used car. So I think that's a natural way of transitioning towards looking at what the customer actually wants.
And I think we can always improve on those skills, whether it is financing or insurance or Kamux Plus or wheels sets in that sense. So that is something that we're working on this to get even better penetration rates.
Okay. Thank you.
And we have a couple of questions from the online. In terms of market share, which rank could you be organically in the next three to five years?
Yeah. That's a good question. No. But I mean, at the end of the day, we are going to grow. And the main growth, as mentioned before, will be organic. Whether there will be opportunities that arise remains to be seen and how that will add on to the growth.
Thank you. Another one. How long do you think it will take you to get back to more meaningful profitability?
That's a good question.
We obviously have very similar targets as the group in general. I think that looking at how we're starting to work in the organization, we're putting new KPIs and new measures that should give effect in both short, medium, and long term. This is on top of our mind constantly, how we're going to improve this profitability part.
Okay. Perhaps in the end Q&A, we might come back to some of the timings as well. Let's take one more question from the audience. The question that we have remaining from the web audience is also something that we're going to save to the end. Go ahead, Mattias.
Yeah. So Kamux Sweden is an interesting part and in a very different situation than Kamux Finland, where volumes are on a different level and profitability and so on, also having a clear market-leading position.
So help me a little bit understand which fight or which fights you think are the most significant ones in order to take on Riddermark and the other top fives in order for a Finnish-based company to slowly but surely gain market share in Sweden.
Well, I think first of all, just going back to one of the first slides that Vesa showed, I mean, the market is incredibly fragmented. And there is a big opportunity for everyone in that sense. At the same time, the Swedish market is about twice the size as the Finnish market, challenging my colleague Jani. But jokes aside, I think we all work in a little bit different ways. I could not say much about how our competitors work, only how we plan to implement our priorities during this period.
With that, there will be, as far as we believe and think, a growth in the numbers based on that.
Thank you. Now it's time to move forward. And then we may take further questions at the end. Next, we have Martin Verrelli from German business. Welcome.
Martin Verrelli from Kamux in Germany. Yeah. Germany, the biggest market in terms of size, the smallest Kamux market at the moment. We will see. Kamux started its operations a few years ago, eight years ago, in the northern part of Germany in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein. Kamux GmbH represents 9% of the group revenue. And at the moment, we are running nine showrooms in Germany. Last year, we moved out of the metropolitan area of Hamburg. We opened a store close to the Belgian and Dutch border in Düren, in the Rhineland.
And at the end of the year, we opened a store in Hameln, which is northern Westphalia, so that we are now, as I said, a bit more spread. Kamux grew relatively fast over the last year, last years, sorry, in 2022 due to some external impacts, war, corona crisis, lack of supply, which was the main driver. We did not grow. And now, for this year and for the future, it's all about profitability. What we did last year, we focused on implementing processes to make this business scalable. It doesn't make sense to open stores in such a big country like Germany if you do not have processes that you can replicate and that will help you to scale the business. How are we going to achieve our profitability, our profitability targets? First of all, it sounds very obvious, via volume.
As I said, we have worked on the processes last year and are still working on them, are improving them. Now we will, via organic growth, achieve higher volumes. One thing we also did, we moved back a little bit from the more expensive cars to somehow cheaper cars, more in the direction of the cars that our colleagues in Finland and Sweden are selling. That will help us as the market there shows higher margins and much higher volume than the sectors that we were acting in before. One focus area for us in Germany is to be Kamux. Everybody in Finland knows Kamux. In Sweden, it's also relatively well known. In Germany, we are not yet well known. In the northern part of Germany, in the Hamburg area, yes, but in the rest of the country, not so much.
So that's something we need to work on. We also need to work on our add-on sales, on other products, financing. I cannot say guarantees because we do not sell guarantees in Germany. That's legally not correct. We sell repair cost insurances. That's practically the same thing. Legally, it's a different thing. Therefore, it's quite important to be precise. Something else we are doing at the moment, we will be starting to sell leasing contracts from April on in Germany, starting with three stores as a pilot. That's specifically of interest for small businesses, independent companies. They have a tax advantage of leasing in Germany. So far, we haven't done this. Now we can also attract those companies, those customer groups. That will also help us to move the business forward in two senses. First of all, we attract new customer groups.
We can sell more cars, and we can sell this additional service as well. Showroom network, what I already mentioned at the beginning. Until last year, we were focused mainly on Hamburg and parts of Schleswig-Holstein. We have relocated 1 store there in Heide. We are relocating another one this month close to Hamburg. We have opened 2 new stores last year, and we are going to open another one in the southwestern part of Germany in 2 weeks' time. What we have also done, and that's quite important for us, we talked about processes earlier. We have these hub partnerships. So the 2 hubs, Juha already mentioned them in Düren and close to Hamburg in Otterstedt, where we process our cars.
The aim was, and it works quite well, to first of all, speed up process and secondly, also to increase the quality of our cars that we sell to our customers. And of course, as everything we do, we do it for our customers. We want to sell better quality, but we also want to monetize this better quality. And that's the idea behind these processes. And there was a question earlier about stock days. Maybe I can show you that we are relatively efficient here. Two weeks ago, the numbers for 2023 were published by the Deutsche Automobil Treuhand, DAT. The average stock days in Germany for used cars in the networks is roughly 100 days. And we, today, in Kamux, Germany, we are at 39 point something. So we have quite some efficient processes in the meantime.
We will continue these operations when we open new stores, of course. We will benefit from the economies of scale that we are having there. Yeah. One other point that also my colleagues already mentioned, the centrally driven fair pricing. I think Jani mentioned it in his presentation. It's exactly the same in Germany. We want to be fair when we buy cars from customers, C2B, which is at the moment a smaller scale compared to the other markets. The majority of our sourcing really comes from the fleets that we are buying, manufacturers, leasing companies, and others. So there's room for improvement. Therefore, fair pricing is very important for us to get more cars. And on the other side, when we sell cars, we also want to show our customers that we have the best quality for the best price. We talked about this already, the store network.
On the map, you can see that the strong focus on northern Germany: 2 stores opened already. The next one will also be in the southwestern part of Germany. Later on, we will move into eastern Germany. Why are we doing this? The southwestern part of Germany is an area with very high car density and a very high used car demand. People need cars to go to work there. In eastern Germany, it's mainly lack of public transportation. So also there, there is a huge demand for cars. And that's where we think we should be and where we should act. By the way, especially southwestern part of Germany, the competition is relatively weak or not existing in the sense. There is no big used car brand. It's different in eastern Germany.
But in the area where we are expanding at the moment, we find, I wouldn't say green field, but there is enough room for us. What we have also done already, what I mentioned, we have upgraded our showroom in Hamburg. We have relocated one store. Are relocating another one. And are working on some of the existing stores as well. Building up scale. What is important for us? Selection of cars. We heard about sourcing earlier. Sourcing is key in used car business. It starts and it ends with sourcing. If you buy the wrong cars for the wrong price, you will never get profitable. So that's, yeah, why we really need to continue to focus on. And I think we are doing quite a good job there already. Can be improved, but it's okay. Third-party processing of cars.
As I said, the quality of what we are offering our customers today is much better than what we have offered two years ago or one and a half years ago. The time we need, and that was our biggest fear, that the process would slow down because we have to transport the cars to those hubs. They get prepared, and then they get transported to the stores. In the past, cars got transported directly to the stores, cleaned, repaired in the store, and they were ready for sale. But as I mentioned earlier, that's not a problem at all. The processing times are really good. Recently, we also gained some days because of the transportation times, which were a problem at the beginning of the Ukraine war that has normalized again.
What we are doing now in April, we will be starting with independent third-party inspection reports as a pilot in three stores in Hameln, in Düren, and in the new store that we are going to open. Why independent? It's not a Kamux report. It's from an independent assessment company or assessor company. Germans need certificates. They love it. That will help us to gain trust. We will be very transparent with those reports. And the customer can really get a good impression on the real condition of the car. And there was a question earlier, if we sell those reports, and I know rightly said, no, no, we do not sell them. On the other side, it's also not free of charge, of course. The business case here is very easy. The costs for such a report at the moment are between EUR 65 and EUR 75 that we pay.
But we are expecting that we will be able to charge between EUR 200 and EUR 300. For the more expensive cars, even a bit more with having such a report. I mean, that's, from my point of view, a pretty straightforward business case in our business. I mentioned already the integrated services. We are increasing or inventing something new, the leasing, which we didn't have until now. We are professionalizing our tire sales. That was something we have done aside. Now we are doing it in a more professional way. Again, sourcing, our main topic. We have now, since last year, been able to purchase cars directly from manufacturers. That's something we will expand further.
We have contracts also with leasing companies where we can source cars from, which will secure that we have enough volume to really, yeah, be able to grow as fast and as much as we want. Our strengths, our USPs in Germany, again, sourcing. We can offer really favorable prices to our customers. Why? We have the professional sourcing. We have different sources. So we also have a huge variety of cars. We have quite strict cost management. And as I said two or three times already, our processes are in pretty good shape at the moment. Then easiness is also quite important. I'm not sure how familiar you guys are with Germany. But when we talk about digitalization, Germany is not really, yeah, advanced. Let's put it like this. So we can really do contracts, yeah, digital for the car and for financing.
Really, in Germany, it's something special. You might think, okay, fine. But we've been approached by many potential partners who cannot offer digital contracting, banks. That's something we won't do because our customers are, in the meantime, used to this, yeah, modern way of buying and selling cars. Last but not least, what we already mentioned earlier, our international capabilities. We can sell cars. Our colleagues in Sweden and Finland can sell cars from our stock. And we, at the same time, we have access to stock in those markets. That's something that not many players in Germany do have. So that's also another USP that we can offer. That's it from my side. Thank you.
So we are ready for questions to Martin. Pia, please go ahead.
Thank you. So I hear loud and clear that you are expanding steadily in Germany.
So choosing the location is, of course, key. So how do you manage the risk? I mean, in expansion, choosing the right location and deciding upon the correct size of the showroom so it's not too small, not too large. How do you do, and how are your plans looking like?
Yeah. When we look at locations, we have, at the moment, if you want, yeah, it might sound a bit cynical, but we have the advantage that a lot of dealerships are closing down in Germany. The franchise dealers, many of them, stop business because of manufacturers changing their model. They are moving to an agency model. And that gives us the opportunity to take over quite good locations. And that's what we are looking for, to be honest, these kinds of stores.
Then, of course, we do an analysis of population density, population age, used car density or car density, demand. We check the situation of public transportation and a few other factors. And then we take a decision. We do business case calculations. And our board of directors then approves or doesn't approve, whatever, our business case. So that's the way we do it. We try to be as data-driven as possible and not just say, "I like the trees around the store," or whatever. So. There's a question directly linked to this from the webcast. Why don't you go south to, for example, Munich? Big population, a lot of used cars to buy. First of all, we go south, as you can see.
Logistics-wise, it makes sense to not go from Hamburg next step to Munich because then you do not have anything in between, and the distances are quite big. At the moment, with the two hubs, we can serve both or all the stores. So the distances are under control. That's quite important. Second answer, especially to Munich, I don't think that Munich is the best location to open a used car business, to be very honest. When you look at the percentage of new cars sold and used cars sold in the Munich area, particularly, then there are other regions which are favorable.
So is Munich a sourcing market then?
Well, it depends. I mean, the sourcing market, the way we do sourcing is we source cars from fleets, leasing companies, manufacturers, and we source them from them. So yes, there is a manufacturer in Munich.
And yes, there is also a leasing company in Munich. From that regard, yes. But the remarketing is going on in other parts of Germany.
Okay. Very good. If I can continue, you talked about the lease, about buying from leasing companies and from manufacturers. So how does that work with your strategy towards lower price points?
Yeah. I mean, we have leasing companies. The cars that we are interested in are mainly of the age of between two and five years. We have certain relatively strict regulations, accident-free limits with the mileage. So we try not to buy cars with more than 100,000 km. And we have also a list of vehicles which we do not buy because the risk for us is too big.
The price that we are aiming for, the average sales price that we are aiming for at the moment is between EUR 18,000 and EUR 19,000. So from that regard, cars between 3 and 5 years very often match in that area. And yeah, especially of the non-premium brands, including Volkswagen, we very often have cars that fit in there, plus the smaller models from BMW, Mercedes, and Audi as well.
Okay.
Let's take one more question from the webcast. And then the rest of the questions, we leave till the end of the presentation. What is the main reason for not being profitable in Germany? And what is the way to get profitable?
Yeah. So the main reason why we have not been profitable is we had no processes in Germany. We were running 7 or 8 independent stores. And we did not benefit from the economies of scale.
The answer how to get profitable is increase the volume and lift the processes that we have invented.
Very good. Thank you, Martin. Now we are going to move forward with the financials. I welcome Jukka Havia.
Good afternoon. So we are closing. We are close to be at the final stretches of the afternoon. And what I'm going to do, I'm going to tell you how we're going to drive the performance. And that's now linked to what Tapio already mentioned, the financial and non-financial long-term targets, and give you a little bit more perspective on those. And if you look at now what we have done, we have set the targets which we published this morning for the long term. And like Tapio noted, we haven't explicitly defined the time frame. It's long term.
We're going to do the strategy actions that have been discussed earlier today in Sweden, in Finland, in Germany, and in sourcing in Aino's marketing area. They're going to then drive us towards these targets. We have set the aim and target. We think these are doable. We think and we believe we can do these organically. Then if needed and if the opportunities arise, now we have an additional option to utilize the M&A as well, either to accelerate the development, speed it up, or alternatively to add something on our offering. Of the targets, the first one is linked to the volume. In total, as a group, we aim to sell 100,000 cars per year. That's the annual target. Secondly, as far as the value of the sales is concerned, our aim to be at EUR 1.5 billion in the long term.
Thirdly, and that is important, the growth which we aim to do shall be profitable. And how we're going to measure profitability is as a relative, which is a percentage of that revenue. So the adjusted EBIT margin target set at 4%. So that is the financial set of targets. Before going on to the non-financials, referring to what was asked earlier in the audience, of course, even if we don't have any explicit targets on the balance sheet or the capital, capital management, net working capital management, where inventory is one part of it, is, of course, very important. It's important for us both to make the growth happen. But we think there are a lot of opportunities to be better. And it's not only the inventory. It's not only, you know, what Juha just said about the sourcing. It's all the other parts. It's the receivables management.
It's also the payables management. It's always the cash conversion cycle as a total. Then we also have now explicitly stated that for the whole group, each one of us, customers are in the epicenter. Whether they are consumers, whether they are businesses, we will measure on a frequent basis their feedback, listen to that. And we want to improve our performance. So the NPS, Net Promoter Score, the target is 60. And what is really important is the employees. Like Tapio stated in the beginning, this is all about the people, all about us. And the employee NPS, we want to improve as well. And the target has been set at 40. And now looking at how we have been developing and starting from the financial performance and these targets we set, we have been growing, of course, over the last few years.
Now maybe for the last couple of years, the growth stalled based on some external macroeconomic and other sort of impacts. But our thinking is, well, if you look at the left-hand side, you see the sold cars from 2018. And we reached 68,000 cars last year. We are aiming to go up by about 50%. The revenue in euros for the total group, EUR 1 billion, we just made it last year. There's also about 50% uplift. And we think organically doable. And then if and when needed, the M&A can add something on top of that. And then finally, what is really important going forward is profitability. So the Adjusted EBIT margin that has been dropping over the last few years, we want to return back to the levels where we were.
So the 4% line, which you can see, which we actually have reached a few years back, 2018, 2019, 2020, is going to be the target. We're going to be back there. So in that sense, it's nothing extraordinary. On the other hand, lots of things to do. And how we're going to do that, first of all, is to increase the scale, utilize the scale, which is the top line. Secondly, be much more effective. It's about the productivity. It's about the efficiency. It's about the cost control. And all of that should drive towards the same direction. Applies to all the markets. Applies to all the functions. Then looking at the non-financial targets, the NPS is already at the high level. Okay? 50 + 50 is actually a high number. So most of our customers are happy. They are satisfied.
But we think building the trust, having the new concepts that Aino talked about, being much more proactive, we think we can drive it forward. And that should then also correlate positively to the financial targets, both short-term and long-term. And then finally, the employees, having the employee satisfaction, having the employee well-being, we think is going to be a positive driver as well. The frequency of getting the information is a little bit different. On the employee side, we're going to do it twice a year. So we're going to have a pulse survey in the summertime. We're going to have a more extensive survey end of the year. So it's twice a year. Whereas for the customer side, we got to get it in all the time. So much more data points, larger sample, higher frequency. So they're a little bit different.
And the eNPS we have already covered and had from 2021. Whereas the information for the customers, the NPS is a little bit younger. So we have only had the information for a shorter time. On the other hand, I think this is something that if we nail this one, it's really going to have a positive impact on the financials as well. And now the other thing which we decided and what's going to be, you know, kept intact, kept as it was, is the dividend policy. And that's more, of course, from the owner's perspective. But we have had and we will have going forward a dividend policy that states that we're going to pay out at least 25% of the net profit we make in any single financial year. So at least 25%.
If you look at what we have done, including the latest proposal that's going to be decided in a few weeks' time, 18th of April at the AGM, we have actually paid a little bit more. The payout ratio you see on the right-hand side, that's the dotted line. It has been fluctuating from about 40%-70%. We think this dividend policy that we have is actually quite stable. It's going to be doable. It's going to be feasible for the company to execute the strategy. Now, if Tapio would be willing and able to join, we would like to do the conclusion, concluding remarks jointly.
I hope you've been enjoying what you've been hearing. I think at least you've been very active with the questions. You can still continue with the questions. We try to entertain.
But I think it's been evident that profitable growth and underlining the profitability. Then on top of the organic growth, we may operate on the M&A toolbox, either on an acquisition or partnering or alliance in that respect. Then the customer and personnel is really in the epicenter of being successful in this business. And especially in the customer thing, we go back on the starting phase of Kamux. Kamux was really for the customers. And Juha and the founders were helping the company to grow. So we will do that in all of the three markets going forward. Then on the international scope, I think the economies of scale, both in our sourcing. And then on top of the direct sourcing for the cars and the vehicles we sell, I think Juha opened the door a bit about the indirect as well.
I think that's where we have room to improve and do better and increase our profitability and productivity in that respect. Then I think our balance sheet is strong. So we are ready to move ahead. For sure, if there would be a very sizable M&A opportunity, we could not maybe potentially act. But I think we have higher power for the normal ones we see in our long list at least going forward.
And I think if I sort of try to figure out where we are heading, and it's quite clear, we're still going to be a growth company. We're going to be aiming to be profitable, much more profitable on the relative perspective. And I think we have a lot of things to utilize better. So the platform, the engine we have, which is the Kamux engine, we're going to tune it up.
So we're going to get more out of the capacity which we already have built. So we have the Green Heart. And we have worthy trust.
Thank you. Now I think it's time to entertain questions.
Thank you. On the financial targets, I would like to ask about the profitability target, which you actually raised a bit, even though your profitability has been clearly below both the old and the new target for a few years. So what kind of led you into the target of 4%?
I think having a look on the past, I think as an individual country, Finland, we've been there and even beyond. And then we have a grip on the way how to operate in Germany, get Sweden in place, and deliver profitability. And all adding up, I think that's something which is really, really doable.
Yeah.
And then maybe to add, Rauli, on your question is that, of course, there are already in the marketplace some other players that are at that level or above. Or even above. Exactly. So we think there are ways and means of making it happen. And I think we just, you know, with the existing capacity, with the existing engine, doing smarter moves, like I think Juha's smart logistics as one example, or just, you know, being a little bit more successful in turning around businesses in Sweden or Germany. Maybe we have good practices in certain parts of the companies we haven't utilized elsewhere. Just by doing some practical, pragmatic actions, we do believe we can improve the profitability. So that's why.
Good. And can you share anything about the contribution from individual countries to the sales or profitability targets?
No.
Like I said, we have set the targets for the whole group. Like Tapio stated, there are plans to execute. You know, we're going to follow that up on a monthly, quarterly, annual basis. So we have it, but we're not going to publis h it. Good.
Thank you.
Hi. It's Pia again. Regarding your strategy, so how now you have published your strategy for 2024 to 2026. Then you have the long-term targets. So how do we as outsiders know if you are successful during your strategy period? So what are you satisfied with? What kind of levels are you satisfied with when we talk about sales and profitability?
I think those detailed and exact targets we have not disclosed. But on the strategy journey, the roadmaps we have done for each individual market, I think we will come back and share where we've been good at.
And if we've been not good at, we'll share that as well.
Okay. Thank you. Then still on this roadmap, so are there any specific step changes we should be aware of? Or is this a gradual journey towards the 4% margin target?
It's more of a gradual journey in all of the three markets. Having said that, it's very fundamentally important that we break even in Sweden and Germany as fast as we can.
Thank you. Then maybe a question on the demand situation now in all your markets. How does the market look like? And then do the strikes in Finland, have you seen any impact on your sales?
Maybe the strikes, this is one to tackle with. Our transportation and our smart supply chain has been maneuvering extremely well. And we have not felt any major issues on the strikes.
Even if we have partners who are repairing and fixing the cars, I think everything has been running rather smooth as we speak. In terms of the market, I think the statistics from Finland are available. I think Kamux has been continuing to be strong on the Finnish marketplace. Sweden, I think we've been roughly... Let me now think very carefully. We've been following the market with the exception that the Riddermark is doing extremely strange good things. And they have taken a quantum leap on their growth. We've been following quite nicely the rest of the market. Then I think Germany, we've been improving the game as we speak.
Thank you. Then another question regarding your group costs. The group costs, they have been on a... Yeah. Not improvement path, but on a growth path during the last year.
So last year, I think you were at EUR 9 million. How should we look at the group costs, which are not allocated to the business the countries?
Well, a couple of things to note. One is, of course, that Jarkko is here. You can have a chat with him if you want. Of course, we have invested to some extent into the digital development, which is a cost as well. It's part of it. We have the management, all of us, most of us are sitting here. Of course, some of the guys are running their sort of segments, the countries. But most of us are sitting in the HQ. But like you sort of see and what we have been telling you guys is that we're going to utilize now the scale better. We're going to have some of the more centralized processes.
So in a way, hopefully that will then bear fruit going forward. So whatever we have as the total sort of central cost shall be positive for the businesses as well going forward. That's my thinking. And then, of course, being a publicly listed company, there is some cost which is, you know, just because of the fact that we are publicly listed, which we have to have, which might not have direct impact on the businesses. But that's part of the legacy.
But I think when seeing how we operate on certain rather standard procedures, mainly in the back office area and related documentation, I think we can streamline and upgrade our game quite a bit on all that respect. I don't have a number in mind of what I woul
d do on the... Pia, can we take one more question?
Then we take some questions from the web. Perhaps there are others also in the audience. Okay. Mattias, did you have a question?
Actually, I have three, should I wait? Okay. Go. Well, I'm counting. We should. Yeah. So the first one is a question that I think I asked too many chief financial officers. But the definition of adjusted without giving a definition. Yeah. What does that mean? Is it... Can you say what will be in adjusted and what will be not?
Yeah. If you look at... Of course, it's company by company, it's different. But the basic idea is that if there are one-off items like restructuring-related costs, that is typically taken out. It, of course, might be an income as well. If you get an insurance compensation. So something that is one-off, that is not recurring, consistent going forward. That's the idea.
In case of Kamux, I think they have been quite small, marginal. I think going forward, they should be not too extensive either. Store openings? Store opening. Just like refurbishing showrooms, opening up... The refurbishings we have done is put into the normal result. So nope. Nope.
Okay. Great. And then one question is... Well, ambitious financial target, 4%. Glad to hear that. Seems to be really doable. But one thing that is interesting compared to like 2020 and 2021, maybe 2019, was this, you know, when you finance... To my understanding, you have a large financing need for like 3, 4 months during the summer when you stock up in spring. And then you sell off a lot of cars during summer months, if I'm not wrong. And then you have the cash inflow.
So my understanding is that you kind of issue term notes for a short period of time to finance this. So comparing interest rates in 2019 to now—going from zero or close to zero to today, like 4, 5...—that's a big difference compared to, you know, the target margin of 4%. So what can you say about this? Has this financing environment changed? And can you say anything about the financing level right now, you know, thinking about...
Yeah. Two comments. So first of all, of course, any interest cost is below EBIT. Okay. It's going to have an impact on the earnings per share, but it's below EBIT. So in a way, it doesn't affect the adjusted EBIT margin. Unless the financing would be a bottleneck and we wouldn't be able to finance it. But I think more fundamentally, we do have a seasonality.
Of course, the net working capital changes. So part of the efficiency productivity is going to be that how can we not only change the level, but hopefully reduce the volatility and the variation, fluctuation as well. But the financing, what we do, we do have commercial papers, short-term financing on the market directly. And then we do have bank facilities which utilize to get it done.
Maybe then we take one question here from the web. And this is actually for Aino. So Aino, if you please join us here.
We do it jointly. Yeah.
The question goes, on Trustpilot, the average review for Kamux.se is 2.1 out of 5 on about 500 reviews. The better competitors have 4.2 and 4.4 out of 5.0 on a couple of thousand reviews, respectively. What do you think that Kamux has... Why do you think Kamux has ended up here?
Does it matter? And if yes, what will you do to improve that score?
Yes. Good. I think this is already stating time before Aino. I think we have not paid any attention to Trustpilot and not using it. That's the outcome when you don't pay attention and don't use it. Now, I think, I don't know, as of when have we started using Trustpilot?
Yes. We have just launched a cooperation and partnership with Trustpilot so that we are able to systematically collect all the reviews from customers. So that it will actually give a proper picture of the experience when engaging with Kamux. The current rating does not give a full picture. It's a skewed picture. We have been working in the group level with Google Reviews, which have been the main partner in Sweden.
There we have the rating of 4 out of 5.
We'll climb up as fast as we can. That will be the normal. Yes.
Thank you. Okay. A bit about Sweden. There was a question about the timelines for Kamux. What kind of timelines Kamux has for launching leasing offering in Sweden and other similar plans in other markets?
I think Andy you've answered already.
Andy answered. I think we will do it as fast as we can. Then I think there was a question earlier on the Beely as well. It's just one of the options we have in the toolbox. We have no exclusivity with them. We are very happy to work with them. But I think we can also test the waters on our own if we need it.
Okay. Very good.
You mentioned earlier about using artificial intelligence to gain edge in the business. So particularly in what type of areas of the business could AI be most useful?
I think fairly many. And I think we have more of a... We don't have lack of ideas where to use it. And I think we've been piloting and testing it. And in most of the cases, we've been using... We'll be very happy with the outcome. So multiple places where you can use it. And I think as we speak, we're going to see that in the visualizing the cars. We can do the content on the cars. We can do pricing. It's multiple things. And I think if you would ask Jarkko this
question, we're going to be here still at seven o'clock. Okay. Let's not do that. Let's not do that. Okay. There's a couple of financial questions here.
In terms of X number of profit going towards dividends, then where will the remaining profit go?
So if we don't share, if we don't pay all of the 100% of the net profit, it stays on the balance sheet. So it goes into equity. So it increases equity on the balance sheet. And of course, if there's a cash implication, it stays as cash to be used, of course.
Okay. At 4% margin, what kind of ROCE does that imply?
Of course, it depends on how much capital we employ. But if you look at... And it depends what is then the top line. But assuming we're going to make EUR 1.5 billion, assuming we're going to make 4% EBIT margin, implies about EUR 60 million in absolute terms of EBIT. Then the capital, if you look at the total balance sheet, it's around EUR 200 million as we speak.
Of course, it's not static. It's going to change. But let's assume it's going to be EUR 200 million to EUR 300 million. So then you could decide it's going to be 60 divided by that. So... And it depends what's the capital, the different metrics, how do you... What is the definition of the capital? But let me say it's in the double-digit region anyways, I guess. 10%-20%. And the role of ROCE in decision making? I think in the long term, driving the value, I think it's important that the return on capital employed is good. And it's better than what's your weighted average cost of capital. So I think it's going to have an impact longer-term perspective for the value generation. But as said, we haven't had and we don't now have a long-term target set for any return on capital metrics.
Okay.
But I think if you drive the profitability in the right direction and are efficient on the balance sheet, that should drive the return on capital up as well.
Very good. More maybe a comment saying that without any timely and local milestones, your goals are mostly in the air. Really hope that you reveal countrywise targets ASAP.
I think you can rest assured. We know exactly how the targets are. We've been doing the roadmap on a country level. Unfortunately, not in the position to share it and disclose it. But we'll follow on that one. Good rule of thumb is that make Sweden and Germany profitable. Then Finland continue improving. That's unfortunately the level best we can share as of today. But further news to come.
Okay. One last chance or maybe two out of the audience if there's anything burning.
If not three.
Thank you.
We have heard a lot of new and small changes like it usually is in retail. A lot of details. So do you need a cultural change in Kamux to reach these new targets? And how do you ensure that your employees are incentivized and with you throughout the strategy period?
Excellent question. I think we are in a process of trying to paint a unified picture. How does good look like? What are the prerequisites to be successful on a certain function of our retail chain? Some of the things take a bit of a longer time. People, when they see and they realize, "Oops, that's the way you can also do." By the way, by doing that, you can achieve better results. As most of our people pay for performance, I think they're very fast to learn.
If you pass it to Jussi, please.
You said in the beginning that the industry is quite fragmented. Do we know what's profitability in industry on average?
Some of the average we don't know. But we know who's been extremely good and what they can deliver. They can even deliver up to double-digit on the profitability. Like one of our dear German colleagues is seeing. Then some of the European family-owned companies, it's very difficult to say the real profitability. And then when they have cars and real estate and whatever mix, it's very difficult to say what is really the profitability of the car part. But I think we can do clearly better. That we know.
And do we see any trends on that, let's say, used car companies profitability trend? Is it going up, down, or being flat?
I think what we have seen and a success defined by growth and profitability, the big ones have been able to grow. The small ones, if you're specialized, you can do very good profitability, maybe not growing. The ones who've been fully online, they've been really struggling. Even profitability has been hampered quite badly.
Thank you.
We have one more final question from the back, correct? No? Okay. Very good. Then thank you all for very good questions.
Thank you. Excellent session.
Thank you. Thank you. Wish you all the best.
Thank you to the team. The obligatory disclaimer at the end of the event. Then thank you and have a nice trip home.
By the way, still the opportunity for store checking is valid. I think we're going to be leaving in, say, five minutes. Thank you. Thanks. Have a good day.