Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Aston Martin Lagonda First Quarter Results 2022 Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker presentation, there'll be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded, and if you require any assistance during the conference, please press star zero. I'd now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Lawrence Stroll. Please go ahead.
Welcome, everybody, and thank you for joining us this morning for Aston Martin Lagonda's results call. I am Lawrence Stroll, Executive Chairman, and would like to make some opening remarks before we take questions on this morning's announcements. Firstly, I would like to extend my thanks and appreciation for all that our outgoing CEO, Tobias Moers, has achieved. He joined Aston Martin at a critical time for the company and brought significant discipline to its operations. The benefit of these actions is clear in an improved operating performance of the company and in our great new product launches. Now there is a need for the business to enter a new phase of growth with a new leadership teams and structure to ensure we deliver on our goals.
Our new organizational framework will support the company to its full potential, foster greater collaboration and more cohesive way of working, both internally and externally, especially with our strategic partners, including Mercedes-Benz. I'm extremely pleased that Amedeo has agreed to take on the role of CEO. He has extensive knowledge of both Aston Martin's business and the wider automotive industry with an excellent track record, and previous experience of leading a major ultra-luxury car manufacturer. His technical acumen and charisma will be aspirational for the entire company. With the appointment of Roberto, we add another world-class name to our team. He will help us deliver our future strategy with a particular focus on technology advancements, and our in-house engineering capabilities as we move toward electrification. Roberto is a proven innovator and team builder. He conceived some of the world's most desirable performance sports cars.
His extensive experience of this sector, coupled with his leadership style, will contribute significantly to shape our exciting future product portfolio, and reinvigorate our technical team. We believe these changes will bring significant long-term benefits to everyone who is involved with Aston Martin. We continue to make tremendous progress now operating as an ultra-luxury brand and seeing strong demand across all our product range, with sports cars sold out for the entire year and DBX orders up 60% over previous year. Our most recently announced limited edition, the V12 Vantage, was fully sold out prior to its official launch in March, and DBX707 is making headlines as the premier ultra-luxury performance SUV on the market in the world.
We are poised to deliver good growth in 2022 and remain extremely confident in the medium and long-term prospects as we transform Aston Martin into the world's most desirable ultra-luxury business brand. On that note, I would like to hand over and introduce our new CEO, who's going to say a few words, Amedeo Felisa.
Good morning, and thank you, Lawrence. It gives me great pleasure to join you all today as the Chief Executive Officer of this truly iconic British brand. I would like to thank Lawrence and the board for their trust in me as the company embarks on a new and exciting phase of growth. I have come to know Aston Martin and its senior leadership team very well in my previous Non-Executive Director role, as well as Chairman of the Product Strategy Committee. I know there is a highly experienced and impressive pool of talent inside the company, and my immediate objective will be to implement a new organizational structure, focused on broadening of the technical team on our operational and supply chain teams. Central to this will be our new Chief Technology Officer, highly experienced engineer, Roberto Fedeli.
We have a clear objective to continue the transformation of Aston Martin into an ultra-luxury high-performance brand and become a leader in our sector, meeting our strategic objective, financial target, and roadmap towards electrification. I will now pass to Doug, our new CFO, and I look forward to updating you more on our progress over the next coming months.
Thank you, Amedeo. Good morning to everybody. Like Amedeo, I am delighted to be joining you on the call this morning as the new CFO of Aston Martin. This is clearly an exciting time to be joining the company. I'm very much looking forward to working with Lawrence and Amedeo and the rest of the team in order to help drive the business forwards. I'm also looking forward to engaging with many of you over the coming weeks. So look forward to doing that. For now, I'll hand the call back over to Ken to take you through the first quarter financial performance.
Our outlook for the year.
Thanks, Doug. Morning, everyone. Just a few highlights of the Q1 financial results. Our quarter one performance was very much in line with our expectations. Slightly lower wholesales year-on-year as guided, delivering 1,168 units in the period. Revenues were around GBP 230 million, 4% increase benefiting from continued strong pricing dynamics, with the core average selling price up to GBP 151,000 per unit, reflecting continued lower customer and retail financing support, which was good to see, and the impact of pricing that we took late last year. We also had higher specials with 19 in the quarter compared to one last year.
Adjusted EBITDA was GBP 24 million with a 10% margin, reflecting the volume delivery that I just described together with cost efficiency benefits realized through Project Horizon completed last year. The operating loss of GBP 36 million reflects depreciation and amortization increasing year-on-year as we guided, due to the Valkyrie program deliveries and some accelerated D&A ahead of the new front-engine sports cars next year. The free cash outflow of GBP 25 million includes capital expenditure of GBP 67 million in the quarter, which is a GBP 19 million increase year-on-year, which I was pleased to see, as we invest in the future of our front-engine sports car lineup, and we should continue to expect to see capital expenditure running at around that level for the balance of the year.
That was slightly offset by working capital inflow of GBP 33 million. We saw a receivables benefit in the quarter, offset partially with higher inventory levels in the quarter as we saw an increased level of vehicles in transit at the end of March compared to the end of December. I was pleased that we finished the quarter with a strong cash position with GBP 403 million of cash on the balance sheet. Just turning to the outlook, as I said, the quarter one trading was as expected. For the full- year outlook, we've guided that our expectations remain unchanged. We've updated the net interest guidance to reflect foreign exchange rates. In particular, that includes the impact of a non-cash foreign exchange revaluation of our dollar debt in Q1 due to the pound weakening.
Other than that, there's no change. We're targeting over 6,600 units of wholesale volume, a 350-450 basis points improvement in EBITDA margin, and as I said, full- year CapEx in the range of GBP 300 million for the full- year. This will be my last results as CFO of Aston Martin, and I really wanted to thank Lawrence in particular for his support, as well as the team at the company, and our partners and shareholders for their support. I'm really proud of what we've accomplished in my time here in terms of shaping the company's future direction, helping to achieve a clear roadmap to profitability and financial stability. I really wish Doug all the best as he takes over the reins. Back to you, Lawrence.
Thank you, Ken. Once again, I thank Ken personally for his, the great two years we've spent together. We really, with Ken's help, helped shape the financial part of this company, and I look forward to working with Doug going forward. You know, kind of in summary, we are on a new phase of growth. We have a new team to deliver both in cohesiveness within the organization, and technically on our new products, portfolios, and innovation. We will maximize that potential. We have all of our next generation sports cars coming next year in 2023.
I've always said this, what we've done so far is a bridge to get to 2023, because the heart and the soul, regardless of the major success of DBX and now 707, the heart and the soul of this company remains sports cars, and all three of the sports cars, Vantage, DB11, DBX, are scheduled to come next year. Very exciting time. In addition, as I mentioned, the growth of our SUV, both the traditional SUV, and you can see by the critically acclaimed 707. Our path to electrification, we're very on that. We are moving forward already with our PHEV with Valhalla, and we are diligently working on Aston Martin version of electrification in addition to the option we have to take from Mercedes early next year.
Lastly, what's really been transformative to this company is our Formula One team. I could not speak volumes of what this has done to market this brand in the upper echelon and the highest technical motorsport in the world. We get to meet our customers at 23 events. This weekend is Miami. We have over 500 American customers visiting us this weekend. I don't know another sport you get to touch, eat, drink, talk with over 10,000 of our customers over the course of 23 races around the world. This has had a tremendous impact on our sales. I truly believe this is one of the reasons we're sold out on 7-year-old sports cars. It's quite an incredible fact. The brand has never been stronger, never been hotter. I believe Formula One has contributed to that greatly.
Now in addition to the new management team, new products we will be bringing in the future to take us to that famous 10,000 cars I keep talking about in a couple of years. By the way, we're three-quarters of the way there, so it's not like we're starting at zero. We'll be close to 7,000 this year, so it's not very far from the 10,000 I promised. Bringing the all-new front engines and bringing Valhalla will get us to that milestone. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Ken. Given that Amedeo and Doug are new in their posts, Ken and I will be happy to take your questions. Operator, I pass it back to you.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the hash key. Your first question comes from the line of Charles Coldicott from Redburn. Please ask your question.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I would have two, please. Firstly, for Lawrence, on the leadership change announced this morning, could you talk to us about the key qualities you were looking for in the hiring process, and how this will change the strategy, if at all? In your remarks, I think you mentioned a new organizational structure that Amedeo will lead. What could that look like? Then secondly, on the gross margin. In Q1, it was good to see the gross margin up to 36%. Ken, could you quantify the main drivers behind that improvement and whether we should think of 36% as a new floor for the gross margin? Going forward, input cost inflation is obviously something the whole industry is contending with.
I guess that means that the bill of materials in the new DBX707 is significantly more expensive than when you had conceived it. Does that threaten the 40% gross margin you budgeted for that model? Will you have to raise the price beyond the $230,000 price point that I believe it starts at? Thank you.
Let me take your first two questions. Number one, I break this business into two phases at the moment. Phase one, when I took over the business, we were wholesaling approximately 2,000 cars a year, less than one-third of what we are manufacturing at the moment. I was satisfied at that point that one person can have the role of CEO and CTO. A, for the reason I mentioned, and B, because it was much more about cleaning up operationally, about improving our manufacturing, about solidifying our supply chain, about coming to a new agreement, which was reached with Mercedes-Benz to make bespoke Aston Martin engines, to give us current touch screens, current infotainments, current electronic architecture. That was really phase one of the business, and for that, Tobias did an excellent job.
Phase two of the business is different in respect that it's about growth and innovation and technology and scale. Let's start with scale. The size of our business now will be close to 7,000 vehicles this year. This requires a full-time CEO, and with the innovation and the amount of our product-diversified portfolio, from front engine to mid-engine to SUV to PHEV to BEV, I want a full-time dedicated CTO to concentrate full-time on the innovation. Just as I want a full-time CEO now to look over the broader, bigger picture, bigger spectrum of the whole business. I don't want someone who divides their time 50-50, because we're not about 50-50. We're about full on 100% in getting to those 10,000 cars, again, which we're on the way to do in the next 2 years.
We have the sales, we have the product, now it's about execution. That was the reason to change the management structure, the organizational structure, to broaden and to strengthen the whole company and to focus technically, singularly on the technical team.
Thanks, Lawrence. Charles, just taking your other points. Yeah, definitely pleased to see the gross margin around 36% in the quarter. The short answer is yes, I would hope to see it continue in the mid-30s range in the full year, which is what I said in our full-year results call a couple of months ago. Really the drivers for that being, obviously we've got a full- year of Valkyrie, which is helping to support that. We've got continued strong pricing dynamics in the marketplace that's enabled us to continue to see lower incentive spending. The other key driver is, as we've also said before, we're targeting 40% plus-
Gross margin on all of our new vehicle introductions, such as the DBX707 or the V12 Vantage, both of which will have more significant quantities in the second half of this year. I'd look forward to seeing the margin development supported by that on our journey towards getting the whole business to 40% plus, which is definitely our target. In terms of raw materials, yep, like everyone else, we've seen input prices in terms of aluminum, nickel, palladium, electricity, gas. We've seen cost increases across all those commodities and energy costs. Broadly, we've been able to offset that so far with a combination of price increase we took beginning of the year and the continued lower incentive spending that we've enjoyed.
We obviously keep those price levels under review, and we'll judge whether we need to react accordingly going forward.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Your next question comes from the line of George Galliers from Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. The first question is also in relation to the management changes and how that prepares you for battery electric vehicles. Do you think with the new management team, you are now better placed to prepare for the transition to battery electric vehicles in the second half of the decade? And do you still need to look for incremental talent there, or do you think you have the team and the technical competence on board to deliver battery electric vehicles? The second question was with respect to the DBX performance. Obviously, this was the worst quarter since the product launched in an environment where every other car company is struggling to build enough SUVs with excessive demand across the globe.
I'm a bit surprised that the DBX was so weak given the introduction of the mild hybrid, specifically for the Chinese market. I guess the question is the 707 going to end up being pretty much 100% substitutional for the existing model? If that's the case, will you discontinue the existing model in order to reduce cost and complexity? Thank you.
Let me take your battery electric vehicle first. First of all, Amedeo, who has a great deal of experience and brought with Roberto Fedeli, the first electrification to the first Ferrari. After that, Amedeo went on to be chairman and CEO of an EV tooling company, so focused completely on EV. As far as Roberto Fedeli's concerned, he's regarded as one of the pioneers in electrification. As I said, he started Ferrari's electrification program. He was poached by BMW. He started BMW's electrification program, ran their first electric cars. I don't think there's anybody more respected in electrification than Roberto. He will be joining us with an additional team of people that we will be announcing in the next couple weeks that are further experts in electrification.
We also have some great talent in-house in electrification, who we will be promoting to work alongside Roberto and his team. Lastly, do not forget, we have the option in the first quarter of next year to take full electrification platform from the high-performance Mercedes-AMG Mercedes. I don't think there's anybody better positioned from a team of knowledgeable people, educated people on EV and from a component point of view, having a better partner than the Mercedes-AMG high-performance, Mercedes-AMG platform than it is our option to take. Don't think anybody better suited personnel or component with our partner, Mercedes.
As far as the DBX707 is concerned, firstly, in the first quarter, we had a boatload of another couple hundred going to China that would have made the numbers roughly exactly the same as the previous year that we missed by a couple of days. The St Athan capacity, as you know, we have two factories. We make sports cars in Gaydon, we make SUVs in St Athan. The St Athan capacity has been preparing for the 707 ramp up in production. I would say about 65%, roughly, and don't quote me on that, of our sales this year are planned and will be 707.
Contrary to what you said about our first quarter numbers, I don't know if you heard me in my earlier statement, we are 60% ahead in our order book this year versus last year on DBXs. That 60% increase is roughly 50% current, traditional DBX and 50% DBX707s. Based on the level of excitement and feedback we've gotten from journalists and now customers through our retail. Last week, we had all of our American dealers here for a conference. This afternoon, we have actually all our U.K. dealers here for a conference. It was mind-blowing, the excitement that they're receiving from their customers.
They're saying, "You know, now we really have an SUV from Aston Martin." Some are very happy with the traditional DBX. But somewhat more, much sportier, the most powerful on the planet. We always said that this year, because of 707 ramp up, will be in the third and fourth quarter. We are delivering demos as we speak, on waters, on boats, on planes to our dealers. Those demos will be in place literally in the next weeks or two. Extremely confident we will hit our projections and our numbers and this was planned as we prepare for the 707 ramp up at St Athan.
Great. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Thilo Brunner from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please ask your question.
Thank you. Good morning. It's Thilo Brunner at Kepler Cheuvreux. I have two questions, please. The first is on your comment toward your sports cars being sold out for 2022. Could you give us just a reference in terms of what it means in terms of volumes? Are we gonna see volumes being up year-on-year, or is it just a reflection that your plan was to have a relatively small number of sports cars anyway as you're about to replace these vehicles in Q2 and Q3 next year? That's the first question. The second question is also about the transition, management transition. If I've looked at it correctly, Amedeo is 76 years old in 2022.
Has a tremendous experience, but probably won't stay as a CEO very long. Has it been taken into account in the decision to choose him as a permanent CEO in that context? Thank you very much.
I will take the Amedeo question first. If you knew Amedeo as well as I know Amedeo, and as long as I know Amedeo, I don't think I've ever met a more energetic gentleman in my life. He is up for this task. He's excited about this task. He only left Ferrari five years ago. Since then, he has had full- time as chairman and CEO for an EV company. Amedeo is very young at heart, and by the way, you know, when you build a business like he has, and bringing it to such a great success, one does not forget how to do that. You don't forget how to ride a bicycle when you know how to ride a bicycle.
Amedeo's with us for the foreseeable future, and I couldn't be more happy and thrilled and grateful to have him. No one else in our industry has seen the movie and written the script like Amedeo has done at Ferrari for what we're trying to accomplish. Tremendous happiness that he's with us and incredible opportunity for the company. As far as the sports cars are concerned, we planned, we sold last year approximately 3,000 front-engine sports cars. We budgeted a slightly lesser amount this year, very slightly, because of all the new sports cars coming next year. However, the sales, not us, again, remember I said two years ago, we'll never make another car for inventory.
Sold vehicles to customers have gone from 5% to over 65% when I took over to today, and we are roughly going to do approximately a little less, 'cause I'd like to have less inventory in the market with the new cars, a new generations coming on its heels. We will still be close to approximately the 3,000 mark. We have orders today in-house for well over 3,000. We will produce 3,000 or less, so there's no inventory to speak of on the market when the new generation comes. Quite an incredible number for a seven-year-old product.
Indeed. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Shows the strength of the brand and I think Formula One also and the resurgence through Formula One has helped, particularly in sports cars for that customer. It just shows the strength of the brand, the strength of Formula One as a marketing platform, all combined. Formula One's on fire, and as a brand speaking, Aston Martin's in a great place.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Philippe Houchois from Jefferies. Please ask your question.
Yes, good morning, and congratulations to all those appointments. I have three questions. The first one, if Ken can clarify, the gross margin improvement, great news. How much is the specials and how much is the range cars? Because the Valkyrie, we lose it further down in the P&L, so it's less impressive. If you can kinda split the two, that would be great. Second question, to be honest, I don't quite follow your cash flow. You got GBP 25 million out. The gross equity is okay. I just don't exactly know how to reconcile the working capital, which looks like an inflow, which would help. I don't quite understand where the GBP 18 million increase in inventory financing fits. My understanding, you still continue to sell more retail than wholesale, so where do you need that incremental financing?
What is it for? The last point, again, very impressive that you have. I don't think you've had such an order book ever at Aston Martin, and especially even regardless of how old the cars are. What I'm trying to understand is who is buying those cars, compared to your traditional customer base? Is it a very different customer base in terms of age, preferences, where they come from, location? If you can help with that, 'cause that's, if it's a structural shift, that's quite good news. That would be helpful. Thank you.
I'll take the last one, and then I'll let Ken with the others. It's both. You know, one of the great things of Aston Martin, we have over 120,000 cars delivered within what they call the car park of customers still driving cars. That is a tremendous amount. Part of this has been a rejuvenation of the brand and re-engagement with our very loyal customers trading in their old cars, buying new cars. 50% we feel is legacy customers coming back, trading in, buying up, and exactly 50% are new customers. New customers that haven't bought the product before. Some of them haven't bought, they only wanted an SUV, and Aston Martin didn't make an SUV. That's a big percentage of that 50%. It's a combination of both.
We're also seeing younger customers, particularly in sports cars, which I think is really influenced by Formula 1 and the brand of Formula 1. It's a combination of those three, I'd say. 50% legacy, 50% new, part of the new being younger, majority of the new being SUV customers that just want an SUV that Aston Martin never had.
Mm.
I just, before handing over to Ken, I just wanna clarify something on the gross margin so everybody understands. We said last year the first new car vehicle under our management that we delivered was the DBX707. Everything else was priced, manufactured, et cetera, before I arrived on the scene. 707's the first new delivery of a vehicle under our regime. I said for every vehicle we deliver, starting with seven oh seven, we will have a 40% minimum 40% gross margin. All the next generation vehicles that are coming out next year will have a minimum of 40%. I'm not talking about specials or front engines work.
We'll have a minimum of 40, and by the time you put options, could go up to a 50% gross margin, which is almost double what the previous gross margins were for similar vehicles prior to us changing product and changing strategy of luxury, changing strategy of only making cars to order, changing strategy of supply and demand, increasing residual values, which are significantly up around the world for Aston Martin. That number that you're seeing starting now only gets stronger, and more consistent with every new vehicle we introduce. Critical point.
Very good. Thanks, Lawrence. You asked a few different questions. One was also on the gross margin, asking about the drivers of that. On the investor website is the investor presentation, which has got a year-on-year bridge on the EBITDA. If you look at that bridge, what you see is, year-on-year, you see last year is obviously GBP 21 million, this year GBP 24 million. You can see a couple of the drivers of that. What you see is, wholesale volume is higher, driven by, in financial terms, driven by the value per unit, so that is a contributor. You also see that net pricing is stronger year-on-year, and that's driven largely by the pricing action we took at the beginning of the year and the lower incentive spending.
In terms of the gross margin improvement, it's a combination of both those factors. I'm pleased that it is, that it's both revenue and mix. You also asked about cash flow. Just cutting through a bit, the cash flow saw working capital inflow in the quarter, yes, of about GBP 33 million, if I got the number right. Within that working capital inflow was both a receivables inflow connected with the collection cash associated with vehicles we wholesaled at the back end of last year, and partially offset with a growth in inventory connected with more vehicles in transit at the end of March than had been the case at the end of December. Lawrence referred to part of that, which is vehicles on their way to China, for example.
Just kind of normal ebb and flow of receivables and inventory in the quarter, leading to a net inflow, supporting the net inflow from operations of circa GBP 40 million, and that being offset by investments of circa GBP 66 million in the quarter as we ramp up the investment in the next generation of our sports cars. Those things driving the modest cash outflow of just around GBP 20 million from net cash, net of investments in the quarter. Yes, we also drew GBP 20 million of inventory financing in the quarter. That's something that does ebb and flow for operational purposes through the year, so there's nothing really significant. It's been at this level before.
It sometimes we have it drawn at a slightly lower level, sometimes we draw it at a higher level. So that's just an operational detail really.
There's an increase in the amount of cars you financed that stay with the dealers right now, so I'm just trying to get reassurance.
No, that.
that you're still selling. No.
That inventory finance actually relates more to working capital in the factory rather than finished vehicles.
Right. Okay. You're still selling more
More cars retail than you're selling wholesale.
One hun- one hundred percent.
Yes.
We are retailing more than wholesale.
Yeah, we don't disclose the number, but absolutely that was the case in Q1.
As was the case all of last year.
Correct.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Christoph Laskawi from Deutsche Bank. Please ask your question.
Hey, good morning, and thank you for taking my question. It will be one also linked to the management transition and essentially implementing a bit of a new structure in the organization and hiring new staff also for R&D and the technical development. Do I read it correct that with all the changes you're planning to do more in-house again, say broadening the scope of what you are developing and then using only potentially the technology that you could source from Mercedes? And if that's the case, are there any changes in your foreseen R&D spend going forward, and is that tied into the midterm targets already, or should we expect at some point an update overall? Thank you.
Very astute of you. You're absolutely correct. What we are doing by bringing in a new technical team, and as I said earlier, by promoting within of a great technical organization we already have, is significantly increasing our in-house capabilities. That is something I've been planning for a long time. It is great to have Mercedes as a technical support and partner for the bits we need from them, but going forward, we want to have almost complete capability to do what we can in-house. Hence the organizational shift, change, promotion, et cetera. Having said that, there is no, at this point, additional spend that is not already budgeted, so these, this new structure is already in our budget. If we do more in-house, we take less from outsource. It's kind of a wash.
From a technology transfer point of view, clearly going forward, we're better to have our own full in-house capabilities. Remember, we're taking a tremendous amount of technology coming from our Formula One team, which this company never had before last year. A lot of this electrification, a lot of the hybrids that we have in our Formula One team is what our engineers are learning from and bringing to our road cars. We didn't have this luxury until we had a Formula One team. Not only from a marketing point of view is Formula One transforming the recognition to the brand, but from a technology point of view, to take this technology in a watered-down version and bringing it into our road cars.
'Cause I think legitimacy, transparency is what we all live in the social media world today, so we wanna show what we can take technology from our F1 team and bring it down, particularly into some of our mid-engine products to start.
Thank you. Two follow-ups, if I may. The first one will be on the transfer between the F1 team and Aston Martin company. At what sort of price is that done? Is it just the cost plus? Is it completely different than that? With the new team in-house, when do you expect the first in-house technology to ramp up into the car launches that you see in the future from the new team?
From your first question, from the price point, there is a transfer price. I think it's cost plus 10, I don't remember, something very marginal. Since it's Lawrence Stroll really involved in both, it's not about making profit in Formula One, it's about the overall business growing. The second question was, I'm sorry?
The second question was.
All the HMI will be done in-house for our next-generation cars to start with. We will then see a lot more of this technology coming in our Valhalla.
Thank you. Very clear. Last, more a statement than, obviously, I think this is your last call. All the best for the future and thanks for the collaboration.
Oh, it's great having you. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Horst Schneider from Bank of America. Please ask your question.
Yes, good morning, and thanks for taking also my questions, three please. The first one is on supply shortages that you mentioned in your presentation. I just want to understand if that could be a bigger risk going forward, if that could maybe trigger some more shortages Q2, Q3, Q4, that maybe then the full =-year target gets at risk at some point of time. The second question that I have that relates to the long-term incentive plan targets of your new CEO. Remain these old targets of Tobias Moers in place, or will there new targets gonna be set, and to what extent will they change?
The last question may be a tricky one, sorry for asking that, but we heard here in the German press particularly that you were maybe looking for a new partner in Formula One. Audi is, for example, searching also, and Volkswagen name was mentioned as well as a potential new partner. I don't know. Could you maybe comment on that? Or could you maybe just say that the partnership with Mercedes, you're still fully committed to that. Should that change in 2026, would that also change your existing partnership in general, Aston Martin with Mercedes? Thank you.
Take the last question first. Formula 1 is great for these sort of things. Have we been approached by Audi? Yes. Are we very happy with our Mercedes relationship? Yes. Formula 1 paddock is full of these stories. As far as Amedeo Felisa's compensation is concerned, that's something we don't comment on, and it won't be significantly different, but I can't really comment on it. The first question was what?
Supply chain disruptions.
Supply chain.
Supply chain disruptions.
I mean, yes, we see, you know, we've been navigating our way around supply chain disruptions through the last months in common with others in the industry. Obviously we continue to do so. We've managed to navigate our way, our path through that one way or another. It's a day-to-day challenge, but we navigate our path one way or another.
What kind of disruption is that? Is that mainly affecting transport or is that supply of parts?
We have seen, for example, transport and logistics disruption, such as transport is taking longer to get to places than we would have originally planned. We take that in our stride and we worked carefully with various different suppliers to sort of ensure the smooth supply of parts that can sometimes be disrupted, either by logistics shortages or, well, raw material issues. A variety of suppliers, but one way or another, we have managed to figure out, you know, navigate our way through it and the logistical challenges ultimately are about timing.
you know, it's got a close degree of attention by us as we go forward, and it's for sure a risk, but one that we've managed to navigate.
All right. Thanks. Maybe one last follow-up, pretty easy one. Since you have got now the CEO change, nevertheless, you can confirm all launch plans for 2023, they're not gonna be any delay. You can rule that out at this point of time, right?
At this point in time, that's correct.
Okay. Thank you. Great. All the best.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Gabriel Adler of Citi . Please ask your question.
Hi. Thanks. Two questions from me. I'd just like to come back, please, to the business reorganization. What led you to the decision here to shift to the more in-house focus that you mentioned, and why are you making the shift now? Does it relate to those comments that you made around phase two really being about scale and innovation and just the fact that it wasn't possible at an earlier stage, or was there something else behind the decision to make the change? Then my second question is on China. How much of the decline in China volumes that we saw in Q1 relates to dealership closures because of lockdowns? Do you have any concern that the continued or new lockdowns in China may disrupt your schedule for the DBX707? Thanks.
As far as the first question, phase one and phase two, we did it in an orderly manner. As I mentioned earlier, taking over from phase one was getting some operational disciplines to the company, production disciplines, supply chain disciplines. It was in a bit of a disarray. Before one can consider growth, one has to have deep-rooted foundations of the operational manufacturing supply of the business, which wasn't the case when I took over the company. Tobias did a very good job in doing that. Once that was secure, it was always my intent to bring more in-house capabilities to Aston Martin and be less reliant on outsourcing, whether Mercedes-Benz or other people. We outsource to other people as well. It's not only Mercedes-Benz.
A company of this stature wanting and will be the next greatest luxury high performance brand, and with all the great engineering that takes place in this country. This country has the greatest amount of high-skilled automotive engineers in the world. You simply have to look at Formula 1. There hasn't been a non-British Formula 1 team winning a world championship since 2007. The reason for that is people. Where we're based, we have the best people around us. There's no reason based in this country, in U.K., we're not in some remote land, that we should not have much more significant in-house capabilities. Previous shareholders, previous managements wanted to outsource more.
I think with the change in direction of innovation, which taking our technology from a Formula One team that they never had the opportunity to do before, this is something we should be doing in-house. Thank God I've been able to put the team together, with more, as I said, names to come the next few weeks, who's joined this incredible technical team that have the experience to be able to do that. There aren't millions of people who could do it, but there are several, and we've managed to get many of them to join us. Again, we have great internal talent and great talents right around the corner from us. It's imperative to be honest, transparent, and the more of our own capabilities going into our product, more demonstrates our luxury performance brand that we're building.
Question China.
Oh, yeah. Oh, China. China, in quarter one, we had no effect. Basically.
Yeah
Our numbers were our numbers. Going forward, we're in the same position as anybody else. We plan on relocating. Thank God we're in a very good position that mostly we're oversold. We're relocating a lot of the inventory from China to countries that aren't closed.
That's great. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of José Asumendi from JP Morgan. Please ask your question.
Hi. Thank you very much for taking my question. I just asked, did you update credit investors on covenant levels? I realize that if you have over a 40% draw, you do have some leverage covenants under your bank facility. Given all the uncertainty in the market, would you consider or have you already considered loosening those covenants despite the fact that you feel pretty confident on your financials into 2022 and 2023, just to give yourself some wiggle room versus an uncertain backdrop fundamentally? Then also on covenant levels, you do have some differences, of course, in the way that you calculate EBITDA versus how you present EBITDA to investors normally.
I was just wondering if you had an update on either the ratio for senior secured debts, EBITDA, or just your levels of orders and production, EBITDA as adjusted versus what we can calculate that you've reported so far. Sorry for the convoluted question.
To be honest, yeah, probably a bit more complicated than we can go into right now. The short answer is that, when we looked at our financial planning, we've taken into account what we see at the covenant levels, and we've thought about that as we looked at our financial modeling going forward. That's taken into account. We haven't discussed or considered discussing changing the covenant levels on the revolving credit facility, which is really where they are with our banks. That's not been something we've discussed at this point in time.
Okay. Those were my questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
You have no further questions at this time. I'd like to pass back to the speakers for any closing comments.
I would just like to thank everybody very much for attending the call today. Be rest assured this company is going from strength- to- strength. We're going to hit our numbers. It's incredible to be sold out in sports cars and have a 60% increase in DBX. Formula One is generating tremendous excitement to the brand. Strengthening the leadership team with Amedeo and Roberto and being more innovative on technology, we believe will be transformative for the future. Stay tuned. It's gonna be getting from exciting to very exciting. As I keep saying, we keep delivering on what we're promising quarter after quarter, and we will continue to do so. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.