Welcome to the Bilia Q3 report for 2024. The first part of the conference call. The participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answer session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing star five on their telephone keypad. Now, I will hand the conference over to IR, Carl Fredrik Ewetz. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the introduction, and welcome to Bilia's third quarter result presentation with CEO Per Avander, CFO Kristina Franzén, and I, Carl Fredrik Ewetz. We also have our Deputy CEO, Stefan Nordström, here today. The agenda is that Per will start going through the current situation in the car industry, followed by Q3 numbers, then Christina will go through the financial situation, and I will conclude with an outlook for Q4, so by that, I'll leave the word to Per Avander.
Thank you very much, Carl Fredrik, and we start with the current market situation. There is a strong demand in the service business, with quite long booking times. Our customers take care of the cars, both for service and repairs, and right now we are in the important tire season. The fleet business has still a stable demand for new cars in Sweden, with a market share around 60% of the total sales. The private consumers are still in wait and see, but we can see some better activities when we measure, for example, floor traffic in the showrooms. Many brands have started strong campaigns with big discounts and attractive private leasing offers. In Norway, we see signs and can feel a better business climate. The demand for new cars is growing, good booking times in workshops, and the consumer index is at a stable level.
Our brands have, for the moment, strong campaigns in the Norwegian market. The demand for used cars are on a good level in Sweden and Norway, and we see stable prices for all cars, except fully electrical vehicles. The stock of used cars is at a good level in all our countries. There have been a lot of discussion regarding different business models during the last years. A few years ago, it was really popular to try car sharing, subscription, and agency models. Still, we see some manufacturers using agency models, but other manufacturers hesitating to adopt this. We now see clearly that we are going back to traditional business models we had in the past. Please go to the next slide. Net turnover increased organically by 3%, explained by higher deliveries of used cars and growth in the service business.
We report a result of 281 million SEK, with a margin of 3.1%. We have better earnings in the service business, and the used car business was at the same level as last year. We see lower profitability for new cars. Next slide, please. On this slide, we explain the lower profitability compared to the quarter three last year. As you can see, the big red here is the difference coming from the new car business. Can go to the next. On this slide, you can see the quarter three profitability between 2020 to 2024 in each country. In the middle, we have Norway, and here you can see some improvements. On the right-hand side, you can see Western Europe delivering at a stable level.
Sweden delivers lower earnings due to the car business that we showed on the previous slide. We are moving to the important service business. As I mentioned, there is a still good demand in the service business in all our countries, especially for body and paint shops. We have an organic growth for the group of 6%, and in Norway, as much as 10%. We report the profitability of SEK 221 million. This is 74% of the group earnings. As you can see on the right-hand side, it's SEK 60 million better than last year. There are several reasons why we report a higher result. One is we had a strong underlying growth and a better profitability in the Swedish body and paint shops. Another is good booking times in all our countries.
The third is we had one working day more in the quarter, except Belgium, there we had two more. The car business. Deliveries on new and used cars, adjusted for acquired and closed operations, were 4% lower for new and 50% higher for used compared to quarter three last year. For the car business, we report a result of SEK 73 million compared to SEK 151 million last year, and the profitability for new cars in all our countries were on a lower level. The main explanation for that is lower turnover. For used car, we report profitability at the same level as last year. The demand is good, and we have a stable and good margin, especially in Sweden and Norway. The stock of used car is at a normal level.
The order intake on new cars, adjusted for acquired and closed operations, was 11% higher compared to last year. As I mentioned, we feel and see a little bit better activity in all our countries.
... The order backlog of new cars is a bit on the weak side, especially in Sweden.
Mm-hmm. Thank you, Per. So let's then move into our financial position. Starting with cash flow, which continues to be one of our focus areas, and we did, during the third quarter, generate an operational cash flow of SEK 480 million. Thereby, we have, for the first nine months, generated some SEK 1.3 billion, compared to around SEK 500 million last year. We will continue to work on inventory management, including the turnover rate of new and used cars, but we do also focus on other parts of working capital to be as efficient as possible in this time, where financing costs are higher than in the past. During the third quarter, we have also paid out our second installment of the dividend of, in total, SEK 6.6 per share, which means that we have paid around SEK 150 million to our shareholders.
There are two remaining installments, whereof one has been paid in October, and the last one will be paid to our shareholders in January next year. We have not made any payments for acquisitions during the third quarter, while we, for the first nine months, have made such payments for almost SEK 400 million in total. However, as of October the 1st, we have taken over a BMW dealer in Luxembourg, Carlo Schmitz, whereby we are now running our operations from two facilities in Luxembourg, and the payment for this acquisition was partly made in cash and partly in Bilia shares. During this quarter, we have also announced that we have entered into an agreement to acquire another BMW dealer, this time in Sweden, which are operating through one facility.
We do expect this acquisition to be concluded, the first or the second quarter, between February and May next year, and payments will, to a smaller piece, also be done via Bilia shares. At the end of the third quarter, we utilized just below SEK 1.3 billion out of our total credit limit of SEK 2.3 billion. This credit limit was renewed during the first quarter this year and matures in March 2029. Our financial net was SEK 83 million for the quarter, which was higher than last year, but in line with the previous quarters during the year, and the higher financial net compared to last year is due to higher interest costs.
Our net debt at the end of the third quarter amounted to SEK 2.5 billion, which was 80 million kroner higher than December, but some 200 million kroner lower than at the end of June. Our target is to have a ratio for our net debt in relation to EBITDA, excluding IFRS 16, below 2.0 times. Looking at this ratio at the end of the third quarter, the ratio was 1.5 times, versus 1.6 times per June, and 1.3 times as per December 2023. So in summary, the ratio remains on a stable level, well below our target of 2.0 time. So I think that-
Mm
... summarized our financial position.
Thank you, Christina. We move over to the outlook for Q4, starting with the service business. This is one of the best Q results ever for Bilia in the service business, delivered during a very tough economic period, especially for private consumers. I think it's fair to say this demonstrated resilience in this business. So with a more favorable consumer environment, we see the good demand continue in Q4. In addition, we continue to see good booking times ahead across the business. And as Per mentioned, in Q3, the service business represented 74% of our operating profit. Used cars, the activity level in the business will remain on good levels, and we see prices stable during the coming quarter. When it comes to full electrical vehicles, we are not certain of prices.
I think Per mentioned that earlier, and we actively work to strengthen our offering within used cars, and we will continue to do so also in the coming quarter. The stock of used cars was at a good and comfortable level in all our countries going into Q4. We do see improvement activity among private customers, following campaigns from the car manufacturers and an increasingly more favorable consumer environment with falling interest rates. We do expect to see even more campaigns in Q4 to increase private consumption. We are cautiously optimistic about the new car sales during the fourth quarter and/or first quarter 2025. We continue to believe that there is a big pent-up demand, among especially private consumers and customers.
We see the order intake from fleet customers to continue at a good and stable level, so no trend shift here. Every day, we work to improve profitability and efficiency in our operations. We intensified this earlier this year, and we continue to work hard to improve newly acquired businesses, as well as existing businesses lagging our own standards. Our goal is to continuously optimize our processes and create high customer satisfaction and increase shareholder value. Then finally, just a reminder, we will-
... have a Capital Markets Day, two weeks time here in Stockholm, to talk about Bilia and the future, et cetera, et cetera. So that finalizes our third quarter presentation, and we can now open up for questions.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key six on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Simen Aas from DNB Markets. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. So, I have a few questions there. So, to start with Norway, obviously good to see that your earnings are improving here. Can you just give us some? You say that the campaign activity in Norway has sort of improved, helped improving that somewhat. Can you just give us a flavor on Norway going into Q4? Is it? Should we expect it to improve sequentially even more, or how should we think about Norway here?
If I start, we say we have better campaigns in Norway. If you remember, it was a lack of components a couple of years ago, one year ago, or two years ago, with long delivery times. So we have no campaigns at that time. But we were in the deep sea when you're talking order intake in Norway. So we see some improvements now. One example is really good campaigns for BMW in Norway, both private leasing campaigns and the right price into the market. Another is we launch XPENG, the Chinese brand, and in the Norwegian market, 88% is fully electrical vehicles this year.
We are right price for XPENG, and we sell a lot of them as well.
I think, Stefan, I think you can also add that when you look at the Swedish market, it's somewhat lower activity on the fully electric cars.
Mm.
And we see more hybrids here, and you see the same when you come to Western Europe. But when you go, as Per mentioned, to Norway, so I think the manufacturers, they, in a way, want to put their cars in Norway to get the fully electric cars out. And I think in September, you had 96% fully electric in Norway. So I think that could also be one of the reasons-
Yeah
... for the good campaigns.
Yeah, and you have the Volvo EX30.
Yeah
... EX30, a smaller car there, and there is a really good price for the moment now in the Norwegian market,
But also for the BMW-
Yeah
... BMW, so yeah.
Okay, and then just to get a feel for sort of how that will play out in general for the campaign activity. Did that start early in Q3, or did it sort of start in the middle? Or, given that you expect that this should continue into Q4, just to get a feel for-
Yeah, yeah
... how large part of the quarter have good campaigns, is the question for Q3?
We, as I would say we started in Q2, too, with some campaigns before the summer. And a lot of manufacturers, next year, you have to pay a fine with the emission for petrol and diesel engines. So I guess, my best guess now is many manufacturers, they will support the market in Norway really high, with a lot of efforts into the market, because you can sell easy the fully electrical vehicles there.
But we can also see it's like, it's a little bit when it come to the campaigns, you can see it's a little bit of, starting to be a little bit of a race. When somebody enters with a good campaign, the others cannot stand still, and they also add something. So we can see an improvement with the campaign. So we think this is positive going forward.
You can bear in mind that the total market in Norway is around 110,000 new cars. It's a really low market, and the top is 170,000 cars.
Yeah.
So we are. We have been in the deep sea, you can say. But
Yeah
... so I guess the next year, the forecast for next year will be much better, new car market in Norway.
Yeah. Because I don't know, Simen, if your question partly relates to when we will see it in the figures, because the campaigns will generate orders-
Yeah
... and then it will be delivered with a certain lead time.
You can read it in the backlog for new cars. There you can see we have more cars-
Yeah
... this year. We are growing the backlog of new cars. If I remember right, Christina, it was-
Yeah, yeah
... one thousand eight hundred cars some quarters back, and now we have two thousand six hundred cars.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
So you can see them there.
Yeah. So that was just the follow-up on the order intake. I think there is a typo in the report, actually, because it says that new order intake was 11% lower than previous year, but in the presentation, you said 11% higher. So is that the correct number? Just to get that right.
It's higher, yes.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Okay, so okay, then, that that's good to know. And then one final one. Earlier this month or earlier this quarter, Volvo Cars announced that it's scrapping the agency model in Norway and Sweden. Can you just give us your view on this, and how will this impact you? Is there any chance that you will, will they sell the Oslo asset back to Norway now, or how should they think about this?
Uh, eh, eh, eh-
Care by Volvo. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you talk about the business models, Care by Volvo or-
If we will get, when Volvo now-
Yeah, the B2C sales in Norway and Sweden, I think.
Yeah, they will go-
went down.
Yeah, yeah, they will skip Care by Volvo in Europe now. Go more for traditional business models, as I talked about in my presentation today. So we see some manufacturers nowadays, they hesitating and see go back to the traditional business models. And for us, we have agency model for Mercedes-Benz. We were pilot in Sweden, and it doesn't matter for us. You can say we have a good margin. We have lower risk in demonstration car and new cars. So for us, we can have both model, but what we think, we have to go 100% for agency model or 100% for traditional models. Sometimes you can have a sort of a
Mix
... mix. For fleet business, you have agency model, and the next time you have for private consumers, you have a traditional model. We don't like that because we can't be so efficient when we have different models. So for us, it's okay, we're 100% agency model.
I doubt the assets will come back.
Okay, so what they're doing now is they have the agency model for B2B and not for B2C. Is that how I should read it?
I don't know. Did it for Volvo that is?
No, no, I-
They said that they will have a hybrid model.
Yeah.
Yeah, but when they talked hybrid model, it was traditional business as we have had in the past and Care by Volvo. So we have had it maybe three, four, five years, the hybrid model they talked about, and now they skip Care by Volvo and go 100% for traditional business.
But hybrid, I think it means also multi-
Yeah. Okay, that's, that's fair.
... multi-channel, et cetera, et cetera.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But the conclusion here is that it doesn't really impact you that much, but in one way, you will get more customer through your, service shops, won't you? Because, people have to visit your stores now.
In the longer run, yes. But the- Should be might positive, maybe.
But I think we had the customers in our workshop before as well, regardless of model. So I think that is not-
Doesn't matter
... Doesn't matter. But I think more when we talk about the campaigns that we have better campaigns in the market and to start the volumes to come increase even more on new cars. Then we will get even more people into our workshop, so and also delivery workshop like that.
Okay. That, that's clear. Thank you for taking my questions.
Thanks, Evan.
The next question comes from Stefan Stjernholm from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Hi, Stefan from Nordea here. I have a question on the campaign activity and how that is impacting the profitability of the new car sales. Is the cost taken by the car manufacturer, or is it both you and them sharing it?
Sometimes, we can take a little bit of our margin together with the manufacturers. It depends on which brand we are talking about. For the moment now, we have a little bit lower margin when we are talking BMW, but for Mercedes, with an agency model, we have the same margin as in the past, so, but how can I say it? We like to have a lot of campaigns. When you have overproduction of cars for the manufacturers, they give us a lot of incentives into the market with marketing, better pricing, better offers for private leasing, so for us, it's the better way to work.
Instead, too, where we lack of components and you had the demand, it was higher than the production, it's not so good for a dealer like Bilia.
But most important, we will get more cars in the long run into our service.
Yeah
... business.
The forecast for this year is 255,000 new cars in Sweden, and if you look back 10 years, the average is 320-
Five
... six thousand new cars. So it's a low market. So impact us, if we have many, many bad years, impact us and hit us into the service workshops in the future. So we must back to a better new car market again.
And with that, then you add also the finance-
And going into-
and things like that. Mm, mm.
And then going into Q4, do you see a sequential increase in campaigns, or you think it's stay at the same level as in Q3?
We are in quarter four now, and if you look in the newspapers, you can see a lot of activities and campaigns for the moment now. One example is,
Yeah
... Volkswagen is really aggressive, and Audi is aggressive for the moment in the market. It will most likely increase.
Mm, good. And, yeah, okay. And another topic, looking at the service subscription and wheel storage numbers, they are both down year over year, relative to the start of the year. Is those figures and higher numbers depending on improved cars, new car sales, or how should we think about that?
Yeah, it start with the new car sales. When you sell a new car, we put in the winter tires directly into our tire hotels. And we sell less cars. We decline a little bit in both for tire hotels and service subscriptions. But we are working and putting a lot of efforts into when we sell a used car, to sign for a service subscription and tire hotels as well.
I see. Thanks, no further question at this time.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Mats Liss, from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thank you. A couple of questions. First, I mean, cash flow was good, I guess, and you mentioned working capital impact somewhat. But you also indicated that there are more measures to be done. I mean, are there any structural changes that you are looking at or... And maybe also if you could give some comments, I mean, if car producers move away from the DTC sales approach, and you go back to the old or traditional way of selling cars, will that sort of increase the need for your inventories, sort of balance the opportunities?
Yeah. No, I think, Mats, to start with your first question, I mean, there is not any real structural changes that we are taking. It's more to continue the work that we have done for several years, right? Perhaps, in these times, a little bit more intensified, right? And also, of course, working with the new operations that we have acquired over the past two years, to make sure that they have a turnover and the same focus on the aging of the cars as we have in the other operations then. When it comes to changes in business models, Stefan?
Mats, I think when we take the changes there, I think like that, when we buy cars, if we have a traditional model, it's not the same that we want. That we put them in stock, because you have a production time in the factories. So our goal is always, even if you have a traditional model, to sell the cars, while they are like what we call it, changeable in the factory, so we can adjust them for your specification. So that is the way we are working. So where even if we go back, we try to be very, how to say, lean with the capital. That's why if you take the used cars, we do the turnover rate ten times per year to work in all our subsidiaries with that.
With new cars, we try to sell them before they enter our, how to say, lot or what you call it. That is the target, even if we go back to the traditional way, like before.
So, okay. Yeah, great. Thank you. Sounds reassuring. And then on the P&L there, I guess you have this result from interest in joint ventures. It sort of, you have cost there, and I was wondering-
Yes
... if it sort of will reappear in this fourth quarter, or is there more to-
John, uh
... to expect in, in that line?
Yeah. It is the joint venture, that is the importer business that we, where we have started for our Jaguar, Land Rover business, right? So, and then your question is, Mats, I guess, if the, the result and the startup expense that we have seen so far, if that would also flow into the fourth quarter, that's your question, I guess, right? Yes.
Yeah. Yeah.
I think that there will. I mean, there will be some startup expenses also-
Mm
... in the fourth quarter, right? It is a new business that we have to get to learn and understand-
Mm
... how to operate, right?
One example is we started from zero with warehouse for spare parts.
Yeah.
When you start with zero turnover from one day to another-
Yeah
... it's really costly.
Yeah, so it's a-
To start up.
... new warehouse we have started-
Yeah
... that sort of distribute spare parts for both the Swedish and the Norwegian market then. So but we are trimming it, of course, but we have had it up and running now for six months, and that is still a rather short period of time to get to know the operations and to have it fully trimmed.
Great. Great. Then finally, I mean, M&A activities. I mean, you mentioned the BMW dealer in Luxembourg, and I guess there are some competitors out there that are sort of having a tough, well, trying to adapt to a tough market situation. Do you see more opportunities there to grow, well-
Yes
... speed up the M&A agenda, or, or are you sort of still at the moment?
It's a lot of company for sale, for the moment, but we are really careful. We like when we acquired the BMW dealer in Luxembourg, because we were only three BMW dealers in the Luxembourgish market. Now we are only two, so we have one competitor there. So it means in the future, maybe a little bit better margins for new cars, the workshops. But we are really careful, so we are a little bit more focused. My comments in the report now, we talked about we can do it better. In some business we have. One is Jaguar, Land Rover importer. Another is we start up with XPENG in Sweden, Norway.
We have a brand-new dismantling business in Norway, and we have some workshops we can doing better in the future with our centralized business excellence team. So, for the moment now, little bit more focus on the business we have today. But still we are looking for-
Okay, great.
Yeah.
Great. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.
Thank you very much for that, and thank you all for listening, and please revert to us if you have further questions. Have a good day. Bye-bye.
Bye.