Welcome to Bilia Q1 report for 2023. For 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 Carl Fredrik Ewetz. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much for that introduction. Welcome to Bilia's Q1 results presentation with CEO Per Avander, CFO Kristina Franzén, and our Deputy CEO Stefan Nordström, and I, Carl Fredrik Ewetz, investor relations. We follow our quarterly procedures, and as you can see, the agenda here on page two, similar as last quarter. We will start with how we see the current car industry, and I leave the word to Per Avander.
Okay. Thank you very much, Carl Fredrik. The current market situation. There is a still good demand in the service business, but the important tire season is a little bit late due to late spring with cold weather, especially in Sweden and Norway. Continued high order backlog for new cars, except the Norwegian market, there is a more normalized situation. Weaker demand for new cars, especially private consumers. Private leasing is much more expensive with higher interest rates. We can see our private consumers, they are little bit, they are closed their wallets for the moment. We see an increased demand of used cars, today we have a little bit higher stock of used cars in all other countries. There is an ongoing consolidation in the car industry.
It will be fewer dealers and the smallest workshops, they sell their business or close it down because it's so heavily investments with pure electrical vehicles in the future. The industry is changing. Several brands are moving towards on an agency model. One example is Nissan in Sweden, where we will be a pilot market from in the beginning of next year. Many new brands are launching this year in Europe, mainly from China. I heard a figure about they have manufacturer, 250 manufacturers in China. It's huge. Okay. We go to Q1 2023. Net turnover increased due to availability of cars and growth in the service business. We report the result of 431 million Swedish crowns and a margin of 4.4%.
It's the third best quarter one ever, which you can see on the right-hand side. If we adjust it for divested operations, we are in line with the last year, SEK 500 million, as you can see here. We report better earnings in Sweden, and for Western Europe, it's a new record quarter. Really strong. The important service business. As I said, there is still a strong demand in the service business, and we have good booking times in all our workshops. We had an organic growth by 10% with an operational result at SEK 297 million. Higher results year-over-year within the service business considering divested operations in Sweden and Norway. It was the Volvo business we sold in Oslo area and in some cities in Sweden last year.
Norway reported a lower earning. It depends on different reasons. One is divested operations, as I said, in Oslo area. Another is new business areas. One is dismantling in Trondheim, North Norway, and a brand-new facility we have opened up now in Røyken. It's, you can say, southwest Oslo. The third is acquisition of Land Rover and Jaguar operations in Oslo area with lower profitability in the service business. We take a lot of actions. We have a centralized excellent team who helping the different business areas, so we can grow the profitability in the service business in the future. The car business. We have a backlog of little bit over 23,000 new cars. Bear in mind a normalized backlog is around 13,000-14,000 units in the Bilia Group.
Still we have a really good backlog, mainly in Sweden and Western Europe. We had a profitability of SEK 158 million . New car business, we had a higher result, but a little bit lower in the used cars business, SEK 82 million . In a historical perspective, it's a good result. The gross profit was a little bit lower in comparison with the last year, especially in Norway. Order intake on new cars, adjusted for divested operations, 53% lower. As I said in the beginning, the fleet business is stable, but the private person, they are waiting and see what happen with the interest rate and the energy prices for their households and everything around it.
In Norway, we have had a lot of cancellation of new cars. It was Toyota, a pure electrical vehicle with a lower range. There is regulation, if we sign an order a couple of years ago, the customer can cancelate the contract. We have seen some cancellation, but it's only in the Norwegian market. Kristina?
Yeah. Let's move over to the financial position. For the first quarter, we reported a negative operating cash flow of around SEK 490 million . The reason for that was that the working capital was negatively affected, primarily due to a decrease of trade payables regarding purchases of cars. The inventory levels in Norway, both when it comes to used and new cars, are assessed to be on a high level at the end of the quarter. That is also partly caused by the cancellation of customer orders that Per mentioned previously. The inventory levels for the other countries are assessed to be on a good level. For the second quarter, we do have reduction of inventory level as a target for our operations.
From a cash position point of view, we utilized at the end of the quarter just below SEK 1.1 billion of the credit limits amounting to in total SEK 2.3 billion. Those of you that follow us knows that we have extended the credit limit by SEK 800 million in February this year as a backup credit for the bond loan that is due in October 2023. Together, this resulted in a net debt EBITDA relation of 1.1 times, which is well below our limit of 2.0 times.
Just to finalize, during the afternoon today, our annual general meeting takes place, and the proposal for the board that was made as part of the release for the fourth quarter, is that there will be a dividend of SEK 8.80 per share, and that will then be paid in four installments starting in May if the AGM approves that proposal.
If we have a outlook for the quarter we have now, the consumer confidence, it's a little bit better in all our countries. What we expect that private consumers, they are wait and see for new cars, but we expect we will have a really good demand for used cars instead. We have seen that phenomenon in other recessions we have had 15 years ago with the Lehman Brothers crisis, the bank crisis 1992. The private consumers, they go for not for new cars, but for used cars. The fleet business, as I said, much more stable, so we expect we will sell a lot to companies. Carl Fredrik, you take over now.
Yeah. Thank you, Per. We continue with the outlook. Perhaps not a surprise, but we continue to see a weaker order intake for new cars in Sweden and Norway in the coming quarter. This is mainly explained by the ongoing economic uncertainty with less money to spend for the consumer. Having said this, we continue to argue that there is still a pent-up demand in the market from the transition going on in the car industry. We see order intake in Western Europe to remain on a normal level. In electrical cars, interest remain high with perhaps a pending demand. This relates to that the market condition remain less supportive since the reduction of climate bonus and subsidies for chargeable vehicles in our market.
If you then add, the recent price cuts from Tesla, we believe customers will remain more reluctant and perhaps wait and see how the situation develops before switching to a more sustainable alternative, i.e. electrical cars. We see good demand for used cars on the back of what I've already mentioned, uncertainty, a pent-up demand, less money for the consumer and less subsidy for EVs. Consumers choose to keep their old cars or buying a cheaper used cars, typically ICE, internal combustion engine vehicles or hybrids. When it comes to prices for new cars, we see a rather stable situation in Q2, but won't rule out some volatility. Note the price drop in EVs post Tesla's price reduction.
Going over to the service business, Per mentioned that we continue to offer our customer what we believe is a high-quality service, and we see a solid outlook for the service business in the coming quarter. In this quarter, it represented 70% of our results. With interest for used cars picking up and new car deliveries, we see a continued good demand here.
Looking at M&A, we see longer lead times, increased supply, and slightly lower prices due to the weak economic situation, higher financing costs, and an increased requirement for investments. To almost repeat what we said last quarter, we want to be part of the ongoing consolidation, why we valued most businesses we are being offered, and we do actively, of course, search in areas we think would be a good fit for our current and future strategy. Cost saving, obviously on the agenda. As we communicated in our year-end report, we launched a cost-saving program almost a year ago, and this program is going according to plan, and it's designed to reduce costs without sacrificing the quality of our service. These were our final words. We open up for questions, please.
If you wish to ask a question, please dial star five on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial star five again on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Andreas Lundberg from SEB. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Let me start up with you with what you ended with the cost savings there. Could you update us on the timing and the magnitude of that program? Thank you.
I mean, we initiated the program quite a while ago, right? I think it was after the summer we started to prepare it. That is ongoing, right? It's running according to plan, both in terms of cost savings and also in terms of when it should be finalized. Part of the savings have kicked in and some will kick in throughout the year.
Okay. Can you give some color on or quantify it?
I don't think we have done that in the past, Andreas, right? It's almost said it's a normal level, right? It's...
No, it isn't.
Yeah. It's on a clear level, I would say. It's not giving any numbers, right?
Mm-hmm.
It's not, significant in terms that we should, get at a cost, bringing any cost. I don't have any numbers to give you, Andreas.
This is of course something we always do when things are turning a little bit sour and we do it all the time. In this case, we obviously have looked into it a little bit deeper.
Yeah.
Yeah. Cool. On the price reductions for Tesla, could you maybe describe a little bit what this will mean for both the new car and the used car business? Thank you.
It's easier in Sweden. All manufacturers, the competitors, maybe Ford Mustang said that they will follow them, but the rest they said, "We will have a stable pricing on new cars." We don't see a reduction of the price for the competitor to Tesla in Sweden. Tesla, okay, they will be bigger and bigger in the Swedish market when we are talking market shares. They don't put the price in the market. We don't see the pressure of the margin and the pricing of used car in Sweden. In Norway, they are market leader in the market. When they reduce the price, it happens a lot with all other competitors on new cars. They have huge problem to sell the cars.
There is so many used Tesla in the market. When you can buy a Tesla for NOK 200,000 you can't take NOK 350 for pure electric XC40 Volvo, for example. Therefore, we had a bad quarter for our used car business in the Norwegian market. It's little bit different in the markets. There is a other complication as well. The currency is weak today if you compare to Euro.
The manufacturers, they have problem to reduce the German brands, for example, they have problem to reduce the price because if you go back, maybe one, two years, it's 20% less between the currency, the SEK and EUR.
Right. That doesn't mean that some manufacturers or resellers are priorities like prioritizing selling used car outside of Sweden, for instance.
What do you say? They export a lot of used cars.
Given the currency situation-
Yeah
- does that also mean that some resellers or be it manufacturers, try to sell more cars outside Sweden? Used cars, I mean.
Yeah. For the moment, I think it's a bit more calm if I compare to three quarters ago. There was much more. If I look at our Deputy Managing Director, it was much more to go back nine months ago, to sell the cars outside, Sweden and Norway, Norwegian market. It's not the same today what happened with Stefan.
No, I agree with you. I think activity was bigger. If you go back, of course, we will have some that will sell the cars abroad, due to the currency, as you mentioned, Andreas, but we will see the, for the moment, it's a little bit, how to say, slower.
Mm-hmm.
Lastly, given the high order backlog you have and the, I guess, some still, constraints on getting supplies, what's the potential to deliver on this order book or order backlog in 2023? Thank you.
Uh.
I think the chain of, how to say, supply or component is better, but it's not perfect yet. I would say it differs a little bit still, different from brand to brand.
Mm-hmm.
I think also what we can see, you have some of which is some of the brands have a little bit of challenges with the factories. I think still it's not a perfect supply chain.
Supply.
With that, I still think we will have some challenges during this year.
Mm-hmm. Okay, thank you so much.
Please state your name and company. Please go ahead.
Hi. Well, two questions, I guess. First, about service sales, I guess it's sort of as moving into a seasonally strong second quarter, are there any reasons to believe that this seasonal pattern won't be happening this year? I mean, are consumers more sort of reluctant to service their cars, so they postpone their service this year and, or maybe do it later on in the autumn?
No, we don't see it. I'm soon, so I've been in different recessions. The customer, they still investing in their cars. I don't see that the booking time is going down or something like that. We see we will have a strong quarter two now and I guess for the rest of the year as well. We don't see a reduction there.
About this backlog again, could you say something about the mix? I mean, you mentioned that Sweden was important there.
I guess you have sold a lot of electric cars and premium cars, I guess. The pricing there of the backlog is, or price of car prices are sort of quite high, or could you say something about that?
Yeah. We have 15,000 units in Sweden and close 4,000 cars in Western Europe and 4,000 in Norway. The average price is increasing because it's more pure electrical vehicles in the backlog. But it little bit, as Stefan said, different between the brands we have. For Toyota, we have a really high backlog in Sweden. But for BMW, it's little bit less because they have had, what you can say? We have a little better situation with components. We have delivered more BMW. Still, we have a really good backlog for Volvo. I would say the average price is little bit higher if you go back two years ago.
About the country mix there or geographical mix, it seems that the Western Europe part of business is sort of improving now gradually. Is it, a trend? I mean, is it not any one-offs included there?
No one-offs.
I would say that there are no specific one-offs included in the Q1 results for Western Europe.
No, no. What we can say, if we take the Western Europe, I would say, to start by the brands we are, how to say, representing are number one in the Belgium market and number one in registration in the Luxembourg markets. We have the BMW brand is very, very strong brand. I think also we sell average price, quite high average prices in that market.
We have launched a brand new facility in Luxembourg, much bigger. In the past, we had used cars outside, so we think we will start to sell more used cars. We have a bigger workshop as well-
Yeah
-in Luxembourg. Now we have put a lot of effort into the market in Luxembourg. As Stefan said, BMW is a really strong brand in volume and Luxembourg, volume in Luxembourg.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you.
There are no more questions at this time. I hand the conference back to Carl Fredrik for any closing comments and written questions.
Okay. Thank you very much for listening and showing interest in Bilia. We hope to hear from you soon again, if not, during our Q2 report. Would questions arise in the meantime, do not hesitate to contact us. Have a nice day and a pleasant week.
Thank you very much.