Good morning, welcome to the presentation of Volvo Cars' full year 2022 and fourth quarter 2022 financial results coming to you from our headquarters in Gothenburg. My name is Ron, and I'm joined this morning by our President and Chief Executive, Jim Rowan, and our Chief Financial Officer, Johan Ekdahl. At the start, Jim and Johan will walk us through our performance, and thereafter we'll throw it open for a live Q&A. You can participate in two ways. Either you can send in your questions via the chat window that you should be able to see at the bottom of your screen, in which case I will then read out the questions, your questions to Jim and Johan, or you can also participate by using the phone lines. Please follow the link at the bottom of your screen or simply just use the QR code.
I'll come back with more information on how you can participate at the start of the Q&A. For now, the floor, Jim, is all yours.
Thanks, Ron. Welcome, everyone, to this, the fourth quarter and full year review 2022 for Volvo Cars. In 2022 was an acceleration of our strategy and navigating some challenges, and we made some good headway. 2022 full- electric share of sales rose to 11% versus 4% last year. If we isolate the fourth quarter, that rose to 18% versus 6% in Q4 2021. Of course, we had the global reveal of the Volvo EX90, our first fully designed electric platform car. We divested the rest of our assets in Aurobay to allow us to fully focus on our electrification journey. The battery plant and engineering joint venture with Northvolt was announced for here in Gothenburg. Our new fully electric assembly plant in Slovakia was also announced.
Of course, Polestar, our affiliate, was listed on the NASDAQ exchange in New York. It was also a year filled with challenges. Energy crisis and rising inflation, higher cost for raw materials, semiconductor shortages forcing spot buys and logistic disturbances. The year started with this terrible war in Ukraine, which of course is still with us today and likely to cause disruption going forward. The continued COVID-related lockdowns primarily in China in 2022 forced plant closures and shortages of some key components. Those were really the key challenges that we faced through that year. If we take a quick look at our full year financial results, and Johan will take us through this in a lot more detail just shortly. If we start with retail sales, they were down by 12%.
Because of our high pricing and also the car mix, our revenue was up by 17%. EBIT margins compared to 2022, sorry, compared to 2021, were up at SEK 22.3 billion versus SEK 20.3 billion in 2021. Of course, we remain fully focused on our mid-decade ambitions. We aim to be at 1.2 million cars sold run rate, as well as 50% electric sales, 50% online sales, 8%-10% EBIT margins, and a 40% CO₂ reduction when compared with our baseline in 2018. We remain fully dedicated and focused on those mid-decade ambitions. Perhaps one of the most important things that we saw in 2022 was the validation of our electrification strategy and that sharp rise in Recharge and BEV sales.
If we isolate this to Q4, we can see that BEV sales at 18% are the highest ever, and total Recharge sales at 41%, again, the highest ever in the history of the company. In fact, if we isolate just December as a month, we can see that BEV sales actually increased to 20% of our total sales. This bodes well for the future because we start to see that now emanate out towards some markets across the world, from Latin America to Southeast Asia and to here in Europe. We've listed here the top 10 markets across the world where we see a high adoption of Recharge, and that includes BEV as well as obviously our plug-in hybrids.
I think that bodes well for us as well in terms of the future and the investment strategies that we've made as we start to see more and more of those countries move higher into that electrification journey. With that, I will hand over to Johan, who will take us through the financials in some more detail.
Thank you, Jim. Good morning. Some more details on the financials. In the fourth quarter, we saw an increase in retail sales volumes of 11%, which is then on the back of the improved production situation towards the end of the year, where December actually was our best production month ever with more than 72,000 cars in production. Revenue with a solid growth of 31%, taking us to SEK 105 billion in the quarter, also proving that we still see a good demand and have been able then to have a good mix of cars and a healthy pricing. On top of that, we've seen a tailwind on FX, on revenue, and also some contract manufacturing contributing to that growth of 31%.
On the EBIT side, Volvo Cars, without JVs and associates, we are at SEK 3.9 billion or 3.7% for the quarter.
Not where we want to be, we have had, which we'll go into more detail later, still very elevated cost for raw material. We have been buying semiconductors still on the spot market, et cetera, we are at an deteriorating margin compared to last year. Cash flow, SEK 9 billion of free cash flow for the quarter, which is then on a very healthy level and almost on par with the 2021. On revenue, a little bit more in detail, we see, of course, a positive effect from the increased volumes in the quarter. We do see still positive effects from mix and pricing. We have a very good tailwind on FX, which is then in, on revenue, especially on the U.S. dollar.
We also have effects from our contract manufacturing of cars to Polestar, taking us then again, 31% growth and SEK 105 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter. On EBIT, we do see positive effects. We have increased volumes, we have good sales mix and pricing on the back of the continued healthy demand. On FX, it's actually slightly negative on EBIT due to the fact that we have EUR and other currencies on the cost side, offsetting the effects on revenue, especially U.S. dollar. Then we have the negative effects from the increased raw material prices, especially high on lithium still on our BEV cars, but also raw materials in general, still at elevated levels. We see increased cost for freight.
We're buying semiconductors to some extent on, still in the spot market, which then takes us to SEK 3.9 billion or 3.7% in the quarter, including JVs and associates, SEK 3.4 billion or 3.3%. Our BEV margins still at lower levels at 6% compared to 5% the previous quarter. We have had some positive effects from sales of CO2 credits. We also see that we have a good development of the revenue per car in absolutes, an increase both in revenue and in gross income per car compared to the third quarter, although still offset by then the elevated prices for lithium and raw materials, and also some effects from the high U.S. dollar rates in the prices for the batteries.
We are coming out into 2023 with a very solid liquidity level. We are at SEK 84 billion, including undrawn facilities on the back of the SEK 9 billion positive free cash flow in the fourth quarter. We have been slightly positively impacted in the fourth quarter, due to the fact that some of the so-called structural investments already announced in connection with the IPO, some investments, especially in China, have been pushed forward into 2023, awaiting regulatory approvals, et cetera. There is a time phasing that has had a positive effect in the fourth quarter as well, although also the underlying operational cash flow is at a good level towards the end of the year, taking us to a very solid liquidity level.
If we look at the full year, it's to a large extent the same story as in the fourth quarter. Volumes for the full year down 12%, as we saw previously. Despite that, we've been able to increase revenue 17% to SEK 330 billion, taking us for the first time in the history of the company above SEK 300 billion in revenue, affected by still good mixes, good pricing, FX, and contract manufacturing. We'll come back to some more details shortly. EBIT, Volvo Cors, excluding JVs and associates, SEK 17.9 billion for the full year or 5.4%, including JVs and associates, SEK 22.3 billion, also a large effect from the Polestar listing in the second quarter.
Cash flow, SEK -6 billion for the full year, almost on par with last year, taking us to that we do have a healthy liquidity level at the end of the year. As Jim showed previously, we are really seeing a good increase in our share of electrified cars, 18% of full electric in the fourth quarter, 41% Recharge cars. Then it's an important proof point towards our mid-decade ambition of a CO₂ reduction of 40% per car mid-decade, whereby the increased BEV share will be the most important contributing factor due to the fact that the tailpipe emissions then will be reduced. We are fully on track towards that ambition.
Again, revenue for the full year at SEK 330 billion, 17% increase despite lower volumes compared to the year before. Sales mix pricing, again, proving that we have seen a good demand during the year and been able to price our cars better. We have a positive FX effect, especially from the U.S. dollar in revenue and then contract manufacturing on top of that, taking us then to SEK 330 billion. On EBIT, we see also there positive effects from our mix of cars and our pricing. FX slightly positive, but again, EUR and other currencies on the cost side offsetting to a large extent the positive revenue effects from the U.S. dollar. Again, the negative effects from the increased raw material prices, lithium especially, but also on a lot of other raw materials.
Spot purchases of semiconductors in order to save cars in production and increased freight costs. Even though we have been quite successful in our mix, and pricing effects, not fully but to a large extent offsetting the increased cost, but not to the full extent, taking us down to SEK 17.9 billion or 5.1% for the full year. 22.3% or 6.6%, including JVs and associates and the positive Polestar listing effects. With that, I will leave back to Jim to take us to the final summary.
Thanks, Johan. In summary, 2022. Overall, semiconductor situation and freight cost is better and the easing of the COVID restrictions and lockdowns, we should see a positive impact as we roll forward into 2023. In 2022, the second half production improved by 15% compared to the first half production. Again, that bodes well for us as we pour into 2023. As Johan said, December was our highest production month to date. We've refocused on cost and efficiency, and this is to help not just drive 2023 but also our mid-decade ambitions as that relates to EBIT. In 2022, the EURpean price actions will further materialize in Q2.
In Q1 2023, due in part to that sizable order book that we accumulated throughout the course of last year. We roll forward to 2023, despite the macroeconomic situation, our execution engine continues to improve. Our order book remains robust and healthy demand globally. We expect solid double-digit growth in retail sales compared 2022 to 2023. We intend to also increase our BEV volumes, resulting in that percentage growth of BEV. The global unveil and supply of our new fully electric small SUV is a highlight for us this year. We look forward to announcing that to the world later this year. At the same time, we will also transform the U.K. to become our first fully direct consumer-facing market.
That's something that we're looking forward to as it has so many proof points for us as a business. Of course, we will start the construction of a new Northvolt facility, one of EURpe's largest high-tech battery manufacturing plants. With that, I will hand over to Ron, who will take us through the Q&A session. Ron?
Well, thank you very much for that, Jim. We are all set now to roll the Q&A session. As I said, you can participate in the Q&A session in two ways. Either you can send in your questions using the chat window that you should see at the bottom of your screen, in which case I will then take the questions to Jim and Johan. If you want, you can also participate via using our phone lines. Please use the QR code that you see on the screen. Once you're on the call, press star one one to be able to ask the question, you'll come directly to this live conference. To get the Q&A session, let me also invite up here our Head of Investor Relations, John Hernander. Good morning, John.
Good morning.
All right, let's take the first question then. This comes in from Henrik Christiansson from Carnegie. There have been a number of price cuts on BEVs from other OEMs in recent weeks. How do you see that development, and how does that impact your ability to get the necessary price realization through?
Yeah. Despite this, despite the high inflation and the high energy costs, we see demand for our products on a global basis, incredibly high still, especially on our BEV products. That bodes well, obviously, not just for our strategy to become fully electric and to increase our electric sales, but it bodes well as well for the strength of the brand and our pricing within the market. We don't have any pressure points that we see that would require us to reduce our pricing anywhere in the short term.
We can take one more question from Henrik. Could you explain the change in the accounting policy for the Polestar Holding impacting JVs and associates income? What is the forecast profit loss based on, and how will you treat actual versus forecast outcome in the P&L in future quarters? Maybe Johan.
Yes. Since Polestar now being a listed company, we need also to adhere to certain insider regulations. We are reporting as of now, earlier, our quarterly results compared to Polestar. It's not really. It will not be any material effect in our figures at all. Rather than taking in the actuals, using the equity method, we will take in, let's call it a well-informed forecast rather. There might be small adjustments in the quarter afterwards, if you're referring to the difference between actuals and forecast. I think we will have the ability to do that in a way that I foresee very, very insignificant effects in our P&L from this change.
All right. Thanks for that. Let's take in a caller then. The first caller is George from Goldman Sachs. Good morning, George. Please go ahead with your question.
A quarter of more than 200,000 units and a very strong finish to the year it sounds like. When we think about 2023, is any reason why you won't be able to achieve this level of production on a quarterly basis through the year? A second question just on the financials for Johan. Obviously, it was a strong quarter in terms of volume and top line, when we look at the profitability ex the JVs, and we also strip out the benefit that you get from capitalizing a high level of R&D net of amortization, it looks like the earnings were only around SEK 500 million or around a 50 basis points margin. Obviously, this is in a very strong end market environment in terms of pricing and mix.
Can you give us some insight into what is holding back the profitability at Volvo Cars today? Is it just the raw material and high semi costs or are there other important items, and how do you see these easing over the coming 12-24 months? Thank you.
Hey, George. I'll take the first part, which is on the production side. The real positive that we see in the tailwind that we're already starting to see through the fourth quarter is of course the COVID lockdowns in China were a big part of the disruption factors for 2022. In fact, that's where most of the supply disruptions and plant closures came from. We have a large supply base in China, it affected not just the manufacturing plants in China, but affected our manufacturing plants on a global basis. With the easing of those lockdowns in China now, by and large, it looks like those won't reoccur in 2023. That's the biggest single hurdle and the best tailwind that we can find.
In addition to that, the semiconductor situation, it continues to ease. That doesn't mean to say it's gone away. We'll still see small disturbances, and we will need to play in the spot market in order to get some of those semiconductors, I would imagine all the way up through the half, through the first half of the year. Hopefully we'll see that slide away as well in the second half of the year. But those are the two main things which give us the confidence that we can grow the production in line with our forecasts. We saw that actually manifest itself to some extent in Q4 with that highest ever production month of around 72,000 units.
Yes. On the question on the profitability, I would say that to the absolute main part of the deterioration in margins is due to, as you say, the elevated prices for raw materials and also other costs for semiconductors, spot buys, which has, on the other hand, saved quite a lot of production, but also comes with a cost. Then also increased freight costs, et cetera.
On top of that, I would say that there is also naturally a volume effect, which means that we have had these supply and production disturbances during the year and even though that the volume, there is also an effect that if we would have had higher volumes, the profitability would be slightly higher because if you put it simply, not all cost in gross margin is variable either. I would say on top of the elevated raw materials, et cetera, there is also volume effect. In summary, raw material being by far the biggest effect.
I guess we can also add to that what we said during the IPO, that when we sell more BEV cars under the current generation of platforms, it would be sort of a dilutive effect on margins. When we introduce the new platforms in the years to come, we will get closer to the BEV and ICE parity, but that has an effect on the profitability in the fourth quarter as well.
Let's take a few questions from the media. Let's take a few of them. How has the launch of the Volvo EX90 been received by the market? How much do you see that car model take part of the 2023 financial results? Maybe on just the feedback from the market.
Yeah. The feedback's been really good. In fact, we opened that up for pre-orders, and we set ourselves some internal targets that we were hoping to achieve, and we blew through those targets, pretty well. The demand for that product is high, which we had expected, but even beyond our expectations. That's great. Of course, the production of that car, as we announced earlier, that won't happen until well into the fourth quarter. Supply this year will be limited, and therefore the effects on our 2023 results on the EX90 will be limited.
Let me take the opportunity as well just to bring into place the new small SUV that we haven't announced yet officially, but we'll announce that, you know, later on this year, probably around about the mid part of this year. As we announce that car actually will be in production as well by the end of this year. Both of them, the combined effect will still be quite small in 2023, but as we port into 2024, then we'll have two brand-new cars. The nice thing really for that is we top and tail the range. We've got the EX90 at the top of the range, full electric and in full production by, you know, by 2024.
This brand-new SUV, which is gonna take up a new position in the market for us, I think will bring in different demographics for us as a brand. That again will be in full production by the end of this year as well. We start off with rather than just two cars, which we have this, we're doubling up to four cars by the end of the year.
All right. I'll take two quick questions then from Göteborgs-Posten as well. One is, this is from Waldemar. Is it realistic to stick to the goal of 1.2 million cars sold mid-decade, considering you sold a bit over 600,000 last year?
Yeah, let me take that. First of all, the clarification point on that is that we had said that by the mid-decade, we expect it will be at 1.2 million cars. That's a 1.2 million run rate by the mid-decade. What drives that? I think some of the, maybe the narrative has not quite picked up that this new smaller SUV, which will be, you know, a lower price point than our current BEV sales, our BEV cars, will allow us to pick up that new demographic. It won't be in a major way cannibalistic to our existing sales, it goes on top. We'll have obviously the C40, the XC40, which is in play right now.
We'll have the Volvo EX90 in play, we've already said that we'll have one brand new production fully electric car in play, or we'll release that every year for the next three or four years. When we get to that mid-decade, we have, you know, five or six fully electric cars, fully built on new electric platforms, all in play at the same time, especially the new smaller SUV, which plays to a different demographic, we think that will be a nice volume car for us. When you add that together, I think you have a very credible story towards getting to that 1.2 million run rate by the mid-decade.
Mm-hmm.
That's how those numbers add up.
Right. One more question from him then. How will the Swedish organization and the employees in Gothenburg be affected by the cost and efficiency optimization plan? Maybe I'll turn to you again, Jim, for that one.
Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I think it behooves every business right now to be seeing how do they make sure that they're driving efficiency through their entire organization. We obviously do that on a day-to-day basis. We've amped that up to make sure that we're fully fit for the future. A good example of that is we have divested all of our Aurobay assets, for example, so that we can fully focus our investments in the future, which we of course see as full electrification, the electrical propulsion systems and all the new technologies that we need to be to remain relevant in this new emerging EV world.
That's a good example where we're really looking at our cost base in every part of the business and saying, "Okay, this is something where we think, we think we can take out costs in order to fully invest in the future.
All right.
It's, it's a sharpening up. It's not, it's not a big separate program. It is a sharpening up of our efficiency and where we spend our costs.
Mm-hmm. Good. All right. Let's take a caller now. Let's take Mattias Holmberg from DNB. Good morning, Mattias.
Thank you for the time. Can you hear me?
It's loud and clear.
Perfect. When I spoke to your IR team earlier, I understood that you had a quite material balance sheet FX revaluation effects that impacted the foreign exchange line in the EBIT bridge in the quarter. I noticed that you didn't mention this during the presentation. I would want to first of all confirm if this was the case and perhaps clarify if there were any issues here?
Yeah. On FX, if we look at the full year, or the quarter as well, we are on EBIT, we have quite limited net effects on FX, although we have a big positive effect in revenue. That's of course different parameters. You have the U.S. dollar mainly affecting the revenue. We have the mainly EUR and other currencies affecting the cost side. We have effect of hedges included in that number, and we also have balance sheet revaluations. I would say over the full year on the net side, I would say the biggest effects are the change in U.S. dollar on the revenue side and the cost effects of the EUR on the cost side.
There are other corresponding effects, and they can of course vary somewhat month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter. I would say for the full year, those are the main effects.
Would you say it was a material headwind or tailwind in the fourth quarter, particularly, from revaluations?
I would say it's not that significant in the fourth quarter. I would say we the main effects in the fourth quarter as well is the positive U.S. dollar year-over-year on the revenue side and EUR and partly hedges on the cost side, which then takes us to slightly negative but almost a wash in total in the quarter for, from currency.
That's clear. A second one, if I may. Can you tell us roughly where the BEV gross margins would have been without the currently elevated lithium prices, or rather perhaps how much of the COGS for the BEV segment that relates specifically to the batteries at this point? Also if there were any positives impact in particular to the BEV gross margin from the credit sales in the quarter, or did that sort of impact the ICE segment or the common side on gross profit please?
Yes. On the second question, the credits sold, it has a slightly positive effect in the quarter, but it's not that huge. It's mainly one percentage point or something like that from the credit sales. On the lithium prices, I would say that if we compare 2021 with Q4 2022 , the main part of that deterioration for sure is lithium prices.
That's clear. Just to clarify, the impact from the credit sales, did that impact the BEV gross margin or the ICE gross margin or the common?
The main part affecting the BEV gross margin, since we also have credits for certain PHEVs, there is also a slight effect on the non-BEV cars, if you will. The larger part is in the BEV. It was not that huge amount.
Okay.
But Yeah.
Okay. Thanks.
That's very clear. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Mattias, for the questions. We can take another question from the media. This is from Erik Söderholm. Will there be a bonus payout to employees this year?
Yes, there will be a bonus payout for our employees this year.
Yeah. Good. We have a question from Automotive News. Do you plan any job cuts as part of the cost optimization plan in 2023? If so, where globally will these cuts come from? Jim?
Yeah. No, we don't plan any job cuts. In fact, if you look at, if you look at our electrification journey and our growth ambitions and also this transition to new technologies, we're gonna be, we're pretty confident we're gonna keep all our people pretty busy for the next few years as we get the new cars ready for production and ready for prime time, the new SUV or EX90, the small SUV, the EX90, and of course, 1 new car every year for the next two or three years, I think is going to keep our people pretty engaged and pretty busy.
This is from Charlie Martin in Autocar. You noted in the full year report that the active subscriptions increased 49% compared with last year. What has driven this growth, and how do you see it developing through 2023, the subscription business in general?
I think really what's driving the growth in subscription is that we're in a new phase where people are looking for different ownership models or different user models for, you know, for cars and next-generation mobility. I think it's great that we're an early adopter in that, all the way from Volvo On Demand, which allows you to enjoy the benefits of having a car for a very short period of time or subscription base for months or, you know, or a short-term basis. It's gonna be a new thing that is here to stay, in my opinion. I think it will accelerate.
I think if I go back to the small SUV, when we release the small SUV and we put that on a subscription-based ownership model, that's gonna allow us really to talk to brand-new customers we've never spoken to them for the first time. In many cases, Gen Z, who are coming into the car market for the very first time 'cause it makes it affordable. The price of that car is gonna be lower, of course. When you add subscription-based ownership, you're only signing up for, you know, for say a minimum of three months. I think it's, I think it's just a new addition to how this next generation of car owners want to enjoy that product.
Mm-hmm. Good. Let's take a caller then. This is Jose Asumendi from J.P. Morgan. Jose, go ahead with your question, please.
A few questions, please. Thank you for the disclosure on the growth margin between ICE and BEV. Definitely, you know, I think you're leading the discussion here amongst the OEMs. Can you, Jim, maybe provide some clarity, how do you expect to move those growth margins on BEV higher in the coming years? What are the sort of biggest levers you're thinking to move to improve the profitability there? Second, for Johan, can you explain a little bit more the SEK 13 billion headwind bucket you have for the full year? Can you just give us some breakdown of the biggest buckets behind this SEK 13 billion and whether you were expecting at the beginning of the year maybe to offset this category with price mix?
Final one, CapEx R&D. Can you give us some steer for 2023? How should we think about CapEx and R&D? How much higher is it gonna go versus 2022? Thank you.
Hi, Jose. Thanks for the question. Yeah, right now what we're seeing in the market is very encouraging for us. We've managed to move our BEV sales from basically 4% to 11% year-over-year. If you isolate the fourth quarter, that goes from 6% to 18%, which is a threefold increase in the space of a year, despite supply chain disruptions which hit BEV sales or BEV supply more than other supply. Actually, when we isolate Q4 December within the fourth quarter, we see that that actually increased to 20% in BEV sales. That's, you know, so that direction and the adoption of electrification in our customer base is great.
The one headwind that we have, of course, is this high price of lithium. How do we get that down? Now, all of our intelligence tells us that we'll start to see more supply come in on lithium, not just the lithium mining, but also lithium processing, and that's part of the thing that's driving the price up as well, that lack of supply. We're already in discussions with mines and with processing factories in order to get direct access to that at more predictable costs. There's another part to this to play out as well, and that is battery chemistry and battery technology continues to increase. With the adoption of new technologies like LFP technology, I think you're gonna start to see then meaningful cost reductions across the BEV to ICE comparison.
I still expect to get there by 2025, BEV to ICE parity. I'm confident ever more so that we'll get there in the 2025 timeframe. Hopefully, that helps answer the question.
Maybe the next one on headwinds then.
On the SEK 13 billion you're referring to for the full year, I would say if you simplify it's to a very large extent, a couple of things. It's the main part is raw material increases, raw material prices. That's the, by far, biggest part. On top of that, we also have increased costs or payments to certain suppliers, which to a large extent also are raw material cost-driven, if you will. We have had these supply constraints, especially on semiconductors, where we have been buying semiconductors in the spot market, which also is a part of that. That has, of course, been a good business case, if you will, because it has saved quite a substantial amount of cars in production, but it has also, of course, come with a cost.
We also have increased cost for logistics and also you could say disturbances in the production due to the constraints we've had, which also of course comes with a cost where it's more difficult to plan. Those, I would say on a net basis is the sum up to these SEK 13 billion of which the by far largest part is driven by raw material prices.
Thank you. On CapEx, please, if possible. Thank you.
On CapEx, we will increase our CapEx in the coming years. We will have in large investments both in development of new architectures, new car models coming up, one each year, at least going into the mid-decade, and also on our production footprint. The Košice plant in Slovakia. The joint venture with Northvolt in Gothenburg. I expect CapEx to increase, although we will see that on the back of a growth, which means that the relative share of CapEx as a share of revenue, if you will, I would not expect it to go up that much.
Mm-hmm. All right, Jose. Thanks.
Thank you. Thank you very much.
Yeah. Thank you. This question comes in from Agneska. How long and how large is your order book? That is, how much of your projected production for 2023 is covered by it?
We don't disclose the size of the order book. What I can say it's still very high on almost record high levels. Of course it do cover a part of the sales into 2023. When we now see the improvements in the production system, the order book will come down because I mean, it's positive that we have a large order book from a demand perspective, but we also have long delivery times to our customers, which we of course aim to reduce when normalizing production. The order book in totals will decrease during the year. We will not comment on the exact size of it.
Mm-hmm. Anything, Jon, you would like to add on this?
No. I think that the order book remains of good quality. We don't see a big change in cancellation rates either.
Yeah.
They are on normal levels, relative sort of the order book size.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
This question comes in from Efiwe Lungelo. Does Volvo still feel that they will be fully electric by their set year after there have been hikes in lithium prices and coal shortages globally? Maybe Jim.
Yeah. I mean, you know, the industry's in transition and, you know, the problem is when an industry is in transition, especially when it's a technology transition as well as some of the other things that, you know, that are happening at the same time, it looks like the industry is gonna transform at a linear pace. That's what it looks like. When that technology becomes more mature, when cost comes out of the equation, when the friction factors of things like charge infrastructure and range start to be eliminated, then you hit that inflection point. When you hit that inflection point, the gradient of the curve goes up very, very quickly.
The big problem with industry transitions is if you don't invest ahead of the curve, then you miss that inflection point, and you're not ready for when the market changes. We're investing ahead of the curve. Yes, right now, the only real headwind that we've got is the price of lithium. We see globally, last year, we saw that new BEV sales increased by 61%. ICE sales fell by 15%. I mean, that's a big data point. That's telling you that the market is moving towards electrification, and you best get ready, and you're gonna have to cope with some of those increased prices right now with lithium, which we think will die down.
We think that new battery technologies will help reduce the cost of batteries, and we think we'll get to price parity by 2025, which really is when I think that inflection point kicks in, and the market really goes, not quite exponential, but the market goes towards a much higher gradient towards full BEV adoption. We've seen it. I mean, we've seen it happen in places like Norway, where 80%-85% of every new car sold is now electric. We've actually seen it in some of our markets as well. We showed in the slides earlier our top 10 markets that are now above 80% either Recharge or full BEV, and that's just gonna continue. Do I think we'll get the right strategy? That was a long answer to a short question, I guess.
Yes, I absolutely do think we've got the right strategy, and I think we've been bold enough for us to invest ahead of that inflection point, which we know is gonna come.
Mm-hmm.
I think if you're waiting to say, "Well, I'll try and hedge both bets. I'll keep investing in ICE, and I'll keep investing in BEV," then that's I think that's. I think you then risk missing the market.
Mm-hmm.
We don't want to risk missing the market.
Good. Thanks, Jim. Let's take another caller. We have Daniel from Bernstein on the phone line. Good morning, Daniel.
Gentlemen, thanks for taking my question. Jim, you maintained your mid-decade guidance. I know you said before that mid-decade may not mean 2025. Could you elaborate right now what is keeping you from providing interim steps between where you are today, kind of with quite a gap in volumes and margins, to that mid-decade ambition, right? What are the interim steps? How are you thinking about the shape of volumes and margins as we head towards, I'm gonna say, 2027? For Johan, can you, kind of, can you give us some color how you would affect the moving parts in 2023? You've already commented on the cost per car or the evolution you think on the COGS side.
In your mind, kind of what's the upside on your exit rate from December, which I guess, right, was pretty low? What are the moving parts you'd point us towards in this year? You know, can you give us a sense of where you'd hope to end up by the end of the year?
Just to come back on your first point. We've said, we've already said, we said earlier today that we expect to see strong double-digit growth. I think that's your first proof point. You know, as we go through the course of this year, we release our volume numbers on a quarterly basis, then you're gonna start to see that come through. We know demand is strong. We know we have a strong order book. Where we were constrained on growth last year was basically on the supply issues around COVID, around some of the disruptions on semiconductors and so on. We have that pent-up demand. We don't see, as John alluded to earlier, we don't see any significant order cancellations.
We just look, we extrapolate the demand with our supply engine, and we can see, yeah, we can get to that strong double-digit growth. That's gonna be your first proof point at the end of 2023, and our move towards those mid-decade ambitions of a run rate of 1.2 million cars, which is obviously 100,000 cars per month. Can we reach that? The fact that we made 72,000 cars in the month of December allows us the confidence that we can get there. Remember as well, the market is moving towards electrification. That's where the growth is happening.
61% up versus 50% down on ICE, and we will have the C40, the small SUV, we'll have the big EX90 at the top of the range, and then we'll release a brand-new car every year for the next three or four years. By the time we get to that mid-decade, we're gonna have four, five, six probably cars, and brand new, fully, you know, fully electric in a market which is now much more adopted to electric with full core compute technology. That I think is the roadmap towards that ambition.
On your question on the moving parts, so to speak, in 2023 and on the margins, we don't specifically guide on profit margins, so this will be more of a generic answer. I think 2023 will play out sort of a gradual change. We are going into 2023 still on elevated price levels for raw materials, especially lithium, but also in other cases. We also still see, even though it has improved significantly, disturbances in the supply chains. We are still buying semiconductors in the spot markets, et cetera. I think what we believe is that gradually during 2023, raw material prices will come down, especially with the exception of lithium, where the timing might be somewhat more uncertain.
Also there, we believe that the intelligence that we have, the reports that we get, et cetera, indicates that lithium prices will start to come down already during the second half of 2023, although that timing might be somewhat uncertain. In other raw materials, we will see a decline during the year, due to, you know, contractual indexation, et cetera. That's one part. Also, I think that the supply chain when it comes to semiconductors is already improving. We see that in the increased production volumes, but we believe that will also gradually improve over the course of 2023, especially in the second half.
I think and also then, as I said before, there is also volume effects of in the increased volume, that double-digit growth that we will have during the year will also have an effect on this. With that said, I think there will be a gradual improvement during 2023 without saying any specific number.
Yeah.
Maybe in addition...
Great.
In addition to the comments on the 1.2 million, I mean, that's capacity that we have today. What Johan talk about CapEx is to secure the growth beyond the mid-decade.
Yeah.
We have the capacity in place to reach 1.2 million in the current facilities.
Yep.
I think maybe what I'm wondering, if I could put those two answers together, Jim Rowan and Johan Ekdahl, is you have a plan, you're executing on it. I think it's well understood. You have a good grasp of the business. What's been the discussion in the board? What's keeping you from providing some more guidance figures to the market, be it for 23, 24, kind of interim steps that may help investors kind of range the shape, if you will, between now and then? I think that's what I'm asking, right? What's the decision? What are the reasons for the decision that, you know, you don't feel comfortable at this point kind of sharing a few more guidance items?
Well, partly it's just the policy we've decided to adopt. Really as well, if you look at, as we sit here today, and we've wound back the clock a year from now, the Ukrainian war hadn't started. That in itself is a massive data point. There's a lot of disruption still going on. We still have inflation costs. We don't really know what's gonna happen with the Federal Reserve. We've got, you know, this rumbling war in Ukraine. We don't know what turn that's gonna take. That could get a lot worse before it gets better. We've got global economic uncertainties in terms of energy prices and energy security, and we've got global uncertainties in terms of world trade and whether tariffs start to go up.
Now you have a tax tariff that if you manufacture a car in China and you sell it to the U.S., you have a 27.5% tariff cost. You never had that a couple of years ago. I think it behooves us as a public company to say we're not in control of all of the could be eventualities. To give far out guidance would seem at this particular point in time, given the disruptions that we've already seen in the last couple of years and what's likely to continue for the next year or so, I think it behooves us to be, you know, to be conservative in that approach.
We also get a lot of questions, especially on the EBIT margin target. Sort of as a sneak preview, we will have an update throughout the year, capital markets update, where we address some of these topics and hopefully clarify it a little bit more in the building blocks.
Maybe just to pivot on that point. The industry's in transition, okay? We are an early mover, and we hope to get that early mover advantage. We're already seeing some of the benefits of that early mover advantage, where we grew our BEV sales by three times within a year in a very turbulent market. We're, we're making the investments to put in new BEV cars. We're not trying to say, "Well, let's release two ICE cars and a BEV car." We're like, we're all in on BEV because we think the technology is better. It's much more efficient. An internal combustion engine is only 30%-35% efficient. An electric propulsion system is over 90% efficient. There's no, there's no tailpipe emissions, of course, which is a massive benefit.
Our customers really care about that. There's no noise, there's no vibration, there's less servicing costs for our customers. Yes, we've got some headwinds right now, in terms of lithium. That's pretty much the only thing that stands in the way of full scale adoption. The other thing is you need to look at the other side of the table, which is ICE. Internal combustion engines will probably become more expensive because there'll be less demand for them. Therefore they won't have the leverage of volume over time. Not only that, when they need to hit Euro 7 or China 6 or some of these other new regulations, they're gonna have to make big investments in ICE at the same time as making big investments in BEV. That becomes a bit of a drag as well.
As ICE is seen as old technology, then the residual values of ICE cars are probably gonna reduce, which makes it higher for them to offer that in subscription-based ownership. Whereas BEV cars are probably gonna hold the residual value higher because it's a new technology, therefore subscription-based ownership becomes a lot cheaper on that. You add all that together and you say, "Wow, we're really in the middle of transition here." Who's brave enough and bold enough to make the decisions for the future? Despite the high lithium costs that we're facing right now, you know, we just think we have a good strategy for the future. Back to your earlier point, we're not quite ready to lay that out on a month-by-month basis towards that mid-decade ambition.
Mm-hmm. Well, thank you.
Thank you. Jim, thanks very much.
Yep. We have about less than 10 minutes now, so we'll take a few more questions. This one comes in from Tobias Bieth, analyst at Redburn. You mentioned raw materials still being a headwind in 2023. Can you remind analysts what the typical timeline is on your contracts for both non-battery cell materials like steel and cathode, and precursors like lithium?
I would say it's hard to say in very generic because it varies between different raw materials and different contracts. There are both indexation that is more based on the spot prices on a quarterly basis or on a yearly basis. That's why in total there is a certain lag and there are some raw materials that are actually indexed annually, which means that we are still in some cases suffering from prices in the, in the first half of 2022, whereby we have seen the benefits of other raw materials already in the, in the second half of 2022. It's very difficult to say a very generic answer.
Yeah. Thanks, Johan. Let's take another caller, Hampus from Handelsbanken. Good morning, Hampus, and if you could please restrict your questions to just two so that we can get in one or two more after that.
Hello. Can you hear me?
Go ahead. Yes, loud and clear.
Okay. 2 questions from me. Just a clarification on your outlook, Jim. Do you think that supply will determine your sales this year, or will it be the demand? You've been supply constrained for all last year, so it'd be interesting to pick your brain on that. Second question is on the lead times. What lead times are we looking at here today or between order and delivery, and how has this changed if you look back one year? Those are my questions. Thanks.
Yeah. Supply, I think we'll still see some supply chain disruptions this year. We'll still end the year with almost the same backlog as we started the year. I don't think we'll make headway into that in 2023. Hopefully I would like to reduce that order book, 'cause when we reduce the order book, it suggests then we have a smaller lead time to our customers. This year I think we're gonna still be somewhat supply constrained. Demand is incredibly high. The order book is incredibly high, especially for BEV. Some of those raw materials, especially the likes of semiconductors, are much more geared towards BEV production than other production.
That's really I think gonna be, that's gonna be the choke point for us towards... Now, having said that, we still see tremendous growth this year-over-year, because a lot of that is freeing up, but it won't free up fully.
You had another question on lead times?
On the lead times, it of course varies between models and markets, but I would say it's still long. I would say six to.
Six to eight months.
Six to nine months, or at least I think, a little bit depending on which car of course, which mark.
All right.
Thank you.
Thanks, Hampus. This question comes in from Marcus Winkler. How will you be able to approach and manage the complexity of software-defined vehicles, and what effect will it have on your organization, partnerships, and even on margins?
Yep.
Jim
Sure.
turn to you.
Yeah. One of the things that we spend a lot of time and attention on is what do we build versus what do we buy? I think that's one of the critical parts when you're in this transition, you're trying to figure out exactly where you should be spending your engineering dollars, what's essential for us to drive differentiation into the product and what do we need to own. Software is part of that. Of course, it's a lot wider than software, so we've decided that the electrical propulsion system for us is important, so we make our own e-motors, we make our own inverters. We'll now very shortly be making our own batteries.
Our own battery management system, which is a software layer that sits on top of that to get all of the best performance from that propulsion system. We invest heavily in that software. We're also investing in the software that drives the silicon to the application layer. We buy in the silicon from NVIDIA. As you know, we buy in the silicon from Qualcomm on the infotainment stack. We build the software, for example, for all of our safety systems. Zenseact, a wholly owned subsidiary of ours, we have over 700- 800 people working just in that software alone. We think that drives differentiation in the product and that allows us the freedom to make the changes that we think we need to make without being reliant on sub-tier suppliers.
We also buy in some software. We buy in software from the likes of Google and Apple in terms of Android Auto and Apple CarPlay, because we think that gives our customers one of the things that they want, which is to be able to connect their cell phone, their smartphone with our cars. Of course, we also have the VolvoCars.OS, the operating system for Volvo, should they want to just use the Volvo system, but we're giving them those choices. We're constantly making these make versus buy decisions. Far, I think by and large, we've got that pretty much right. That's gonna be a continued journey.
That's how really understanding the software at the silicon layer is where we're investing a lot of our time, especially as we take the range towards a further core compute architecture.
Good. Another follow-up from him was, how will it impact our margins and our balance sheet when we make these sort of investments?
Yeah. Well, if we, if we have meaningful technology within the car, hardware and software, and incidentally, I should also mention that software is not just inside the car. The software is also the connectivity into the cloud. As well as into the application layer on your iPhone so that you have a Volvo app which is meaningful and helpful, and you can unlock the car, you can use it as a digital key and that we can connect with our customers directly through the Volvo app in a meaningful way.
Mm.
We take it all the way from the customer engagement, all the way through from the silicon layer and then of course into the application layer and some of the embedded software and the likes of batteries and so on. If you can create that meaningful differentiation in your product, then of course you can provide a premium product which people are prepared to pay more for, and therefore it helps your gross margin structure.
Mm.
That's the, that's basically the strategy.
Good. Maybe we take our final caller then. This is Tim Rose from Bauer Media. Tim, maybe if you could restrict to just one question, please.
Good morning.
Keep time. Good morning.
Good morning. Question for Jim. On the U.K. direct to consumer or agency rollout, how will you measure its success? How will you deem it a success, and when do you kind of expect that to be? Secondly, will you be doing similar in other markets?
Yeah. To take the first question first in terms of the UK, that will happen. We'll get to that full, let's call it UK, direct model by the end of this year. How we measure that will really be our engagement with our customers. That's the bit. This is really the point that we're trying to change. It seems strange for me, coming from the consumer electronics and technology industry that you can sell a product which is, you know, $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 of value to a customer that you never speak to. You never speak to pre-sales, and you never speak to post-sales.
For me, that's a flawed business model, especially in today's world when we've got so much connectivity at our fingertips. We need to be part of that conversation. Now, whether that customer researches online and buys online, or whether that customer researches online and buys at a dealership, or whether they just go straight to the dealership because they want to try a test drive, actually, I don't really care. What I care about is that every single touch point within that we're connected with that customer. If you go to a dealership, you're still buying from volvocars.com, and we are still part of that conversation.
That gives us access to that customer, that customer data, and then, and of course it gives us a much better chance of continually engaging with that customer to find out what they like about the product, what they don't like about the product, and hopefully keeping them as a lifelong customer. As they trade up, maybe they come in at the small SUV, as their life changes and they have kids or they move to the country, they need a second car, we're constantly gonna be part of that conversation. That's really the big measure of success.
Mm.
Second part, sorry, was what?
Yeah. Second part was other markets that will follow after U.K.
Yeah. so far we have the U.K. as the front runner. we're gonna take it. We're gonna learn so much from that U.K. flip, I think it would benefit us to say, "Okay, let's see what we learned here. Let's take a beat. What worked, what didn't work, and how will we change that for the next market?" U.K. is definitely our lead market.
All right, hopefully that answers your question, Tim. Thank you very much. We really need to wrap up this live stream. Our media lines are open, so please reach us if you have follow-up questions. You can reach the investor relations team as well. We need to wrap up for the day. Thank you for all your questions and engagement. Jim, Johan, Jon, pleasure.
Thank you.
That's all from us. Have a great day. Bye.