Welcome again to our pre-close calls for the fourth quarter 2025. As per usual, we will start off with some information from our side and followed by Q&A, in which you are all, of course, welcome to ask your questions, and we will do our best to answer them. We'll start with the macroeconomic environment outlook and how we view the current situation. And the global macro environment has remained fragile through the fall, with recent data showing only limited and uneven signs of improvement. In the euro area, consumer confidence has stayed broadly unchanged since September, with the latest November reading at minus 14.2, still well below historical norms and indicating subdued household sentiment. In the U.S., consumer sentiment has remained under pressure.
The University of Michigan's index of consumer sentiment stood at 51.0 in November, significantly lower than one year ago, and showing no material recovery during the fall, as households remain cautious amid persistent cost-of-living concerns and more mixed labor market signals. In China, the economic recovery has remained uneven. Consumer confidence is still subdued, and order demand has become increasingly discount-driven. And at the same time, Chinese exports of electric vehicles continue to grow, amplifying competitive dynamics in Europe. Regulatory visibility has improved on certain fronts, including the clarification of the U.S. tariff framework, but the broader outlook remains uncertain. Moving over to the state of the industry, S&P Global has somewhat revised its forecast upwards for automotive sales volumes, and the most recent forecast published in October shows that the U.S. premium segment is now expected to contract by 2.4% in 2025.
Europe is to contract by 4.9%, and China premium market to contract by approximately 10%. Globally, the premium segment is now expected to contract by 5% in 2025, compared with a 6% decrease forecasted in August. Then moving over to more Volvo Cars-specific and focusing on the revenues. As we communicated in Q1, Q2, and Q3, the second half of the year should show a balance between wholesale and retail deliveries, which implies that lower retail deliveries translate to lower wholesales. As a reminder to you all, wholesales and not retail sales is the best input to use when calculating the volume effects on sales. Reported retail sales for October and November showed a -6% volume decline so far during the fourth quarter, with October down -2% and November down -10%.
Revenue from contract manufacturing was SEK 2 billion in the first quarter 2025, SEK 3 billion in the second quarter 2025, and SEK 3.2 billion in the third quarter 2025. Due to a continued stronger Swedish krona, the SEK FX poses a continued headwind. In Q3, we also said that we were delivering Q1 and Q2 orders, so the cars sold in Q3 did not fully reflect the developments of higher discounts, as those were sold at a higher price point. That effect will instead materialize in the fourth quarter. In the US, Section 45W ending will, all else equal, affect PHEVs sold in the US with -$7,500 per car. Moving over to the gross margins. Besides the effect from weaker volume development, there will be effects from the US tariffs introduced during the second quarter.
As communicated in the third quarter, we took cost reflecting a 27.5% tariff in July and 15% in both August and September. In the fourth quarter, that rate is 15% for all months. As previously mentioned, retail sales have quarter-to-date dropped by 6%, which will have a negative effect on the gross margin in the quarter. As for revenue, higher discounts will have a negative impact on the fourth quarter as well. Moving over to the EBIT margin. As seen in the first three quarters of the year, depreciation and amortization in 2025 versus 2024 have increased and will continue to increase as we launch new or updated products. As said in the third quarter, revenue from the sale of CO2 credits is expected to affect also the fourth quarter.
Last but not least, on the EBIT margin, negative volumes and discount developments will have an impact on the fourth quarter. Moving over to the free cash flow. Historically, the fourth quarter typically demonstrates a seasonal stronger cash flow generation as sales typically is higher. As pointed out in the Q3, the big inventory reduction that we saw in the fourth quarter of 2024 will not repeat in the fourth quarter this year. Continued investments in the SPA3 platform, the Košice plant and others will also have an impact on the fourth quarter. As mentioned before, the negative volume development quarter-to-date will impact the fourth quarter. That was all from my side for now, and we can open up for some questions. If you please go ahead and raise your hand, and we will try to answer them as good as possible.
I can already now see a hand from Hampus at Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Hey, yes, can you hear me?
Yes.
Just a clarification on the tariffs. We've seen a lot of filing in this Court of International Trade from both car OEMs and sub-suppliers to safeguard that they will get their tariffs back if there's a ruling in the Supreme Court that they're against the law. Have you filed for this to secure that you will get your tariffs back? And second question is more on the U.S. inventory situation. And we now hear that battery electric vehicles are seeing average discounts around $11,000, which is like four times higher than normal levels. And if you have any comments on that, I'll stop there.
The last question, Hampus, was that related to a specific market? I didn't catch that.
Yeah, the U.S. market. We tried to track the average incentives and they are on sky levels for BEV, but on ICE, they're quite low from a historical perspective.
Yeah. On your first question there, we don't have any information whether or not we have filed for that yet, so let us come back to that in the quarterly reporting. On the second question, as we have said, discounts have been creeping up for a number of months now, and we were selling cars in Q3 that had a higher price point from orders taken in Q1 and Q2. But any specific reasons to why discounts are up? I mean, we don't really have those details at hand, but competition is.
Yeah, it probably has to do with the expiring of the subsidies in September, I guess, but to me, it was very high, but fair enough. So I have one last question, and then I'm going to get back in line. And that's related to the EX30 production in Europe. Where are you in terms of run rate? Are you where you want to be, or are you still ramping?
The production is ramped up as of week 46, I believe.
Okay, fair enough. Thank you.
Yeah, moving on to Nikita.
Yeah, hi there, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I would have actually two. So the first one, sorry if I missed it, but are there any impacts we can expect from your restructuring program in Q4? And then the second question, can we expect to get guidance on 2026 with your Q4 results? Thank you.
When it comes to the cost and cash action program, we don't give any outlook for that. It is not going to be kind of a linear development. What we have said so far is that the separation of roughly 1,000 consultants were part of the Q3 financials. And then as from Q4 and onwards, we will also see the effect from the headcount reduction on fixed employees. Then it will be kind of from quarter to quarter exactly what cost actions we are able to execute. Some of them will kind of persist going forward, and some of them will be isolated to one or two quarters, maybe.
And second one on guidance. I mean, we did the strategy update about a month ago. I mean, as we said then when we received the questions, I mean, really, we don't guide on whether we will give guidance or not. I think that the overall messages brought to you all on November 6th will remain pretty much the same going forward. What we try to do is to be as transparent as we can in the actual so you can draw conclusions from that.
I think next one is Erik Golrang from SEB.
Yes, thank you. Two questions. First one on order trends, where you've been at least in some regions a bit more positive previously, if you can give an update there. And then secondly, on your cash flow comments and the inventory dynamics. Should we read it as the comparison from last year should be seen as an outlier, or should we read it as that inventory development has sort of shifted the seasonal pattern that we won't see the Q4 24 seasonality?
No, I think what you can say is that we are going back to kind of a normal seasonality. We had too much inventory last year, so we took that down in December. And what's happening this year is that we're going back to normals, but we're also building some inventory on the XC90 and XC60 to prepare for the introduction of the EX60 in Torslanda to give that some breathing room to make that a little bit less complex.
Okay. And on order trends?
On order trends.
Order trends, as we said during the strategy update, the order trends on BEVs are picking up. So they are positive from a year-over-year perspective. So that's positive. We haven't said anything more than that, so we shouldn't do that now either.
Thank you.
I think we have, is it Mattias from DNB Carnegie?
Yes, thank you. I'm a bit curious about your balance sheet exposure towards Polestar. So beyond the billion-dollar equity convertible loan that you have, I understand that you also have some accounts receivables from the contract manufacturing. Is it at all possible to quantify how big the accounts receivables are that you have outstanding towards Polestar? And really what I'm getting towards is if in the sort of unfortunate event that something would happen to Polestar, what would be at risk basically of not receiving?
I mean, we can't comment on the receivables during quarter four, of course, but they are fulfilling their obligations in terms of payments to Volvo Cars according to the contracts that we have. So any specifics on that, we will have to come back to that in the quarterly reporting.
Because I think that you disclose in the quarterly results roughly what you have in terms of receivables to related companies in the Geely sphere. If I'm not mistaken, it was something in the magnitude of SEK 20 billion plus. Is it at all possible to sort of point us in a direction how much of that is towards Polestar and how much is towards other Geely companies?
I don't think we should do that in this context. Let's see if we can be more specific when we disclose the Q4 actuals.
Okay, thank you.
Yeah. I think we have one more question from Jose at J.P. Morgan.
Thank you very much. A few questions, please. When you look back at the previous meetings you've done with investors, what have been the comments you have provided with regards to working capital in the fourth quarter in terms of an inflow or an outflow? Second, just going back to the comments you've done before in terms of CapEx, is Q4 CapEx higher than Q3? I expect it will be. And then three, gross margin directionally also on the back of the comments you have provided, which is negative impact on volumes, higher discounts on the impact of tariffs. Again, going back to the previous comments you've done, gross margin, are we looking at directionally higher or lower versus the third quarter? Thank you.
I mean, we cannot comment on any numbers in Q4 in relation to Q3 or any other quarter really. That would be inside information. But in terms of working capital, as we commented before, we usually take down inventory in quarter four. This time then again is a little bit special. So it's going to be a lesser effect than we saw last year. But any more specifics than that, we will have to wait for the quarterly reporting. And then I think you had another. Okay, good.
Yeah, it was basically CapEx. Just going back to previous meetings you've done with investors, any comments you've done on CapEx, working capital, gross margin, sequentially?
Yeah, exactly. So both on CapEx and gross margin, we can't really give those specifics. But I mean, we are investing, continues to invest in Košice and the other investments that we have been quite transparent with in the quarterly reporting. So there are no major changes from that trajectory.
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Yeah, one more question from, sorry, I can't really see the full name, but Owen?
Yeah, Owen Paterson from Jefferies here. Sorry, just a quick one. Sorry if I missed it at the beginning. Could you provide a bit of color on the minus 10% November registrations? It seems like that was a bit weaker than what you thought it would be at the end of Q3 looking forward.
Yeah, no, I mean, we were a little bit positive in September, a little bit negative in October, and November were negative 10%, as you said. And of course, that was a little bit of a disappointment on our side. One effect was the removal of the 45W in the United States that took down the PEBs. But I want to kind of stress that order intake on the BEVs are going up. XC60 is delivering quite well in China, and the EX90 is just refreshed. And again, then the orders on the EX90 is going up. So one shouldn't take too much notice on the November sales and use that as some kind of projection for the coming quarters.
Okay, cool. Thank you.
Thank you, guys. Any more questions? Or if not, you have a new chance tomorrow if you would like to join that call as well. Okay then. Thank you all for listening in and wishing you all happy holidays, and see you on February 5th. Thanks. Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Thank you.