Hello. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to welcome you on our regular teleconference meeting with our board. Today, we will talk about the result of second quarter of 2024 . We will start in a moment. Just let in all the interested people. Okay, we can start. So, I just started the recording. Okay. Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Just a moment, I just have to unmute. Okay. Welcome to our regular meeting regarding the result of two thousand second quarter of 2024. Today's meeting will be held by the Vice President of Inter Cars, Krzysztof Soszyński, and Member of the Board, Piotr Zamora.
The first part of the teleconference will be provided by our board, and there will be the information about our result, and on second part of the meeting, you will have possibilities to ask the questions and get the answer, of course. Our meeting will be recorded, and the recordings will be uploaded to our relations site. So please, Krzysztof.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We will start from the description of the market, as well the company, because I think the second time we together with the Piotr we started to prepare this phone teleconference in English. The European spare parts market has a stable basis for growth. Following a period of adjustment after COVID-19 and supply chain issues on the supply side, supply now exceeds demand. This trend is observed across the United States, Western, and Central, and Eastern Europe. Our target group for Inter Cars is B2B, car repair shops, point of fixing, which accounts for Inter Cars around 74% of our sales. We act as a one-stop shop. Inter Cars provides products and services to drivers, vehicle fleets, and last mile forwarding companies throughout a distribution network.
We supply parts and added value to one hundred thousand regular customers in the category every day, which is our competitive advantage. Inter Cars plays a critical role in the European distribution network. Our growth strategy, based on customer trust, allows us to grow at the pace of players who have chosen to grow throughout acquisitions. Our goal is to grow organically with each segment in the countries where we are already present and to expand abroad. Our customer base, as I mentioned before, independent workshops, workshop chains, and vehicle fleets, giving us possibility to sell the highest possibility service for mobility in Europe. Our loyalty is 100% toward customers, this exactly garage, because we can give them all solutions, starting from the parts through the know-how, finishing with the garage equipment and the financing their growth.
We believe as well in the process that entrepreneurs, even acting the new technology and the new solutions, will need the partners, and we build with them kind of a successful ecosystem. In Inter Cars, only the export is 5%, which mostly what we do toward this export, we find the new partners because our network is based on the entrepreneurs, the kind of the franchisor partners acting based on the distribution contract. Something which as well we can manage mention today is, like, about the consolidation in Europe. Seven players keeping around 25% of the market share, and we see that in United States, the consolidation is on a high, bigger, we could say stage, because it's 10 players hold around 85% of the market.
Car sales in Europe are performing well, with around 4 percentage points of growth in the first half of 2024. Take one market, Poland, our largest market. We see that the registration of new cars growth is around 16% year to year, and as well, registration of used cars imported from abroad is around growth 24.6%. What we see is that in the longer period as well, it will give us the possibility to sell the parts. After the post-COVID situation, the people now exactly focus on exchanging the car instead to repair them from the operation we can call the prevention. They go to the mode of the reaction. If something happen, they go to the garage.
We see the nice growth in this product group, like, filtration, lubricants, brakes, this which is exactly to the first service after somebody buy the car, in place of the more advanced operation, like change clutch or change timing kit. This is something which gives us as well the possibility to grow in many segments. If we compare our growth in euro, this is something as well, we which we try as well to be comparable. Our growth in euro is 15%, if we look for the first half of 2024, in Polish zloty is 8.1%. The Piotr explained as well, how it's influence us on the results. We see the different dynamic in a different segments.
In passenger vehicles, our organic growth is +16%, in the truck business, around 11%, and in tires, which as well sometimes is the product group, which you can find some players, European one or listed, is +11%. We see the general growth is above the market if we compare it to the European players. The number one growth in Europe for half a year, LKQ Europe is 3%. The third player, GPC, is 8.1%, MEKO is 8.6%, and as well, Parts Holding Europe for half a year is +7%.
Some of these companies as well have the growth as organic growth, but as well, part of the growth is from the acquisition, which we see that our strategy based on the growth, organic growth, and based on the micro acquisition, overtaking shops, jobbers, and setting up them as a kind of the franchisor partner, give us a lot of the strength because most of the value is based on the Inter Cars tools. They operate on the distribution agreement as a kind of the agent, which mean that every tools stock receivables are on accounts of the Inter Cars, and we share with them commission. It's something to remind you the way how we grow, which mean that to summarize, we are below our expectation. We thought that the growth will be higher.
We are happy from the results we achieved. We try to improve as well all operations in Inter Cars Group to have the market price, to satisfy on the last mile, our main customer as a independent workshop, and prepare for the extension growth in the future because we believe that European aftermarket have solid statements to grow in the future. Now, I give the voice to Piotr.
Thank you very much, Krzysztof. Welcome, everybody. A few comments on the results. Just to clarify a little bit the situation, because as we getting some questions from the investors, sometimes they get confused how to read the results, how to read our results. Okay, so in the first half of 2024 , Inter Cars Group generated consolidated sales revenue at the level of PLN 9.4 billion , compared to PLN 8.67 billion in the same period of the previous year, which means an increase of 8%, to which Krzysztof referred that we a little bit, we are slightly disappointed. However, if we look at our sales dynamics, when we convert Polish zloty to euro, then we show a solid increase of 15% in the first half of 2024 .
In our opinion, this more realistically reflects the sales dynamics, especially of the companies whose financial functional currency is euro. We have quite a big amount, big number of daughter companies which are which operate in Eurozone. The strengthening of the Polish zloty versus euro, this exchange rate, while we purchase almost 50% of our spare parts in Polish zloty, compared to the levels of this exchange rate in back in 2024 , 2023 indeed had quite a significant impact on the assessments of our sales results. When it comes to sales dynamics measured in units in the first half of 2024 , the group generated sales increase of 10%.
In this case, our results are quite similar to the assumptions regarding the unit sales increase that we communicated to the market at the beginning of the year. Just to remind you, in terms of units, our predictions were between 10%-12% at the beginning of the year, and in terms of the value, in terms of the dynamics of the sales value increase, our guidance was around 14%-15%. So in fact, our results are showing a stable upward trend. We can say that if measured in Polish zloty, because majority of our costs are measured in Polish zloty, then this growth is insufficient.
However, we have to bear in mind that how we should measure and judge the results of our operations in the euro countries. The group generated a net profit of PLN 345 million , which means a profit decline of 3% compared to the same period last year. However, exchange rate differences from settlements, I mean settlements, receivables from our daughter companies, because the Inter Cars in Poland is the main supplier of spare parts for our daughter companies, and this valuation of these receivables had a significant impact on our results. If we look from the perspective of the entire six months of 2024 , the impact on the result is negative, and it's minus PLN 20 million .
When we look from the perspective of quarter one and quarter two, it's negative PLN 23 million in the first quarter and positive PLN 2.5 million in the second quarter. With such a comparison of net profits, when we eliminate the impact of the change in the valuation of receivables, which are not very much connected with the sales of each distributing company, then the group would record an increase in profit by 2.5% instead of the decrease. At the same time, for the second quarter, 2024 , the group increased its net profit to PLN 189 million, which is an increase of 23% compared to second quarter of 2023 .
which is a significant improvement in profitability, and in our opinion, it's mainly due to the improvement of the first margin between the quarter two and one of this year, while we still have lower percentage of the gross margin, if we compare it to the same periods of 2023. As for the level of the gross margin, in the entire period of the first half of 2024, gross profit on sales increased by almost 7% to the level of PLN 2.7 billion, compared to the period of the previous year.
In the first half of 2024 , the impact of the exchange rate differences on the change in margin was very small, 0.2 percentage points, while in the corresponding period of 2023 , the impact was much bigger, 0.6 percentage point. After eliminating the impact of exchange differences on these receivables towards our daughter companies, the margin would amount to 28.6% for the first half of 2024 versus 29.8% for the first half of 2023 , which means a decline in gross in the first margin percentage by 1.2 percentage point.
The key factors influencing the level of the first margin were, firstly, I would mention a decline in the exchange rate in virtually every month of the first half of 2024 , compared to the corresponding periods. Then the second point I would mention would be the decline in the average purchase prices of goods from our suppliers, which also partly result from the falling exchange rate. And finally, the result of the change of those two preceding factors is the decline in the average sales prices affecting our margin. Because in our business, the sales prices for the majority of distributors are calculated individually for each item sold.
So if there's a decline in the purchase price of our inventory, that is reflected in the declining sales prices. Additionally, we would like to mention the fact that there's an increased competition on some of the, I would say, on the main markets. I mean Poland, especially, where we have the situation that the smaller players are defending themselves against the consolidation of the market, and there is an excess of supply over the demand on the market, because the customers are, in our opinion, deferring the moment. Actually, I'm more in a, I would say, reactive mode in terms of repairing their cars, and they are delaying the repairs. Of course, the delay of the repairs cannot be delayed forever.
The market will come, but for the time being, we are in the situation that there's quite a big fluctuations of sales dynamics between demands, partly caused by exchange rate, but also partly caused by this reactive approach to servicing their cars. What we would like to emphasize here, what is important, is that in such a market situation, Inter Cars sales must sell at the market value, at the market price, I mean. And but this gives smaller space, and this actually smaller space for our competitors because this actually accelerates the consolidation of the market. So we must be at the market price in order to enter into the transaction.
On the other side, it is accelerating the consolidation, but also our scale, our operational efficiency on which we are focusing very much since, I would say, for the last two years, I would say especially should give us better results than our competitors. It is also worth noting that market consolidation is ongoing in Europe, which in our opinion, actually, in given market situation, is actually accelerating. And we are aware that the smaller players are simply defending themselves with the price. But this only plays in the longer term to our advantage, because this will create a situation when with time, a smaller number of much larger players will remain on the market.
If we compare the market consolidation, how advanced in terms of consolidation the European market is compared to the U.S. market, we see that the European market is relatively unconsolidated versus the U.S. market. The 10 biggest players on the European market comprise around 30% of the market, while in the U.S., they constitute as much as 75%-80% of the entire market. So with this consolidation, we see also our future, and this is also we forecast what is going to happen. So we can summarize that Inter Cars basically consistently pursues a policy of long-term cooperation with garages.
It is very important for us to keep and develop the cooperation with point of fixing because we believe that this is the solution for the future, and the comprehensiveness of this cooperation that it provides will give us, in the future, the scale of our operation and will give us the possibility to obtain to perform our business on more, I would say, favorable terms in terms of our profitability. Regarding the situation with our operational costs, the share of sales and general management costs for the period of six months of 2024 in relation to sales amounted to 14.1%, which is higher by 0.4 percentage points compared to the same period last year.
However, the Management Board, so we are focusing very much on improving, on improving the operating margin, including, we are heavily focused on process optimization, continuous assessment of new initiatives, and also ongoing projects. We are heavily focused also on generating higher and stronger cash flows. So what we would like to stress here, that we would like to maintain our ambitious plan, that we communicated to the market at the beginning of the year, that the cost to sales ratio for the entire year of 2024 should be lower than the similar ratio for 2023. This is very ambitious, but we think we can deliver this.
We also plan some cost adjustments, cost reductions, for the second half of 2024 , so it should be doable. We will see, of course, what would be the sales revenue dynamics, and, because it's true that we have not anticipated the situation that resulted from the change of the exchange rate, and we did not take it into account. But we believe that this is doable. To sum up, this short presentation, I would like to emphasize on, because we are getting a lot of questions from our investors, they perceive the situation as rather difficult. There is a lot of question regarding whether and when we are going to improve our growth margins. But what we would like to stress, the situation actually is playing to our advantage.
I mean, the situation that there is a little bit of a stress on the market, and this accelerates the consolidation. We would like to emphasize that the organic growth model gives us higher growth than our competitors, which was clearly explained by Krzysztof in his presentation, that Inter Cars' sales dynamics is the highest among competitors in Europe and also in the U.S., and that also we would like to stress that in the past, we have managed to adapt to many changes or abrupt changes in the market. So we believe that we can do it as well, even though that temporarily we would present slightly, maybe less optimistic result, or maybe less, a little bit slightly less than expected.
However, we proved that, for example, since 2019 , we have almost tripled our EBIT. So we believe that, and we also have many ideas how to improve our profitability in the future. And we would like to stress that we reinvest in the company in the long term, and we've accumulated almost PLN 5 billion in the equity, which we are using on a daily basis to build our company and prepare our company for the future.
And with this investment program, for example, in logistics, where we devoted almost PLN 2 billion into robotization, that means that we simply believe that the first, the fundamentals of our business are there, that the car park is growing, and we expect it to grow in the new, in the even next decade, and we are preparing for this. Thank you very much. I pass the voice to Krzysztof to briefly summarize.
The outlook for the industry remains positive. We still see room for sales growth on domestic Polish market, but on each daughter companies, including B2B and e-commerce. As I mentioned, the main customer is garage. We believe in the future as well, in this channel, remote diagnosis, every ecosystem, partnership for Inter Cars to build the strength around the European aftermarket. We would like to grow as fast as possible, using as well the balance between the prices and the add value. Through our investments in logistics, we are preparing the company for significant further growth, as we believe that the market situation for independent aftermarket distributors will be favorable in the long term. Our first fully robotic warehouse will be put into operation in September, October 2024 .
At the same time, we are working on preparatory work for a fully automated warehouse in Romania. This warehouse will be twice as large as the current one. We plan that the warehouse in Romania will be fully operational at the beginning of third, fourth quarter of 2025. We believe in perspective and of our company, that we will be one of the main player on the market, with the good payback period for all our investment, investors in the future. Thank you very much, and we will go to the session of the questions.
If somebody want, would like to ask the questions, please raise your hand or just unmute yourself and please ask.
Or you can put your questions on the side of the Teams, yeah.
Yes.
We can see them. Okay. It seems there are no questions.
Today.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Oh, yes, please.
Oh, yes, there is one.
Yes.
Perfect.
Yeah, William, please.
Yeah, yeah.
Hello, Krzysztof. Hello, Piotr. How's it going?
Hello, hello. Very well.
Thank you for the call.
We are trying to explain that we are doing very well.
That's great to hear. My first question is, you mentioned that you're seeing kind of the drivers, the end users, that they're deferring their repairs, and there's been a change of behavior in terms of how frequently they're going to repair shops, and maybe that they're not repairing their cars unless it's critical to the functioning of the car, compared to what you've seen in the past. Can you just explain like what gives you confidence that... Like, what is it exactly that you're seeing that explains the sales dynamics versus, you know, obviously the revenues are fluctuating quarter to quarter, but or month to month, but why is it that you think there's been a change in behavior specifically?
... You know, that I can answer. It's like, you know, when the COVID came, the people really afraid about the future, what can be. They wanted to be separated, transport themselves, to have mobility to catch up the hospital or the doctor. And that time, even it was not a big need, but they started after the COVID, a little bit left. After the first wave, they started to repair the car, not to change to the new one. From other side, it was all about the electric vehicles, and it was as well the question mark, which even technology will win? On the end, the people found that everything is coming back to the new normal time, and as well, they thought, "Okay, why I need to spend more money? I see that electric vehicles wave is not coming.
Maybe I extend the used car and I buy another one better I have." And, at the beginning, because we see this on the products group, the people still exchange the lubricants, filtration when they buy the new used car, but they do not touch timing if they do not need, or they do not exchange the clutch, or they do not exchange the injection system. They will do this when the trouble will come. And because you have so many cars and so many decision makers, as well, it's giving you on the first time, on the first momentum as well, delay with the sale. It's not in Poland, it's not in Europe, it's in globe.
Even you go to United States, you ask the guys, they will see the same, that the people a little bit delay investments in the garage if they see that they have less customers. Less, what it mean? That maybe number of the customer is not smaller, but this is a kind of the barrier with how much they want to spend in the garage. In the behind was inflation, and sometimes for them, it's better to buy new used cars instead to rebuild big part of the car. But as I know, and my knowledge in the past, based on the importing of the used cars, is that your new used car is not any more new, which mean that takes time and you need to repair.
And sometimes from the mode of the prevention, if we come to the reaction, you pay more because something happened, and you need to drive your car. This is my explanation based on my experience, but of course-
Plus, I would add to this, Krzysztof, that generally, the model of how the cars are serviced in, especially in the CE region, because now I wouldn't say in entire Europe, is more, in general, more reactive than preventive. Yeah. If you compare Poland to Germany, you would see that the preventive. And this is based on the surveys, yeah? That the percentage of you know, timely preventive services, servicing of car is much more, like, more frequent in Germany compared to countries, for example, Poland or some other CE countries. So this is, this also comes down from this. We see this, as Krzysztof mentioned, in the structure of sales. It not only applies to engines, it also applies to tires.
People can simply drive a little bit longer using the same tires, not necessarily change, buy the new ones. Yes. But at the same time, we see the same imports of used cars. We see also that people are not driving less, so either the cars disappear somewhere or people simply try to defer. Yeah, so that is our way of thinking. Yeah. Because, you know, if we look at the, for example, number of imported cars, used cars imported to Poland, is more or less on the level of almost one million a year, which is like the level that we have seen in the past, in years where we had the biggest growth of sales. Yes. So it's not smaller.
Yeah, the sales of new cars is smaller, but it is not so much affecting the sales of spare parts in our aftermarket business. It's more only driven by number of miles and cars in the car park. Yeah. And the car park is growing, and it's much... It's growing faster than in the western part of Europe. Okay?
Yep, understood. One other question. Well, would just be interested to hear some comments on the export segment and your business in Western Europe, or, or just the business where you're selling outside of, you're selling car parts outside of the branches. You've seen strong growth in this segment in prior years. Can you just comment on how this is trending in 2024 ?
I think that generally, as I mentioned, our pure export is 5%, and generally, it was not higher. In dynamic, yes, it was nice dynamic, which mean that in the end, when the whole company is 15% growth, as well, this export still with the growth is on a good trend. But as we mentioned, always that we look for this final customer as the franchisor partner, future type of the customer connected to us using our tools, selling under our name, which mean that our... And it, I started from this, yeah, that our main customer is garage, independent workshop. 74% of our revenue, around 100,000 customers...
Like that in all segments, which mean that for us, this spot business, because I call it spot business, to sell outside the Poland to the as export without our distribution network, never was our strategy on the long term. On the short term, yes, we can activate these customers, because then we can think based on these customers, how to build our network in this country. The same strategy was in Baltic States, on the south of Europe, in Poland. The same now we are doing in Germany, that we want to grow with on each of the land in Germany, with the local guys. Then to choose the prospective customers, to show them the idea how they can be our distributor.
But distributor in our meaning means that it is Inter Cars outlet, is only operated by the, by kind of the entrepreneur, but based on the IT of Inter Cars, stock of Inter Cars, shelves of Inter Cars. He pays only for the local, we could say, rental fee, and generally, we can exchange him if he's not performing according to our mutual agreement. Which means that generally, our focus is the same as it was before, that we want to grow with the garage. And of course, on the new markets, which still we do not have the grant network, yes, we have these export customers, which we deliver the products. Sometimes are bigger customers, sometimes smaller. Depends as well on the cost of the logistics, because as well, we need to balance it.
But from customers which only looking for the price, is no loyalty, which mean that we look for the customers, which on the end will be with us. They will clean their stock. On the end, we buy from them, them the stock, and they will start to be our outlet. Yeah.
Yeah. But it's true that the export sales slow down. It's probably partly effect of slowing down also in the West, which Krzysztof mentioned at the beginning of our presentation. It's probably partly due to the increasing power of Polish zloty versus euro, and also it seems that the competitors on the Western markets realize that quite a lot of players from the eastern part of Europe are trying to enter their market, and they are also reacting to this. So it slow down definitely. Yeah.
Very clear. Thanks. Final question. You're talking a lot about the downward pressure on prices. So volume growth is decent, but generally, purchasing and selling prices are decreasing slightly year on year. Can you talk about, like, what does that mean for your negotiations with suppliers? How do the suppliers, like, see the current environment when there's parts deflation as opposed to the inflation that was the norm, over the course of COVID and in the aftermath?
The customer-
Obviously, what's the implication for the gross margin in those negotiations?
As I told, the suppliers are friends of everybody would want to buy. Especially that we know that they have the issues on their own profitability. They invested a lot in the new technology. They need commodity products to grow themselves, which mean that if they see that the market is not growing, they support all of the sources as well as. On the end, we see that our margins are not different very much to this, what it was in the past. Because as you, I think, Piotr mentioned as well, that we need to look on the FX rates, yeah?
Which as well, are not something which we can easily touch, especially that part of this FX rates is, as well, Piotr mentioned, as a kind of the valuation of our accounts because of the investments in the foreign daughter companies. Which generally, the biggest players receive support of the suppliers, the big suppliers, as well, part of the suppliers which lost a lot during the COVID, they try to come to the game. Which it mean that on some brands you have the lowering the margins, but this is something the same as we had in 2008, when it was Lehman Brothers bankrupted and all automotive were treated as one segment, the car production, as well, distribution of the car parts or the producers of the car parts.
I think that we already had in history a situation as we are facing now as a price war. It will be a new status quo, and in the end, it will even speed up the consolidation, and generally, it's good for us, especially that Europe is much more fragmented than we compare it to United States. Yeah.
I think the suppliers have different strategies depending on their situation. Some of them invested more, some of them. We know for the fact that the. If you look on the financial statements of some of our suppliers, or, you would see the situation that aftermarket distributors, car manufacturers performed over the last five years quite well. However, some of our suppliers, which are manufacturers of the spare parts, did not perform that well. And this is making the situation a little bit more difficult because some of them trying to gain. Trying to improve their situation. And that's why we a little bit of this part of the story of this.
... price declines. However, I think we are in a good situation because we have a quite big number of suppliers. I think we have the biggest number of suppliers in the among other distributors, and we still don't do this, but in the future, it will be possible for us to think about the consolidation of the volumes. Yeah. For the time being, it's not good because we are building our competitive advantage on the widest offer and availability, but with time, when the situation... If, for example, situation does not resolve in a beneficial way for us, then we will be able to consolidate the volumes, yeah, in order to improve our profitability. But, for the time being, I think it's too early. Yeah. We will see-
Okay, great.
how it evolves.
Yeah. Thanks for those points. I'll see if anyone else has any more questions. Thanks.
Thank you very much for your question.
Thank you.
Does anybody has questions?
Yes.
Julian Scheffer, please. Can you unmute yourself or you-
Yes. Hello.
Yes.
Good afternoon.
[crosstalk] Yes, good afternoon.
Julian,
Yeah
... MBB, that's me. I was wondering if you could help me please a little bit with the market concentration in your markets outside of Poland? So we've looked at it, and our feeling is that they are way less concentrated than the Polish market. If you look at your largest, so your top two to top five countries, who are your competitors there, and what fraction of the market is captured, for instance, by the top three or top five players in this market? Thank you.
Okay. The answer is that the fragmentation outside the Poland in central Eastern Europe is similar, like you have in Germany. Top four, five players steal a lot of the market, which is fragmented. It's true that on Polish market, Inter Cars is the number one in the passenger vehicles, and we are, I could say, I think that we have around 24%-26% of the market share. We have some products which we are below, some products which we are, which we are above, but still, we have the segments which we can grow because we try to have kind comparison to the players based on the segmentation. We have five players we compare in Poland. In passenger vehicles, we have quite strong truck part distributor in Poland as well. We compare to them. We have quite strong tire distributors in Poland.
We compare to them as well. The Agro players, which are not the same companies which acting in the truck or passenger vehicles program, and it's the same in Ukraine, the same in Baltic States, the same in Romania. Everywhere, it's true that we have the space for a growth, and this growth is on the different stage of the, we could say, the phase, and of course, in some markets, we are more successful in the trucks. In some markets, we are more successful in the bus vehicles. The example is Czech Republic, that we are not so strong with the passenger vehicles because on this market, the market was very much consolidated on LKQ. They have only, what I know, only one market.
They really bought too much players, even they were asked by the European court to sell part of the assets, but on the other markets, is nobody so strong, and even in Czech Republic, we increase the market share because we are weaker in the bus program, but we are quite strong in the truck business, in the tires, and other products, which we can bundle as a unbeatable offer to the B2B customer, which we call the garage. I don't think so that we have a time now to go market by market, but in each market, you have the local players. In, for instance, in Romania, you have four big players.
One of this is Inter Cars, you have Autonet, you have the company Augsburg, which now belongs to SAG-Autonet as well, and you have the company from AD, which as well is quite strong player there. And the company name is Auto Total. In Hungary, you have two, three as well, local players in the bus vehicles is a company which is called Bárdi. The second one is UNIX, and the third one is LKQ. Which mean that generally, our local teams try to understand the local competitors and prepare the offer pricing according to this expectation. And we see, and generally, with Piotr, mostly when we are asked by the investors, what is the strategy?
That generally, the companies outside Poland, they grow in the percentage normally is higher than the domestic markets, mostly from the reason that they have much lower market share. They starting mostly from the one segment, or bus vehicle, or truck business, and then they extend to the products like mass products. They increase the volumes with the tires, lubricants, and batteries, and then extend their network, because we know that the one is Excel file, where we will have the kind of the forecast, but the second is then fulfill it with the logistics infrastructure to deliver our service to the last mile of the delivery. I don't know if I answer on your question or you would like to have a deeper view about this.
That was very helpful. Thank you. If I may, just on Romania-
Mm-hmm.
Your sales development in Romania, is that representative of the Romanian market at the moment?
No. Now we are below our expectation. One issue is that we exchanged the person responsible for this market to the new one, and he is on, we could say, setting up phase, and as well, he's now more concentrated last quarters on the profit than on the growth. One of the results of it, it was that he need to extend the logistics, and Piotr mentioned during the presentation that on the end of the next year, we will double space for the logistics. Which mean that if you will keep the growth but you do not have infrastructure, the cost will be even higher, and the profit will be much lower, which our idea was to extend the logistics to onboard the new team, the new person, which will be responsible for the growth there, and then to speed up with...
But now the market is growing more than Inter Cars. But we do not lose the prof-
Yeah, but I would like to just precise one thing, because if we are talking that we are not satisfied with the results in Romania in terms of the current sales development, because in terms of the results, the company is... And the size of the company and the market penetration, that's a completely different story. Yeah. So, yeah, it's quite a complex, I would say, matrix of situations that we have with the countries. Yeah. I think we are not able to pass this information to, during such a short teleconference, yeah. On each market, we have a completely different competitive landscape and different market share, slightly different strategies, even. So, I'm afraid we are not able to answer this thoroughly.
Okay, understood. Nevertheless, it was very helpful. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
Okay. Do we have any questions? I don't see any hands up. Our telecom recording of our teleconference will be uploaded on our relations site, so. And also information about our next teleconference after third quarter will be also uploaded there. So thank you very much, and see you after third quarter.
Thank you very much for your time.
Thank you very much.
See you.