Hello, good afternoon. Welcome to our annual teleconference regarding result of Group Inter Cars Poland. I will turn on the recording. Wait a moment. The presentation will be held by the Vice-President of the Board, Krzysztof Soszyński, and the Member of the Board, Piotr Zamora, Finance Director of the group. The, as always, our teleconference will be divided into two part. First will be the presentation of the result and comments, and on the second part you'll have the possibility to ask the question. Please, Krzysztof, Piotr, the stage is yours.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. We would like to present our yearly results. As based on our tradition, we will start from the description of the market itself. We are operating on aftermarket, especially independent aftermarket in European market, with the main focus Central Eastern European part. Organic growth proved to more effective than mergers and acquisitions. This is still our observation, and our growth for the last year is like kind of the evidence of it. We did in EUR for whole year, 10.7% of the grow. A lot of the peers had a grow below 10%.
We can comment good results of Parts Holding Europe 6.3%, and from Polish market, Auto Partner reach the first time EUR 1 billion and the grow 9.3%. We can summary that we growing faster than the others. As well we see that independent aftermarket was always called and still we believe it's like a safe harbor. As well, based on this, what we see on the eastern border of Poland or all these conflicts around the globe, based on the Iran case, which will be described by the Piotr, we see big influence and the people as well thinking how to spend the money. We see that generally this influence as well, independent aftermarket.
Based on first data we collected for first quarter, we see that we growing faster again. For the first quarter 2026, we reached 13% of the grow. Based as well on the estimation from the last year, we the first player on the market, LKQ Europe, the distance was 10%, the gap to the leader from the side of Inter Cars. In the first quarter, as I mentioned, we reached 13% of the grow, which we can estimate that based on this, what we found that LKQ had the decline last year, 6%, and first quarter, 4%, that probably we could be on a stage on the first position in Europe soon.
If not this year, maybe the next year. We expect that our LTI programs growth to continue in the coming quarters, especially to the high growth of primary foreign distribution companies. We want to grow everywhere in all segments, but we see especially that the markets where we have the lower market stake, giving us a promise and the grow which would be as well valid in the next quarters. If we look on the European market itself, I would like to comment the situation on the car producers. We see that the market is not predictable for them.
The change between the technologies as well the demand from the side of the customers, which are not so sure if EV is the right investment still is on the way. We could say that the Chinese brands which are coming to Europe winning the market share. Still, Toyota, as well Ford, Renault and Audi had quite positive result with the growth for the last year. A lot of the traditional car makers were below 2024. As well, the winning, and as well, We could say, the brand visible for the fleets and the customers is still Toyota.
If we look on the situation of the parts producers, they are following as well the car producers based on the change of the technologies. A lot of the investments with the high risk, changing demand with the supply, not giving them the good situation which they can stabilize their profits and generate as well good payback period from the owners. Market itself is growing. We see that the car park is grow 1.8% of the cars. Still the dominate, we could say, type of the supply is combustion engine plus hybrid, but we see that the hybrid is winning and taking the share from the ICE.
As well, we see that is the stable growth of battery electric vehicles, mostly in the countries with support and with the better infrastructure or with better wealth of the society which can afford this new vehicle on the road. Average age of the fleet is 12.7 years, starting with the oldest in Greece and as well, Estonia and Czech Republic is about 16%, Poland around 15%, 15 years of the car park. This giving us as well positive impact on the independent aftermarket, where we serve most of the cars above 4 years, and our sweet spot is around 8.5 to 12 years. Based on one market, our domestic one, Poland still is with the big portion of imported, used cars.
The sales were only 2% lower than in 2024. As well, we see the new trend that more and more new cars from China is coming, especially price of these cars and as well the infotainments giving interest to some parts, to some types of the customers. We see generally that these cars are not advanced and generally, we predict that it will be naturally part of our independent aftermarket network in the future. As well with something what is important that this trend of the car park, we believe will be continue.
This is kind of the evolution instead of the revolution, each of the players need to dig down and understand the new technology, how we need to transform our customers, which kind of the tools and equipment trainings we can to deliver to them. I believe that a lot of the people from IT, we could say industry will start to work in our industry because the car is more and more similar to the computer, and you see as well the possibility that you can easily validate what you did and what you receive on a daily basis. For the young generation, it's important to do something they can value. This is I think something which can bring additional fruits to our industry.
Now I will switch to Piotr, which comment the financial results and as well the assumption, why our results are great for the 2024.
I will try. Good afternoon. Thank you very much, Christoph, for this introduction. A couple of comments from our side what we think is important in our results and what might be a kind of a guidance for you in the upcoming quarter or maybe even years. Maybe I will start with the summary. In the fourth quarter of 2025, Inter Cars Group again increased its market share and recorded sales of PLN 5.7 billion, which represent an increase of over 10% compared to fourth quarter of 2024. On a 12-month basis, the sales growth was just slightly under 9%.
What's more important, what's also important is that we achieved 97.5% of our LTI target, which is the incentive program for the quite broad group of managers. In terms of sales, we achieved 97.5% of the target. The target was a growth of 12%. We are slightly under 9%. In order to, you know, to evaluate the sales results, it is also very valuable to look into our sales from the in terms of unit sales growth.
After the 4 quarters of 2025, the sales growth measured in units amounted to slightly above 11%, which shows clearly that overall, we have a difference between 11% and 9%, and the difference lies simply in the price pressure and competitiveness on certain markets, which was driving prices down. Also, which is very important, that the Polish market, which is still the most important market in our group because its share is roughly around 38%. It continues to lose its, I would say share, and its position is being replaced by our foreign distribution companies.
On the previous, on the previous call, in Polish, we had a question, what is the expected final share of Poland versus foreign countries? We did a couple of years estimations of how it might look like, taking into account the population of vehicles, so the car park in each of the countries. It seems to us, at that point where Poland value was more or less 60% of group sales, that eventually it should lead to the ratio of 25% Poland, 75% foreign activities, excluding the, you know, the Western countries, of course, where we are now entering, for example, Germany.
We are gradually going towards this direction, which we think is very beneficial because it's increasing our geographical diversification. In fact, it doesn't really matter so much what is the share. We see that I mean, it matters because we see that still, for example, the countries like Romania, which accounts for more or less 8% of our, of group turnover, still has a market share of around 14%. The upside to the market share of Inter Cars Poland, which is roughly 25%, is still huge. Yes. Even though this company is sales amounts almost to PLN 1.8 billion. From this perspective, we expect further growth.
The Poland growth will be outpaced by our foreign distribution entities, and we will continue consolidation of the market through the organic growth. Over the past 12 months, we opened 24 new branches abroad and closed four branches in Poland. At the end of December 2025, we had 684 branches, which is the largest distribution network in this region and one of our competitive advantage. The improvement of our results, according to the board, according to us, can be attributable to a couple of factors. We would like to mention them.
The first one, I think, we think is the development of the continuous supply to customers through an extensive branch network and the broadest product offering in the industry. We have a significant number of suppliers, over 1,600 suppliers, which allows for not only risk diversification, but also managing properly the portfolio of suppliers to achieve the best possible mix of product supplier in terms of growth and in terms of profitability. Yes. The second factor that we would like to mention is, of course, which is very unique to Inter Cars, because there is practically no other distributor which offers product in so many segments.
The development of segment strategies and implementation of these strategies in this, in various countries allows us to compete effectively with smaller entities specializing in a given segment, such as tires, oils, or even but even broader segments like passenger segment or commercial vehicle segment. This allows us to, you know, to be simply divided into smaller business units where we can more effectively, our managers can more effectively compete with these smaller entities, the specialists. We are simply more, I would say, agile.
This is part of, this, according to us, is quite a, plays a big role in success and why Inter Cars is growing faster than its competitors on most of the markets where we are present. The third factor we would like to mention is that, despite, I would say quite a competitive market, Inter Cars managed to grow to achieve one of the highest growths, outperforming the peers from the West, which Krzysztof talked about a couple of minutes ago. Even in this, I would say in these, circumstances, we've managed to improve our stock rotation. At the same time, simultaneously, we've managed to improve our margins, our purchasing conditions with the suppliers.
At the same time, we've managed to improve receivables rotation, which increased only 3% versus 9% of increase of turnover, which led to the situation that Inter Cars in 2025 recorded one of the highest cash flow from operating activities, which we think is also quite a big success and allowed us to improve overall our financial results. Regarding the gross margin improvement, what we hear from the market, from the investors, there are some mixed views whether our performance in terms of the margin was good or not. How do we perceive it?
What I would like to mention is that when we entered 2025, especially in Q1, but mainly in Q2, there was a quite big drop of the margin, especially on markets such as Poland, which is the biggest market, and also the Baltic countries. The drop of margin was nearly 1.6 percentage points. We've managed in Q3 and Q4 to recover. If we eliminate the impact of the exchange rate differences, the gross margin is at the level of 29.4% compared to 29.5%. Basically the same level of gross margin despite quite a heavy decline in the first half of 2025.
The next point, the next factor that we would like to mention that allowed us to achieve this extraordinary results in 2025 is of course optimization of operating expenses, which is of course mainly related to the optimization of the processes, both sales processes and back office, I would say, internal processes. The share of operating costs to sales, which we measure in every quarter, amounted to 14.3%, which is basically on the identical level compared to the previous year. I think we should look at this from like two angles. Sales, slightly below expectations because our target was 12%, not 9.
As I explained before, it is also a question of the competitiveness of the market, prices dropping down. Also, it is also an effect of our decisions related to the which are connected to the robotization processes because, especially in quarter 3 and quarter 4 2025, we as a board decided to accelerate the process of robotization in Zakroczym and in Romania, which led to additional logistic costs. We can call them one-off costs which mainly cover the extra cost, extra efforts required to accelerate the processes, but also led to a little bit of, I would say, disorganization of certain regular logistical processes.
Overall, we estimated that this level of one-off costs, amount in 2025 in this quarter 3 and quarter 4 amounted to PLN 15 million. I think this should be taken into account when analyzing what might be the level of this factor of operating cost to sales in 2026. We of course expect the improvement of this indicator in 2026. First, due to this one of time nature of certain expenses, but also that we are going to be thriving on this assistance is coming from the robotization.
What we can say as of today, after the 1st year of the 1st full year of running the 1st robotized warehouse in Zakroczym, the savings coming out of this robotization, savings which are calculated as the amortization cost of new robots versus the less labor cost is around PLN 25 million on annual basis. The scope, I would say, of this 1st warehouse which was robotized in Zakroczym is more or less similar to the 2nd phase of Zakroczym, which was completed more or less at the end of 2025. It's slightly smaller to the scope of the 3rd phase, which is the robotized warehouse in Brasov.
What I would like to say, what we would like to say is that in 2025, we should expect efficiency gains coming from 3 robotized warehouse. Phase 1 in Zakroczym, phase 2 in Zakroczym, and robotized warehouse in Brasov in Romania. More or less, we should expect the optimization, the level of optimization. Of course, given the, if we assume the same level of sales in 2026 than in 2025, there should be also some increase in the savings of around between PLN 25 million and PLN 30 million per each of these projects. These are our expectations as to the optimizations of the operating expenses.
Of course, we continue to on optimizations of other internal processes, and you would be seeing the results of these optimizations in the coming years as well. Regarding the financial cost, the optimization, you know, we noted that we managed to decrease the financial cost in Q4 2025 from PLN 55 million to down to PLN 46 million, which is primarily due to stock and receivable optimization, so the meaning less use of the working capital and of course, lower interest rates, which led to this eventually, both these factors led to the decrease of the financial cost.
What is also worth mentioning at this point is that the current level of financial indebtedness did not, I would say, deteriorate, did not increase significantly despite, I would say, quite extensive CapEx expenditures in 2025. The ratio stood at the level 2.23 compared to 2.18 a year earlier. We do not expect any major changes in 2026 regarding the indebtedness, because the scale of investments, especially in the logistics area, planned for 2026 and 2027 is mainly the warehouse in Stryków, which will be a dedicated warehouse for the western part of Poland and western markets, mainly Germany.
The warehouse, as of today, we expect the opening at the end of March 2027. Total CapEx expenditure, which will be spent both in 2026 and 2027, PLN 600 million, split more or less in half in 2026 and the other half in 2027. Finally, the profitability, we managed to improve, increase our net profit from PLN 168 million up to PLN 2,023 million in Q4 2025, representing a 32% increase, which is a very solid figure. On the, you know, 12-month consecutive basis, year on year, the increase in profit is 11%.
I can also add that in terms of realization of our EBITDA target, coming from our in long-term investment program for the managers, including the board, we've managed to achieve 99% of the target set for 2025. For 2026, we expect the improvement in terms of sales. I mean, the target which is set in this program is 10% increase of sales and maintaining the profitability with which we entered from 2025. In our view, it seems that at this point, this target seems to be achievable, I would say. Maybe 2 more comments regarding one-off events.
One maybe just as a reminder, regarding our results that they include already also another one-off amounting to PLN 20 million. It's a write-down or impairment, right, which was recognized in quarter 3, which resulted, which is the effect of the event that occurred at one of our warehouses in Ukraine. There was a fire which was caused by the fire which was spread from a neighbor building which was attacked by the Russian army. It's not directly situation caused by the war.
Potentially there is a certain probability of obtaining some indemnification from the insurance company, but we are still in the process, so we cannot, we cannot tell for now whether or not we are going to achieve this. Potentially it is still on the table. Of course, another event is the Middle East conflict. What I would like to mention, maybe without going into detail, is that in our in our financial statements, both consolidated and the report of the board on the activities from the operations in 2025, we have disclosed quite, I would say, extensive note on how we see this conflict and how this conflict may impact operations of Inter Cars or our industry in general.
I think the most important thing is for now that we do not see any major, any significant, I would say, direct operational disruptions. Maybe in one segment, which is oils, we've noted that some potential disruptions or limitations rather than disruptions in terms of availability of oils for which LNG is gas is necessary for production. Of course, on the other side, we see some quite big, I would say, demand and rising margins as the effect. We do not see any disruptions or any changes in the demand or supply relating to other products. For the time being, we do not see any major impact. Potentially, of course, inflationary moves are possible, if the conflict prolongs.
I think this is a little bit out of scope of this presentation. From my side, I think these are all comments regarding the financial results, our comments, and the points at which we would like to pay your attention at. Thank you very much, and I pass my voice to Krzysztof.
Yeah. I would like only to make summary. Inter Cars is fastest-growing distributor among the largest market players despite declining demand in select European markets. We anticipate growth in 2025, thanks to the stable aftermarket and ongoing market consolidation, which rewards strong players like Inter Cars. We believe 2026 will continue it. We still see room for growth next year, which mean 2026 and the next year's primary through expanding sales within specific segment in each country. Growth based on segment strategies provides agility and flexibility in business management and increases the group's competitiveness, resulting in higher sales growth than local competitors in many countries. We believe that in 2026 is the chance to be number 1. Of course, it's still on the way.
We see that the first quarter we finish with the growth over 13%. We had the gap to the leader, LKQ Europe, 10% of the sales. In first quarter, what they announce, they had declined 4%, we believe that this trend will continue. As well, we found the Alliance Automotive Group results is in the first quarter, 1%, around 1% growth in Europe, which mean that this is still continue of the situation which we had last year. We believe that Inter Cars will use this opportunity to strengthen our operations and as well, our ambitions will come to the results on the top line, but as well on the bottom line based on the LTI program as Piotr mentioned. Thank you very much.
Now we try to answer your questions.
If they're there. Mm-hmm.
If you have any questions, please unmute yourself and ask.
You can put them on the chat.
You can put them on the chat, of course.
No questions. We will meet soon.
Yeah, we will meet in 2 weeks, after the first quarter result will be published on Monday 18, and on 19 of May, it will be held, the teleconference after the first quarter results.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for today. Of course, the recording will be uploaded our relationship site, so you can hear it again. Thank you very much. See you in two weeks.
Have a nice day. Thank you very much.
Good afternoon. Bye.