Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings plc

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Aston Martin Lagonda Full Year Results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. I would now like to introduce the conference of the Lawrence Stroll Executive Chairman, Aston Martin Lagonda. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for this Q&A on our full year results of 2022. I hope you had a chance to read the release and also watch my address and the presentation of the results from Amadeo and Doug that are on our investor relations selection of our corporate website. Last year saw Aston Martin continue to build on the strong foundations that have been established over the last three years. While the last 12 months presented industry-wide challenges, we look to the future with renewed confidence in our ability to deliver on our vision and the targets we have set. We ended the year with significantly improved growth, margin enhancement, and positive free cash flow in Q4, exiting 22 with the strongest order book in many, many years. Since I became executive chairman, we have focused on fixing the core fundamentals of this company and building the necessary foundation to deliver on our vision, which is to become the world's most desirable ultra-luxury British performance brand. Over the last three years, we have rebalanced supply to demand, consistent with an ultra-luxury business. which has resulted in record ASPs and the strongest order book ever. Starting with the DBX-707, we launched the first product developed under my stewardship, combining ultra luxury with high performance. Crucially, all these new models target a 40 plus percent contribution margin, a very significant increase from the past. We have rejuvenated our iconic brand, further amplified by our partnership with the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Formula One team, which is attracting a rapidly growing new generation of customers and offers new opportunities to enhance our brand image and appeal globally. We have built a world-class leadership team and added significant bench strength across the organization, with a focus on innovation, execution, and efficiency to support our longer-term growth. And we successfully completed a significant equity capital raise, which has allowed us to delever our balance sheet, accelerate our future growth, and our target remains to be sustainably free cash flow positive from 2024. Having completed this heavy lifting over the last three years, we are now at the exciting part of the journey and set to reap the rewards of this multi-year transformation. Starting this year with the delivery of the first of our next generation of sports cars, a whole new lineup including high margin specials. And with the cadence of incredible new sports cars launching this year, and in 24, this will truly reposition Aston Martin for our future success. Over the last three years, I have consistently referenced our target to deliver around 2 billion of revenue, 500 million pounds of adjusted EBITDA by 2425. I am extremely proud that given the strong progress we have made to transform Aston Martin into a truly ultra luxury business. This is now demonstrated by the trajectory of our ASP and gross margins. And we are on track to meet these financial targets, but with significantly less volume than originally envisioned. Due to the greater gross margin, we're able to get to our EBITDA numbers without necessarily having the higher volume at this point. In addition, I remain highly confident that we will achieve our targets to deliver 10,000 home sales over the coming years and with it significantly enhance financial performance. And with that, we are now happy to take your questions.

Ladies and gentlemen, we now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 1 on your telephone. If you wish to withdraw your question, star 1 1. We are now taking the first question. Please stand by. The first question for Hadi Agassi May for Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open.