Kamux Oyj

Hello. Welcome to Kamuksi's Q2 results presentation. And I have here our CEO, Tapio Paiuharja, and CFO Jukka Havia presenting the results. And after the presentation, we have a session for questions. If you participate via the teleconference, you'll get the information and guidance before we start taking questions. Those participating via the webcast, please use the chat function and I will moderate the questions here. And then we have also questions here from the audience. Let's begin.

Very good. Welcome on board. And I think the headline tells it all. It was not the drive in a park, but I think we also have many good things happening. And I will share where we are on that. I will also have a bit of a look on going going forward. All in all, I think we'll dive deeper on the Q2. Then we'll have the market position, a bit about the strategy work. Then especially, I think, on the improving productivity and efficiency, we have some speedy matters happening on that one. Then Jukka will share the finance and development, and together we have the outlook and finance targets, and then we have time for questions and comments going forward. I think all in all, the sourcing market has been tightening in most of the places, but also in our operating marketplaces. And I think going forward in Finland, we could have had more cars. We were not able to get them on a solid margin. On the other hand, the cars we sold, we maintained a good margin over there. And that's a fundamental going forward, and we need to beef up our sourcing in that respect. Sweden, where we started the quarter rather okay, became very, very soft towards the end of the quarter. And later on, we'll have a bit of a deeper look on that one. On the other hand, Germany did deliver well, both on the top line growth, almost on the black numbers, and also a very nice profitability improvement when we have a deeper look on that one. Cross-profit decreased due to the tighter margin we get on the sourcing side, and at the same token, most of the car-related things, including maintenance, service, repair, and some of the people-related issues have been inflated, and that's something we need to tackle. And as an outcome, unfortunately, our operating profit took a dive, and I think altogether a 40% delta on that one. And for the first half, we are roughly at par on the prior year performance, so we still have a lot to do in order to make a major improvement on the bottom line. On the good side, I think on the integrated services, we are back on track with selling our final product in all of the three markets and improving quite nicely on that one. Same applies for the Camux Plus incremental guarantees for the customers. And then on top of that, the products we've been introducing in Sweden, we've been rather good in selling the tires and rims. And as we speak, we've been piloting the same in Finland. Then on the number of cars sold, as seen, we take a bit of a dip. On the value, we do better than on the pieces, but still Sweden was not the highlight of the year and had a very, very sad story for the month of June over there. And I think the consequences you've already seen, and we'll talk more about that. Market position, I think in Finland on the personal cars, we are still clearly on number one position in the PSEs. And I think Finland, it's good to remember that in our numbers, we have a fair share of the utility vehicles on board with the current economic climate and building and all of the activity on that front going down. The utility cars have been heard clearly more than the personal cars, and it's visible in our numbers in that respect. Sweden, I think we have a bit of a starting issue, and we'll dive deeper on that one over there. Germany, I think we have unchanged our position. The market has been good, but the sourcing market also in Germany has been very, very difficult, and I think that's going to continue for some time going forward. And I think building up our inventory ahead of this season, that's where we failed, and I think we could have had more cars in all of the three markets going forward. Then when having a revenue comparison, I think we are roughly at par with the issue, but slightly down due to the Sweden issue. But then on the profitability, that's where we did not deliver what we expected to deliver. And that's why we are taking incremental measures and speeding up some of the productivity and cost elimination issues going forward. Then on the number of cars sold, it's a pity that we missed the one car in Finland, but I think all in all, we could have sold a couple of hundred cars more if we would have the right models available in a timely manner. And then in Germany, rather nice development, and especially keeping in mind the challenges in the sourcing side, job well done. And then when having the value comparison on that one, it's good to remember that we have decided to take down our mid price point and the sweet spot. And now we are roughly at par with that one and going forward. Sweden is where we failed quite miserably in the month of June. The start of the quarter was still very, very solid. Then on the adjacent services, good job done. And I think we are really gaining speed on most of those. Having said that, I think on the Kambux Plus in Sweden, where we have a fairly fresh team selling it, we did not reach the average numbers over there. And actually we dropped halfway on that one. And now we've been training the team and clearly making onboarding and maybe also need to upgrade some of the product to make it really work. On the tire sales, I'm very happy what the team Sweden did. but unfortunately that was not fully offsetting what we lost on the Camux Plus over there. Then on the network development, I think if you have a look on our web store, we've been making some upgrades on the web store. The visuality of the cars, also the descriptions we've been beefing up. And then we've been making it rather easy for the consumers to pick up. If you want to have a hybrid and rechargeable car, then you just click one button and you get the availability. Same for the works, same for the exclusivity. And that's something we're going to be enhancing going forward. And then the visualization, especially now in Sweden, we are in the process of switching to car cutter. And I think it's clearly more evident that we can do standard good quality pictures in all of the stores going forward. In Finland, very happy for the development in the outside of Helsinki and the Hyvinkää. where we were below our market share in general. Now we are back on track and we've been gaining quite nicely on that area, both on the personal cars as well as on the utility vehicles in Hyvinkää. And then the Laka-Lava flagship, which we opened, have been always beating all-time highs, and I think we are reaching new levels, so they're very happy for that performance. Sweden, we closed the Nordköping showroom, removed the cars, and then later in the beginning of actually mid of the Q2, we decided to close Heronsity and Nortellie, and that now transferred cars to elsewhere. And I think we still have work to do on the Swedish showrooms. Sundsvall, Helsingborg, we have upgraded. We are clearly in better premises. Still the layout and some of the decoration visualization is ongoing, but already now we know that we can do clearly better. And then on the agenda, we have a store in Gothenburg, which is actually one of our largest where we are lacking cars. So we need to make the Gothenburg store fly with the cars and with the personnel. Then we have a good go for Sweden. Adelsburg in Germany is a new premises. Very happy for that. Still the same issue with the layout. We have not made it 100% ready as of yet. We are 80% ready. Then the new showroom in Sirshan is operating. Final decoration visualization has been done now when we speak. Then we decided to close store in Lübeck and Kaltenkirchen. I think we had too high density on the close to Hamburg area. And on top of that, the Lübeck was extremely expensive and didn't make profit. And all of the stores we've been closing are actually improving our profitability going forward. In Sweden, we still have a couple of stores we are considering. On the other hand, we know that we are underrepresented on the greater Stockholm area, and then the northern part of Sweden is still a black area for us. It will not be like that going forward. Then Germany, we have a good plan where to go, and it's mainly in the south and then in the eastern part of Germany. And also the Finnish network, we are conjuring more about that in a short while. Finland, still a rather steady job, and I think on the average metal margin, a job well done in a very difficult marketplace. But where we failed is actually on the adjacent costs related to the car. Maintenance, pre-cost, logistics have been creeping up, and with our pricing, we've not been able to basically offset that. And at the same time, some of the people-related costs is an area where we need to address, and that's going to happen rather fast. But I'm very happy for the performance on the upgraded stores. I think on the greater Helsinki area where we've been doing the upgrades and then gradually as we speak also we have something happening in the northern part of Finland. And I think we are gaining traction on the Finnish marketplace. Currently the availability of cars is also improving. Sweden, rather sad story. And I think part of that is due to issues which we focus so much on creating a sustainable atmosphere. And I think we can now say that all of the anomalies, all of the wrongdoings, semi-criminal, criminal issues have been eliminated. having said that we have almost more than one third of the sales people new and onboarding was not done with the proper manner and I think we did not see the outcome on the commercial areas of yet but I think gradually we are coming back on that and we already see stores where even the new people are performing clearly better and I think the salary models and incentive schemes are coming into place after they've gone through the so-called guarantee salary period and then we will see the performance kicking up. Our offering on the cars, I think we were a bit substandard on certain areas and now we've been addressing that and I think the buying team in Sweden has shown that hey we can get the things but the buying market in Sweden has also changed quite a bit. One of the leading companies most likely currently she's having a big inventory and that has impacted prices of some of the most popular models in Sweden. Then on Germany, I think even though we had a nice growth on the volume, a value didn't make it on the black numbers, but a major improvement on the bottom line. What I see happening in Germany is that we have the offering in place, we have the quality in place, we've been improving on the pricing issue, and I think availability and access to the big fleets and bigger sources are coming gradually in and going forward we can benefit of that not only in Germany but also rest of the marketplace so we are on a steady journey over there. Market has, in a way, not changed in a big way, but still, I think the bigger ones are getting bigger, and I think there is a lot of things happening. In the central Europe, especially, Adamis has been doing a very good job, and they've been improving their performance both on the marketplace as well as on the quality. They have adapted a fully hub model where they process all the cars in an industrial manner, and I think there are some learnings we can also take from there. Still, I think our vision is to become number one. We have a lot of issues to be done on our organic way. And on top of that, we have the opportunity to consider M&A activity when the potential partner would be available. And that's what we are doing as we are speaking. Then as a part of the strategy, I think this is something we now have decided to take a bit of a speedier manner. That's improving the productivity and efficiency. We are on a two way street. One is all of the car related issues we outsource from a third party. And on the last count, we had more than 5000 partners with whom do we work with. clearly a too high number to be managed on a professional manner. We have decided to cut the number of partners, focus more volume for the dedicated partners, and as a hindsight of that, we'll get better prices, better services, and more of a KAMUK standard procedure on that one. That's something we've been starting together with our sourcing team in Finland, in Sweden and in Germany. And some of the partners are going to be for all of the countries. And on top of that, I think we have some which are not car related, but they are third party sourcing issues where we can get benefits in a speedy manner. And that's roughly half of the story. The other half is coming from our way of operating our network and the way we operate on certain areas and that then having an impact on our network in all of the countries and also some of the processes which are outside of the commercial work we do. And that's something we're going to share later in what we do. We expect that roughly a bit less than one third will hit on this year's PNL. The rest is then building the basis for going forward in 2025. The strategy is unchanged. Customer promises is where we live, or we make it or break it, and that's where we've been doing a good job forward. Operational efficiency is an area where we still have a lot to improve, and I think on the best practices we are very good at, but to increase the average performance and efficiency of the whole operation is where we need to do an improved effort and in a speedier manner, and that's what we are doing with the project core. And now Jukka, the numbers.

Thank you. So I will take up and have a look from the consolidated total group perspective. And like Tapio stated, of course, the second quarter was dominated, and one of the predominant issues was challenges in Sweden. But we had relatively okay top-line growth, both in Finland as well as in Germany. But I think the real challenge was linked to the cross-margin. Now, after a couple of last quarters being going up, now it bent a little bit down. There are two main drivers behind that. One is the tight sourcing market. And the second one is, like Tapio stated, the costs that are car related, which were inflated, on which we are now having these actions that was referred by Tapio a short while ago. We did already, end of Q1, of course, try to build up the inventory for the season. And of course, with hindsight, now looking at what happened, we did not get probably all the cars we would have been able to sell. Still end of June 24, we had about, in value terms, about 5% higher inventory. Even if that was the case, still the net cash flow in the second quarter was on the positive zone and better than last year in the second quarter. But then if you look at the totality for the first six months, the cash flows are more or less at the same level. Our balance sheet has stayed very stable. Maybe the only main change has been that now the interest bearing debts after Q1 end has been now classified as short term. And that is linked to the fact that we are now starting the process to refinance ourselves. And then as a consequence of that, the return on equity, the equity ratio, all of these sort of relative metrics have been staying quite stable. Equity ratio is slightly down, but still at a good level. And then unfortunately for the second quarter, the EPS was flat at zero. And that is, of course, something which we have to improve going forward. That's sort of the nutshell. And then going into the table of numbers on the left hand side, you see the second quarter, April to June. Then in the middle, you have the first six months. And then on the right hand side, you have the last year, all of it, 12 months. And of course, now on the top line perspective, the second quarter was not that bad, quite flat. If you take the Swedish dip out of that, there's some growth. And same applies for the full six months, still some growth, 3% growth after the first half. However, then deeper down you go in the P&L, then you start to see the challenges we faced in the second quarter. And of course, the deviation delta in Sweden is one of the key drivers. The integrated services have been positively contributing to the profitability, but have not been able to fully offset the cost inflation that has eaten out the profits. If you look at one of the positive sides, even if the inventory value terms increase, the inventory turnover in days, days of inventory outstanding, is about five days less, about 8-9% better than it was last year at the same time, even if we have had some challenges in Sweden. But we think that there are more, coming back to these efficiency boosting measures, more we can do in order to turn it over, because that's one of the drivers, not only for balance sheet, but also profitability and cash flow. So that is how the group looked. Then on the working capital, so even if inventories went up, we have been able during this period to improve a little bit versus what was the case in end of June last year. And one of the drivers behind that is the fact that on the trade payables, accounts payables vis-a-vis the suppliers, we have been trading, getting some positive traction. And there are a lot of activities now ongoing managing our very diverse and complex supplier base. And one target is, of course, to have an impact on our networking capital and thereby the cash flow, because at the end of the day, the changes in the networking capital in this business are the key drivers of our operating cash flow. But all in all, the cash flow is stable and the financial capabilities and capacity, of course, do allow and would allow us to grow even faster than what we have done. And then, before jumping into how the future looks like, one note on the dividend. Like you know, in April we had the AGM, and based on the shareholders' decision, the first tranche of €7 per share was paid to the shareholders end of April, and then the second tranche of the dividend, which is a little bit higher, €10, will be paid at the end of October. And then we go to the outlook and future, and maybe Tapio can take over from here, or would you like me still to? Well, let me take that one. Fine. So if you look at our long term target setting that we announced end of March, the long term we haven't defined where it is, is long term. On the financial side, we have a volume target of 100,000 cars per year. On the right-hand side of this table, you see the last 12 months. That's the run rate last 12 months from July 23 until June 24. And we are a little bit up from where we were last year. Of course, the volume growth is not yet that high as we had planned, but still on the right direction. And that is driving the revenue as well. So the revenue 1.017 million, 1,000 million, 1.0 billion euros. But where we really have the challenge and what we now want to target is the adjusted EBIT margin, which is still flat, of course, not going down, but still at the flat level. We want to improve that. towards a target level of 4%. And in order to do that, we both, of course, have to be good at the commercially driving the sales, but also better in efficiency and productivity. On the non-finance side, which is driving the performance, the customer, of course, is super important. The customer service is at the epicenter and the trust at the epicenter of the strategy. The NPS on average for all of the group in the second quarter was 49. And that's the net promoter score number. The target is 60. If you think about where we were in Q1, we are slightly down. But there is variation between the countries, between the units. And now we spend a lot of time and energy internally looking at that at the store level and the reactions behind that. So I think that's going to drive the performance going forward. So OK level, but still room to improve. On the employee NPS, the E-NPS number, we are now doing end of Q3A employee survey. And thereafter, when we get the results, that will be then later also reported here. And then Tapio is going to take over from the outlook.

Yeah, I think the outlook is unchanged. We go for the better than prior year, 18 million in that respect. And I think the actions are in place, what we are doing. And then... What do we see in Sweden? And I think it's also good to remember that we have a rather different team over there. We've been enhancing our financial department. We have new CFO. We have a very capable after sales director over there. And our security and control is in place. And I think now with Aino and the new energy and the commercial team, we will see a change. It's not going to be a drive in the park. And I think we will not see a really big jump, but we see a gradual improvement towards the year end. will start to deliver black numbers in Sweden as well. Then I think as a summary, this is already known to everyone, and I think it's time for Q&A.

Thank you. Let's start by taking questions from the teleconference, if there are any.

Welcome to the conference call. For the first part of the conference call, the participants will be in listen-only mode. During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key 5 on their telephone keypad. Now I will hand the conference over to the speakers. Please go ahead. The next question comes from Maria Wickstrom from SEB. Please go ahead. The next question comes from Maria Wickstrom from SEB. Please go ahead.

Hi, this is Maria Wickstrom from SEB. Can you hear me?

Yes, loud and clear. Welcome on board.

Perfect, thank you. I just wanted to touch once again on the whole year guidance, given that you are currently flat on adjusted EBIT in the first half versus last year. And if we look at the underlying trends, the Delta was clearly negative in Q2 versus the Q1. And I think you mentioned this, Sweden, many times and the problems and you are taking action. But at the same time, if I look at the Finnish gross profit per car, I mean, that was also down year over year. So it's not completely isolated in the Swedish business. So can you just... Touch once again that, I mean, why you are so confident in the current guidance?

I think what we have now been addressing and what we are doing, the issues on the sourcing market, then at the same token, I think the seasonality is helping a bit on the sourcing side, and then the impact we are giving for the car-related indirect cost, I think, is helping us out. But I think, like you said, the margin, we have had our own estimates way above the prior year adjusted EBIT and the delta between prior year and our forecast has been squeezing down, but still we stick to the outlook and feel confident that we can deliver that. But not a drive in the park, as I said.

And maybe one continuation of that, if we talk about the metal margins per car, which is something down on the group level, is this the kind of what you say related to the difficult sourcing environment, or is there any impact of you basically getting rid of the old inventory where the metal margins wouldn't be as high compared to the cars that are sourced more recently.

Old inventory with a professional manner and doing our utmost and maybe towards the end of the quarter for sure cleaning, but I think that has very small impact. And the majority of the impact is when you try to source cars in the middle of the market and everyone else is doing that, the margins tend to be narrow on that respect.

Okay. And then I had a question given that I think, I mean, the head of the Swedish operations has been a windy seat to say the least. And now the latest CEO of the operations was there only for seven months. So what were the reasons that you already concluded that he's not the one who could lead the turnaround in the Swedish business? And what kind of capabilities you are looking when you are now hiring a new person to head the Swedish operations?

I think the issues we have at hand, first of all, needs to have a team effort and working together as a team. And I think Andy did an excellent job for cleaning the business, making it work and make it fully sustainable. But then the area of teamwork between all of the functions, I think he was not up to speed with the expectation of the rest of the team. And then the outcomes became rather visible also on the top line. And then we didn't need to call the call the action.

And then finally, I mean, you kind of like you having a operation, certain operational issues. now present, I mean, you quite vividly talked about MSA. Why makes you now shift the gear in MSA when basically the underlying operations are underperforming?

I think we are not shifting a gear on that one. I think we'll be remaining on monitoring the market. But these opportunities come when they come. And I think we know who they might be. And if they come, we will be ready. And I fully agree that we have eye on the ball. But I think the operational issue is rather OK, both in... Finland and Germany and we know how to fine-tune and fine-tuning is the right word and in Sweden I think on the processes we know how to do now we need to make sure that every single person and every single unit performs based on the process and that's taking a bit of a time but the basic things are in good place so when that is done we should be having black numbers also in Sweden

Thank you. I let the others to ask questions. Next. Teleconference.

The next question comes from Pia Roskvist-Heinzalmi from Carnegie Investment Bank.

Please go ahead. Hello, this is Pia Roskvist from Carnegie.

Thank you for your presentation. A few clarifications, please. So with regards to the closure of four showrooms, can you quantify the effect on earnings you expect this to have?

I think that's something we have not disclosed, but I think all of the stores as a standalone were not profit makers. Then we transit the cars and the offering to stores which do preform. Most of the personnel will not discontinue, but some of the people do continue in other stores.

Okay, and I think in that release, when you told about the closures, You now also said that the showrooms had been loss making. Can you quantify of your current showroom network how many of the showrooms are still in the red?

I think that's something we don't disclose, but I think regarding Finland, we don't have any issues in that respect. Sweden, we still have some stores which are not on the benchmark and doing negative figures. German stores, we have roughly the same situation, but gradually improving month by month.

Okay, thank you. Then the issues regarding inflation and its impact on the maintenance costs. So can you give any more color on this? So is this specifically repair costs or warranty costs? Or is this, I mean, a broader issue? I think you mentioned also logistics. So still, can you be very concrete on the actions to tackle this?

Yeah, and I think the first and foremost is that when you have more than 5000 partners to work with, then you cannot have a good control and standardized way of operating. So we are bundling the services to a lesser amount of suppliers. Then we are also standardizing the services we buy. and then it's all the costs which are car related starting with the logistics conditioning washing documentation repair maintenance and painting all of that and by the way spare parts included and I think lately logistics gone up all of the other processes gone up and some of the componentry in the spare parts gone up not by percentage by x And that's something we need to offset. And we've been finding ways how to offset that. Some of that is in a way technically coming early into the books, because when we sell the Kamuks Plus, we basically allocating the revenue either for 12 months or 24 months. And usually when we get some issues with the car, the cost comes in within the first three months. So then it's always queued on the P&L, but that's the way we've been booking it in the history and we'll continue booking like that.

All right. Thank you. Then still, if I can continue, I think on page 14 in the presentation you described the actions to improve productivity and efficiency. Just to clarify, the targeted annual savings

um in uh in this project five to seven million euros so uh can you uh can you repeat your comments how much of this uh will we see this year how much uh next year yeah the way i see it i put the midpoint on six and it's basically 50 50 on the two paths we we operate and i would say roughly one third or slightly less is then coming through for the pnl of this year and the remaining part is then improving the benchmark for 2025.

All right, thank you. And are there any one-time costs related to this project that we should be aware of?

One-time costs related to that, but that's something we have not disclosed as we speak.

All right, that's all for me now.

Thank you.

Thanks, Pia.

Thank you, Pia. We have one more question at least coming from the telephone line.

The next question comes from Kaie Loikanen from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to check on the car related costs or follow up on the car related costs that you mentioned, the inflation. I mean, when did this inflation really start in these costs? Because I guess everything hasn't come in the second quarter.

I think it's been gradually creeping in, and then I've taken maybe an analogy of one of our peers in the industry, and I think we referred to Aramis Auto in the past, when they processed the cars, It's also on the perceived quality and what is good enough and what is too much. So I think it's in a way on the component issues. And I think after the pandemic, some of the engine parts, for example, they were not increased by one or two percent. They were increased by X because there was availability issues. And that's something we have not put into the calculation. Now we are prepared and we know what to tackle and how to tackle. And then also, do we also always put the original parts, do we put new parts, or do we put parts which correspond to the age and mileage of the car. I think that's where we need to improve our game. And then bundling the partners, and I think even in Finland we have more than 1,000 partners, and we need to really cut down the number of partners.

Okay, that makes sense. But how did this issue kind of blow up now in the second quarter?

didn't blow up it's been gradually creeping in and then when we addressed the issue and we also had a bit of a backlog on the on the topics and when you try to kill the backlog with the speedy manner then you also may do a bit of an overkill on that one and that's what has happened.

Okay makes sense. Then perhaps on the on the going back to the Swedish operations you obviously have a plan in place on what to do, but how long do you expect it takes to kind of turn the operation back on track in Sweden?

I think towards the end of the year, we should see a solid improvement. And I think when we have roughly one third of the sales team new, some of them learn very fast. Some of them are like normal people, like Jukka and me. Katariina take a bit longer time. But within three months, everyone should be learning the trade, how to sell the adjacent products. But with the process in place in the stores, And in the region, we need to help them to preform. And that was something we did not have fully in place when we started.

Okay. And then on the sourcing market, you mentioned several times it's been very tight. Has anything changed on that side now in the early August and in July as well, or is it still continuing to be tight?

I think during this season, it remains rather tight. When the season is now fading off, it's improving a bit. And then I think we've been also improving our game. And we know now how to tackle some of that. But I think in general, some of the dynamics has changed maybe forever. And looking at the Finnish marketplace, the platforms are gaining share. So it's to buy from a door purchase from the consumer. is very rare. We mainly buy as a trade-in and then we buy from the other sources or maybe from the platform and then we need to import lots of cars and I think that's going to continue for some time. The new car sales in Finland, Sweden and also in Germany has been challenge for some time so the total availability of cars is actually down and then you need to get closer to the sources of the cars which are outside of finland has been okay for sweden but i think longer term we need to be where the big volumes are and then go closer to that and that's what we are doing okay that's very helpful that's uh that's all for me thank you thanks

Okay, we have no further questions from the teleconference. So what we're going to do is we're going to take questions here from the floor. Pauli, please.

Yes, Rauli from Inderes. Hello. A couple of maybe more detailed questions left for me after my colleagues. But coming back to the store closers, you had about two in Sweden and Germany in the end of Q2, so you discussed the profit impact, but I was just wondering how negative impact do you see from those for the rest of the year?

I think on the... By the way, when we close the store, then we negotiate with the landlord, we transfer the cars, and then we transfer some of the people, so it's coming gradually in. For some of those, we need to also pay for the landlord if it was not due on an ideal state, but I think when that's done, a one-off should be automatically favourable. I think stores we've been closing, Nortelie, Heron City, has been not big stores, but has been actually rather high-cost in that respect. Same applies for Germany.

How about the top line?

I think for that region we may take a hit, but as a totality it should be a wash.

And then the sourcing difficulties you had. Of course, the season is continuing kind of full steam during Q3. Should we expect that you are not performing at the market level during Q3?

And I think the market has also taken, if you follow the Swedish market, you follow the German market and Finland and the regional markets, they are not all the same. And there has been quite a lot of changes lately. I think we've been rather okay on the domestic marketplace. Utility vehicles are still soft, but when you take the personal cars, rather OK is on that area. We've been gaining share on the higher price point hybrids and the newer cars, which is according to the plan. Sweden, we have missed some of the traction over there, but in Sweden, if you look at what happened with the number one player, I think they have stirred the pot a bit and now they have a bit of a hangover and they need to figure out also how to turn their inventory around, and that may help us on going forward. Germany, we are such a small player that it doesn't make a change over there.

Sure, sure. All right, thank you. And then finally on the cost savings, mainly those coming to the OPEX level, I was wondering if you can kind of a bit talk about, are you expecting OPEX, absolute OPEX actually to decline, maybe especially in Sweden, where the top line has been weak, or do you see some kind of offsetting pressure on the cost going up, kind of compared to the savings you are expecting?

I think the increases and the inflation is currently even halted, and some even now taking a bit of a down, so we may even benefit, but that's not in the books as of yet. But I think we should see a downward trend on the OPEX. Okay, very clear. Thank you. Thank you.

Okay, it seems that we have one more question via the teleconference.

Welcome back.

The next question comes from Pia Roskvist-Heinzalmi from Carnegie Investment Bank. Please go ahead.

Hello again. Thank you for taking my follow-up question. So I have two. One is with regards to the financing penetration rate in Finland, which declined. Do you think this could be a start of a new trend or is it explained by other factors?

Actually, our earnings potential in Finland has improved. Penetration rate maybe took a bit of a hit. I don't know how to say this in English even. Positivinen luottorekisteri. I don't know how, but Bia, you know what I mean. That had some impact on the, what I call, I would say lower income, maybe higher debt burden on certain consumers. And we also have fair share of this clientele. So that's something, but I think it's the same for all of the car dealers. Yes.

All right, that's clear. Thank you. And then regarding the implementation of the merchant model in Finland, I think We did not see any clear impacts yet in the results. But when can we expect to start seeing those in Finland?

Gradually coming in. And I think on the first quarter, we did not see it fully. Now we already see that all the people who are the merchants, they pay attention to the profitability of the store or the stores they have. And I think that's going to be reflected on the action of the store. So it's coming in.

All right. Thank you.

Okay. Teleconference line is very, very popular today. One more question coming in.

Please go ahead.

The next question comes from Maria Wickstrom from SEB.

Please go ahead. Yes, this is Maria.

I still had a few follow up questions, which first one is that we see quite a rapid decline in interest rates in Finland. So how do you see this impacting your business? I mean, firstly, thinking about the affordability and then secondly, thinking about the profitability of your a finance product, do you expect that you can keep the profits to yourself with the decline in interest rates, or do you plan to give some of that back to the customers?

I think during the time, we also need to adjust to a certain level, but I think at the same time, the cost of the finance money should be reflected, so I think we can maintain our margin in that respect. And then what was your other question?

Yeah, it was more relating to the demand of used cars. Do you think the lower interest rate would have a positive impact on the transaction volumes in the market in general?

Yeah, I think in general, and I think when having seen the curves, what is happening with the prices of the new cars, maybe eliminating the made in China EVs. The new cars clearly going up on the price points and the used cars maintain roughly a very steady journey on that one. And I think the need for the mobility has not changed. They actually increased. So we expect to have a good demand for the used cars going forward. And especially for the ones who either are really focused on the money or need to focus on the money.

And then I wanted to touch upon, was it beginning of this year when you announced that you have signed a cooperation agreement with Abili? So is there any comments on that cooperation?

I think ongoing, a nice add-on for our offering, but it's not in a way substantial in that respect that we would report it separately. But a nice start. We are roughly at par with the plans, and I'm very happy to have that offering in our portfolio.

Thank you. I don't have further questions.

Thanks, Maria.

Very good. Thank you, Maria. We'll now take a couple of questions that we have received from chat. There's two questions related to the management changes, so I'll combine those. It seems that Kamux has had a lot of turnover in management. Why is that and what are you doing to increase stability in the leadership? And then more specifically, Why did the Swedish CEO leave, and you have been there for over 11 years? Have you failed?

Let's start with the case Sweden. I think... When we hired the individual for the job, we were not fully aware of what is ongoing. Then we found out what is ongoing, did an excellent job on fixing that, but then didn't find a way how to cooperate with the team. We need to make the call on that one. And that's what we decided and did it in a good manner. He didn't do anything wrong. It was a good try on that one. But as a team with the new team, it didn't work out. And that's why we made the decision. Then we have other changes. And I think on the sourcing side, we had a very excellent person running the processes and getting it done. But then at the end of the day, on top of the process, we need to have the access to the car market, know the people. And the car market is in a way like a big family, about 100 people who know each other. We need to get into that family in order to get access to the fleet. And that's why we have initiated the search. And the search is not going to be based in Finland. It's going to be based somewhere in the car markets, most likely closer to Germany or Central Europe. Then I think on the HR area, Maria has been on board for some time, a very good capable person. We would love to keep her, but she decided to go for entrepreneurship, which we highly appreciate. They're going to be a very good entrepreneur. On the other hand, it gives us an opportunity to do something different. And I think part of our plan going forward and also part of the core, we may combine things and some of the outsourcing things we may insource. So we combine roles on that respect. So that's what we're going to do. And then on the on the strategy work where Vesa Huotila, who's been, by the way, excellent person, been 10 years on the board first as a board member, then working for the company and then now rejoining private equity. I think that gives an opportunity not to hire exactly the same calibre, same character as Vesa, but maybe someone who can help us more on the car related logistics, conditioning, repair, maintenance and execution of certain things on the processes. And that's giving a new opportunity for us in that respect. I agree when looking at a longer history on Kamuks, there have been quite many changes on the top management. On the other hand, this has been in a way almost like a startup company evolving on the journey. Now, by accident, we got a bit of changes on that matter.

Thank you. There's a question in Finnish, and I'll translate freely. It's about Camux's relative competitive position. Has it weakened, and what's the impact on long-term profitability?

I just got the latest information on Finland from a partner by the name of Nepa, where they monitor the consumer perception of Camuks. Actually, we are rather good. I think there is one area where we need to improve, and that's on the higher income area, and that our strategy to have newer cars, lower mileage, more of the hybrids. I think that we are addressing that quite nicely. Historically, that used to be our weak point. We've been climbing up on that one. Maybe then what has changed that way we are catching up is the frequency of the clock and I think that's why we need to improve especially on the sourcing market what used to be okay to take it in three hours today you need to make it not in three minutes but maybe 15 minutes you need to act fast we've been catching up on that one so I think we are steady with the market and we are at par where we should be are we in Sweden at par with the number one no we are not but we know how to how to get there what to do in order to get there Finland we are

Very good. Thank you. One more question from the chat. Do you plan to tackle competition from integrated car brands that lock in new car customers for their replacement or resale? Do you see them getting more aggressive on sourcing? Integrated car brands.

I'm not really sure whether I understood the question.

I'm not either what's exactly meant by integrated car brands. I wonder whether this could be about brands like Tesla, et cetera, who, you know, Pretty much the intermediate positions are left out.

No, I think we're actually benefiting from their way of operating, because they don't usually take the trade-ins. Trade-ins are taken by someone else. We are a Tesla partner. We've just been playing very careful on that one due to obvious reasons. But I think we should be benefiting, same with the Polestar. We are very okay and very happy for their way of operating. We are in the same value chain one way or the other in any case.

So I think that should not be... If that was the question, then I think... I actually think it's maybe something more related to which we have very much so done in Finland also, is that typically when a customer comes and buys a car from us, we get a trading car. And then it's more about, you know, Now that more new car sellers also are focusing on used cars.

Yeah, I think the market dynamics has changed and that they really do operate. They have one benefit, they can get their cars. On the other hand, the way they value the used car of their own brand is very different. So in that respect, we may also have an opportunity on that one. But if we are next to each other, like in Germany where we are next to a BMW, the same BMW at the BMW dealer, which is a certified BMW, costs maybe 1,500, even 2,000 more than with us. So the ones who are not putting the brand image on the car sources from us. Same car, same service, same guarantee.

Very good. Thank you. Now I have no further questions from the chat or teleconference. What about the audience? All clear.

Thank you. Thank you. Excellent questions. Enjoy the rest of the day. All the best. Bye now.