Bilia AB (publ)

Hello everyone from Asana in Gothenburg and welcome to Bilja's second quarter results presentation with CEO Per Havander, CFO Kristina Franzén and I, Carl Fredrik Jevets. We're happy to present the resilient result in turbulent times with higher order intake for new cars, positive cash flow, a solid financial position and some green shots in outlook that I will come back to in the end of the presentation. Our agenda, Per will start to go through the current situation in the car industry, followed by Q2 numbers. Kristina will go through the financial situation, and I will conclude, as always, with an outlook. So let's start. I'll leave the word to Per.

Okay, thank you very much, Karl-Fredrik. We'll start with the current market situation. In Sweden, we see signs of better interest in new cars from private consumers. In Norway, we see good demand from private customers, and they are not so affected by the current economic turbulence. In Western Europe, the demand from private customers remains stable. The fleet business has still a stable demand for new cars in Sweden with a market share around 60%. Most of our brands have strong campaigns. big discounts and attractive private leasing offers. In Norway, we have a much better business climate. The demand for new cars are growing, good booking times in workshops. The consumer index is still on a low level, but the customer, both company and private consumers buy new cars. Our brands have strong campaigns and right prices in the market. The demand for used cars are on a good level in our countries, and we see stable prices for all cars, except fully electric cars. At the same time, we see lower prices of new fully electric cars, which affect prices of used. The stock of used cars is on a balanced level in all our countries. There is a good and strong demand in the service business in Norway and Western Europe with good booking times. In Sweden, there is a bit weaker demand, especially in body and paint shops. Part of explanation is some years of lower new car sales and export of young used cars. The total car market in Sweden 2024 was almost 20% lower compared to an average market the last 10 years. During this period, there is a shift in the car population to more older cars. There has been lots of discussion of different business models. Four or five years ago, it was really popular to test subscription, car sharing and agency models. One example is Lincoln Co. They only sold the cars through a subscription model, and now they are going over to traditional wholesale model. Still, we see agency models from some manufacturers, but the feeling is more that we are going back to what we had in the past. Some manufacturers hesitating and pushed the introduction of agency model into the future. Next slide, please. Net turnover was in line with the last year. We reported a result of 348 million with a margin of 3.3%. It's a lower result compared to last year, but in the current tough economic times, it's a resilient and good result. We had lower profitability in Sweden related to used cars and the service business. I will come back to the main reason later on in the presentation. On this slide, you can see the quarter two profitability from 2019 to 2025 in each country. In the middle, we have Norway, and there you can see some small improvements. On the right hand side, you can see Western Europe delivering at a really strong level. It's the best quarter two ever. On this chart you can see the different business areas. We improved the earnings in new car business and report lower earnings for used cars and for the service business. We are moving over to important service business representing 64% of the earnings in Q2. As I mentioned, there is still a stable demand in the service business in Norway and Western Europe with positive organic growth. Like we said in the first quarter, the booking situation for our workshops in Sweden was on a slightly weaker level and we reported a lower turnover for the second quarter. We report earnings of 252 million, which was 40 million lower than last year. There are several reasons why we reported lower results. First, fewer working days in the quarter. Second, lower turnover in Sweden, especially body and paint workshops. The third, booking times in Sweden on a slightly lower level. And there is a mixed effect. Louvre turnover involved in paint shops, impacting our sales of spare parts. The reason for the current Louvre demand is not totally clear. One reason is Louvre sales of new cars, shifting the population of cars from newer to older cars. Because of this shift, we have now taken actions that accelerated our efforts towards the older car segment. And we are including new car brands such as Xpeng, Polestar, Link & Co into our already existing workshops. The order intake of new cars adjusted for acquired and divested operations were 13% higher compared to Q2 last year. As I mentioned, we have seen a little bit better activities in all our countries, especially in the end of the quarter two. For the car business, we reported a result of 136 million compared to 155 million last year. And the profitability for new cars in Norway and Western Europe were on a higher level. For used car, we reported earnings of 61 million compared to 90 million last year. In a historical perspective, it's a good level. As I mentioned in the beginning, the stock of used cars is on a good level in all our countries. Sweden reported lower earnings and the main reason for that is price pressure on used fully electric cars. We have in the quarter increased the backlog of new cars with 700 units since the end of quarter four. Let us go over to

Thank you. A few words about the financial position. During the quarter, we had a continued stable cash flow and we generated an operating cash flow just below 200 million kronor, which equals some 1.4 billion kronor on a 12 months rolling basis. And thereby we are somewhat below the cash flow of some 1.6 billion kronor that we generated for 2024. The reason for the slightly lower run rate is an increase of new cars. partly due to the expansion of new brands such as Polestar and Lincoln Co. but also due to higher level of new cars for our operational business. During the quarter, we made the first payment, so this year's dividend of 5.60 kronor per share in total. The dividend is paid out in four installments where we made the first payment to the shareholders of 1.40 kronor per share or some 130 million kronor in total. During the second quarter, we did receive a payment of some 250 million kronor related to the divestment of our truck business for Mercedes-Benz. The divested operation generated a profit of 28 million kronor before tax. This means that we have terminated our relationship with Mercedes-Benz for the trucks business. And as a next step, we have, as of July 1st, entered into a new relationship with Volvo Lastwagner. Volvo Lastwagner is an important player on the Swedish truck market, which we are very pleased to work with going forward. We have, as of July 1st, acquired two companies that perform sales and related services for new and used Volvo trucks. The business that we have acquired had in 2024 turnover of some 1 billion SEK and did report an operating margin of around 4.5%. The business is conducted through nine facilities and located in mid Sweden. As part of the financing of the acquisition of these truck operations, We have in early July divested six facilities in Sweden where we are running operations for Porsche, BMW and Toyota. Through the sale of these facilities, we are conducting the acquisition of the Volvo Lastoina operations with basically no impact on our net debt leverage. By the end of the second quarter, we utilized some 550 million kronor of our credit facilities of 2.3 billion SEK in total. And just as a reminder, we did during the first quarter issue a new bond amounting to 800 million kronor with a maturity term of five years. This bond was raised to refinance our bond loan of 500 million kronor that is maturing in October this year. Our net debt taking out or excluding IFRS 16 at the end of the quarter amounted to 2.6 billion kronor, which was almost 300 million kronor below our net debt as per December. That means that our ratio net debt EBITDA was 1.6 times compared to 1.7 times as per Q1 and as per December 2024. That also means that we are in line with our financial target to have a ratio below 2.0 times. So I think that's where we are from a financial decision point of view.

Good. Let's move over to the outlook. And of course, our efforts to enhance profitability and operational efficiency remain a key priority. Profitability, capital allocation and maintaining a balanced and good inventory level remain top priorities throughout the whole organization. And this has also been accelerated since Q1. Looking at the car business, the demand of the quarter for used cars was mixed, stable demand for hybrid and fossil fuel cars, but low demand for electric cars in Sweden. Our inventory levels are at satisfactory levels and we frequently work to strengthen our offering and will continue to do so also in the coming quarter. Used cars will remain under slight price pressure even in the coming quarter. For new cars, the demand is still historically low, and to assess demand for new cars in the coming quarter is tough due to external factors, of course. Having said that, we saw a pickup in the end of the quarter, and we do expect this to continue in Q3. And with an overall big pent-up demand in all markets and continued campaigns here in 2025, we think private consumptions will improve. Moving to the service business, we see the current demand continue in the coming quarter in our service business. In Q2, the service business represented around 64%, as Per mentioned earlier, of our operating profit. The total car market has decreased for several years, affecting our business. However, we think the market has bottomed out with improvement in the cars years to come. With the recovery in the total car market, our new targeted push within the segment older cars, new brands like Polestar, Lincoln Co and Xpeng, combined with our focus on efficiency and profitability, we remain positive. And we're certain that our customers will continue to service and repair their old and new cars in the coming quarters. As we said in the last two quarters and during our capital markets day in November last year, we see an increased effort among our brands adapting and developing the traditional wholesales model again. Having a strong and established physical sales network has yet again proven to be a competitive advantage for most manufacturers in selling their products and having a multi-channel offering. And we see this continue. And we want to have happy customers and we'll do our utmost for customers when they are visiting us in our around 180 facility or online. Just briefly on consolidation, while we are consolidating and integrating our already acquired businesses, we continue to evaluate opportunities in attractive business areas. With that said, a healthy balance sheet is always a priority within BILIA and will continue to be so going forward. That finalizes our second quarter presentation, and we can now move over to questions.

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It seems like crystal clear.

There are no more questions at this time, so I hand the conference back to the speakers for any closing comments.

Thank you very much for that. And thank you for listening. And if further questions, please just revert to us. And we wish you all a great summer. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Bye.