Volvo Car AB (publ.)

Hello and welcome to this presentation of Volvo Cars financial results for the first quarter. With me here today to walk you through the numbers, we have Jim Rowan, our Chief Executive and Björn Anvall, our Chief Financial Officer. Following the presentation, there will of course be an opportunity to ask questions and you can do that either by dialing in or typing in your question in the online function, in the online function, chat function online, sorry. If you want to ask your question over the phone, then please remember to dial star one. But with that, I leave the floor to Jim.

Thank you. And welcome and thank you for joining us here today. So I guess the underlying narrative for the quarter is that it's been a stable EBIT margin in a very unstable environment. EBIT has come in at 8.1%. We're seeing a strong order intake for our products. And the pandemic in China continues to provide high uncertainty for the future. So that's really the backdrop to this quarter. We remain fully committed to our mid-decade business ambitions, which is 1.2 million units sold, that we will move our business to 50% in electric vehicles, that we will move the commercial channels to 50% online sales, and we'll increase our margins in the region between 8% and 10% EBIT. At the same time, our commitment to reduction of CO2 remains set at 40%. Obviously, with the 1.2 million units and the lack of supply this year provides a steeper gradient for us to hit that 1.2 million units sold by our ambitions of 2025. And we as a management team are working hard on how to increase those growth rates. The transformation journey remains. We are seeing surge in demand for BEV, which is strong and very much in line with our long-term strategic ambitions. Recharge sales at 34%, with fully electric sales now at 8%, which has doubled within the space of two quarters. And we will see us in very solid double digit numbers on fully electric vehicles by the end of this year. CO2 emissions, as far as CO2 reductions, now stand at 13.4%. And again, that is tracking to a plan of 40% by 2025. Strong demand in online sales, 13% now in the markets that we're in, and we're in limited markets around the world, we're only in six markets, and we see 13% as an average of those markets that we've launched in. However, we should note that that's really only launched on the B2B channel, whereas the B2C channel, whereas the B2B channel, if you like fleet sales, which are particularly important in markets like the UK, will come on stream a little bit later on this year and should further increase that percentage of online sales. We're seeing continued progress in the transformation of investments. The battery factory here in Gothenburg now has all the permits in place and very soon will go to the planning phase of that factory itself. Plant investments for the next generation BEVs, including merit casting, again, is well underway and has been planned out well into the future. And of course, our global software talent is ramping up with our stock home office ramping from 300 software to 700 positions to support our endeavors in the commercial strategy of building that channel to the B2C customer base. And the full electric share, as alluded to earlier, has increased in Q3 last year from 4% to 8% this year and we'll see that continue to increase through the course of this year. This is particularly encouraging for us because it validates our strategy that strong demand will be there for our BEV vehicles and our desire to be a 100% electric company by 2030 is a good backdrop towards these increasing numbers. Finally, we're starting to see some of the markets now change to fully recharge. Maybe some markets, less surprisingly, like Norway, who has a good foothold already in BEV and rechargeable models. But maybe a bit more surprisingly, we're seeing in different parts of the world, like Brazil and Thailand, are also now 100% of our sales, and those regions are now our chargeable models. And again, that's very encouraging for the direction of travel that meets our strategy to be 100% electric car company by 2030. With that, I'll hand over for the Q1 Financials to Bjorn.

Thank you, Jim. So let me run through some of the numbers in more detail before we go back to the Q&A. And we have a number of things that we feel good about in this result. Clearly, I mean, despite having lower production and therefore also lower retail deliveries, we had an increased revenue. The revenue was up 8%. We get a lot of questions around the direct impact on Volvo cars on this tragic war in Ukraine. And one should know that Volvo, we don't have any production in neither Russia nor Ukraine. We don't have any major suppliers in any of the countries. And the total sales going to Russia and Ukraine was around 1.5% last year. We have totally suspended our operations in Russia. So we don't ship any cars, we don't ship any spare parts, we don't sell any of it. We have taken down our national sales company staff to an administrative minimum. And we don't foresee any business in Russia for the foreseeable future. And we're going to come back to more long-term solutions for that. But the financial direct impact on Volvo is not material at all from this situation. What is material though is how, and that Jim was talked about, how the Ukrainian war has further accelerated the inflationary pressures that we see in our environment. Raw material prices, freight costs, energy costs is continuing to rise. That's the more material effect for Volvo's reality here. So we see the production volumes still being the restraining factor for us and the restraining factor for the growth we would like to have and the restraining factor for us in order to serve our customers. The waiting time for a Volvo car is very long, nine months, 12 months, which is unfortunate and that's a consequence of the supply situation we're in right now. We see that the underlying kind of the big hampering factor has been the semiconductor shortage. And there we see week by week, month by month, how that has gradually but slowly improved, but with a particular setback related to one supplier and one specific semiconductor that hit us in March and will be a limiting factor during quarter two. But we do see that for H2, this will be less of a hampering factor for us. As already talked about, in this quite uncertain environment and very unstable environment, we then delivered a very stable result of 8.1% EBIT margin. And also, as you can find in our interim report, we are now in a very transparent way separating out the profitability on our BEV cars, compared with the non-BEV cars and also separating out how much of our investments that goes into our full electric future compared with the non-full electric business that we have. And you can see that those margins, while slightly lower than the non-BEV cars, are still solid and it's a good foundation for us to build on as we go into a full electric company. If we then take just quickly some of the highlights, so as we said, retail sales, retail deliveries is down 20%, but revenue was up around 8%. This is driven clearly by a continued increase in pricing for our cars, and also partly as we are doing contract manufacturing for Polestar, and clearly their sales volume and their production volumes is also ramping up. But the major factor is really stronger pricing. And worth mentioning then, despite everything that's happening in our environment and despite us increasing prices, we don't see any negative effect on our order intake as a consequence of that as we speak right now. The EBIT margin 8.1%. If you look at the full EBIT, if you look at EBIT excluding Javis & Associates, 7.9%. And let's break that down, the EBIT margin. So if we take the walk from quarter one last year, last year we made 8.4 billion in the quarter or 12.3%. But almost 3 billion out of that came from one-timers related to Senuity, as that was finally closed as an entity, and the private placement in Polestar. So that was transaction-related one-offs. That takes us to an EBIT also. If you then take away all the results from the Javis & Associates, you come down to, we had 5.5 billion. Then during this year, negative volume, in the quarter and that has been fully compensated for with a better sales mix and primarily higher pricing. That's the big thing that has happened during the quarter if you compare with quarter one last year. And if you then look forward a bit, we are seeing continued very, very strong demand for our products. And as I said, despite the price increases, we don't see any hampering on the demand. And it's worth noting that this demand is particularly strong for electrified vehicles, so the full electric cars and the plug-in hybrids. The full electric cars, the order pace is now already at where we will be from a capacity point of view after summer, where we will be at an annual capacity of around 150,000 cars. So we feel comfortable that we will deliver this solid double digit share of BEVs for the full year. The semiconductor situation is improving and we see how this hiccup for the specific semiconductor will be resolved during this quarter. The more worrying aspect is the COVID shutdowns in China, where eastern parts of China, we had a lot of lockdowns in Shanghai and the surrounding provinces. That means our production right now is standing still in China. There are a lot of suppliers in China that are in lockdown, and that affects the Chinese production. And over time, that will also have effects on the global production, as there are some components from Chinese production that goes also into our European factories. The positive thing is that the incident rates in Shanghai is now improving, so there is some light in the tunnel, but a prolonged lockdown in China clearly would have a negative impact on Volvo Cars and the whole industry and many industries. So that's the one thing to watch out for going forward, how that develops. The indirect effect was mentioned also of this raw material price increases. That didn't impact us too much, the Ukrainian war effect in quarter one. It will have some effect in quarter two. There's a time lag before it hits us and most of this comes in quarter three and quarter four. And we are taking pricing actions to largely offset this raw material and other inflation pressures on the cost side. But worth mentioning, and maybe an obvious statement at this point, it's an environment with an extreme high uncertainty, both on the supply chain, on the cost side, and then eventually also what happens to consumer demand. But right now, it's very, very strong. So that summarizes the quarter where we are right now. So back to you, Kristina.

Great, thank you Björn. So now it is time to open up for questions and to repeat you can either dial in or type in your question in the chat function online. If you would like to ask your question over the phone you must remember to press star 1. So to give everyone some time to dial and type I would like to start by asking you a question Jim. You've been here with the company for a bit over a month now. Would you like to share any of your initial reflections?

Yeah, I mean, I'm extremely pleased because I think the amount of turbulence that's in the system right now, normally you deal with these things one at a time. But what we've got is kind of unprecedented. We've seen the effects of the war in Ukraine. We've seen rising inflation. We've seen the semiconductor shortages. We're seeing the pandemic in China and we're seeing, you know, rising prices in general. and yet we've managed to secure supply, increase the price, and deliver, I think, a good, strong first quarter. And that's a tribute to the people here in Volvo. I'm the new guy, so I take no... I guess no ownership of that. That's really up to the team. And that's really been, for me, the exciting point this is a well-oiled machine that is running I think extremely well and everyone's committed to our future which is that fully electric brand for 2030 and you I can feel that as it emanates through the business so first five weeks I'm very pleased.

And we have started to get some questions now through the chat. We have a first question from Felix Page at Autocar. Good morning. Are you on track to reveal and launch the all-electric XC90 successor as planned?

Yeah, we're very much on track. So we've made commitments that we would be releasing a certain amount of vehicles every year. We will make the decision on when we will release that, but there'll be the fourth quarter this year is when we will release more details on that product. And again, a very exciting time for us because it takes us into, you know, another sphere, it's another building block towards the future. Of course, that model itself is an extremely important vehicle for us right now. And I think will be a very, very important addition to our building towards the mid decade ambitions as well as the full decade ambitions. So yes.

We have another question from the same journalist and he asks, you have two pure EVs on sale, how many will there be in the lineup in 2025 if you are to achieve the 50% market?

Yeah, we haven't released that detail yet and that's obviously something we continue to look at the range plan, we look at the markets, we look at the demand profile and where we think that fits best with our consumer base and our chosen target customers and so on. so but what we have said as you know previously is that we will be releasing a certain amount of products every year and we stay very much committed to that.

so a big fully electric car. We'll also have a small fully electric vehicle that we will also reveal soon, so during next year. Then we also clearly the XC60, which is the heart of our product portfolio, will be replaced with the fully electric vehicles. So with that replacement for the XC90, for the XC60, we'll have an XC40 fully electric, the C40 and the small fully electric SUV. There we have a very strong backbone for our electric future.

pipeline is there. I believe we have a caller as well. We have Valdemar Lönnrot from Göteborgs Posten wanting to ask a question over the phone. Valdemar, please go ahead.

Thank you very much. I have two questions. Jim Rowan, you cite the pivot towards a sustainable environment as a key factor for Volvo Cars and the industry, and you also cite this decrease in emissions during the first quarter. I wonder, the long-term goal is net zero emissions for Volvo cars, and you signed up for this target case-based initiative program. How will you be able to reach this net zero emission goal or climate neutrality, whatever you call it, in the long run in the whole value chain and over the whole life cycle of the product? Is that really possible to do? And what offsets will you have to use to reach that target? That was the very long question number one. The question number two is, can you be more specific on the problems in China in the supply chains? Thank you.

Yeah, so on the first question, so that march towards net zero on the sustainability journey, that will come in many different ways. So obviously technology plays a huge part of that. Our willingness and the choices that we make as a company play a huge part in that as well. And availability of the materials that allow us to get there are the kind of key building blocks. But I think with these decisions, you need to make that commitment and then you need to find a way in which you can move the business in that direction. And we're committed to that because we think it's the right thing for our company and we also think it's the right thing for society and the environment. But that's not to say we have absolutely everything lined up right now that takes us to that. There will be some things, especially around the technology aspects of that, that we'll need to develop in order to fulfil that ambition. On the pandemic in China, yeah, of course, many supply chains are reliant on China. We've now been in lockdown for almost 50 days in the Shanghai region. That's a population of 26 million or so, with lots of suppliers, not just for Volvo, but lots of suppliers to the auto industry and indeed many other industries around the world. So the longer that particular situation goes on, the more uncertainty and the more turbulence it causes within our supply chain.

Great. We have a question here from Karin Olander at Dagens Industri. She asks, what measures towards employees in Russia and Ukraine have you made? Do they keep their salary and for how long?

I can answer. I mean, clearly a very tragic situation and what we have done is suspended operation fully and we have then also scaled down the staffing on our national sales company given that we don't foresee any operations for the foreseeable future and clearly with with packages that is fair and square, given who we are as an employer. I don't want to go into the details on exactly the number of people and exactly the conditions on it, but that is how we have treated our employees in Russia.

We have a question to Jim from Thomas Augustsson at the Swedish national paper Svenska Dagbladet. And he asks, Jim, you have been the CEO for over a month now. What changes have you decided to make?

I think, obviously, the changes within the environment of these four or five different turbulence factors are causing us to accelerate and prioritize. So, for example, we've prioritized our BEV production, we're prioritizing certain mix on models and so on. And that's been something which I think we've managed well, but we'll continue to make sure that we prioritise the long-term business objectives over the short-term turbulence that we're seeing right now. And then the execution engine of the company, given that we're in a very different environment, given we've got these four or five things happening at the same time, the pace of execution on some of those deliverables will need to increase. And that's one of the changes that we're making as well. How can we find additional resources? We're already in a war for talent, but we now need to go and lean in and find those additional resources to bring in those changes a little bit quicker. A good example of that, of course, is our move towards towards the consumer B2C channel and how do we build up that digital backbone and reach those customers quicker than maybe we thought, because I think that's going to be a very, very important channel for us. Just as importantly, if I use the UK as a good example, building a B2B channel into the fleet sales on a digital network is going to be very important for us as well.

Thank you. We have a question from Monica Secondio, and she's wondering, can you please tell us a bit about the gross margin of BEVs and non-BEVs?

That's perhaps for you, Björn. We have been very clear since the IPO that our future is fully electric. So it's fair for investors and analysts to be able to know how we're doing on the margins on the fully electric vehicles. So that's why we, as the first traditional OEM, are being transparent about what are the margins on the BEV compared with the non-BEVs. And as you can see from the interim report, that the absolute margins, if you look at the margins gross income per car, it's slightly worse for the BEVs compared with the non-BEVs. Then you should also remember that our BEVs are 40 series cars and the non-BEVs is a mix of 90 series cars, 60 series cars and 40 series cars and typically have higher margins for the 90 series. So if you were to compare only the 40 series BEVs with the 40 series plug-in hybrids, you actually have a stronger gross margin per unit for the BEVs. And then in relatives, as it presents on sales, it's slightly worse on the BEV side. Again, this is based on our first generation technology, first generation batteries, electric motors, battery management system, on the vehicle architecture that was engineered to handle both BEVs and combustion engines. On our technical roadmap, we are now improving all of those to get a more cost-efficient, also energy-efficient solution, so that by mid-decade, we should have cost parity on our full electric cars and the ICE. Up until that point, we do believe you get price premium for BEVs, and you also have stronger government incentives for BEVs versus ICE. So that helps us to cover that cost penalty, if you will. But clearly, in the long run, we need to have cost parity for ICE with BEVs.

We have another question here from Felix Page at Autocar and he says, will you lower retail prices again if the supply chain crisis eases or do higher prices fit your premium ambitions?

Well, I guess the backdrop to that is that we've seen a lot of underlying price increases. The underlying rate of inflation, the increased raw material prices, increased freight, increased energy costs and so on has caused us to increase pricing in the market. As Bjorn alluded to, despite those increases in pricing in the market, we've saw no damping of demand for goods. for Volvo products. So that's the good news in that we have a strong desire for our products. As inflation continues, if raw material prices increase further, then we'll review that at that particular point in time. But I think we have a strong enough brand that we can, by and large, offset the price increases that we see on raw materials and inflation to our sales price.

We have a question here from Paul Miles, TU Automotive. Would battery swap and hydrogen fuel cell technologies feature in Volvo's future plans?

Well, we look at, obviously as a technology company, we look at a full range of different technologies. A good example to that is that we have decided the core technology stack from the business, what should that include? What do we make versus what do we buy? One of those decisions that we've made is that we want to be in full control of the electrical propulsion systems within the next generation cars or electric vehicles. And that means we've made this investment with Norfolk on the batteries themselves. So that core battery investment allows us to do two or three things. It allows us to really understand the pricing structure of batteries. Two, it allows us to understand the chemistry and the detailed engineering aspects of batteries. And three, it allows us to understand how to produce this in mass volume. And it allows us to do it right here next to a factory. So we massively reduce the logistics cost by having that factory. right here. And we have the option to build other battery factories in different parts of the world, if that makes sense. But perhaps more importantly, we think that battery supply may become constrained and therefore that's why we wanted to be in control of that and having that access to batteries as we go 100% electrics. So that's a good example of the technology stack. But we look at core computing, we're looking at LiDAR and radar and camera arrays and there's a plethora of different technologies. This is really the transition that the industry is in right now. It starts with core computing and then how you write the software stacks from silicon all the way out to the application layer for those different attributes of the car, be that safety or be that lighting or heating or whatever. And that's really our core.

I think it's important in any kind of strategy, you need to choose what to do and what not to do. And for any specific question on hydrogen or battery swapping, those are areas where we have chosen not to do. So that is not part of our plan for the coming five years, because we are focusing in the areas that Jim talked about.

Great. So Tomas Augustsson at Svenska Dagbladet also wants to have an update on our plans for the introduction of autonomous driving. Will that be in California later this year or next year or with the XC90 successor?

So we haven't released those details yet. Suffice to say that of course autonomous driving remains as you know with Zanziak and our focus on that and the investments that we've made in that in the past and we continue to make in the future. and perhaps maybe more importantly it's not just about autonomous driving in terms of autonomous driving it's how that fits into the first car but then how that fits into our business model going forward and more importantly how we bring that alive across the entire range of products. So then you need to look at what does that really mean and that starts with core compute. And so it's difficult to isolate autonomous driving only, but I can say that that autonomous driving capability will come from some of the other investments that we make around core compute technology and active safety.

Great. We have a few questions left in the chat. I would just like to remind everyone, if you would like to ask a question over the phone, please press star one, but you can also of course type in your question in the chat function. A final question for now then is also from Thomas Augustson. Do you see any risk that the lack of raw materials for batteries and electric engines will delay our electrification plans?

That's clearly one of the topics that we're working hard with. Right now we have secured capacity for the car programs that we have, but over time clearly the raw material access for fully electric vehicles is one of the topics that there are bottlenecks there that we as an industry need to resolve and we are actively involving ourselves there That's part of the reason for, again, the investment in the joint venture with Northvolt to much better understand that part of the value chain. We're working to a higher degree directly with smelters and mines and not working through suppliers for those type of raw materials. So it's an area that needs work, and we're doing that work.

Great, thank you. We have right now no further questions on the chat and no further questions over the phone. So that will conclude our press conference for today. Thank you Jim for joining, thank you Björn and thank you everyone for watching.