Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Aston Martin Lagonda results call with CEO Tobias Moers and CFO Ken Gregor. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Tobias Moers. Please go ahead. Thanks very much, hello everyone, and welcome to Aston Martin's Q1 2021 results Q&A. I'm Tobias Moers, CEO, and I'm joined by Ken Gregor, CFO. I hope you have had the chance to see our H1 2021 results accompanied by our video. In summary, I'm really pleased with the good progress we have made and that we have delivered results in line with our plans. Both revenues and wholesales tripled in the half compared to last year, and we reached a double-digit EBITDA margin at 10%. In the statement, you can see some notable milestones we've achieved. I'm particularly pleased with the healthy demand we are seeing for our products and the strong pricing dynamics we are achieving. This is for sure a result of operating as a luxury company with the right supply to demand balance, which we achieved in quarter one, and that's earlier than we had originally expected. As well, we have made excellent progress on Project Horizon. All of these actions are aimed at transforming Aston Martin into a world-class, as well performance-oriented, ultra-luxury automaker, and we are right on track with that. With that, we're happy to take your questions, and thanks very much for joining us. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen. Your first question today comes from the line of Charles Caldicott of Redburn. Please ask your question. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two, please. The first, as you mentioned there, the average selling price for your core models has gone up a lot. It's pretty much the highest it's ever been. Obviously there's a few moving parts in there, including the regional mix, the higher option take rates, I guess the DBX, and clearly lower dealer incentives as well. Can you give us an idea of what's really driving the higher ASP for your core models, and how much of it is sustainable? My second question was going to be on electrification. Mercedes-Benz revealed that it is developing a new dedicated electric platform for its sports cars last week called AMG.EA. Can you just confirm whether your agreement with them, which I think extends to 2027, includes access to that platform? If so, when we should expect the first product on it? Maybe I take the ASP question first. Charles, you are right that the strong ASP and the ASP for the core vehicles does reflect the factors that you mentioned. We have got DBX. The biggest driver of the year-on-year improvement is the significantly lower customer and retail financing support that we have been pursuing as a strategy for Aston Martin with some success this year. Although the core ASP is always going to ebb and flow by quarter because of regional and seasonal mix, we do expect it to continue strongly through the Q2 of the year. I said? Okay. The thing is with the ASP, I think it pays off that we cleared the stock for the sports cars. Yeah. I think that was the most important topic to achieve that level of ASP. Coming to your second questions with electrification. Yeah, I saw what Mercedes-Benz announced, AMG.EA. Yeah, I always told everybody they have more than one platform in place for the future because I know that. It's a bit too early to talk in detail about that, but expect something. Yeah. We're going to team up with Mercedes-Benz because it was always part of our technology transfer agreement. For sure, we're in discussion and what we can achieve. Now everybody has an understanding what is possible. I don't want to talk too much into detail at the moment. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Your next question today comes from the line of Henning Kosmehl of HSBC. Please ask your question. Hi, good morning, Tobias and Ken. My first question is on the Nebula effect. My understanding is that you said for 2022, you said in the press release you can manage that within current expectations, and my understanding was that that was in reference to the about GBP 250 million EBITDA consensus at the time. I'm wondering if you can share a little bit more color on that. What would it have been without the Nebula effect? Ultimately what I'm getting at is that you're suggesting it's a net positive over time. I'm wondering when the GBP 15 million from this year and also the additional effect in 2022, where's the inflection point, and how much comes on top of your original expectation then, reversing the negative effect that you're seeing over the next couple of years? That's my first question, please. The second question is on the mix between GT, Sports, and DBX. It's good to see that DBX is now more than half of the volume. If I recall correctly, the wait lists for DBX were a little bit shorter at the Q1 stage than they were for GT and Sports. I was wondering if you could just update us on that. Is that still the case? I understand with your suggestion that DBX will remain more than 50% of the mix. Can I just ask if you're deliberately producing more DBXs and deliberately managing so that the wait lists for DBX are shorter, and can you just discuss the rationale of that again a little bit? Thank you. Maybe I'll take the Nebula Project point. At this point in time, there is no update on that that we can give you. The financial effect I expect for 2021 remains as we disclosed, and including that we did take the GBP 5 million provision for doubtful debts in the Q1 of the year in these results. For 2022, it remains the case that the negative financial effect is containable within the guidance, and I don't have anything to add to that. That just remains the case. The Nebula contract that we had was a multi-year contract, so it's beyond that point, for several years, that the balance of it being net positive over time takes place. Right now, because the matter is subject to action in the courts on a number of different fronts, we really can't say any more about it at this time. Yep. Regarding DBX and sports cars, order intake for both car lines is in line with our expectations, order book are reach out into quarter four. Both car lines very important for us. First time probably, I don't know everything about the history, but retail was stronger than wholesale for us in the Q1. That's very good, and that's part of that ASP situation, and this is the strategy for the future, and we keep going with that. Expect DBX and sports cars as kind of a 50/50 mix this year. We bring another variant, we increase the portfolio of DBX for next year. Too early to talk about next year numbers, but yeah, DBX is going to see some expansion in the portfolio for 2022. Okay, thank you. Just two clarifications, if I may. On Charles' question from earlier, you expect the core ASP to remain relatively stable in H2. Did I understand that correctly? Yeah. Yeah. Look, as I was hinting at, if you like, it ebbs and flows by quarter because of regional mix, seasonal mix. Broadly, it's in a zone where it's in a strong zone, and we expect it to continue in that region into the Q2, driven by similar factors, driven by the fact that we continue to maintain the strategy of balancing supply with demand, including in order that we can keep the level of customer and retail financing incentives low. Yeah, understood. Sorry, just to also clarify on Charles' second question, I just don't want to go away and feel less certain about your Mercedes-Benz agreement. My understanding was that the agreement is such that it would include state-of-the-art technology from Mercedes-Benz, whatever it is, over the length of the contract. Now I understand that there's additional conversations to be had, whether it does include AMG.EA or not, or is that a wrong interpretation? Is it fair to go away and say, "Well, whatever is state-of-the-art for Mercedes-Benz, you're going to have access to that"? You probably know my roots, okay? I always put a bit in the direction there are more than one variant and one platform to come, yeah, we are on our path, but I cannot disclose too much at the moment. It's not possible. Okay. Thank you. We going to have access to the right technology for the end. Take it that way. That's helpful. Thank you, Tobias. Okay. Thank you. We take our next question, which comes from the line of George Galliers of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Thank you for taking my question. The first question I had was just on the volume guidance. Obviously, you're seeing a very nice sequential development in terms of your volumes, and as you mentioned, the retail is outpacing the wholesale. With that in mind, would you be prepared to go materially above the 6,000 wholesales that you're targeting for this year if the retail demand is there, or are you planning to keep that as a cap and happy to see the wait list build as the retail demand comes in? The second question I had was just on the Valhalla deposits. Obviously, you unveiled the Valhalla. It looks extremely exciting prospect. Could you just give us some insight into what deposits were taken historically on the Valhalla? When do you plan to start taking deposits on the product now that you've unveiled it? Finally, a question just on the EU proposals around CO2. Obviously, they're proposing an end to the small vehicle manufacturer exemption from 2030, as well as zero emissions from the tailpipe in 2035. Do you see that as having a major impact on your strategic planning over the next decade? Or is that something that won't have a big impact over the next five to seven years, but it's something you'll have to take into consideration with, I guess, the next generation of planning? Thank you. Let me take the first question. Is the 6,000 a dogma? No, it's not. If retail demand picks up, we have some expectation for retail demand for the future, you saw our projection of the 10,000 cars. We are always able to improve or increase our performance on the manufacturing side. We are really flexible now. That was part of Project Horizon, to bring us on a very flexible and agile situation in the manufacturing. We are now there. You really like to have a certain order book. You like that because in luxurious business, retail should be minimum the same level. Now, with the stock clearance of sports cars, it was clear that retail are going to be overachieving the wholesale. We are flexible with our numbers. Valhalla, we have a certain level of down payments with the company did from 2019 ongoing. With unveiling the new Valhalla, we see really an overwhelming response of everybody who placed the deposit. We are starting to sell the car now, the new Valhalla, and we just had yesterday a few customers in here in Gaydon. It's a good journey and everybody was more than positive surprised about what we unveiled as the new Valhalla, regarding the performance level of the car, that it's going to be a hybrid, a plug-in hybrid. We're going to take it to Pebble Beach in two weeks, three weeks. It is so kind of really good as a response that we decided to build a second show car. I think that speaks for itself. The third question was, if you do a strategy for a company, and this is what we did, and you don't consider that turn into the electric drive future, you did the wrong strategy. Our strategy is not affected by that or compromised by that. There is no need for adjustment of our strategy. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Your next question today comes from the line of Akshat Kacker of J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is now open. Thank you. Akshat from J.P. Morgan. Two from my side, please. The first one on DBX and China. Are you generally happy with the sales momentum that you're seeing in the region for the SUV? How are you doing versus competitors like Lamborghini, Bentley, and Rolls-Royce in China specifically, please? Also how the customer feedback and response to the new derivative going into production in Q3, how has that been so far? That's the first one. The second one is kind of a follow-up on the deposits balance, where deposits were up GBP 7 million in the Q1 of 2021. How do you expect this to trend by year-end and into 2022 as you deliver the Valkyrie and the AMR Pro, please? Thank you. Maybe I take the second question first. On the overall deposit balance, our intent, our target, our plan is to more or less maintain that deposit balance through time. Yes, we'll see some unwind relating to Valkyrie deliveries in fourth quarter of this year and in relation to Valkyrie deliveries next year. At the same time, as Tobias was just saying, we've just launched the new Valhalla, and we have other plans not yet announced yet that will give us a pipeline of plans for our specials going into the future. Our target is more or less to maintain that deposit balance over the next year or two. Although it will always ebb and flow, but we're clear about what our intent is. China DBX in line expectation, so we are doing good. You see different patterns in the different regions, but DBX is for us at the moment in line with the expectation. Honestly, we didn't unveil the derivative, what we're going to bring in the quarter four finally to customers. That's too early to talk about. Thank you. No. Thank you. Your next question today comes from the line of Ross Schneider of Bank of America. Please go ahead. Yeah, good morning, all. I just have got a few follow-up questions. I want to get back again on this pricing issue, because also in your presentation, we just see the year-on-year impact. I mean, obviously, it has been quarter-on-quarter also not been bad, but in terms of Just the earnings contribution and the price impact. It seems to me that the price impact on earnings sequentially was rather limited. Would you agree to that, so that we have kind of stable pricing Q1 versus Q2? You would disagree to that? The second question that I had that related again to your comment in your release, that you have got a good visibility on GT Sport and DBX, maybe you can provide more details again on the waiting times for the various models. It seems to me that the GT line is selling a little bit worse than sports. Just want to know if that impression is right. The last one that is again coming back to EU Fit for 55, because it says basically there will be an ICE car ban as of 2035. Does that imply also for you that you plan not to sell any ICE car anymore in Europe in 2035? Are there any exemptions that I'm not aware of? Thank you. Maybe I start with going back to the ASP point. Sequentially quarters, yes, Q2 was similar to Q1. It varies a little bit because of mix and seasonal factors. Going into Q3, Q4, I would expect it to continue to vary a little bit in the range it's in, because of mix and seasonal factors. Therefore, yes, when you look year-on-year, the biggest improvement is kind of Q1 of last year to Q1 of this year, then sequentially over time, the improvement year-on-year looks different. Overall, we're happy with the development of the ASP, and the strong position it's in. Sorry, what was the next question? Yeah, I think we see it flow through to profitability for sure. The EBITDA performance of the business in the Q1 of the year being substantially GBP 130 million higher than the EBITDA of the Q1 of last year. There's a number of contributing factors to that GBP 25 million of that improvement was driven by the lower variable marketing or incentive support. That's very clear, and you see the benefit in our numbers. Okay. Coming to the question about the ICE ban in Europe. Probably I call it what I would make it all, kind of we have to face the reality, and I think it's not the final decision done regarding small manufacturers. Anyway, we establish a strategy for the company and we are clear that we have to move to electric-driven future, and that is part of our strategy. Is that worldwide the case that we don't have any ICE anymore? I don't know at the moment. Like everybody else, where it's reasonable, doable, or where it's doable regarding the region and the region has a clear understanding about ICE, no ICE, for sure we're going to be electric. If there is some regions that it's a challenge for everybody to get a grid up and running for fully electric drive everywhere. Yeah, it's a journey and we are on the journey as well, but it's part of our strategy. Come back to my initial point, when we pushed out a strategy in 2030, we have a portfolio for electric drive and next generation sports car. I'm talking about the current generation and the next generation after the current generation, that's going to be fully electric. That's given and that's part of our journey. The 50% penetration target that you have got for 2030, that is a global target, right? What would that imply in terms of penetration target for Europe specifically? Is it something in the range of 75% or? I don't know. If it's worldwide more than 50, we are able to do that. That's kind of a rough numbers. I saw what Mercedes-Benz pushed out that they're going to be fully electric by 2030. "Depends on the region" was the add to that sentence, if you have a close look on it. I don't know. The next generation sports car is supposed to be fully electric. This just means that 100% of the sports cars then is fully electric. Do we still sell some hybrid DBX? Probably, yeah. Mm-hmm. The good side of the story in the luxurious business, you don't see in the business and the segment where we are in, you don't see, and this is what I see in our strategy, you don't see the impact on the margin, like on small cars. This is what you've done in the forecast. You don't see that. Mm-hmm. All right. Just follow up on the first question that I had regarding waiting times. I think you have not commented on that yet. Okay. Sorry, I just forgot that. We end the Q4 with both car lines, honestly, sports cars are doing better than everybody from what sold last year. We're really pleased about order intake for sports cars. Having new derivatives in the sports cars like Vantage F1 Edition, that's selling really well. The good thing of that variant is we see new customers coming to the brand, younger customers. It happened at the moment, something with the brand. Having Formula 1 in place, bringing a very sporty variant out of or derivative out of the Vantage I just had visits on two dealerships last week and everybody told me it's unbelievable. We see new customers coming into dealership. Traffic is increasing in the dealerships. It pays off that we change our portfolio. All right. Excellent. Thank you. Welcome. Your next question today comes on the line of Stephanie Sherbourne of J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you very much for taking my question. Just a few, if I may, just on liquidity and cash flow. Can you talk about, in terms of deposits, how much of your current liabilities or trade payables are related to those as of the 30th of June? Also, given the DBX and the rising amount of sales in China, can you verify that the cash, I guess that's available to you talk about quite a small amount that's unavailable, but is there any cash outside of HQ that we need to be aware of? Then finally, I think in prior bond documentation, you did speak about potentially trimming some of your real estate outside of your core manufacturing facilities. Is there any intent to do this over 2021 or 2022, especially given COVID and some of the trimming of real estate that we've seen for other businesses? That would be helpful. Thank you. Thanks, Stephanie. On the deposits, at the end of the half, they were circa GBP 270 million, similar level to at the end of the 2020. As I said earlier, our intent is to continue to raise new deposits relating to Valhalla and other specials we have in the pipeline in order to sustain that balance. That's our target, and we're very clear on that. In terms of cash, yeah, the vast majority of our cash is in the U.K. and available to us from that point of view. There's some cash that's in China, which is in the region of, I want to say in the region of GBP 30 million-GBP 40 million in China, which is available to us in China. We take steps over time in the normal way to repatriate that cash back to the U.K. via dividends as and when we can. That's normal. Your last question was. Site strategy site strategy. We're kind of mostly done on the site strategy and exiting lease buildings that we had in various places in the U.K. Probably the bigger parts of that are done for now. Yeah, it's almost done. Site consolidation has been done. All the sports cars are now engaging in the main factory. The specials are here in the main factory. There is no shadow organization anymore in place. St. Athan is on a journey. That's going to start after the summer break. We are on a line consolidation to put everything in a different, much more efficient way how we're going to assemble the DBX. Yeah, there are still a few opportunities. The majority is done. Within almost nine months. That's what the company can really be proud about. Yeah. Efficiency is never going to stop. For sure not. Thank you very much. Thank you. Your next question today comes from the line of Christoph Laskowski of Deutsche Bank. Please ask a question. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. It's really follow-ups only on the DBX. You commented on the regional performance, it's pretty strong in Asia and China and the U.S. My question would be, how actively are you steering those sales currently? Are you actively moving the units into those regions and at the detriment of the European demand, or is it essentially reflecting the order intake? The second question would be a bit on the order intake of the DBX. Are you currently limiting orders for the base model in order to keep the excitement up for the new variant that is coming up, or are you accepting all orders that are coming in the store for base, even though you're launching the new one soon? Thank you. Orders of the DBX, we take every order we can get, honestly. We take every order from retail side, which means the customer's behind. If you bring a new variant, you're always careful and you monitor your stock properly, and you phase it a bit down or you move it a bit down and increase your dealer stock on the new variant, depends on the region, depends on the variant, but that's a normal business in automotive. The alignment of our production, we are on a much more agile and flexible way how we align our production capabilities to the regional demand. Everything is retail-driven and stock-driven. The company is doing a total different job, how to align production line loading to the demand in the region. This is just another result of our move to being a luxurious automaker and align production and stock and retail. We retailed more cars in the Q1 than we wholesaled I think that stands for itself. Thank you. Just to follow up to Stephanie's question. Stephanie, page 21 of the stat accounts that we released here, note two, gives a little bit of detail to the cash that's in China and also the arrangement we have in China that enables us to deposit cash in China and utilize that cash in the U.K. to maintain the liquidity available to us. Happy to talk through technicalities of that one-on-one if needs be. Thank you. Your next question today comes from Charles Caldicott of Redburn. Please ask a question. Hi. Thanks. I just had a couple of follow-ups. On the Valhalla, I think you've been quoted as saying that instead of the previously discussed price tag of GBP 1 million, it's going to be significantly less than that, but that you're potentially going to do around 1,000 units over two years instead of the 500 limit that was previously discussed. Can you just confirm that those numbers are how we should be thinking about the Valhalla, and maybe just discuss what's led you to increase production like that? My other question I just wanted to ask on the raised guidance for the D&A. Can you just explain that a little bit more? What's the program timing related to? Yeah. Let me take the depreciation amortization point first. We've been working, as you know, internally on plans for our refreshes of our sports car models. As we develop those plans, we're obviously working very hard to launch them as soon as possible and also to make them a very substantial refresh and technological update, infotainment update, electrical architecture update, and really address all of the customer features and attributes that we want to deliver that supports the promise of the Aston Martin brand. In doing so, there are some elements of technology which maybe previously might have been assumed to run a bit longer, that we're taking a conscious decision to change in order to make the refresh as substantial as possible. That's resulted in some depreciation amortization needing to run a bit faster than it was previously assumed. Should I take the Valhalla question? Since I joined the business, I had a complete review about Valhalla. What we're going to do with Valhalla, where we're going to move Valhalla, what is our understanding about the definition of a supercar. Basically, a target for us, what we try to achieve when it comes to EBITDA, EBIT contribution margin with products and every lineup and everything is now to follow that KPI set. Valhalla with the realignment, I can confirm, you got the point. Openly, we talked about EUR 675,000 for the car without tax. It is a limited production run for two years, 2024 and 2025. We're going to have the first deliveries by end of fourth quarter of 2023. It's a very simple answer. It's a very robust business case for us. This was the reason to move the car in that ballpark. It is hypercar performance for super sports car pricing. That what we get as a demand and a review and feedback from our potential customers, as well, new customers coming to the brand regarding the technical KPIs and details of their cars is really amazing. That was the reason for bringing the car there. As I mentioned in my previous discussions, I think we have to find our own path and our own pattern, our own footprint when it comes to the new Aston Martin with the specials. Valhalla is one new interpretation of a sweet spot for a special. Great. Thanks. Thank you. Your next question today comes from the line of Thomas Besson of Kepler Cheuvreux. Please ask your question. Thank you very much. It's Thomas Besson of Kepler Cheuvreux. I have three questions, please. Firstly, I'd like you to discuss a little bit, if you don't mind, about the ability to differentiate electrified or electric cars for ultra-luxury brands versus new brands. Do you believe that it's going to be as easy to differentiate your vehicles when it comes to EVs than when it was ICE vehicles? That the first question. The second, you mentioned in your prepared speech, the video we were able to watch this morning before this call, several management changes. Can you just give us an update on where you stand in terms of reshuffling your management team? Is it done or should we expect more? I think that since the IPO, there has been multiple changes, notably on the sales front, people responsible for your distribution of your products. Can you say a few words about that as well? Finally, I'd like to come back to the comments you've made about orders. I'm not sure I understood. Did you say that for both sports cars and SUV orders run into Q4, or did I understand incorrectly? Thank you. Last question first. Order intake, order bank is into Q4. Not just at Q4, it's into Q4 for both. Leadership team there, yeah, we made many changes, honestly. I strictly believe in strong leaderships. I think we form, at the moment, one of the most strongest leadership teams in the automotive business in U.K. That's what I think what we do. We are not through that journey. There's still more to come, but I cannot talk in detail about that, honestly. Yeah. Yeah, we changed direction in the manufacturing side. We appointed a new head of quality. We appointed a new head of technical aftersales. The orchestration of the sales is in a new hand now. MarCom, we hired somebody new. Always good persons, people with a great reputation in the industry, with other brands as well. Very diverse leadership, and that's really good, but very strong. Coming back to the question regarding ICE and EV. I'm not concerned about a journey into EV, because when it comes to an EV, I think it's more about the brand than it is even currently. The brand is the major differentiator when it comes to the EVs because 0- 100, 0- 60, that's really very democratic in future for everybody. Everybody can achieve a 3.5-second acceleration from 0- 100. The brand plays the major role, and therefore we started to prepare ourselves to do so. Brand is linked with customer experience, and this is one of our most important topics regarding how Aston Martin provides an excellent, outstanding, luxury-oriented, ultra-luxury-oriented brand experience and customer experience. There was one point, for example, to decide that we're not going to use Mercedes NAV system and Mercedes Connect car systems for the future anymore. We build our own ecosystem when it comes to the connected car, and it's about to start with the facelift of the sports cars. That's very important. We can always talk about the emotion when you don't have any ICE anymore in a car, but we have a lot of ideas to overcome that. Thank you. You're welcome. That does conclude the Q&A session for today. Back to Tobias for closing remarks now. Thanks from our side for joining us that morning or that afternoon, whatever time you are. Happy to take your questions and I'm looking forward, and please stay tuned on our journey. Thanks very much. It was a great experience with you. Thanks. That does conclude our results call for today. Thank you all for participating.