Good afternoon. I wish you all welcome to this telephone conference about Bilia's first quarter results for 2021. May I ask you all to mute your phones while we have the presentation? You will be able to put some questions. My name is Kristina Franzén, and I'm the CFO of Bilia, and together with me, I have. Per Avander, the Managing Director for Bilia AB. We would like to start with some highlights. After that, as Kristina said, we can have a Q&A. I will start. We report an operating profit of SEK 528 million compared to SEK 279 million last year. It's an improvement of close to 90%. It's the highest result and margin for the first quarter and the second highest quarter ever. The margin in the business was 5.6% compared to last year, 3.7%. Norway stands out in the report. The profitability was SEK 206 million compared to SEK 52 million the last year. It's a new record quarter for Norway. We divide our business into three business areas. We have the service business, car business, and we have the fuel business. Today we would like to have information about the service and the car business. If we start with the service business, we had profitability of SEK 390 million compared to SEK 263 million last year. We have an improvement of profitability in all countries. We can say Norway stands out in a positive way in the service business as well. We had one day less in all our countries for the quarter. If we talk about the growth in the service business, we had in the Bilia Group, 7% in growth. Norway improved 26%, Sweden - 1%, due to our body and paint shop. The demand in the body and paint shop in the quarter was a little bit weak. A lot of inhabitants in Sweden are working from their homes. There is not a queue in the traffic and it's less accidents. We have talked to the insurance companies. We don't, what you say in English? Reduce our market share in the body and paint shops. If you go to the car business, we had profitability of SEK 225 million compared to SEK 80 million last year. In the new car business, we have an improvement of profitability of a little bit over SEK 100 million. For the used cars, it was close to SEK 100 million in improvement. The used car business, the demand in the quarter was strong and we had a really good margin. We sold many more exclusive. More expensive. More expensive cars in the quarter compared to last year. New car business, the turnover improved 36% due to changes in the tax system for new cars in Sweden. The government, you can say they support or they move some money from plug-in hybrids to pure electrical vehicles. In the end of March, we delivered a lot of diesel and petrol engine and plug-in hybrids. I guess now in quarter two, we will deliver many more pure electrical vehicles. In order taking, we improved 11% compared to last year. Sweden 8%, Norway 30%, and West Europe only 2%. In Germany, we have closed all our showrooms for in the quarter, so we had a lot of minus when we talk Germany. It's a little bit better in Luxembourg and Belgium. In Norway, we launched pure electrical vehicles from BMW and Volvo in the quarter. The order taking has been very strong in Norway. The backlog is a little bit over 13,500 cars compared to last year, it was 160 less cars. The backlog in Norway improved 55% compared to last year. Is it enough? If we look at operational cash flow, we had a slightly negative operational cash flow that primarily came from a higher working capital. That's related primarily to accounts receivable because there were very high deliveries of cars both in Sweden and Norway by the end of the first quarter. We also had a somewhat higher level of inventory. However, given that we were running on very low levels by the year-end, we believe that was even good and actually means that we have a good level of the inventory as of today. If we look at the financial position, even if we had a slightly negative cash flow for the period, we still have a receivable towards the bank, announced almost SEK 1.4 billion compared to SEK 1.8 we had at year-end. It means when we look at the net debt as now for the first quarter, we actually had a little bit of a net debt amounting to SEK 40. Some of you might know that we actually did have a positive net debt by year-end. It also means that net debt EBITDA is now more or less on zero compared to being on the positive side this year. If you look at the net debt and include the IFRS 16 liabilities, there were an increase of around SEK 900, and out of that, actually SEK 600 came from the new leasing contract for the new facility in Stockholm, which is one of the biggest we have, and it's now then newly built and a very fresh facility for us to use. Yes. We have acquired a lot in the quarter one. One example is rim repair. The company's name is Felgteknikk AS in Norway. We took over the business in January. In Sweden, we will start rim repair as well in Jönköping and in Stockholm. We have acquired a Porsche company in south Sweden, Helsingborg and Malmö. We will take over it in May this year. The same for Funnemark Toyota business in, you can say, the southwest from Oslo area in Norway. We will take over it as well in May. We announced last Friday we will acquire a Mercedes dealer in Stockholm with four outlets, and we see we can take over it the 1st July. One question can be why we acquire more of other brands into our portfolio. What we can see, Porsche is a strong brand, and today, Porsche is not only a sports car. Today, they sell a lot of SUV as a company cars. Mercedes, a premium brand, really strong brand both in Sweden and in Europe. We like it a lot. We had a discussion with Volvo. They terminated our contract in November last year. What I can see and say today, we have a really good dialogue with Volvo, both in Sweden and Norway. When we acquire Mercedes, we have a new business area, trucks. Many years ago, around 20 years ago, Bilia had Volvo trucks in the portfolio at that time. Now we acquire Mercedes, and we will start to sell trucks. It's a stable business, and we see really loyal customer, big service business, but we can see a lack of some concepts and some processes. If we can do what we have done in the passenger cars, the same in the service business for trucks, it can be really good. If we go to the total market, in Sweden, last year it was close to 300,000 new cars registered. This year, the forecast is 300,000. The first quarter, it's improvement of the new cars into the market, but there is a discussion for the moment now, what will happen with the tax of company cars? The government will take a decision in the beginning of June, and maybe it will be a little bit cheaper for exclusive cars. For cheap cars, the tax for the driver will go up. Let us see what happen with the new car market in Sweden. In Norway, we sold 140,000 last year, and the forecast is the same level. It's a really good backlog for Bilia, our competitors or colleagues as well. I guess it's a little bit too low figure. In West Europe, there is no official forecast for the total market on new cars. I guess Germany, there is a lockdown for the moment, so it will be a weak new car market. Luxembourg, a little bit better, and Belgium, a little bit better if you compare to the last year. A few words about COVID-19, the pandemic, and what has happened during the quarter. We have actually had some COVID-19 restrictions that have meant closed down our facilities in all our countries, with the exception of Sweden. It has been to different extent in the different countries. I think the overall assessment is that it has affected the business less than it did last year. For some of the countries, it meant, for example, that the sales business was closed. However, we could still have customers into the facility on a one-to-one basis. Given the spreading of the virus, of course, safety for the customers, as well as our personnel, has been the highest priority, and we continue to learn how to develop those safety measures all along the development of the pandemic, of course. When it comes to the cost aspects, we are still focusing on cost. However, we are also running the business on a more normalized level. What is less of compared to before is perhaps primarily travels, some educations, and events where there is a lot of people gathered together. If we look at recruitments, we have increased the number of people compared to the year-end. If you would compare with the same time last year, we are actually a little bit above 300 persons less in the group than we were one year ago. When it comes to financial support from governments for the pandemic, we have used that to a very limited extent during the first quarter. It's NOK 2 million, and that has been a positive or a lower cost compared to normal business. That money was referring to Western Europe. When it comes to Sweden and Norway, there are no financial support from governments at all included in the results. If we are looking forward to quarter two, we see we will have a good demand in the service business and still have a good demand for used cars and a good demand for new cars in Norway and Luxembourg and Belgium. What I said before, let us see what happen with the taxation system for company cars in Sweden in beginning of June. After that, we can see better what happen with the demand for new cars in Sweden. Yes, Kristina, I think it was all from us now, and maybe we have some questions. Let's see. Is there any questions from anyone? Hi, this is Mika from Handelsbanken. Can you hear me? Yes, we hear you, Mika. Yes. Could you open up the situation in the used car business a bit more, market by market, what kind of inventory levels you have there, and then the sort of pricing environment in the used car business? Are the prices still on the rise or what's happening there? Inventory levels for used cars in the different countries and the pricing position. We see the level of used cars in our stocks is in a normal level. We have a good situation. If you go back one quarter, we had a lack of used cars, and we were a little bit afraid we had too few used cars in the business. We see we have much more cars today in our Bilia Outlet for older used cars. In Norway, we have a better situation as well. We see the demand is really good. Often, in the spring, we have a good demand for used cars. I see this summer, a lot of inhabitants, both in Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, they will have holiday at home, so they will use their cars a lot in the summer, and then they invest for a newer car. What we can see now, we will have a good demand, we will have a good margin as well in the used car business. About the pricing in the market generally. Are the prices still up? We see we will have the same pricing as we have today and maybe the same level now in quarter two. We are often afraid and see when we take some of the margin to have a high turnover rate when we see in the total market it's too much used car in the market. We don't like it. Now we see it's a normal market for our competitors as well. It's a good level of pricing. It will be a good level of margin in quarter two. Okay, good. Thank you very much. Are there any other questions? Hi, Mats, I just had a question about Norway there. It's a very strong earnings performance in Norway. I guess, is it sort of boosted by the used car and new car deliveries? Or is it more that the Norway hub has come into another situation that you have a structure now supporting your sales and earnings? Yes. One reason is the cost side, because as Kristina Franzén said, less of education. We stopped lots of projects. The cost level maybe will increase a little bit in the rest of the year for Norway. We have had a really strong situation. We launched, as I said, BMW i4 now. We have a really good order taking of the car. We have launched pure electrical vehicles from Volvo. We have a really good momentum, you can say, in the new car business for the moment. The Norwegian people, they invest a lot in cars for the moment in Norway. Instead to go to the south for holidays, they are standing in Norway. It's not easy to say if we have this level the rest of the year. The demand in the service business has been very strong as well. One reason there is we have the contract now with Polestar. We don't sell Polestar in Norway, but we help them to deliver the cars, and we have a sort of delivery service, and we sell accessories to the car, winter tires, and other accessories. We had employed more mechanics in the Norwegian business, is one reason as well. It's not easy to say we will have the same in the end of this year, the same level of profitability. I don't think so. When I talk about the cost side, I see we will increase a little bit there. Quarter-over-quarter, I think we had the Polestar services added on the second half of last year. Year-over-year that will not make a difference by the end of the year. Polestar, is that a long-term contract for you, or is it year by year, or? No. It's a normal contract as we have with all our brands. Why are we talking about it? If you remember, we had Ford in Økern, in one of the biggest outlets we have in the city, Norway. We closed down and terminated the contract for the sales and the workshop for Ford maybe six years ago. There we have opened up now. We paid the rent already, and we paid the heat, everything, we are paying it, and we have employed some more mechanics. It's a really good business for the moment. There are no extra fixed costs added yet. Just some more variables. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Mats. Any other questions from anyone? Okay. If there are no other questions, I think we end here and now. If there is anything that comes up, you're of course welcome to contact either myself or Per Avander if there is anything we should clarify. Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Goodbye. Have a nice day.
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