Bilia AB (publ) (BILIA) Earnings Call Transcript

Welcome to the Bilia Q3 Report for 2026. [Operator Instructions] Now I will hand the conference over to IR, Carl Fredrik Ewetz. Please go ahead.

Thank you for the introduction, and welcome to Bilia's third quarter results presentation with CEO, Per Avander; CFO, Kristina Franzen; and I, Carl Fredrik Ewetz. We're happy to present a good set of figures, strong cash flow and an even more solid financial position than last quarter. Here's our agenda. Per will start with the current situation in the industry, followed by Q3 numbers, then Kristina will go through the financial situation, and I will conclude with our outlook. Let's start and I'll leave the word to CEO, Per Avander.

Thank you, Carl Fredrik. The improvement in demand that we saw in the Swedish new car market in quarter 2 and -- quarter 1, quarter 2 continued in quarter 3. Demand from private customers for new cars is also higher than both last quarter and last year. In Norway, we had a strong finish in quarter 4 last year, driven by changes in the tax situation. As a result, order intake was weak in January, February this year. We are now seeing a similar trend with order intake improving ahead of the tax changes coming into effect at the end of 2026. In Western Europe, demand remained stable throughout the quarter. Many of our brands have strong campaigns with attractive discounts and competitive private leasing offers. This contributes to a push market environment across all our markets. Demand for used cars remains somewhat weak in Sweden and Western Europe. However, prices for fully electric used cars have stabilized at healthy levels, which has supported demand. In Norway, there are still many used cars available, but our own inventory remains well balanced, both in Norway and in our other markets. We continue to see good demand in our service business, reflected in healthy workshop booking levels. This was despite several years of lower new car sales and the export of young used cars in Sweden. With the Swedish car market in 2025, almost 20% below the 10-year average, the vehicle stock is aging, which continues to support demand for service and maintenance. Net turnover was somewhat higher compared to last year. We reported a strong result of SEK 380 million with a margin of 3.8% compared to SEK 310 million last year. We had higher profitability in Sweden and Norway, coming mainly from our service business. In Western Europe, we reported a stable result. Earnings per share was SEK 2.02, slightly lower than last year because it was impacted by a tax-free gain on sale of properties in Sweden. On this slide, you can see the quarter 3 profitability from 2020 to 2026 in each of our countries. On the left-hand side, you can see the strong performance in Sweden. In the middle, you can see Norway performing better since a few years ago. On this waterfall chart, you can see the different business areas. As you can see, we continue to improve the earnings in the service business significantly. In addition, I would like to highlight that we performed well in new cars related to Sweden. We are moving over to the important service business, where we report the best quarter 3 ever. Our service business represented 73% of the earnings in the quarter, and we improved the result and the margin. We reported a result of SEK 293 million compared to SEK 233 million in the same period last year, and the margin increased from 10.2% to 12%. The main reason for this is improvement of profitability in Sweden and Norway, arise especially from our workshops. We also had a positive organic growth in the group of 3.6%. There are several reasons why we report a higher result in Sweden and Norway. One is higher efficiency. Another is more deliveries of new cars affect our delivery workshops. And the third is our dismantling business performed well. The order intake of new cars adjusted for new car brands was 27% higher compared to quarter 3 last year. As I mentioned, we have seen better activity in all our countries, especially in Norway, mainly driven by our new brand XPENG. For the car business, we reported a result of SEK 99 million compared to SEK 81 million last year. The profitability for cars was related mainly to Sweden. For used cars, we reported a result of SEK 55 million compared to SEK 68 million last year. As I mentioned in the beginning, the stock of used car is on a good and balanced level in all our countries. The lower earnings related to Norway due to a lower gross margin related to a large supply of used cars in the market where the price level was impacted by high price competition for new cars during the quarter. The lower demand of used cars in Sweden is due to attractive private leasing offers for new cars. As we said in quarter 2, prices of fully electric cars have stabilized, and we can now see slightly increased demand. We have increased our underlying backlog for new cars by approximately 6,100 units compared to last year. And today, we have 18,600. This is from a historical perspective at a really high level. As we mentioned in quarter 1 and quarter 2, some of our brands have launched interesting new EV models with long range, attracting a lot of interest from our customers. Examples are the Volvo EX60 and BMW iX3, which has been well received in the market. Over to Kristina and the financial situation.

Thank you, Per. For the third quarter, we reported a strong operating cash flow of SEK 479 million generated by the underlying business. This cash flow was broadly in line with the corresponding period last year, adjusted for the SEK 303 million payment that we did receive last year for the sale of properties in Sweden. As highlighted in previous presentations, cash flow remains a key focus area for us and will continue to be so going forward. Our net financial expense amounted to SEK 78 million during the quarter, an improvement of SEK 7 million compared to last year, primarily due to currency effect and lower interest expense on borrowings. For the first 9 months, the improvement amounted to SEK 33 million, reflecting again both lower interest expenses, but also higher income from associated companies. At the end of the quarter, net debt, excluding IFRS 16 liabilities, amounted to just below SEK 2.2 billion, which was slightly below the level we had at year-end. Net debt to EBITDA, again, excluding IFRS 16, was 1.2x, thereby improving from 1.3x, both at the end of the second quarter and at year-end 2025. We, therefore, remain comfortably within our financial target of maintaining a leverage ratio below 2.0x. At quarter end, we used approximately SEK 610 million of our committed credit facilities. Total committed facilities now amounts to SEK 3.1 billion following the signing of an additional SEK 800 million facility during the third quarter. This further strengthens our financial flexibility and provides additional liquidity headroom to support future growth opportunities. During the quarter, we also paid SEK 138 million in dividends to our shareholders, the total dividend for 2026 of SEK 6 per share is being paid in 4 equal installments. We have now made 2 installments with the fourth and final payment scheduled for January 2027. So I would say, in summary, our financial position remains strong, supported by solid cash generation, moderate leverage and good liquidity. So with that, I will hand over to you, Carl Fredrik.

Thank you for that, Kristina. And moving to our service business. As Per highlighted, our service business accounted for 73% of our operating profit in Q3, underlying its resilience and importance to the group. Our Swedish operations showed a margin of 14.2% in the quarter, exceeding our margin target of 14%. As always, we continue to work on improvement across the service business, and this is to make sure our operation is efficient, profitable, combined with the best possible service experience for our customers. Supported by our current order book, the fundamentals for the service business remain good for the next quarter. Moving over to the car business. We expect demand for used cars to remain on the weaker side in the coming quarter. Positively, the used EV market in Sweden and Western Europe seem to have normalized with prices stabilizing at levels that better reflect underlying supply and demand. This has improved customer confidence in buying fully electric used vehicle. Our used cars inventories are at healthy levels. Looking at new car sales, demand from corporate customers has remained consistently stable, and we expect this trend to continue. Overall, we see that strong campaigns, attractive discounts and competitive private leasing offers from many of our brands will continue to support demand in the coming quarters. A number of new generation electrical vehicles models are being introduced with extended driving ranges, which are expected to broaden customer appeal and contribute positively to volumes in the coming quarter. Looking at the overall market, the markets are still very difficult, and we continue to see an industry very much under pressure. But we remain humble in our outlook, but are encouraged by our ability to continue outperforming the market through disciplined execution, a strong customer focus and the dedication of our employees, we believe we can continue to perform well compared to the overall market. We remain focused on strengthening profitability and operational performance across the entire group. The efficiency program launched last year continues to progress according to plan and is expected to deliver the benefits previously communicated. Then just to highlight, on May 21 next year, we will host a Capital Markets Day here in Stockholm, where we intend to provide a more comprehensive view of Bilia's strategic direction going forward and our priorities for long-term shareholder value. During the day, we will, as always, have on display the latest car and truck models from most of the Bilia brands. So please save the date for this event. This is the 21st of May 2027. This finalizes our third quarter presentation, and we can now open up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from Andreas Lundberg from SEB.

If I start with the outlook on, you say certain improvement for the car operation. Do you mean that the underlying demand from customers or do you mean, and do you mean improvements versus recent quarters or versus last year? And how do you include the order backlog in this?

Let's see, Andreas. So your question was that for the demand in the car business, if we see that the demand will increase quarter-over-quarter or year-over-year, right? That was your question, Andreas.

Yes, yes.

Yes, we see that in Sweden and Norway. But what I try to tell that there will be a peak now in quarter 4 this year because the VAT, the change of VAT in the end of this year. And we will have the same next year in the Norwegian market with maybe a little bit lower quarter 1 in the demand for new cars. But here in Sweden, we see a stable increasing quarter after quarter. And we have a lot of good private leasing activities for the moment now for many of our brands. So we see a little bit positive for the future. And what we have told you before that the Western Europe, really stable market, Belgium and Luxembourg.

And on the order backlog side, you said it's historically high number, which is true. How do you think about timing of that? And how does it look for certain models or brands when it comes to deliveries?

I think the order stock is on a very high level, right? And we know that there will be a slight delay in deliveries when it comes to some of the Volvo car brands, right, the EVs, where some would be pushed a little bit forward, right? So I mean we normally say that the order stock would be delivered in a 3- to 6-month period. It might be a little bit longer now, I think.

A little bit different in Norway.

Yes. That's true...

Of course, the VAT changing. So for many brands in the Norwegian market, we will have a peak of deliveries in quarter 4, except some Volvo models, maybe you have read that in the newspapers, they are delayed.

So perhaps it's still a 6-month period in average, yes.

Okay. Cool. And you mentioned in the service business, you mentioned the dismantling business. Could you update me or us on how this business is progressing or this is a [ total ] improvement? Or have you seen a good trend over time, so to say?

Yes. So the profitability development quarter-over-quarter or year-over-year trend.

And it's a lot of regulation in the market for the moment. So we guess it will be better and better in our dismantling business, both in Sweden and Norway.

No, I think the interest is clear there from the market, right, from the insurance companies that want to have more used parts in the sort of in the repair shops. So I think that's contributing to a more long-term development.