AUTO1 Group SE (AG1) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and good morning from Belen. Welcome to the Auto1 Group Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Financial Results Presentation. I'm Philip Reicherstorfer, Group Treasurer. As always, I'm joined today by Christian Bertermann, our Co-Founder and CEO; and Markus Boser, our CFO. We will start with the presentation, followed by questions and answers. [Operator Instructions] Before I hand it over, I want to make you aware of the safe harbor provisions at the beginning of the presentation here. This will apply to any forward-looking statements made by management today. And now over to Christian.

Thank you, Philip. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Auto1 Group Q4 and Full Year '23 Earnings Call. Before we go into the numbers, I would like to zoom out a bit and give a short overview of our company. Auto1 Group is a technology company that aims to maximize value for merchants and consumers when buying, selling or financing their next vehicle. We are working in the EUR 700 billion used car market of Europe, which is one of the largest markets in the world. It is characterized by a very high degree of fragmentation and often lacks great customer experience. We founded Auto1 Group in 2012 to help transition this market to the future driven by AI pricing, low transaction costs and high levels of consumer and merchant satisfaction. Financially, we aim to edit the used car market on the Auto1 Group platform. Value that we provide can consist of higher selling prices, lower purchase prices, better customer satisfaction, faster processing times, greater selection or liquidity support through financing. We believe that the financial opportunities that we currently pursue can be worth in excess of EUR 100 billion in the long run. To achieve our mission, we offer a range of products and services on our platform aimed at maximizing value for our clients. B2B buying is a vast and dense network of branches that connect our customers with the highest Europe-wide price or the vehicle, often beating their local price. Remarketing is a B2B sales solution that offers our selling dealer partners access to the highest Europe-wide price for their wholesale inventory, often beating their local price combined with fast processing speed. The AUTO1.com merchant platform is the platform for professional car buyers, accessed by thousands of merchants on a weekly base for sourcing the best next car for their stock, supported by powerful logistics and fast delivery. AUTO1.com merchant financing is our newest product, a wholesale financing section to support our best dealer partners to grow their business organically, speeding up delivery time as no prior payment is required. Autohero is the EU-wide leading online shopping solution for used cars with a well-recognized retail brand, vast selection and home delivery at competitive prices. It has supreme levels of customer satisfaction and it's positioned to address the growing demand for shopping used cars online. Autohero consumer financing is currently available in Germany and Austria. It's our in-house find solution with a more than EUR 250 million credit portfolio that is growing. It also is a complete digital process with the fastest financing approval of any retailer. While some of our products are brand new, others are developed, the result of years of iteration to finally arrive in their current form. What unites them is that all of them have been developed in-house and are deeply tied to the Auto1 Group platform. Now let's take a look at '23. In '23, we have more than 520,000 customers sell their car for a higher price. We funded them with more than EUR 4.1 billion. We supported more than 39,000 partner dealers with finding purchasing and delivering the best fitting next units for their stock, carried out more than 910,000 transports through our partners and helped more than 60,000 retail customers to find their new car. And we reported more than 20,000 of them with financing for more than EUR 275 million. And we provided millions of consumers across Europe with a free price estimate for the car. While these figures describe the huge scale of our business well, '23 was the first time we set bottom line profitability as the leading goal for a business year. For the past 12 months, we worked extremely hard to find the right balance between investments, our cost base, units and gross profit. We achieved our first EBITDA breakeven quarter earlier than planned in Q3 after continuing our strong EBITDA track. The work required for reaching the goal represents something much bigger, however. It's the foundation for long-term profitable growth. I'm very proud of our team who hit our '23 financial targets while we continued key strategic investments. We reached gross profit of EUR 528 million for the full year. That is EUR 40 million more than in the year before and a new company record. With EUR 528 million, we are right in the middle of our guidance given in the beginning of '23. We improved adjusted EBITDA on a year-on-year basis by astonishing EUR 122 million compared to '22, which is a strong testament to our rigorous work towards long-term profitable growth. Additionally, we increased our cash position to EUR 548 million, up EUR 6 million from Q4 '22. Throughout the last decade, we have been growing units, gross profit and in most years, a combination of the 2 consistently. Over the period of the last 4 years, we faced extraordinary market conditions caused by supply shortages, very volatile used car prices, strong interest rate increases and general uncertainty. During that period, we gave gross profit growth a little more focus than units overall, but nevertheless, achieved our highest amount of units in '22. Units in '23 were mainly impacted by 3 effects: lower merchant basket due to lower industry turns, drop in remarketing as a result of eliminating unprofitable units and Autohero, while more or less stable in units, gave priority to GPU increases over unit growth due to the overall group financial target. We will go into more detail into each of the unit drivers in the subsequent sections. But overall, we're really excited to be on the verge of profitable growth and feel that it's the right time to begin another unit growth cycle. When we look at the last years, in merchant, external market forces have had a major influence on our merchant business. The supply shortages of new cars during the pandemic led to reduced supply, historically high prices and higher inventory turns for our partners. When used car prices started to roll back, the reverse effect took place. More supply entered the market and inventory turns reduced. While we actually sold to a slightly high number of merchant partners in '23 with 39,105, we experienced an 11% reduction in average basket driven by higher normalization of inventory turns, and that led to a total reduction of 10.7% in merchant units. We started to turn that trend around towards the middle of Q3 with increased levels of investment into our merchant partner network, product and technology improvements and the launch of AUTO1.com merchant financing. When we look at GPU trends, we see a strong picture. Despite the fact that average selling prices were very volatile,over the last few years, especially in the period from Q4 -- Q2 '21 to Q4 '22, driven by the supply and demand trends mentioned above, we grew merchant GPU strongly over the quarter since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. This demonstrates the power of AI pricing being able to adjust prices extremely dynamic often ahead of the rest of the industry. We intend to keep the merchant GPU within the target corridor for the foreseeable future. We estimate the market has now returned to inventory trends that are normal for our industry. Also, the price development overall seems to have entered a much more stable period. Our Auto1 Group price index showed more or less flat used car prices throughout '23. Now heading into '24, 61% of our European partner dealers expect used car prices to decline this year based on a survey we ran on AUTO1.com. This was about 5,000 merchants. 1/4 of the survey participants think that used car prices will remain stable in '24, while the rest assumes that prices will increase this year. So it's a little bit of mixed picture. But overall, we would welcome lower used car prices as it will likely lead to more affordable used cars and subsequent positive effect on market transactions and unit growth. If you look at Q4 on the next slide. Yes. So if we look at Q4, we sold 131,000 units to our partners, which is an increase of 4% quarter-over-quarter while growing gross profit by 15% year-on-year. And that was driven by a strong GPU of EUR 792 at the top of our unrated GPU target range. So we can already see first positive momentum from the measures we took in merchant. Units sold in our C2B business have grown from 111,000 units in Q3 to 116,000 units in Q4, while remarketing was stable quarter-over-quarter with 15,000 units. Throughout '23, we rightsized the remarketing business by eliminating unprofitable units and as a consequence, massively improved unit economics and hit breakeven in that business within Q4 of '23. We aim to grow remarketing profitably from our current base and believe we will be able to do so, driven by product iteration and innovation. Overall, we're really hungry for growth in merchant. It seems like we finally arrived in a used car market environment that is more stable compared to the forces that worked before, that we are in a strong position after our successful work on GPUs and the enhanced AI pricing power we possess today. We are really excited to reaccelerate growth in our largest business segment, and we'll now go to a couple of input drivers for future merchant growth. With more than 430 purchasing branch network locations across Europe, we believe we are close to our private sellers, but not yet close enough. We are convinced that being even closer will add to the convenience of our C2B purchasing product. This is why we started to expand our branch network of '23 and so far have added around 30 new locations for our customers. We see potential for more than 1,000 additional branches over the next couple of years, and we'll continue to execute on the supply level throughout '24. Now on Merchant Financing. It's a completely new product, and we're really excited about it. We started it in Q4 of last year. Auto1 financing enables dealers to seamlessly add the financing solution to the vehicles they purchase on AUTO1.com as part of their digital customer journey. After purchasing cars, merchants can choose to finalize them with one click and instant approval, making it the most convenient solution on the market. We create value for our merchant partners with this product by speeding up the delivery time. And more importantly, we enable our partners to grow their business organically supported by our liquidity. No matter if it's used as a convenient temporary financing solution or used to a bigger business, we have received overwhelmingly positive feedback so far and are very curious about the next month. The product is already on the verge of profitability, which is even better news. We believe that our Merchant Financing solution can increase loyalty to the AUTO1.com merchant platform, and this will increase the frequency of purchases, but also make the overall product more attractive. We aim to scale it quickly into more countries and also an overall credit portfolio size and considered an important growth level for merchants. If we take a look at the tax side, on AUTO1.com and also general in the Auto1 Group, every product we launch, every feature we release and every part of the user journey that we improve as a common goal to create value for our clients. We launched several key features last year and are already seeing positive effects on merchant engagement. We continue to invest in our central AI pricing algorithms, increasing their position and coverage. We are now able to provide bonding prices for 89% of all pricing requests we received, a new all-time high. We also enhanced our purchase application, making significant improvements of car damage details, allowing a more detailed presentation on AUTO1.com for our partner dealers, enhance, delivering even better on our commitment to quality. The introduction of the premium return right service for our buying dealers goes into the same direction. With this service, we give our partners the security to receive the vehicle in the quality they expect. Essentially, it works like an insurance on the condition of the car against the premium to be paid. If a car is returned to the premium return right, let's get their money back without questions asked and the car is reevaluated before it goes back into auction. Additionally, we launched personalized vehicle recommendations based on AI technology. Our algorithms now learn better than ever from merchant behavior, leading to significantly improved recommendations for them. Overall, we are really excited to push our merchant flywheel further in '24, fueled by many growth levers like the ones discussed. More branches, Auto1 Group financing and new platform features are just examples for lever there we can push for additional growth in our largest business segment, which is run on a unique technology platform with strong competitive advantages. And the whole merchant team is really excited to push towards the next level. Now let's switch to retail on the slide before, please. It's very early days for buying cars online. And Autohero is our most innovative product. If we want to compare the market stage of development, then we could compare it with 1999 for ordering books. In that year, only a small fraction of the general population was interested in buying a book online. Fast forward 25 years later, the overwhelming majority favors buying books completely online. We don't know if online shop in used cars will follow the same trend as books or electronics. We do know that virtually, all global new car manufacturers are investing heavily in the online sales approach. We also know that Autohero customers are exceptionally happy, and that 82% of our financing customers would order their next car again with Autohero. To sum it up, Autohero is the possibly biggest price we're after, but it also requires continued growth investment, which has to fit under our group's financial goals. So if you take a look at, 23, in line with our overall profitability strategy, we prioritized GPU growth and cost base improvements in retail during last year. We ended up with '23 a new record GPU of EUR 1,970 for Autohero. That is an increase of EUR 716 or 57% compared to Q4 of last year, continuing our strong upward trend since IPO. Retail gross profit increased by 23% to EUR 30.1 million year-over-year, up from EUR 24.4 million in Q4 of '22. Units sold were 15,700 vehicles in the last quarter, a slight growth over Q3. With Q4, GPU just under EUR 2,000, we believe that we're only EUR 300 to EUR 400 away from breaking even before headquarter cost assigned to Autohero. Going forward, we will maximize unit growth in Autohero and at a given group profitability target. Should we hit breakeven before headquarter costs by either growing in total gross profit or getting more cost efficient or a combination of both, that constraint will obviously vanish. So if we go into a bit more detail and take a look at the different building blocks of our retail operation, then we can start with the Autohero brand. We built immense brand awareness in our 9 Autohero markets, resulting with us being amongst the top 3 car retail brand in almost all of our core markets after just 3 years of investments, and that includes also the top classified. Reaching these awareness levels enabled us to become much more efficient with our marketing spend over time, which you can see on the left. In Q4, our retail marketing cost per unit was at EUR 400, EUR 100 below our year-end marketing cost target and a decrease of 56% compared to Q4 of '22. Autohero, on the next slide, is the EU-wide leading online shopping solution for used cars and stands for a seamless digital purchase and financing experience. Along every step of our fully digital funnel, AI-powered support is guiding our customers. In December, 44% of our orders in Germany did not require any phone support, up from 22% in March. The rest of our markets show a similar development track. And also on production over the last year, we have created a blueprint for state-of-the-art used car production. On the next slide, please. In December, EUR 0.89 of all units sold were used internally in 1 of our 10 in-house production centers. The growth in internalization rate over the course of the year was a strong success and of course, also driven by our 4 additional production centers we opened in France, the Netherlands, Sweden and Austria. We were able to reduce costs in our flagship production center by EUR 110 from Q4 '22 to Q4 of last year, further lowering our total production cost to EUR 640 per unit. The first wave of our in-house production center rollout is now complete and a huge success overall. For many of our customers, our home delivery option is perceived an exceptional value. We increased the share of home deliveries in our iconic glass trucks from 39% to 69% from Q1 '22 to Q4 of last year. By doing so, we created thousands of memorable experiences for more than 2/3 of our Autohero customers. Consequently, other delivery or pickup options declined over the course of the last 2 years. We were also able to bring down third-party deliveries to 3%. We believe that a pan-European retail brand like Autohero has immense growth potential in the years to come. When we think of the impressive size of our market, its extremely fragmented nature and the desire for trust in used car dealerships, we believe that building an unparalleled brand and buying experience no matter where our customers get in contact with the Autohero brand is an incredible and massive opportunity. The skills that we added to our company with the launch and scaling of Autohero are enormous. We now know how to mass purchase suitable cars for retail within our C2B buying product. We know how to price them, and we learned how to mass refurbish our stock internally at very competitive costs while keeping NPS at high level. We got the leading online shopping platform for used cars in the EU. We integrated long-haul transport of retail card smart into our logistics network, and we assemble the only existing last mile delivery network of scale our knowledge. These are prime skills needed to create the Amazon or Walmart of used cars. Now let's do a summary. From a financial perspective, we did well in '23. We reached our top target of the first breakeven quarter on an adjusted EBITDA basis early in Q3 and improved adjusted EBITDA by more than EUR 120 million year-on-year. We also handled our cash position very well, generating EUR 6 million year-on-year to land at EUR 548 million for the end of the year. If we zoom out a little more, '23 is a pivotal year in the short history of our company. This is the year when we started to lay the foundation for long-term profitable growth, the year we learned how to configure our level of investment per product, the cost and margin requirements that lead the way to continued double-digit growth while being on a clear path to cash flow breakeven. With this solid foundation in place, we are eager to start reaccelerating growth across all our business units and are looking at the year ahead with excitement, curiosity and a strong ambition that characterizes our teams. I'm now handing over to Markus, who will give you a more detailed financial update of Q4 and the full year '23.

Thanks, Christian. As we now turn to our financial results. Overall, we're very pleased with the very positive developments and profitability from 2022 to 2023, achieving EBITDA breakeven in Q3 and relatively small single-digit adjusted EBITDA loss of minus 4.5% in Q4 of 2023. While top line quarterly units were down 2.5% year-on-year, we achieved quarter-on-quarter growth for the first time since Q1 this year in both our merchant and retail, putting us at an inflection point in growth that we think positions us well for the full year growth that we expect in 2024. Gross profit grew over 8% on a full year basis and almost 17% on a quarterly basis year-on-year as a result of the company achieving an average EUR 153 more on every unit itself, showing the power of our scale. At the same time, we also reduced our total OpEx by EUR 82 million, mainly by significantly reducing fixe costs, particular payroll by 10% and marketing by almost 30%, resulting a full year EBITDA of minus EUR 44 million, an improvement of almost EUR 122 million in our 2022 EBITDA. So we are very proud of our full year 2023 results. Focusing on Q4, which is historically our seasonally weakest quarter, we kept our gross profit, close to flat quarter-on-quarter, while investing for 2024 growth and with minus EUR 4.5 million in quarterly EBITDA achieved an 88% yearly improvement. While EBITDA was down slightly quarter-on-quarter on a flattish gross profit, the quarterly loss in Q4 versus Q3 was primarily the result of investments in payroll, specifically around EUR 5.6 million, a combination of our planned increase in our purchase work, our sales org and finalizing our refurbishment rollout. As you can see, we grew our cash in 2023 from EUR 542 million at the end of '22 to EUR 548 million at the end of '23 million. This was accomplished by a combination of improved inventory management with inventory declining by EUR 74 million, higher loan-to-value on our inventory ABS and improved collection in our receivables. Lastly, we also continue to invest in our captive finance business, increasing our consumer loans by EUR 83 million to EUR 269 million and launching Merchant Financing with a portfolio of EUR 37 million as of December 31, 2023 and growing fast. Before we move to guidance, I'd like a short discussion to explain our balance sheet. As noted, we have EUR 548 million of cash on our balance sheet. In addition, we have a further EUR 544 million of used car inventory that is both liquid and value daily. To the extent that we have a rated nonrecourse asset-backed securitization of EUR 475 million against this inventory alone, which is held in a separate SPV. The loan is not against Auto1 Corporate. We further have EUR 306 million of captive finance loan receivables assets, of which EUR 269 million are in consumer loans and EUR 37 million in merchant loans, as stated on the previous page, again held in separate SPVs against which we have EUR 269 million of refinancing loans for a total net value of semi liquid financial assets alone of EUR 654 million. Overall, this puts us in an extremely liquid position with no corporate loans or maturities and a business that is close to breakeven. On guidance, we expect to sell between 540,000 and 595,000 merchant units and circa 70,000 Autohero units in '24 at GPUs of around 1,900, resulting in total units of 610,000 to 665,000 group units. We expect to achieve a gross profit of between EUR 565 million and EUR 625 million and achieve adjusted EBITDA breakeven for the full year. While not part of our formal guidance, we expect CapEx to remain at recent levels, circa EUR 3 million or so per quarter for 2024. We are proud of our 2023 performance and the shift we achieved to substantially improve our unit economics in both our merchant and retail business. We try to find the right balance between growth and profitability to continue to invest in the innovation that the used car industry needs and the customers appreciate, and believe that we are now at the inflection that will allow us to shift back to growth. With that, I open up to questions.

Hi, everyone. I'm Agnes, your Zoom operator. [Operator Instructions]

Yes. Thank you, Agnes. And we'll start with Adam Berlin from UBS.

Good morning, everyone. 2 questions, if I can. Can you talk a little bit about how you got to the guidance for Autohero units for 2024? I mean I was a bit disappointed it was only 70,000, given what you're saying about a return to growth. But Christian, you talked a little bit about profitability considerations. And just can you just talk through the thinking about why we're not going for more growth in Autohero units now that the unique economics are kind of where you expected them to be? And then I just wanted to ask about cash flow. You talked about adding EUR 6 million of cash on a reported basis during the year. Can you just tell us, is that free cash flow? What else is in there? And specifically on the inventory. I think you said it's EUR 544 million of inventory. How much of the available ABS have you actually drawn against that EUR 544 million?

Thank you, Adam. So maybe I take the first question, and then Markus on the cash one. I mean with Autohero, yes, it's a little bit like we talked about in the presentation, we see an enormous opportunity. We see enormous growth potential in retail over the years to come. But of course, we need in order to scale the business massively, profitability on a variable base. And other -- if we don't have that, so variable base is profitability on a unit base before headquarter cost. So we are willing totally to put in the headquarter part as an investment. But on a per unit base, we think that we're EUR 300 to EUR 400 away from breakeven before headquarter. So now we want to find the best combination between units and GPU, and that is reflected in the guidance. So we want to make sure that we have the flexibility to balance growth in GPU versus growth in units or the other way around. And there's just still a good amount of way to go for Autohero. And should we hit that inflection point further, when they look EUR 2,300, EUR 2,400 GPU, then, of course, Autohero is not loss making anymore before headquarter. But it's still, yes, a good step or a good path of the way to go. I think we have shown over the last 2 to 3 years that we can increase and grow GPU very successfully, but it's really important that we add also to the overall group profitability and not reduce the overall group profitability by scaling Autohero, and that's the background of the guidance.

Thanks. And then just on your second question, I think on the -- specifically the question of the inventory financing and how much is drawn, you actually can see that on Page 29. So of the EUR 544 million of inventory, we've drawn EUR 475 million in financing. That's out of a total of the senior financing that we have of EUR 800 million. So there's still a substantially significant headroom there in terms of drawing more for inventory going forward. I think in terms of specifics on the cash flow. Obviously, we have our annual report, which we will release in early April. Nonetheless, broadly, what I can say is the increase in cash came through combination of first, overall reduction in inventory. Again, you can see that on Page 28, where we reduced inventory and then further also, we're able to get a higher loan-to-value on our inventory, do that asset-backed securitization. So in total, there was a positive cash from that of around about EUR 90 million or so. In addition, I think we've also done a lot in terms of just improving our overall receivables collections. And I think at same time, still investing in our captive finance business being a combination of the consumer and the merchant receivables.

I think one thing that I would like to add, Adam, maybe to the answer that I gave. Because you said also, hey, you talk so much about really accelerated growth. And why is Autohero just 5,000 units? When we talk about reacceleration of growth, we specifically look at the full group. And I think that's also important going forward as a perspective for Auto1 Group. We aim to grow double digit as a group, and we aim to improve profitability over time and then step-by-step, work our way towards cash flow breakeven. But what comes for us in growth is the total group units and not only Autohero. That does not diminish anything that I said in the first part of the answer about Autohero. So we're really excited about it. But Autohero is the youngest business of scale that we have. It's 3 to 4 years old. Now it's going into the fourth year in its current form. And in certain aspects of it, it also just needs time to learn and time to adjust and time to continue to just work on the improvement. And that's why we would like to make sure growth for Auto1 is really much more taken out of the perspective of the full group because we see quite positive growth potential also in the other businesses, specifically on Merchant for this year.

Thanks. With that, over to Karl Karger. I guess Karl might have moved on now. Chris Johnen from HSBC. Do we have a technical problem somewhere? Do people can speak? Okay. So actually, he just sent a message. His phone isn't working. But he wanted to know why we are only thinking about adjusted EBITDA breakeven. And also, he was following up on last quarter, we were talking about the possibility of reaching net income profitability some timeduring 2024. What happened to this?

Maybe I take that question. As you know, I think in 2023, we really put reaching adjusted EBITDA breakeven really front and center in our goals. And that's obviously something that we did achieve over the course of 2023 and are now expecting that similarly for 2024. We believe, however, that we see this massive opportunity to continue to grow the business, and that growth will lead to ultimate net income profitability. And I think that's something that should happen either towards the back end of this year or the beginning of next year. But we don't really want to have that as the front and center goals, much we d the adjusted EBITDA for this past year. But really that we focus on the growth that we have set out and believe that by achieving that higher unit growth, higher gross profit still investing, though, for the long-term opportunity, which is obviously really critical that we will -- it will naturally lead to net income profitability later this year, early next year, but don't really want to make that the front and center goal as we had done for adjusted EBITDA in 2023.

Yes. Also specifically because we don't need to, right, from a cash point of view. I mean you can see the cash, which is like a very comfortable amount. And we want to make sure that we do the right thing, as Markus was saying, to invest for the long-term opportunities that we see, both in merchant, but also in retail and in the financing parts of our business with Merchant and Consumer Financing. And priority now is growth to make sure, yes, that we reaccelerate, as I've mentioned, the full business in units. And then it will come naturally, as Markus was just alluding to.

And can we go over to Lisa Yang from Goldman Sachs then?

Yes, just a follow-up on the adjusted EBITDA guidance. What do you mean exactly by breakeven? Is that reaching breakeven, like is that 0 to EUR 5 million, 10 to EUR 10 million? Like what's the level of flexibility or corridor you're thinking when you said just breakeven? And how should we think about the cadence of EBITDA through the year? Do we expect EBITDA to be more like second half weighted? Or how should we think about that? That's the first question. The second question is, I think, on free cash flow. I think in the past, you said you would expect free cash flow to break even a year later after EBITDA breakeven, which I think would imply Q4 2024. So is that still the case? And is there sort of an order of a cash burn that you should expect for 2024? And the last question is on merchant GPU. So you did really well last year at around 800, although it came down a bit in Q4. So why would you go back to 725 to 800? Is it because you're going to be selling like less profitable cars? Or what's driving the decline in GPU for merchants going forward?

I think I'll take those questions. So I think in terms of to breakeven, I think for us breakeven basically it means kind of flat 0. So breakeven, I think we don't provide any specific quarterly guidance. Though I would generally, as you seasonally look at, usually, Q1 and Q3 are the seasonally more positive ones, then Q2 and Q4, as we have talked about are seasonally, usually, the less positive ones. It's a little bit different this year because Easter falls in Q1, or literally in the border between Q1 and Q2. So I think it makes it this year different than most in terms of that normal seasonality. But as I said, I think we really want to -- which kind of also answers the second question on free cash flow, really to go back to what I think I had mentioned earlier, which is I think,we don't want to make that specific profitability goal the front and center goal for this year, as we had in 2023. So for us, it's about really achieving the growth that we have set out. We think that if we achieve that growth and are able to do that, the profitability will follow naturally, as I said, later this year, possibly at the beginning of next year, but don't want to make that sort of the single goal for this year, particularly with a very strong cash position. And as stated also competitively, I think Christian has said this a few times, we see this massive opportunity. A lot of people have left the market. This is the time to invest and really be the go-to player in a product that really doesn't exist in Europe by anybody else. And so rather than kind of create this, if you want, slightly arbitrary goal in terms of the specific quarter to achieve it, would really focus on the long term. We have the cash to invest and therefore want to use that, take advantage of the opportunity and really build ourselves that we can actually accelerate growth from the current guidance we have even further in further years. I think with the final question on merchant GPU, what I would say is twofold. First, I think we had started off with a merchant GPU boundary, if you recall, of 675 at the lower end and have actually increased that by about EUR 50 per car. So now the lower boundary is really at the 725. So I think we actually see that profitability, that GPU improvement as kind of sustainable and permanent. What we kind of want to avoid is that every time you outperform, just that automatically wherever it goes up by another EUR 20 to EUR 50, obviously, we think that there's still, over the long term, a lot to play for and seeing that it goes very well. But just want to remind everybody that we already see a step change in that merchant GPU and believe that that's a permanent step change that we can continue. You've obviously kind of shift a little bit quarter-by-quarter, but do see that overall, that level is going to go up and don't think that we're going to go back down to the 700 or even 725 that we had seen as recently as last as well, one year before. So I believe that the current GPU improvements are sustainable, but there's obviously quarterly variabilities within that.

Thanks, Markus. With that, Andrew Ross?

Cool. I've got 3 questions, if that is okay. The first one is to follow up on leases. And I was hoping you could walk us through the bridge between EBITDA and free cash flow in '24. And I guess, interested in CapEx leases, but also if there's any more work on optimization of working capital that can be done just so we get a sense of what kind of free cash flow burn we're talking about this year. That's the first one. Second one is to come back on split that you gave between the different business divisions in terms of EBITDA a couple of years ago. Maybe you could update us in terms of how the EBITDA broke down in 2023 between Merchant, Autohero and unessential to get a sense of [indiscernible] looking. And then the third one is an extension of that. I think you're talking about a gap of EUR 300 to EUR 400 per car in Autohero to get back to being EBITDA positive pre group. I assume that is in Q4. Can you just kind of walk us through the bridge how you close that gap in '24, given that you're pointing to relatively few incremental units for Autohero and holding GPU flat around that kind of 1,900? Just kind of trying to square about circle in terms of how we close the gap to get to Autohero being EBITDA positive pre group costs?

Sure. So let me start. I think as -- so if we kind of bridge between sort of the flat EBITDA to kind of cash flow. Essentially, we are between EBITDA and net income, we have about EUR 13 million quarterly costs, of which about 8.5 are IFRS 16 lease expenses and then the rest, the combination of net finance expenses and some capitalized R&D. We then have a further, as I talked about, EUR 3 million or so per quarter in CapEx. So if you then look at that, you're kind of post the EBITDA line, you're at about EUR 16 per quarter, so a little bit over EUR 60 million in -- before any working capital adjustments in terms of kind of the bridge from that even EBITDA down to, if you want, kind of operating free cash flow. Working capital, we don't provide any forward-looking guidance in terms of inventory by and large. On the one hand, I think if you look at our existing -- the Merchant business, I would say, by and large, the relationship between revenues and inventory should by and large be pretty direct versus, I think, the Autohero business, where we continue to strive to make that faster and improve. I think the additional variability to keep in mind is, of course, what happens with ASPs. So interestingly, you've obviously seen the decline in our overall inventory between 2022 and 2023. But at the same time, we've been able to increase the number of units as well, which is again positioning us, I think, for more growth this year. But yes, trying to think what were your second.

Maybe on the third question by Andrew. It's like how do we square the circle with EUR 300 to EUR 400 and then you're guiding EBITDA flat, but you do 10% of units. So the EUR 300 to EUR 400 is on the current units, Andrew. So if we grew -- I mean what matters in the end, and of course, the P&L is also a little bit complex, right, because it depends on utilization, of instance, the personnel that we have in the production centers and also of our sales teams and also of our delivery drivers and so on. So the EUR 300 to EUR 400 is at current units. So if we didn't grow in units, and let's say we add EUR 300, EUR 400, probably rather EUR 400, we would be breakeven. If we add now more unit, we increase the total gross profit, so it might also work this way.

That makes sense. But I guess in the guidance, there isn't that much unit growth baked in for Autohero.

Yes, in the guidance, it's like 10%, right? So you could say, look, if it's at 1,900, and then you add 10%, then you're at 2,100. So it's a step up. And this is our best, let's say, compromise between hitting the breakeven and growth. But obviously, I mean, we are -- this is like squaring the circle. But again, I mean, this is what we try, right? This is -- we try to find the best combination between growing GPU and unit growth, and this is why we put up a guidance like this. And there is a step-up in breakeven included in the 10% that we guided towards. But it might also be that yes, we're able to do higher GPUs and maybe this level of growth, maybe lower level of growth, maybe a higher level of growth. So we're actively working towards this on. And I want to repeat this, the most innovative products that we run. While the most important thing from our point of view that we really focus on is growing group units and improving profitability further.

Makes sense. And the last one was just the split of EBITDA between Merchant, Autohero and group costs. If possible to get any kind of directional sense on that?

The one that we gave a couple of years ago.

Yes. What I was going to say was it was -- I think we gave the one-off guidance in 2021, I think, have decided not to provide that again. I think if you look at it, then it was around the 3% or so kind of segment margin. I think directionally, I would say that's broadly still the case. But I think, yes, we'd stick with that.

So I think we got time for one final closing question from Pete-Veikko Kujala from Morgan Stanley.

Maybe on the Merchant GPU first. So does the corridor that you talked about, does that include the impact from Auto1 Merchant financing? And what kind of expectations do you have for the Merchant Financing impact over the, let's say, next 1 to 2 years? And then the second question is on I think you were running some like yard management system pilot in one of your production centers in 2023, which you are now expanding to all the production centers. So I'm just wondering, is there some like additional cost efficiencies on the production center side that we should expect in 2024.

Maybe I'll take the first question, Christian, and you can answer the second. I mean the Merchant Finance product is obviously a product that we started in Q4. Any revenues from that, yes, they are inside the Merchant business, but it's still very small. You saw EUR 37 million of portfolio at the end of Q4, and that was built up over the course of Q4. So any interest income and so forth is going to be pretty negligible in Q4. I think it will still be relatively small. And at the beginning, we have high hopes for it. We see it growing very quickly. And it's -- and it really is -- I mean, as Christian talked about in his section, is a product that dealers really like. But I think it may be a little bit too early to start providing specific guidance on that as a separate unit.

So on the yard management system, Peter, so very well spotted. I mean this is one of the drivers, right, among a lot of other things. But it's one of the drivers for more efficiency. I think we have not yet seen the full effect, full potential effect of optimizing. It's not only yard management, but essentially an improved production software that has yard management, but also that tracks productivity in every step and that optimizes workflows and so on. So yes, I mean, we are back to the Autohero profitability discussion, of course, planning not with the same production cost internally, but with a better one. We think that we reached a level that is sufficient for breakeven, but we aim higher.

Okay. Thank you, Christian. Thank you, Markus, and thank you, everybody, for attending the call. That closes the earnings call for 2023. And I'm sure we'll talk to most of you in the next couple of days. And otherwise, we'll meet at the Q1 financials.

Thank you very much, everyone. Bye-bye. .

Thank you. Bye.