Renault SA (RNO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Audio Gap] Renault's First Quarter Revenue 2021 Conference Call. I now hand over to Mr. Thierry Huon. Sir, please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. And welcome to Renault's First Quarter '21 Conference Call, broadcast live and in replay versions on our website. Presentation slides, press release for these calls are all available on our website, in the finance section. I would like to point out the disclaimer on Slide 2 of this pack regarding the information contained within this document and in particular about forward-looking statements. I invite all participant to read these. Today's call is scheduled to last about 40 minutes. And as key speaker this morning, Clotilde Delbos, Deputy CEO and CFO -- presentation will last about 10 minutes and will be followed by the Q&A. As usual, if we don't have the time to takes everyone's question in this session, the IR team will be around to take your calls later. I'll pass the call over to Clotilde for a few opening remarks and her presentation.

Thank you, Thierry. And good morning, everybody. The last 12 months have not been easy ones, as we have to deal with a stop-and-go situation regarding lockdowns and curfew across the world. Fortunately, the situation is not as bad as the one we had a year ago when major European countries were under strict confinement. However, we are still far from being in a normal situation. And our lives and business are still significantly impacted by the pandemic, and this will last for at least several more weeks. One strong positive from this quarter has been the continuation of our new commercial policy, which has translated for the third quarter in a row into another strong pricing effect on our revenues. We are also pleased by the reception of our recently launched models either in Europe or outside Europe. And we have been able, despite the context of the pandemic, to book strong orders, most of the time beyond our initial expectations. However, we should not ignore some increasingly strong external headwinds such as weak ForEx and raw material prices on the rise. Moreover, like the whole industry, we are facing the electronic component shortages. The lingering effect of the Texas storm and the recent fire at one of the Renesas plant compound makes the situation even worse. Therefore, the visibility is deteriorating, and it is very tricky to make a reliable forecast for the production as news are changing by the day. As we don't want to play a guessing game, we prefer not to give any estimates which might be proved wrong very quickly. Hopefully, the visibility will improve soon. And as you can tell from these remarks, environment remains quite unpredictable both on the demand and on the supply side. In this context, we think it does not make sense to give you a guidance for the year at this point of time. I would like to finish these preliminary remarks with a word on our liquidity situation. While this is not a result call and as you know, I won't comment on profit or cash flow. Nevertheless, I can tell you that we have a solid liquidity position which remain well above 25% of our expected full year revenues, a ratio which had been set as our comfort zone. Let me now give you some comments on our commercial performance. We registered 665,000 units in the quarter, a 1.1% increase over last year. Renault brand sold 434,000 vehicles, an increase of 1.3%, while Dacia enjoyed a 10.2% growth with 121,000 units. Lada showed flat sales at 90,000 units. By region, Europe represented 52% of the total, and our sales followed the market performance with a 4% increase. In Eurasia, sales in Turkey grew more slowly than the market, awaiting the arrival of 3 core models. I remind you that Romania is no longer in Eurasia Region but in Europe. In Latin America, in accordance with our strategy, we have chosen to withdraw for some nonprofitable business, notably in Brazil. I've told you that we are pleased by the performance of our car that we have launched in the quarter. As you see on this slide some figures showing these successes: We booked more than 10,000 orders for KIGER in India on the growing and profitable compact SUV segment. Twingo electric is enjoying a good success with more than 5,500 orders, and it completes our offer in the urban electric cars besides ZOE. In Russia, the new Duster is exceeding our expectation with more than 5,000 orders and a very strong version mix. The new Dacia Sandero is well above our most optimistic forecast, as the car has been extremely well received in major markets. This is a very encouraging sign, as the CMF-B platform used for the first time on Dacia brand with new Sandero will be the base of our product offensive in the next few years. Finally, we have opened preorder booking for the new Dacia Spring, which is one of the most affordable EVs in the European market. In a few week time, we have received more than 10,000 preorders ahead of the official opening of the order book due in June. We told you when presenting Renaulution plan that we will implement a strict pricing discipline. I guess that the graph on the top right of the slide speaks for itself. And we will see in a minute how this impacts revenues, but last but not least, the mix of electrified vehicles continues to improve, supported by the success of our E-TECH offer. Of course, you can see a slight sequential decrease due to the seasonality, but the trend is clear and should continue to increase with the arrival of additional hybrids vehicle in our lineup. And this makes up -- confident to achieve the needed energy mix to meet the 2021 CAFE target. Let's have a look at the upcoming product in Q2. On the LCV side, we have the brand-new KANGOO van which -- that is offering unique features such as no B pillar on the street side and the new Express van for those looking for efficient and simple van. New Arkana, Renault first C-SUV coupe, has just been launched and will be completed with an electrified hybrid version before the end of the quarter. E-TECH hybrid offer will also be enriched by new version of CAPTUR and MEGANE. Let's now see the contribution of our different segments in the first quarter revenues compared to last year on Slide 11. As we can see, group revenues were down 1.1% in the quarter at EUR 10 billion. The Automotive division excluding AVTOVAZ revenues were almost flat at EUR 8.6 billion. And AVTOVAZ contribution was EUR 685 million, down 2.3%. Without the negative ForEx impact, revenues would have been up 21% in AVTOVAZ. The Mobility Services contribution amounted to EUR 5 million versus EUR 6 million in the first quarter of 2020. And RCI revenues decreased by 8.2%. Part of the impact is explained by the negative ForEx in Lat Am countries, and the rest is coming from the decline in dealership financing due to low level of inventories. I will now start the analysis with the review of the Automotive division revenues. On this slide, we show the contributions to the change in Automotive revenues, excluding AVTOVAZ, for the first quarter. Reading from left-hand side of the slide. The first item is volume impacting for minus 6.5 points. This impact is more negative than the change in the registration. As usual, this gap between registration change and volume impact stemmed from the change in the dealer stock, but part of this negative impact is neutralized by a positive one in the bucket others. The second item, geographic mix, impacted our revenue negatively by 1 point. This is explained mostly by the positive volume performance in India and Russia, which have a lower selling price than the group average. The product mix is positive 2.4 points, thanks to higher sales of electric cars and LCVs. The price effect is the strongest positive of the quarter with plus 6.3 points. It reflects our [ steady ] efforts to improve the quality of sales and the pricing of our vehicles as well as the compensation actions in emerging markets to mitigate the ForEx impact. The impact of sales to partner was negative at minus 1.5 points. While still negative, the speed of the decline is easing. The ForEx impact was negative 4.3 points. As usual, the strongest headwinds came from the Argentinian peso, the Brazilian real, the Russian ruble and the Turkish lira. The last item, others, represent the activities outside the new car business and restatements related to buyback commitments. It showed a significant positive contribution of 4.3 points coming from the inventories changes at our owned dealers and lower business with buyback commitment. If I turn to Slide 13. Global inventory stood at 487,000 units versus 661,000 units a year ago. The backward coverage that stood at 80 days is not really meaningful given the business environment, but it is worth noting that -- the absolute low level, which is down 26% compared to March 2020 and to March 2019. I will now comment RCI's commercial performance. The number of new contracts signed by RCI Bank on the first quarter decreased by 10.9%. Due to the delay between registration of cars and activation of financing contracts, the first lockdown in Q1 2020 did not impact financing activities as much as the auto activity, so the comparison basis between Q1 '20 and Q1 '21 is consequently not favorable to RCI. Logically, this has translated into new financing which decreased by 9.9% to EUR 4.2 billion. And average performing assets were down 6.9 points at EUR 45.9 billion. And this concludes my presentation and I am now ready to answer your question. I will now hand the call back to the conference operator. And thank you for your attention.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Thomas Besson from Kepler Cheuvreux.

It's Thomas at Kepler Cheuvreux. I have 3 quick questions, please. Firstly, I don't -- understand it's not an earnings call and you don't want to give a precise guidance, but can you give a qualitative comment around the seasonality of earnings? I think most of the headwinds you flag on the European lockdowns or the semi shortage are probably going to be worse in H1 than in H2. Is it reasonable therefore as well, knowing that your cost savings plan probably kicks in progressively, to anticipate a much better H2 than H1? The first question. And the second question, on the energy mix. You flag the seasonality as a large part of the relative decline in the electrified mix. Are you still comfortable, given the launch of the new Spring and other cars, to meet your 2021 CO2 commitments? And thirdly and lastly, a quick question on the inventory levels. Is it fair to anticipate that you intend to stay at lower level of inventories than in the past as a way to enhance as well your new pricing policy?

Thank you, Thomas, on your 3 question, yes. Well, I guess, on seasonality, we already said in February that there was very little visibility on H1, but we were a lot more confident on H2 for the region -- reason you underline. COVID should be more behind us, thanks to vaccines. We're hoping that semiconductor crisis would be behind us in H2 and that we would be able to recover. And you're right. The more times goes, the more ramp-up we have on the cost reduction. Some of these are still valid. Obviously, COVID, we all cross fingers that vaccine would ramp up and we would go back to normal life. Well, I guess it's taking longer than expected in some countries, but I think it is still a fair assumption that H2 will see a strong recovery in demand because COVID will be behind. Lockdown will be behind us, et cetera, et cetera. On the semiconductor, it's as I said. We have very low visibility. 2 months ago, we said that we think that the peak would be in Q2. We still believe this is the case, but we think that there will be lingering effect at least in Q3. It's not further, but we don't have much visibility. Today, the answers from our suppliers are clearly, how can I say, not going very far in terms of visibility. We're talking about weeks visibility, and even though they are changing by the day, as we said before, we're not taking month visibility at this stage. So we do all cross fingers. I think it's an industry topic that there will be some recovery in -- at least in Q4, but currently the visibility is very low for Q2 and even for the beginning of Q3. So let's cross finger that it will go better, but anyway, indeed the peak should be H1. And you should see a recovery, hopefully, in H2. On the cost reduction, actually we're going faster than what we had anticipated, as we mention in H1 -- sorry, in January, when -- and in February when we presented the result, so we are very confident that this is going to deliver faster than expected in the course of the year. One element, though, that you did not mention is raw material. The raw material spike is not behind us yet. In our view, the trend is not easing at all. And by the time you buy the material, by the time you stock it and by the time you process it and you sell the cars which have been produced with these raw material, you have a time lag. So unfortunately, this might be offsetting slightly, I think, the benefit of what we said before in H2, but all in all, yes, we do expect an H2 which will be a lot better than H1 in all circumstances. On your second question, which is linked to CAFE. We have no concern on CAFE. I think you saw our results in terms of sales of EVs and electrified vehicle. I mention in the commercial part of this presentation the very good success we have on the -- on these new cars. The percentage of electrified cars in order -- in the order book for CLIO, CAPTUR versus the other energy is very high. It's very, very high, so there is really a very good success of our new technology that we have put in the market, i.e., E-TECH. We have Twingo EV starting well. We have Spring coming. We have all these new electrified version coming throughout the year. So we really have the right lineup, I think, in order to be successful and reach our CAFE 2021, so we don't have any concern on this stage for the moment. And on your last question, on inventory, yes, you're fully right. As we mentioned already a few times, our view is really to lower on inventory to be by the rule that we have put in place since Luca's arrival to have more than 2 months of order book and less than 2 months of sales. Obviously, in the current context with the up and down due to COVID and semiconductor, we're not yet at the 2 months of sales, if you look at the end of March, but for me it's really linked to the situation. But you've seen that we reduced drastically our inventory in and out of the company versus last year; or even versus 2019, which in my view is more representative because, last year, end of March was obviously very weird situation. And we are above the 2 month of [ sales, order book ] in Europe for the Groupe Renault. So this is definitely a way to make sure that, first, we're able to answer faster our customer demand. And by doing so, we're also able to have a stricter price discipline and a stricter mix discipline also being more on a pull mode than on a push mode as we could have been sometime in the past. So those are -- I hope this answers your question, Thomas.

[ Yes ].

The next question comes from George Galliers from Goldman Sachs.

So I have 2 questions, if I may. The first one is just on the other line. It was obviously a strong contributor to revenue. As I understand, that includes parts and accessories sales, adjustments to buyback commitments and also some effect from stocking on owned dealers. Firstly, is that a correct understanding? And with respect to that, is it fair to say that, that line has a higher level of profitability than where the Automotive margin has been tracking in recent years? Then second question was just around the comment you made on the liquidity. You mentioned liquidity was more than 25% of the full year revenue, which if I take the consensus revenue of EUR 50 billion for this year would imply more than EUR 12.5 billion of liquidity. If I compare that to the year-end number of EUR 16 billion; and then also take into consideration the Daimler stake, which would take the liquidity to more than EUR 17 billion, it would potentially imply cash burn of more than EUR 4 billion during the quarter. Can you just provide some thoughts on that calculation and that thought process? Are we missing something around what your assumption is for the revenue for this year? Maybe some changes in the backup lines have impacted the liquidity, or maybe even more than 25% could actually be more than 30%.

Thank you for the questions. On others, there is a mixed bag of many things in there. If I take them -- but your assumption, your first comment is pretty correct. So I will go in a little more detail. In that box, you have, first, the dealer, everything which is linked to the -- our own dealer network. And here you have 2 elements. First, they also have recovered in terms of turnover versus last year, so they have -- so there is, first, a positive element on that one. And then they have drastically reduced their inventory level, which is a positive, and as I said in the presentation, it's offsetting a big portion of the negative gap that you had on the volume, right? So it's right pocket, left pocket, but even if you exclude that, it's a big improvement in the inventory dealer turnover. Second piece, which is important, is parts and accessory. In terms of parts and accessory, you're right. It's a high contribution. Dealer is not a high contribution on our bottom line, but parts and accessory is. Then you have the reduction of buyback, which also I think is a good news because it means that we are less in the segments which are less remunerative than the rest of the group. So globally it's a mixed bag of many things. What has more, a higher level of profitability in what I just mentioned is only the parts and accessory piece and the buyback piece. For the dealer, it's not necessarily relative as a profitability. On the liquidity, I said more than 25% because that is the target that we gave externally, but I said also "a lot more than 25%." So I'm not going to go in the details of your calculation, but please take as an assumption that the 25% is really lower than the reality. You're right. We have in the bank now the liquidity linked with the Daimler divestiture, but I don't think that doing a calculation and a simulation just based on the 25% is fair to make an assessment of our free cash flow for the first quarter and is fair to take an assumption as to what our turnover could be for the year. Clearly, usually the free cash flow is negative in the first quarter. That's usual situation in our company, but I will not comment much more on that situation. But I think your -- the result of your "back of the envelope" calculation are unfortunately not correct because of the fact that it is not 25%. It's far above 25.

The next question comes from José Asumendi from JPMorgan.

It's José from JPMorgan. Clotilde and Thierry, just 3 items, please. Clotilde, can you comment a little bit more on the pricing element [ thing ], which became very, very strong in the first quarter? Can you talk a little bit about maybe the dynamics between offsetting currency and enrichments? Do they remain maybe similar to the trend we saw in the second half of last year? Second question, sales to partners has been -- I mean I hear your comments completely that the speed of the negative trend is definitely decelerating. Can you maybe just help us understand a bit better the moving parts behind sales to partners? And when will this category sort of level out throughout the year? And then finally, third thing [ per element ], the software revolution. Can you talk a little bit about the agreements you've done there in the past months and what it means for the company?

Thank you, José. The -- on your question on pricing, we are very happy with the performance. I think there is a really complete change of mindset in the company on this and really trying to get the maximum of what we deserve in terms of pricing, a lot more discipline and a lot of work on the channel mix, many elements here. So some details for you: You're right. There is a portion of that, and I mentioned it in my speech, that is linked to the ForEx impact. Usually we say that we can -- we are able to pass-on between -- 2/3, 70% of the ForEx impact to our customers. We did continue on that trend, but the rest is clearly linked to our effort on passing-on, again, price increase and enrichment. And we've done a very good job, I think, in all these elements. So if you want to make a calculation, I would say let's take that half of it is linked to price increase and half of it is discipline and enrichment pricing. Just to give you an example of our attitude on the channel mix: In -- for example, in France and Italy we've done a very, very good job in the retail market, where we are, I think, in -- for the Renault Group, we're the first one in terms of market share in the retail market in France. So that's a first example. And the second example is Italy, where I think that almost 2/3 of our sales are in the retail market. So we are really very strong in terms of working on these topics, and I think it's paying off all the efforts. And this will continue because the enrichment is not going down, for regulation purposes. We have to price the new technology, EV hybrid. This has to be passed on to customers. And the elements I mention also just before on raw material is quite massive. And our intent, and I think it's true for the whole industry, is to offset that in the price to the customers. I have heard some of our competitors saying the exact same thing. We have to pass-on this cost increase to the customers. And if everybody is doing it, if the whole industry is doing it, I think it's going to be also obviously positive to ourselves. So that's the first point. On the sales to partner, the main impact in the first quarter were linked to the Rogue that we used to produce in Korea for Nissan North America. We still had some production of the Rogue in the first quarter, but this is really fading away now and should disappear in the future. So what is left in the sales to partner is still -- we still have some diesel sales, but this is also fading away. But then I think, throughout the year, you may have some ups and downs per quarter versus previous year because of the lockdown and the biggest impact we had last year, in Q2, but throughout the year, I think it should stabilize now, again with ups and downs, by the end of the year. So probably a positive in Q2 but then still a negative in the second half of the year on the turnover front. On the Software République. I think it's a very interesting concept that we have been able to build together with some pricing -- with some partners. I will mention them again. It is Atos, Dassault Systèmes, STMicroelectronics and Thales. And we're joining forces with some engineers of Renault, own engineers; and software engineers that we have in the group. And we're joined forces to create what we call the new open ecosystem for intelligent and sustainable mobility. We're going to be working together, putting a lot of engineers together in the same center in -- near Paris, in Guyancourt, in Renault's center, in order really to develop together what is necessary to enable these new needs that we have to develop softwares either for cybersecurity, either for cleaner mobility; for example, working on what we call the plug-in charge technology in order to allow better charging ability for customers. They're also working on devices and softwares and platforms in order to provide elements for simulation of mobility to cities. There are many areas where we're joining forces in order to be able to compete with, first, our own competitors, but also to tech providers throughout the world. So for me it's a very interesting concept where we should be able to gain more traction and [ multiply -- demultiply ], I will say, our ability in the software area. Is that answering your questions?

That's very helpful.

The next question comes from Charles Coldicott from Redburn.

I just wanted to come back to the semiconductor shortage again and just ask if you had a number for units lost of production so far this year; and maybe, despite the low visibility, your best guess for Q2 or just even directionally whether or not it's less of an impact than it was in Q1. I think you've previously said 100,000 units that you expected to lose for the year as a whole. And maybe also thinking ahead, have you been prioritizing profitable models? And if so, is there an offsetting product mix headwind to come as you start to produce and deliver the less-profitable cars? And then my second question was just going to be on the restructuring program; and whether or not you can give us an update on how many workers in France have, so far, agreed to voluntary redundancy; and whether or not you've had to increase the offer as, I think, is being reported in the press.

Yes, thank you for the question. So on the [ EZ ] crisis, it's very difficult to answer your questions for many reasons. First, I think -- before looking at production, if we look at sales and registration, I think we haven't seen yet any major impact on our sales number due to this [ EZ ] crisis. That's the first element. On production, it's very difficult to give you a number because, yes, our production has reduced. This is public, but it's not only linked to the [ EZ ] crisis. If you look at the market first -- because actually production is a mix between what we need versus the demand and the market and our policy in terms of inventory management, right? And you -- and on the market side, you saw that the market is slightly better than last year but only slightly better, but it's still in -- if you just look at Europe, it's still 23%, I think, lower than Q1 2019. And if you look at some countries like Spain, like U.K., it's more than 35%, 39%, depending on the case, lower than Q1 2019. So first, we have to take that into account. The market is not booming, for sure. And we have to take that into account. Even though our order book, as I already mentioned, are pretty good, they're pretty good in a market which is a lot lower than 2019. So that's the first element impacting our production level. Second element impacting our production level, we have changed our policy in terms of inventory, as I mentioned. We want to reduce the inventory. We have drastically reduced our inventory in terms of when I compare to last year's same period or even 2019 same period. So those 2 elements have an impact on our production [ field ], but then true: We -- because of the [ EZ ] crisis, we do estimate that we have lowered our production by some tens of thousands versus what we would have liked to produce in the first quarter. So that's the number I can give you, but I won't give you any numbers and firstly, as I told you, for Q2 and for the full year because of the lack of visibility that we have. We're only starting to have feedback from our suppliers on a detailed basis, component by component that we have to allocate by car, of the impact of the Renesas fire that took place a month ago. So you see the time it takes to get visibility from the supplier due to the complexity of the number of component that are used in a car, different car by car, and things like that. So that's a reason why the visibility is extremely difficult to have, and if I don't have it, it's then impossible to give it to you, But then to answer your question: Obviously what we're trying to do, and that's the difficulty of all -- this all situation, is then once we have the visibility, we're trying to find intelligent way to prioritize the cars with the higher margin, for sure. That's exactly what we're doing, together with having some type of an intelligent planning for plants because you're not going to stop 1 day or restart one shift and stop one shift. So we have to make something which is manageable at the production site level while protecting obviously our most profitable cars, and that's exactly what we're doing. And so that's what is in process. Hopefully, as I said before, during the course of the year, it's going to be better, but clearly Q2 is not in our -- is going to be, in our view, the biggest hit in terms of production for the whole year. And hopefully, Q3, Q4 is going to be a -- better. On restructuring, well, it's true that the current voluntary departure plan did not find all the success that we wanted when we launched it in December, but I guess it's understandable in view of the current situation out there. So it is public. It has been public that indeed we have enhanced the, how can I say in English, the condition of the plan a few weeks ago in order to boost the program, but this is not the only program that we have in order to reduce our staff in France. And by the way, we're not only doing it in France, as you know. We're doing it globally and worldwide, and the situation is not the same in every country. We also have for France early departure, early retirement and elements like that. And when you take all in all the different measures that we have in plan, in place, we're not concerned about the success, at the end of the day, of our global cost reduction plan, as I have mentioned that we are very comfortable with the speed at which we're going globally for the cost reduction plan. And we're quite confident that we're going to be able to reach the target a lot faster than anticipated and potentially by the end of this year instead of by the end of next year. So globally this is an element which is indeed complicated, but nevertheless, globally both for the staff reduction and for the cost reduction plan is going well ahead of plan.

The next question comes from Stephen Reitman from Societe Generale.

On pricing. Obviously it's good to see the positive impact you've seen on revenues. I think that's a theme that we're seeing from a lot of auto companies, even pre releases for the first quarter or from last year as well. And where do you think you are in terms of still from the ideal level of inventories to ensure dealer discipline? Do you think you can do further on pricing? And my second question is also on electric cars. Obviously there's been a big drop in ZOE, a big push obviously last year, so there might be some inventory shortages, I suppose, in the first quarter. And -- but if I add ZOE and the Twingo Z.E., I'm still down about 16% against the first quarter of last year. Where do you think ZOE is going to end 2021?

Thank you, Stephen. On pricing, as I said, the -- we're -- we believe that there is still some room to improve and the discipline is getting there. Between Luca on the Renault side and Denis Le Vot on the Dacia side, there is a lot of improvement going, a lot of motivation going to the team; and the discipline is quite improving. And there are other reason why I believe it's going to continue. First, the lineup renewal is continuing, and that is going to help us. Second, the new technologies coming in, EV, hybrid. Our comeback to the C segment in the future is going to -- also going to help. As I mentioned before, we're not the only one increasing pricing. The whole industry is increasing pricing because of raw material, because of regulation, because of many other elements, so in our view, we're going to continue to push on pricing. And I think the lower inventory, the lack of demand, the focus on the most profitable car, the focus on channel mix is -- everything is going to help. So in my view, pricing is going to continue to go up in the coming quarters in line with what we have announced in January for the Renaulution plan. On your second element, on ZOE, Twingo and all these cars, yes, it's true that Q1 is slightly lower than last year, but it's not a concern, in my view. First, we knew competition was coming. We're not the only one on the market, so it's not a big surprise to us. Twingo is just starting. It's going very well for us in view of our belief for that very small and nice car. Altogether, we believe that, EV plus PHEV, we were at 10% of our sales last year. We target between 10% and 15% and we are very confident we will get there. We are very confident to reach like last year for ZOE, roughly 100,000 cars for the year or close to that in the coming years. So yes, it's starting a little slow maybe, but in our view -- and we also lack components for the future. So everything is -- altogether looking [ in that ], I am -- I have no concern about ZOE, its success and Twingo's success. And then we have Spring coming, so in our view, this is going to make it, no problem.

The last question comes from Tim Rokossa from Deutsche Bank.

It's Tim from Deutsche Bank. I'd like to follow up on basically the same questions that Stephen just raised because I think it's key to understand that. When we think about the pricing element, I think it's great that you show us this chart. No one else was willing to do that, but I think it will be a pretty similar profile for the majority of other guys for whom it is not an incremental part of the strategy, to improve pricing. So how much of this achievement really do you think you've achieved because you changed your strategy? And how much was just generally the improved market pricing environment? And then secondly, when we think about this question also, when we look at the chart, obviously it seems to sort of be very strong on a level where we are right now, [ ever ] from Q3 onwards last year. Is this something that you expect to fade as a tailwind, at least in your revenue bridge from Q3 this year onwards? Or was your comment that you still expect that you can go a little bit higher by referring to that as well? And when we think about EVs, really just trying to understand what you meant by seasonality, I think every carmaker will sell less EVs or has sold less EVs in Q1 versus Q4. So that's a natural tendency because we had the VAT cut stops in Germany. We had a couple of incentives that changed. Is that really something that we would expect to see seasonally going forward, in your view, or was it just perhaps a bit misphrased? Because you referred to the strong change from Q1 over Q4.

I'm not sure I got your second question. Could you tell me again?

You referred to this dip in electric sales in your mix as seasonal, yes. I'm not quite sure...

No, that's the third one. The second one is the one I -- sorry. The second one, I didn't get. I got the first one, on pricing; and the last one, on EV, but there was one in the middle and I'm not sure I got it.

When we think about the pricing element, the first one is obviously how much of that is your own strategy. And then the second element is, when we look at the chart, it seems to level off from like Q3 onwards and remain on a very solid level. Can we expect that the momentum that you're seeing in your revenue which -- will fade from Q3 onwards? Or will that still remain an incremental improvement?

Well, on the pricing, well, yes, other competitors are also improving, but I think we have still -- there's a lot which is linked to our own situation with -- when we look at the comparison, what we call the transaction price value added versus competitors, we're gaining position. So it's not only ourselves versus ourselves. It's also ourselves versus competition, first, in terms of absolute pricing for a given car, what we call the transaction price value added. It's we're doing better. We're gaining position. Second, on the channel mix, we're gaining position on retail, as I mentioned. So in my view, there is a big portion which is due to ourselves. Obviously, on the 6.3, you have a portion which is FX, okay? Remove that, but all the rest is, in our view, really linked to our own discipline more than on the market. The market, I think, is improving by 1 point. If you say that, 6.3, half is FX, half is our own performance, you still have at least 2 to 3 points which are better than the market. On the second one, we're going to -- you're right. The pricing has drastically improved since Q3 last year, but there is no reason why we don't continue, in our view. We don't expect a dip in our effort in the coming quarters. So that's all I can say on that one. And on EV, is there any seasonality? Well, I guess, as long as suppliers -- sorry, OEMs have difficulties -- and I'm not talking about Renault. I'm talking about every OEM -- to reach the CAFE target. You may see some seasonality in Q4, but beside that there is no specific reason to have any specific seasonality, except indeed when government decide to change the rule in terms of incentive. So beside changing the rule in incentive and some OEMs doing some things maybe to reach the CAFE on Q4 or in 2020, '21 or whenever, I don't see any specific reason to have seasonality on EV sales.

Okay, so I think that we have reached the end of this call. And as I said at the beginning, if you have further question, feel free to contact us during the day. Have a very good day. Bye for now.

Bye all.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.