Renault SA (RNO) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being with us this morning for the third quarter '21 conference call webcast live and in -- available in replay version on our website. As usual, the presentation file and press release for this call are available in the Finance section of our website. 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. And I invite all participants to read this. Clotilde Delbos, Deputy CEO and CFO, will make a 10-minute presentation followed by a Q&A session. If we don't have the time to take everyone's question in this session, the IR team will be around to take your calls later. Clotilde, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Thierry, and good morning, everybody. This quarter, again, the hot topic has been the chips availability, which has been worse than anticipated. On top of the existing tensions on the supply chain in H1 came the lockdown in Malaysia, which added a layer of disruption to the supply chain. This led to a more severe chip shortage than the one we were anticipating at the end of H1. We estimate that we have lost about 170,000 units in the quarter on top of the more than 200,000 units already lost in H1. The visibility for Q4 remains very poor as the information we get from our supplier is, to say the least, very unreliable. Our best guess for the full year is now a loss close to 0.5 million units. Despite this context, our recently launched products are encountering a strong success, leading to a record level order book, especially for Sandero, Arkana and LCVs. To mitigate the negative impact of the chip shortage, we have continued and even accentuated our proactive policy regarding cost-cutting and the commercial discipline. Even if, as I often remind you, quarterly reports are not about results, I can tell you that our cost-cutting activities have been amplified, and we have no doubt about the -- that the EUR 2 billion savings should be achieved in a few weeks. We have also continued our commercial policy aiming at maximizing the value of our sales and prioritized our allocation in function of models and markets profitability. Despite lower devaluation in emerging countries and a high comparison base, we have been able to continue to post price increases and to show a positive impact of 2.9 points on the revenues. These actions are clearly the drivers allowing us to confirm today the guidance for the group's operating margin and to target a positive operational Automotive free cash flow before working capital development for the year. It is unusual for us to give you a free cash flow target before working capital, but I'm sure you would understand that in the context of extremely weak visibility for chips availability for the last quarter, working capital swings are quite unpredictable. This concludes my opening remark. Let me now give you some comments on our commercial performance. We registered 600,000 units in the quarter, a 22.3% decrease over last year. This fall is largely due to the chip shortage that have limited our production and, therefore, our sales. Sales in Europe and Eurasia have been particularly hit by the production issue, while the other region resisted better. Renault brand sold 366,000 vehicles, a decrease of 24%, reflecting the shortage of components and also the willingness to favor profitability over volume in a context of decreasing demand for our C segment legacy products. Dacia did much better with the decrease limited to 11.2% at 138,000 units. This is the result of the success of the Sandero, which has been prioritized in terms of chip allocation at the expense of other models of the group. Lada sales were down 27% due mostly to the lack of production in Q3 after a relatively good resistance in H1. Before moving to the revenue figures, I would like to make a few comments about the success of our recently launched models. Arkana is doing much better than initially expected with more than 41,000 units ordered since March, and I think it's fair to say that it is quite a big success. After the huge success of New Sandero, the Duster Phase 2 is also enjoying a strong start that confirms that this vehicle has no real competitors. Last but not least, we are particularly pleased by the warm reception of Dacia Spring, which is the most affordable BEV in the European market. Finally, I would like to stress the strong demand for our LCVs, for which we have an order book representing almost 4 months of sales. As you know, since the presentation of Renaulution, we have put a strong focus on our pricing and on the quality of our sales. You can see from the charts on the right-hand side the price impact on our revenue development. It is on a 4-quarters moving average basis. We show the global impact but also the one adjusted for the ForEx compensation using the rule of thumb of 70% of the FX impact, and I think this chart speaks for itself. At the bottom right of the slide, you see the steady progression of our electrified business in Europe, which is at almost 20%. On the back of this achievement, we can confirm that we are on track to reach our CAFE target at the end of the year. We have adjusted our market forecast for the full year in the light of the latest development of the chip shortage. For the European market, we anticipate a flat volume when our previous estimate were at plus 10%. We cut our forecast for Eurasia from plus 10% last to 5% now, while for LatAm, we stand at plus 10% versus plus 15% previously. And as I said in my opening remark, we confirm our guidance for the group's operating margin and target a positive Auto free cash flow before the impact of working capital. You can see on Slide 9 the change in the third quarter revenues compared to last year. Group revenues decreased 13.4% to EUR 9 billion in the quarter. At constant exchange rates and parameter, the decrease would have been 14%. The contribution from the Automotive division, excluding AVTOVAZ, decreased 14.1% to EUR 7.7 billion. AVTOVAZ contribution was down 19% at EUR 0.5 billion in the quarter with a positive impact of the ruble. At constant exchange rates and parameter, revenues would have been down 23.9%. The contribution from sales financing was flat compared to last year at EUR 0.8 billion. And I will now begin the revenue of the Automotive division on Slide 10. From left-hand side, the first item, currency, is positive by 0.3 points this quarter with Brazilian real, British pound and Russian ruble turning positive. The second bucket is the market impact on our volume development, which impacted negatively by 7.6 points as a consequence of the chip shortage worse in Q3 than in H1. The next one, the group's performance in terms of volume development, has a negative impact of EUR 1.1 billion. The chip shortage has prevented us to fully benefit from the success of new models, and we have suffered from lower demand on our aging product. It is also the consequence of our strict commercial discipline. We are indeed refocusing the Renault brand business on the retail channel. In Europe, for instance, we have gained 6 points in the quarter in this channel compared to the precrisis level of Q3 2019. Geographic mix is negative by 1.4 points, impacted by a lower drop in our sales in our international markets, where the average price is lower than in Europe. The product mix effect, positive by 1.6 points in the quarter, is reflecting the success of Arkana and the good performance of our LCV sales. The price effect was positive by 2.9 points. On the one hand, the proportion of price effect related to currency compensation was lower this quarter compared to the previous quarters. And on the other hand, the comparison basis is becoming each quarter more challenging. In addition, we have had the negative impact of the chip shortage on the enrichment invoiced to customer. Nevertheless, price are still improving as we continue to implement our deliberate, more ambitious pricing policy. The sales to partner item was negative 1.2 points in the quarter. This came mainly from lower sales of diesel engines to Nissan and Daimler in the context of the chip shortage. The last item, others, impacted positively for 3.7 points. The bulk of this is due to the impact of the retreatment of sales with buyback commitment, which were significantly lower than in Q3 2020. I remind you that last year, the seasonality of the business with short-term rental car companies was skewed towards Q3 due to COVID when the strong season is usually Q2. It also reflects our willingness to favor retail business. Regarding RCI. In terms of activity during the quarter, average performing assets stood at EUR 44.4 billion, down 3.2 points. It is clear that the financing activities have been impacted by the lack of cars due to the chip shortage. This is illustrated by the number of new retail and fleet contracts underwritten by RCI Bank, which has decreased by 24.1% versus the same period in 2020. But the amount of new financing decreased only by 15.5% at EUR 4.3 billion, thanks to a higher average amount per contract. Finally, our stocks went down in the quarter to 340,000 cars at the end of September, where we were at 427,000 at the end of June 2021. As you can find -- as you can see from the slide, the decrease came from the independent dealer inventories. But even if the group's inventory shows an increase, this is mostly coming from unfinished cars due to the lack of chips and to the ones being in the logistic pipe. I think it is worth noting that the order book is at a 15 years' record high level and stand at 2.8 months of sales when we are targeting 2 months in average. This concludes my presentation, and I'm now available to take your questions.

Thank you, Clotilde. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. So I think the first question is from Horst Schneider from Bank of America.

Sorry. Can you hear me?

Yes. Horst, we can hear you.

All right. Excellent. The first question that I have relates again to the shortage, not that much to semiconductor shortage, also shortage to other materials. If you see any shortage, for example, on magnesium, aluminum, is that included also in your production guidance? And then when it comes to costs, of course, the main concern is that you cannot pass it on via pricing. So I think consensus also expected for Q3 a higher price impact. So I mean, you reiterate the full year margin guidance. I think that's a great sign. But especially looking into next year, you think you can pass on the rising raw mat costs with higher prices?

Thank you, Horst. On other material, so far, what we see is mostly price increase, not that much shortage for the moment. And hence, that we have no specific shortage in our guidance because as I'm saying, we haven't seen that yet, except where it's more tense is freight and container availability but not necessarily raw material at this point of time. So that's for the first part of the question. On the cost and the pass-through, we have done quite a lot even if it doesn't show because we used to -- you have now already used to a huge number regarding price increases. But we have continued to increase prices. Obviously, we don't benefit this quarter from the price increase in emerging markets because there was less movement on the exchange rate. But everything else that we had started in the past, version mix, allocation to cars with the most demand, the most profitability and also the electrified cars, we're going to continue. And if we regard further down to 2022, same thing, it's going to continue. We also expect competition to continue to increase prices because everybody is facing the same difficulties in terms of energy price, in terms of raw material, in terms of enrichment of the cars in order to electrify them to comply with regulation in terms of safety and emission. So our view is that the market trend is going to be to continue to increase prices. Now I don't believe that we're going to be able to pass on the 100%, that for sure. And that's the reason why we are continuing to put pressure on our own efficiency, be it on the fixed cost. As you have seen, I mentioned that we're going to -- continuing reducing fixed cost but also on the efficiency of our own operation in terms of cost reduction. So we believe it's going to continue to increase in the following year, not sufficient to cover the whole thing, hence, all the efforts on what we have in our hand, i.e., productivity.

Can you give any anecdotes that you have increased list prices recently? I remember Volkswagen said they raised prices globally by something like 4% in October. Can you give us a similar anecdote maybe?

Well, we don't look at it globally. Within Renault, we look at it model by model. I know that the Dacia car have increased again their prices. Same with Renault, we continue to increase prices where we can. But specific anecdote is difficult to say. LCV, also quite a lot. Arkana, in view of the success, is also being increased in their prices. So all of -- everywhere we can, we do it.

So the next question will be from José Asumendi.

[indiscernible]

José, we cannot hear you. The line is not good.

[indiscernible] cash flow, capital...

José, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, the line is really bad. It's not possible to understand what you are saying.

Can you hear me now?

Yes. It's better.

Can you hear me now? Okay. Clotilde and Thierry, just 3 questions, please. The first one, Clotilde, can you come back again to the free cash flow, especially, I think, in the light of the 500,000 units of disruption? When you look at the business, what do you think is moving in the right direction to confirm again the guidance and specify that free cash flow, excluding working capital, is going to be positive for the year? That will be the first one. Second, can you confirm or indicate or at least in guidance in terms of the restructuring cash outflow second half versus the first half? Are we expecting a higher restructuring cash outflow in the second half versus the first half? And then three, you mentioned you're upping the cost-cutting plan. Can you give us any details, please, in terms of announcements for 2022?

Okay, José. So on the free cash flow, what make us comfortable that we're going to be able to reach the free cash flow, positive free cash flow for the year, excluding working capital, well, several things. First, as I mentioned, our fixed cost reduction is going ahead of plan. We're almost there. We're going to be there in a few weeks in terms of the EUR 2 billion that we announced for the end of '22. Again, it's going to be reached this year by the end of 2021. Pricing is going up. Every type of cost which is under control, where we're going to be -- is moving in the right direction. So already in the first half, you saw that the EBITDA was covering the investment. So it's going to continue. That's the intent. Plus remember, we got the EUR 1 billion from RCI. That's going to help, and that's the link to your second question, cover restructuring costs, financial and taxes. So that is our assumption, sufficient margin to cover investment and the restructuring covered by the RCI dividend. Even though it's not an earning call, I'm going to mention that we expect H2 restructuring to be slightly above H1 but again will be covered, but slightly, and will be covered by the RCI dividend. On the cost-cutting plan, remember what we said during the Renaulution plan. We said EUR 2 billion by 2020 to EUR 2.5 billion by 2023 and EUR 3 billion by 2025. As we're going faster on the first step, the intent is to go faster on the second step. Now whatever is going to be 2022 will be announced in due time, but our intent is indeed clearly to continue to go a lot faster than what we had in place, first, because the momentum is there. We're pushing, yes. But also, new ideas are coming every day on the table. And second, because, again, it was the lack of volume due to chip shortage. And everybody knows that is not going to stop on December 31. It's going to linger in 2022. I think it's good management to continue to curb your fixed cost in order to make sure that you have a lower breakeven point. So that's the strategy we announced, and we're following it by the letter and even faster, as I said already. Pretty proud of what the team is achieving actually because it's a big effort, but it's coming in very good. Remember also that during this cost reduction, there is a lot of variable -- what we used to -- we did call variabilization, i.e., reviewing the parameter of our internal dealer and footprint in some geographies. And this thing is progressing well also.

Next question from Thomas Besson.

I have a couple of questions, please. On free cash flow still, Clotilde, can you just help us what kind of CapEx you plan to spend? I assume it might be down versus the initial expectations given the volume constraints. And can you also confirm that the free cash flow you indicate in the guidance includes the RCI dividend? So that would be the first question. And the second is a bit more commercial. You've talked about a record order intake in Europe, which I think is great. Can you talk a bit about the content of that order intake? Is that essentially focused on the new models? And can you talk about BEV volumes for this year and next and the timing of new models, whether it's impacted or not by the semi shortage? Is it -- should we think maybe that the MEGANE is eventually more in Q2 than Q1 or Q3 than Q2, I don't know? Or can you keep the same time line, the one you had expected, before these various constraints?

Okay. On CapEx, first, on CapEx and R&D, I want to remind everyone that all the effort we're doing is not at the expense of the lineup. We're not postponing any car. We're not -- yes, we're not postponing any car. Everything that has been decided and announced during the Renaulution plan is on track and is moving forward. Now to -- on the CapEx specifically, obviously, yes, it's going further down than expected. That's part of the fact that we're going faster on the R&D and CapEx target. We expect it to be -- we said -- yes, it's going to be lower than EUR 2 billion for the first -- for the second -- for the full year. So I think it's all I can say for the moment. RCI dividend indeed is included, and that's what I said before to José that basically, what we see is that investment are going to be covered by EBITDA. And because of the big amount of our restructuring, this is going to be covered by RCI. RCI dividend has always been including in the free cash flow since the beginning of our announcement on free cash flow. So it's in. Now on commercial, yes, it's a record order intake. I think most of it is on the new model. And as we mentioned, for example, today, if you want a Sandero, you have almost 6 months' waiting time to get the Sandero. So it's a huge success. You also -- as we already mentioned, there is a big waiting list on Arkana. There is a big waiting list on LCVs. So those are the cars which are the most in demand. So that's what we are working on. Also, Duster Phase 2, as I mentioned already, is working pretty well, and we are very happy actually about that. It's true that our more legacy, as I mentioned in the speech, our more legacy cars are in less demand, let's put it that way. On the timing of the cars to come next year, the biggest one obviously is MEGANE E, which will arrive in the first half. And then in the second half, we should have the new Kadjar coming in. Those are the 2 main elements for next year. On the volume of BEV, I'm not sure we gave a global volume indication. It's -- and by the way, the question is on BEV pure or is it on BEV plus electrified?

Yes. It was on BEV pure, Clotilde. And also, the question on the delay was not linked with your decision to delay anything but more on the impact of semi product may actually lead to...

Yes. Sorry, I missed that part. Yes. On the delay, which would be linked to semiconductors, no, we don't expect any delay because everything we receive, we favor and we enter the launch of the new volume. When we make the allocation of whatever chips we have, we really -- as I said several time in the past, we do favor higher-profitability, higher-demand BE electrified cars. And I forgot to mention, you're right that we do protect the launch of the new cars. So every time that we need some chips in the new cars in order to make the test, the homologation, et cetera, et cetera, we favor that. And we're going to ensure that we don't delay the launch of the cars next year for many reason but also because we expect MEGANE E to be a big success. So we want to protect it because when we see the reaction of the presentation of this car in Munich and since then in test drive, in presentation to a lot of corporates and people, the reaction is extremely good. So there would be no reason for us to make -- to put in danger the launch of this car. In the volume of BEV, we're in line with what we had in mind. That's the reason why we are quite comfortable in terms of confirming the CAFE achievement. ZOE, despite the fact that it's still an old car, it's already an old car compared to competition, we did have more than 8,000 orders in September. So it does show you that it's quite going well despite the fact that there is a lot of new competition in the market. It's still going very well. Twingo has a good performance. And as I mentioned also, the welcoming of Spring is very good. So that's the reason why we're very comfortable. And now in terms of electrified, maybe I could say a word, too. We're very positively surprised by the high percentage of electrified vehicle in some of our car lineup. For example, Arkana, if my memory is not -- is correct, it's almost 2/3 for Arkana in terms of HEV. And for the rest, for CLIO and the others in terms of electrified version, it's a 1/3. So it's quite very good in terms of version mix, if I may say, between electrified and ICE car in the cars, which have the various technology available.

Thank you. So we will move on to the next question. George, the floor is yours.

I just wanted to follow up a little bit on some of the facts that have already been raised. The first one is, obviously, in light of the much bigger semiconductor impact, which is out of your control, you have reconfirmed the guide. But is it fair to say that the second half looks less strong to you today than what you had anticipated for the second half back in July? And can you magnify the scale of the impact on the earnings as a consequence of the semiconductor shortages? And then the second question was around the free cash flow. Obviously, it is good to hear you will be free cash flow positive ex working capital. But for the first half, I calculate you were at EUR 340 million positive ex working capital. You've also received the RCI dividend. So in theory, that statement could be true even if you were to burn close to EUR 1.2 billion ex working capital in the second half. Now I know that's the maths. Is it fair to say that, that's not what you are foreseeing at this point in time?

Okay. Thanks for the question. On the first one, yes, obviously, when we announced the -- when the H1 results at the end of July, we had as an assumption that we would lose around 200,000 full year, which is what we had already lost plus or minus in H1. Now we announced something close to 0.5 million. So obviously, we do see an impact, and you just have to multiply by average turnover per car the amount of cars that we're going to miss. So you're going to have whatever we do an impact on the turnover. There is -- that's mechanical. That's mathematical. So obviously, we are comfortable in terms of confirming the guidance because of all the rest we're doing in terms of cost reduction and things like that. But obviously, you know me, I'm always on the conservative side. And by nature, I have less room of maneuver today than I used to have in the month of July, right? I mean, that's quite obvious. You lose quite a lot of cars. Even though we optimized the revenue, even though we reduced the costs further, there is less room of maneuver by nature. So that's for the first question. But you know me also. If I do confirm the guidance, it's because I'm comfortable we're going to make it, right? Maybe less comfortable, but I'm comfortable, clearly confirming that. Now in terms of free cash flow, I'm not going to do the math. I'll let you do the math. But obviously, if you have less turnover, less margin, you have less EBITDA. But as we said, we confirm that the EBITDA is going to be sufficient in order for us to have a free cash flow, which covers -- which is positive. So basically, we have a little more restructuring, a little less of this, a little less of that and the RCI dividend. But globally, the equation takes into account the fact that we're going to lose potentially up to 300,000 cars more than what we had in mind 6 months ago. That's for sure.

The next question will come from Dorothee Cresswell.

Thierry, can you hear me?

Yes. We can hear you, Dorothee.

Perfect. Really just a housekeeping one. I wondered whether you could give us any help with how much cost headwind we should expect from raw materials and obviously also freight and energy for the second half of 2021 and then looking into 2022, assuming that the pricing doesn't change from here on?

Well, may I remind you, it's not an earning call. So by the way, we gave some indication at the end of H1 of the cost headwind. Well, we don't change it. I think in our view, there is -- despite what we see on the market, because of the time lag before it hits the P&L, there is no reason to change any indication on the cost headwind for the second half. And for 2022, I guess we're going to have to wait a little more because we're in the process of negotiating some contracts, long-term agreements, et cetera, et cetera. So I think it's too early to provide a vision on the 2022 cost impact before we have the final view of the balance of everything.

Next question from Pierre-Yves Quemener.

Pierre-Yves with Stifel. I would have 2 questions, if I may. Just a quick comment from the production lines. If you take the situation on the semis from a mid-October perspective, are there any signs or evidence of things improving versus what you had, let's say, early September? That would be the first question.

Well, yes, there are. You know that actually, the surprise that made us review the guidance in terms of semiconductor impact, which we didn't have at the end of July as an information, is the big impact of COVID in Malaysia, which puts the country into lockdown for quite a few weeks during the summer and this -- again disrupted the supply chain in terms of semiconductor. This is now over. The plants are back turning, and that is the reason why we believe that this 5-week lockdown being over, we should go back to more normal grounds. You have the normal 2 months' lag between what happened in Malaysia and what comes to your plant. So that's why the strongest hit months were September and October, and we do plan on having less constraints in terms of November, December. That's for the moment the visibility, for what it's worth, that we have.

Okay. So if I understand you correctly, November should be the make-or-break month to really gauge if things have improved in your production lines, right?

Yes.

Okay. And just a quick one. On the bridge, on the famous other effect, which is a positive tailwind of 3.7 points in the quarter, I totally appreciate that it's not an earnings call. But usually, that driver, is it earnings neutral? Is it earnings positive? Or what can we say about that revenue drivers filtering through the bottom line?

Well, it's -- it depends what is in. In this case, this month, it's most -- this quarter, sorry, it's mostly buyback retreatment. And there is no reason why this would not be a positive impact also on the bottom line.

So is there anyone who would like to raise a question? Because I have seen no one on my list. So it looks like there is nobody in the list. So in this case, we would close the call now. And we will leave you, for those being in Italy, to enjoy your stay there. So thank you very much for being there with us this morning. And if you have further questions, feel free to call us whenever you want, today or next week. Enjoy your day. Bye.