Volvo Car AB (publ.) (VOLCARB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to this live webcast on Volvo Cars' headquarters in Gothenburg. This will focus on the sustainability of Volvo Cars. This is the second year we have this event, and we really appreciate your interest in our operations and our sustainability work. The agenda will be as follows. First, we start with some welcoming remarks from our President and CEO, Jim Rowan. After Jim, Vanessa Butani, Head of Global Sustainability, will give an introduction to the sustainability at Volvo Cars. Following Vanessa, we will then go through each of the pillars: climate action, circular economy and responsible business. Within each of these, we will discuss both our strategy and the performance in '24, plus a topic highlight per pillar. Towards the end, our CFO, Johan Ekdahl, will discuss sustainability finance and how we progress towards our ambitions for green debt and sustainability-linked financing. Before we close this event, we will also have an open Q&A and expect to end just after 11 a.m. [Operator Instructions]. But with that, let me give the word to our President and CEO, Jim Rowan. Please, Jim?

Super. Thanks, John, and welcome, everyone. Good morning to this year's sustainability update from Volvo Cars, to you, our investment community. As you know, sustainability is integrated through our business, our purpose and our ambitions as a company. It's the right thing to do for our planet, for our communities and for the future competitiveness of our business. At the same time, these are challenging times for our company and for the automotive industry as a whole. Market demand is under pressure. We face tariffs and other regulatory challenges, and geopolitical turbulence shows little sign of abating. Under such circumstances, it may be tempting to retreat to what you know. It may be tempting to pull the plug on significant investments in electrification and decarbonization to stick with the technologies that have served the industry for a long time. Tempting, but wrong. At Volvo Cars, our gaze remains firmly on the electric future and a more sustainable future. There will be some choppy waters along the way. The old ahead will be bumpy at times, and some geographies will move faster than others, yet the end goal remains the same. Our long-term ambition is to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040 remains unchanged and electrification at scale remains a key fight against climate change. Transportation accounts for 16% of global CO2 emissions and scaling EV production alongside clean energy infrastructure is our biggest lever to decarbonization. According to the UN, electrification and moving away from internal combustion engine is the single most impactful action the automotive industry can take to address these emissions. We agree, and we stand ready to do our part. Now of course, where we move towards electrification to unlock our business value, we must do so in a balanced way to meet the market and the speed the market changes at. EV demand is still growing and growing faster than the overall market, but not as fast as we expected only a few years ago. As you know, last year, we slightly altered our short-term ambitions with regards to electrification and CO2 reduction to reflect these changing market conditions, that meant that some tweaks to our ambitions for 2025 and 2030. However, the overall direction of travel is unchanged and the electrification and CO2 reduction investors remain industry leading for us as a company. And we are still very much committed to becoming a fully electric carmaker. As and when the market is ready, we'll be ready for our customers. In 2024, almost half of the electric cars sold had a plug, either fully electric or a plug-in hybrid, making us a clear leader amongst legacy car manufacturers. Plug-in hybrid models are an important technology towards full electrification and a great bridge towards that end. Our own data shows that around half of the kilometers driven by plug-in hybrid cars are done on fully electric power. They truly are part-time cars, and we continue to grow the customer base of our fully electric cars at the same time. Our fully electric cars' share stood at 23% in 2024, which was the highest among all of our legacy premium car manufacturers, and it demonstrates that we are a leader in this transition. Critically, we did all of this while reporting gross margins of 19.8%, proving that you can move decisively and profitably towards full electrification. And that brings me to my next point. Because sustainability and business growth are not mutually exclusive, on the contrary, decarbonization is not about degrowth, it's about redefining growth to include long-term sustainability and resilience. It creates opportunity, innovation, investment and new markets. For consumers, electrification offers significant cost benefits over the lifetime, with lower maintenance, fewer parts to service and greater energy efficiency. And we all know that EVs are around 90% more energy efficient than combustion engines, which waste 80% of that energy in fuel, vibration and heat. At Volvo Cars, we see firsthand that sustainability is a key decision [ factor ] for customers, especially in the younger generations. We see clear proof points and our electric cars, for example, the popular new EX30 attracts new younger customers and new groups to allow us this share -- to gain market share. Being an early mover in electrical business has brought us business and financial benefits as well as a positive impact on climate footprint and for the environment. And of course, electrification alone is not enough. To truly make an impact and achieve our 2040 goals, we need to work across all of our operations to reduce these emissions. Companies must transform their entire supply chains to become more sustainable by working with suppliers, adopting circular economy principles and localizing the production, where possible. So at Volvo Cars, we invest in decarbonization or manufacturing improvement, for example, switching to clean energy, adopting advanced energy management technologies and building where we sell. We work constantly with suppliers and logistical partners to reduce CO2 emissions from materials across our entire value chain. And we embrace circularity by integrating recycled and natural materials into our cars and constantly at exploring new opportunities in this area. In short, we are integrating sustainability into the daily operations and the decision-making of our company. Now finally, let me talk briefly about policy, which has become a hot button at the moment. My main ask for any policymaker is regulatory predictability. Business needs a clear, stable framework to plan and execute transformative investments. We need to stay the course on science-based decarbonized targets, like the EU 2035 ban on ICE vehicles. This is also imperative to securing the EU's position as a global leader in the space. Backtracking on this pivotal milestone would address decades of progress and set us back generations in terms of technological developments. And in that context, it is deeply, deeply disappointing that the European Commission has recently proposed to water down its demand on carmakers for the CO2 reductions in the coming years. These European CO2 targets were set several years ago, giving our industry the necessary time and predictability and the mechanisms to prepare. And at Volvo Cars, we made those needed investments to be ready for 2025. To delay now at the last moment sends a very wrong signal. Companies that invested and did their homework are now being punished, while those who have not have been rewarded. Companies that have done what was needed should not be disadvantaged by last-minute changes to existing legislation. It's wrong and it's simply unfair. What this does is to undermine the strength of the obvious benefits of the commission's carbon credit system. Carbon credits are a way to meet decarbonization profitably, act as a revenue and growth generator, enabling us and others to reinvest in next-generation technologies. But because of the recent ascensions made by the commission, we will lose those expected revenues for carbon credits in '25, revenues that can no longer be reinvested in new sustainable technologies. So I implore the European Parliament and the European Council to reject these self-defeating proposals and stay true to the course on CO2 reduction. Staying the course is essential for fostering the technology need to restart the economic growth and ensure that Europe remains competitive in an increasingly electrified global market. Let us not keep kicking the can down the road. It's not good for the European competitiveness and it's certainly not good for the planet. At the same time, we've also seen a slower-than-expected progress on charging infrastructure. We've seen the withdrawal of government incentives in some markets, and there are added uncertainties resulting from the new tariffs on EVs in many key regions. This highlights the need for stronger and more consistent policies to support electrification. Governments must harmonize regulations across regions to avoid a patchwork approach that simply can choose its customers and complicates business operations. Global institutes, meanwhile, can play a key part in facilitating alignment on decarbonization. They can help set new standards in areas such as carbon pricing, battery passports and infrastructure benchmarks to ensure consistency and scalability across borders. So our main message is this, ambitious and predictable climate policies drive innovation, drives investment and economic growth. And at Volvo Cars, we see firsthand that what's good for the planet is also good for the business. Our results over the past years have demonstrated that. And we continue -- but we cannot continue to do it alone. Let's make sure that clear science-based policies are not just obligatory, but they are also seen as an opportunity. And with that, let's bring in our Head of Sustainability, Vanessa Butani, for a more detailed run-through of our sustainability strategy. Vanessa, over to you.

Thanks, Jim. As Jim mentioned, electrification is a growth opportunity. That's good for business. It's also good for the planet. And as you've heard, electrification is the single most impactful climate solution the car industry can adopt. The benefits of technological advancement aren't only limited to its users, they ripple across both our value chain and society at large. So now, we further integrated sustainability in our business strategy. The integration of the business strategy means that sustainability conversations are happening across company departments and are an integrated part of our decision-making and governance, as well as our product development process. In my role as Head of Global Sustainability, I'm part of the global management team helping to drive the company's strategy. So as you can hear, sustainability is not just one department at Volvo Cars, it's company-wide. With the world's current triple planetary crisis: climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss, it's simply not enough to just focus on CO2 emissions. Nature supports all life on Earth and it's our greatest ally in the fight against climate change. At Volvo Cars, we have a long track record of working with reducing our CO2 emissions, and we've made great progress so far. But our sustainability strategy is wider, and we are taking a holistic approach. Going beyond CO2 is essential because of the interplay between these priorities when making the trade-offs and risks addressing all 3 pillars of our strategy. Now let me share some of our recent success and steps forward in the last year. We see strong demand for the EX30, which has the lowest carbon footprint of any fully electric Volvo car to date. Our flagship model, the EX90, features 50% -- 15% recycled content, a battery passport and a driver understanding safety system that was named one of Time Magazine's Best Inventions of 2024. And the recently launched ES90 is much more than simply an electric vehicle with zero tailpipe emissions, it represents Volvo Cars' work towards enhancing our sustainability credentials throughout the supply chain, looking beyond electrification to include climate action, circular economy and responsible business conduct. We ended the production of diesel engine cars in April last year. We launched the world's first electric vehicle battery passport using blockchain technology to record the origins of raw materials, components, recycled content and the carbon footprint for EX90. We have signed an agreement with our partner, SSAB, for recycled and near-zero emission steel. It will be used in selected components on our upcoming cars based on our next-generation SPA3 platform. We are the first automotive company to publish our corporate biodiversity footprint. We have successfully addressed 92% of the corrective measures that we agreed upon with our suppliers for improvement. And our proactive safety risk management efforts resulted in the lowest ever injury rate, the LTCR, for Volvo cars to date. But don't just take my words for our progress, we had strong ESG rating results as well and most of our results improved compared to 2023. CDP for climate with an A, water and forest, EcoVadis and MSCI, just to mention a few. We were also ranked by Time Magazine as one of the World's Most Sustainable Companies in 2024. While our reduction work is a core activity for us, we also have our philanthropic fund, the Volvo for Life Fund, launched last year, with the ambition to positively impact a million lives over time by supporting initiatives in the communities in which we operate. Through the fund, we support projects that empower people, restore and preserve our planet and provide protection when natural disasters strike. The partners to the fund include Save the Children, The Nature Conservancy, Girls Who Code, SaveLIFE Foundation India and Childhood Sweden. Okay. Let's dive into our sustainability strategy that will continue to drive our sustainability leadership towards our vision of being the pioneer in the protection of people and planet. Our strategy is based on the 3 pillars: climate action, circular economy and responsible business. And this is exactly what we mean when we say sustainability beyond CO2 emissions. So let me introduce Jonas. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Vanessa. So let me start by walking through our climate strategy. Volvo Cars aim to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. We have set a number of short and midterm ambitions to help us guide towards these long-term ambitions. So by 2025, we aim to reduce CO2 emissions by 30% to 35% per average car. By 2030, we have adjusted the strategy with the ambition to reduce CO2 emissions by 65% to 75% per average car. And by 2040, we aim to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by -- meaning a reduction of 90% to 95% per car. To reach this, we are working across 3 areas. The first pillar is to transform to pure electrification. We aim for 90% to 100% of global sales volumes by 2030 to consist of electrified cars, meaning a mix of both fully electric and plug-in hybrid models. So in essence, all cars with a cord. The second pillar is to minimize emissions from materials. Here, we focus on switching to low and near-zero emission materials, with a specific focus on steel, aluminum and batteries. And these 3 areas represent approximately 80% of our CO2 footprint from materials. And the third pillar is to minimize operational emissions. Emissions from operations, for example, manufacturing sites, offices, logistics, et cetera, currently represent approximately 5% of our global CO2 footprint. We focus on climate-neutral energy, we work with retailers and increase our energy efficiency. Our previous climate strategy launched in 2019 was approved by Science-based Target Initiative to be aligned with the Paris Agreement. Our updated strategy is not yet reviewed, but with this increased ambition, our intent is, of course, to stay aligned with the climate science. And since the release of the sustainability strategy in 2019, we have made good progress in reducing our CO2 emissions. In 2024, we reached a 26% CO2 reduction per car versus our 2018 baseline. This is strongly connected to our continued push to electrify, where we have already reached a 46% share of electrified vehicles. And reducing tailpipe emissions is key, but we are also working on reducing emissions from all other areas. 78% of our company operations are now powered by climate-neutral energy compared to 55% in 2019. Out of this, we have 100% climate-neutral electricity across our manufacturing plants globally compared to 80% in 2019. And this is well in line with our plan to reach 100% climate-neutral energy across our global operations by 2025. Another important priority is to reduce CO2 emissions for materials. In 2024, we reported a 21% increase per average vehicle in comparison with our 2018 baseline. But let me stay here for a while to explain why these emissions are still increasing because this is important. Firstly, electric vehicles are off to a challenging start with added batteries and increased share of aluminum compared with those powered by internal combustion engines. We are taking several actions to reduce material emissions from -- for all cars produced by directing our suppliers to use low-emission aluminum as well as reducing the carbon footprint of the batteries to shifting to climate-neutral energy sources. Our CO2 calculations are based on a rigid methodology. So unless we can show accurate and supplier-specific substantiation on a detailed level, we use conservative estimates and generic data. The collection of those substantiating documents is ongoing, and we expect to report a positive impact on our emissions from materials by the end of this year. The improved capability is also important to comply with existing and upcoming green claims legislation. The operational emissions per average vehicle have so far decreased by 24% compared to 2018. And finally, let's mention the progress towards our science-based targets. Already in 2023, we achieved one of our 2030 SBTi targets. And last year, we reduced emissions from scope 1 and 2 by 74% compared to our 60% target. Progress towards our remaining SBTi Scope 3 target, to reduce emissions from use of sold products by 52% per vehicle kilometer by 2030 compared to 2019, was at 26%. So as already emphasized, electrification is key. An electric car is the single most important step that the automotive industry can take to reduce its climate impact. But we know, also, it is not enough. So as I mentioned earlier, we must reduce emissions from the ingoing materials in the car. And reducing these emissions is a design problem. It's an engineering problem and a challenge relating to assessing the right materials at the right cost. It is a data problem, and it is a collaboration problem. It is complex for sure, but it's not complicated in itself, but do require deep integration of sustainability into the business decisions of the company. So 1 year ago, I stood in this call talking about our ongoing effort to implement a steering model. And today, I want to exemplify how we're applying it in our product development and what we expect to get out of it. So when we launched our ES90 2 weeks ago, we teased our next full electric vehicle, the Volvo EX60. This is the first model which will come to market, where we have been part of pushing the climate agenda all the way from the first drawing board, and I'm super excited about this. So let's start by talking about how to design for sustainability. Developing a car is about finding the right balance. From the first early sketch, the car project aims to deliver on a number of many different value propositions. But finding the right balance between them is an art, and the car project is also to deliver upon the right cost level. Most of the CO2 emissions of a car are embedded in the platform, engineered several years ahead of when the first car built on the platform is launched. And reaching the sustainability performance is highly dependent on taking the right decisions at the right time. For the EX60, this car was, in its early days, given the most challenging CO2 target that we had ever given to a car project. This while also being requested to deliver on all other value propositions as well as the expected cost level. By breaking down the problem, sharing a single source of truth of data across the company when it comes to emission data and connecting the sustainability operating model to our existing cost model, we're utilizing every designer and every engineer in the problem solving. And through a combination of taking strategic bets, acting on low-hanging fruits as well as taking smart choices, the EX60 has integrated sustainability throughout its development in a fascinating way. So let's move into sourcing for sustainability. Our procurement department is, through our improved way of working, also being given the power of sustainability. By informing our buyers of both the expected cost and CO2 level, and the expected breakdown of cost and CO2 over the value chain, we create a much stronger starting point for discussions with our suppliers through problem solving and negotiations. On the EX60, we're applying this process to source components aligned with our set sustainability targets at the right cost level. The final contracts are eventually having both cost and sustainability performance side by side, allowing us to verify the data, substantiate claims and take cost-efficient CO2 decisions. Now having sustainability performance in the supplier contract also allows us for a much stronger foundation for doing sustainability communication. Instead of only having global average emissions for our CO2 calculations, the signed contract allows us to get supplier-specific data, a key enabler to be used when making sustainability claims on our products. And with the tough green claims legislation coming up, these contracted levels are essential for us when backing up any communication on the sustainability performance of our cars, starting with the upcoming EX60. Thank you. Let me hand over to Owain.

Thank you, Jonas. So we'll move on to the middle pillar. This is where we aim towards becoming a circular business by 2040. At Volvo Cars, embracing the circular economy has been a focus since the very beginning through waste prevention, material efficiency and designing and building durable products. This was accelerated in 2019 when we launched our previous sustainability strategy. And at its core, it has 3 pillars: reduce the use of primary materials due to their negative impact on the planet, the connected water use and energy use. And we're making positive steps to replace primary material with recycled material and new recycled cars, as you've heard. And the EX90, which Vanessa also talked about, yes, has 15% recycled content. Our second pillar is about minimizing primary resource use by adding -- avoiding freshwater use and increasing overall efficiency. Sorry, this first pillar. We aim to use 30% average recycled content across our fleet by 2030. And for new car models released in 2030, to have 35% recycled content. Our second pillar is focusing on eliminating waste and pollution by preventing it, redirecting outputs to high-value circular loops and tackling biodiversity impact. We're striving to do that by 2030 with 99% of all waste either being reused, recycled. And of that 99%, we're at 94% already. Moreover, we need to view our waste differently. By changing management processes and infrastructure, we can consider the waste as a valuable resource, and I'll come on to that in a bit as well. The final pillar here is about growing circular business by generating more circular revenue to support the decoupling of revenue and primary resources. Our 2025 ambition is to aim for SEK 1 billion generated from circular initiatives, and we'll talk about that in a minute as well. And this is primarily achieved by better sorting of scrap, developing businesses within remanufacturing and reuse of spare parts and batteries. Underpinning this is our continued work on biodiversity, which we recognize as an area that's going to grow in importance. I'll now go on to a couple of headlines for 2024. The EX90 was launched last year, and it has 15% recycled and bio-based content. And you can already see that, this year, we've launched the EX90 with 17%. So we are heading in the right direction. On the second column here, we've increased recycling and high-value waste trading loops to 94% through continued sorting and separation, but also we are far more active in the trading of scrap that is generated. And I'll talk about that a little bit more as well. The total quantity of water was lower in 2024, but per vehicle was higher because of the lower production volumes. Our biodiversity impact has risen a little, but we are working hard to strengthen our methodology, develop our approach to tackling the impact and building that into cars coming out in the future. And many of the climate improvements that Jonas has talked about, like moving to BEVs and increasing recycled content will also have positive benefits for biodiversity. It is worth talking about circular business because the revenue was lower last year, and it's mainly down to 3 reasons. The quantity of waste generated reduced because our actual efficiency improved in the stamping process. That's a good thing. The EX30 is being produced by Geely, which meant that we didn't have the scrap to trade. And actually, the cost of scrap in the last 12 months has been lower. So those are the 3 primary reasons why. And as we near the target date for this ambition, we look to improve the method and approach to working with this, so we can actually drive better circular business moving towards 2030. Next slide, I'll talk about a deep dive into closing materials loops, which is going to be an increasingly important topic. Recycled content is crucial for achieving our climate, biodiversity and circularity goals. As you can see in the graphic on the top right, most cases, the recycled material represents the lowest environmental impact and it should be lower cost. But we are not alone in realizing this. If we look to the future, we can see the demand for scrap is going to increase, and you can see that in the bottom graphic there. And we expect that, that is going to be because of the lower cost, the ability to achieve sustainability goals and reach regulatory requirements. But due to the finite supply, we need to act to access this material as scrap is -- and our scrap that's from stamping is an important asset to develop new working relationships with our supply base and develop the visibility of recycled content flows. I'm very pleased to say that we've established closed loop for steel and aluminum in the EU and China. And this has accounted for over 100,000 tons of material. And we continue to look for new opportunities to establish resilient and efficient circular loops moving forward. Thank you. Next, I'm going to hand over to Ida.

Thank you, Owain. Volvo Cars aim to protect and improve people's lives in our value chain and wider society. We focus on ensuring employee well-being, safeguarding human rights and contributing to sustainable society. Within ensuring employee well-being, our focus is to secure equality, protect our people and educate and encourage sustainable behavior. Volvo Cars aim to continuously increase women and senior leadership as we know diversity drives innovation and productivity. We aim to ensure a year-over-year improvement up until 2025. And by 2030, we aim to have 34% women in senior leadership positions. We are committed to an inclusive and diverse culture and workplace regardless of individual attributes, such as gender, ethnicity or age. We are continuously working on ensuring a culture focusing on inclusion and belonging, and we aim to score plus 1 compared to global benchmark in 2025 and plus 3 by 2030. Gender pay equity is based on the principle of equal pay for equal work, and we aim for a fair and equitable pay for all our employees and have an ambition to achieve gender pay equity by 2027. Volvo Cars aim for world-class safety not only within and around our cars, but also for our employees. Our current LTCR, lost time case rate, the unit we use for measuring this, is already industry-leading, and we aim to further reduce it. Our next pillar is about safeguarding human rights to ensure responsible business conduct throughout the full value chain. And we are working hard to help safeguard human rights through a risk-based due diligence process to identify, prevent and mitigate human rights risks in our full value chain. The tone from the top is important to drive the right behavior, and we conduct responsible business trainings for leaders, and we have strengthened our compliance training for all our employees focusing on this. We work towards a year-over-year improvement in number of assessed sites in our value chain. We have internal targets on a number of assessments upstream, in our own operation and downstream, but the main challenges are found upstream. All directly contracted suppliers, Tier 1, must pass through our basic due diligence program, a broad assessment of their compliance with our Code of Conduct for Business Partners. But for suppliers that we categorize as higher risk, a basic due diligence is not enough, and we need to go wider and deeper and perform an enhanced due diligence, including, for example, on-site audits. Our final pillar in the responsible business strategy is to contribute to sustainable society to collaborate with stakeholders, invest sustainably and support the most vulnerable in society. As Vanessa mentioned, in 2024, we launched the philanthropic Volvo for Life Fund. Our CFO, Johan Ekdahl, will soon give more information about our focus on the EU taxonomy alignment as well as our ambition linked to green debt and sustainability-linked financing later in the session. Now let's look at what we achieved in 2024 linked to these ambitions. We are now just about 31% senior female leaders. For reference, women currently hold less than 10% of executive roles in the automotive industry and just 25% in the tech industry. We are working towards increasing women in senior leadership in key roles through, for example, accountability at business level connected to a remuneration program. We work with advancement and succession planning, focusing on a diverse succession pipeline. We're continuing our global mentoring program. And we have launched a training in inclusive hiring practices. We always aim to pay for skill and competence. And in 2024, we launched a global architecture, mapping all our positions into a job structure that enables comparison of equal roles, and our analysis shows a global gap of 1.5%. This structure will support career growth and together with global pay principles, we ensure fair and transparent pay adjustment, and our job is not done until we have fully closed this gap. Our inclusion index is currently at 77, meaning plus 1 compared to global benchmark. We use a data-driven methodology based on our employee survey to track and benchmark employees' perception of inclusion and feeling of belonging. Examples of activities that we are taking to improve this score are trainings and awareness building events to foster a culture where everyone feels encouraged and safe to speak up. And we have piloted inclusion workshops for leaders in one of our plants. In 2024, 97 high-risk sites in our value chain were assessed on responsible business conduct, 43 audits of directly contracted suppliers, 25 audits of new directly contracted suppliers located in high-risk countries, 28 audits in the battery supply chain and 1 full people policy assessment, this year on our local factory in Malaysia. And 2024 was the safest year for our employees with the fewest accidents in the workplace in Volvo Cars history. We further decreased the injury rate of our employees to 0.05. Now let's look into the actions we are taking to ensure that our employees are safe and leading so that we are ranked amongst the best in the industry. Our aim is that every employee experience a high level of well-being and safety, and that no employees shall get injured, sick or unwell from working at Volvo Cars. Our safety strategy is built on a proactive and systematic way of working as well as a safety-first attitude. A main driver is to implement -- is to identify and implement safety improvements. Each risk identified and reported is an opportunity to prevent an accident. And since 2013, we have identified and implemented almost 650,000 safety improvements. And since then, we have drastically reduced accidents leading to injuries with absence. In 2024 alone, we identified and implemented over 88,500 safety improvements, which is actually more than 2 per employee, resulting in an all-time high in safety improvements and an all-time low in injuries. And as you can see in the graphs, there is a clear correlation between the 2. When a successful way of working is identified, we ensure that, that best practice is shared and implemented in all our sites globally. We have a global standard for working with safety, including that manufacturing stations are built up in the same way on every site, and we use the same system for risk and incident reporting. And to be successful in this area, it's all about our people's work with removing risks before an accident happened. Employee engagement is key, and we provide safety introduction programs for all employees as part of onboarding. We put high attention on the tone from the top, and we train our leaders to set a very high standard and walk the talk. But safety also includes mental well-being, and we are ramping up our work in this area. For example, a survey screening the mental well-being of our employees, and flagging when there's a risk and offering help and coaching. All of these actions are important building blocks, resulting in a safety culture and safety being incorporated in our DNA. Thank you. And with that, I will hand over to Johan to talk us through sustainable finance.

Thank you, Ida. When it comes to sustainable finance, we at Volvo Cars plan to continue to offer sustainable financing and investment opportunities to investors in the future. We aim to, where feasible, transfer all outstanding debt into green or sustainability-linked funding by 2025, and diversify the source of external debt. We have issued bonds linked to the green financing framework since the initial launch in 2020 and updated in 2023, but we also entered into bilateral and multilateral credit facilities referencing the green financing framework. Not all our facilities are referred to as green by our lending counterparties, but are, in fact, solely financing eligible projects in accordance to the green financing framework. Our framework has been reviewed by CICERO Shades of Green, now part of S&P Global, an independent research-based assessment company of green finance framework. Our updated framework received the highest possible rating, dark green, as did our first version in 2020. Included in the overall rating is an assessment of Volvo Car Group's governance, structure and processes, which are rated as excellent. A few updates from the year. During '24, in January, we increased an existing facility with the European Investment Bank by EUR 170 million, which is a part of a EUR 420 million loan agreement with the EIB. The investments will cover research and development, software development and implementing the next-generation manufacturing technologies for fully electric vehicles. And in April, we raised EUR 500 million through our fourth green bond issuance. The proceeds from those will be used to support our electrification program, including research and development of platform technologies, powertrains and manufacturing processes. In December, revolving credit facilities of EUR 1.5 billion with a 5-year tenure and EUR 500 million with a 3-year tenure was signed. The 2 new facilities align with our sustainability strategy by linking the interest rate margins to Volvo Cars' progress in reducing the carbon emissions across the value chain. The facilities also incorporate a performance indicator on reduction of water consumptions aligning with our circular economy ambitions. And so by the end of 2024, the share of green debt or sustainability-linked financing of assets eligible under the green financing framework accounted for more than 75% of our outstanding debt, tracking well towards our '25 ambitions of to have approximately 100% of green debt or sustainability-linked financing of assets. During 2023, we decided on our ambition for future taxonomy CapEx alignment, which is 50% for '25 and 70% for 2030 via these commitments to Do No Significant Harm to any of the other environmental objectives, such as climate change adaptation, sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources, transition to a circular economy, pollution prevention and control, and protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems, as well as ensuring we comply with the minimum safeguards, including adequate human rights due diligence, tax, governance, fair competition and anticorruption. Increasing part of our investments will be in products and manufacturing facilities to produce these products that will be aligned with the taxonomy. These ambition levels of aligned CapEx reflect just that, that more and more of our investments can be seen as sustainable as per the taxonomy. Regarding the other 2 taxonomy KPIs, it can be worth mentioning that the operating expenditure increase will follow the CapEx, and the turnover of revenue will be visible once we start to sell the products that we now put aligned CapEx to. In 2024, the CapEx alignment was 23% and OpEx 8%. And the main reason for the improvement year-over-year is that with the recent launches of the EX90 and ES90, an increasing level of our investments now are focused towards our next-generation platforms and cars. And since cars on SPA2 and beyond, we have committed to align with the taxonomy criteria and the proportion of aligned CapEx has increased year-over-year. We continue on the conservative approach in our interpretation of the Do No Significant Harm, or DNSH, criteria for pollution prevention relating to the manufacturing of our vehicles, particularly as it's related to the suitable alternative technologies and substances. For this reason, we have stated that no current vehicles meet the criteria for DNSH to pollution prevention, which i.e., that taxonomy turnover alignment is 0%, as we recognize the significant work involved for current vehicles to be aligned. So with that, thank you, and I'll leave back to John for the Q&A.

Thank you very much, and thank you, all the presenters. We now move into Q&A. [Operator Instructions] And we have a few questions coming in so far. So we'll kick it off here. The first one says, it looks like you are not on track to meet many of your sustainability targets even after the adjustments have been made in September, why is that? And what targets are currently at risk? Vanessa, start that one.

Thank you. Sure. So we made the strategic adjustment to our targets last year because we saw that we needed to adapt to where we are with the market, and that keeps us competitive from a consumer perspective as well as to drive the economic value in our business. We also have seen, since then, continued political turbulence, reduction of incentives, changes in the regulations in terms of the CO2 credits and many things that are not helping to drive the electrification that we see the world so badly needs. This includes the build-out of infrastructure across Europe and across the world. But we are on track to meet many of our targets, and we are taking a very holistic approach to sustainability, right? So as we said, we have the 3 pillars of climate action, circular economy and biodiversity and responsible business, and we're well on our way with many of those actions to reach our targets.

Okay. Next one relates to our suppliers. So how do you work with your partners and suppliers to meet your responsible sourcing objectives, specifically within human rights? Ida?

Each of our suppliers, their employees and their subcontractors across all tiers must adhere to our Code of Conduct for Business Partners or similar principles, and these includes requirements on human rights and working conditions. As I mentioned, we work with a risk-based due diligence process to identify, prevent and mitigate human rights risks, including both the basic and enhanced due diligence programs. Also, back in 2022, we established a cross-functional team focusing on strengthening our due diligence programs and our due diligence efforts.

Thank you. Then we have another question on materials. Can you elaborate on the emission from materials? Ambition is a 25% reduction, but in 2024, you have continued to increase those emissions by 21%. So will you ever reach your ambitions? Jonas?

It's a good question. So let me start by sort of connecting it to the overall complete vehicle target. Because the main focus is, of course, to reduce emissions, and we are doing good progress to reduce the complete vehicle emission per average car. But if we talk about the material emissions, as I mentioned earlier, this is highly connected to what decisions we can at different points in time. We are acting very actively to take the right decisions to reduce emissions materials on future cars. But at the same time, we're also acting to reduce emissions on cars that were engineered and designed many years ago, but of course, they are still being produced. So therefore, we are trying to reduce emissions as well, but it requires a bit of a different lever. The sort of main material emission categories are still steel and aluminum and batteries, and therefore, we're working differently based on those. But it do require this sort of rigid data model, the data governance and the substantiation for us to do a claim. Because in the end of the day, we want to do the right thing and be able to prove it, and that's what we're trying to do. We're still acting along that way and collecting the substantiation to be able to report on this with a more positive outcome during 2025.

Thank you, Jonas. [Operator Instructions] We have a couple of more questions. One is on the circular business. I think you touched upon this, Owain. But why has the additional circular business revenue gone down significantly year-over-year?

Yes. Well, I think that we've seen slight fluctuations over the years with some growth in between. But the last year was predominantly based on the fact that the quantity of scrap that was generated was actually lower. So on the other hand of generating less revenue, we actually created less scrap. So that's actually a good thing from a sustainability perspective. And also the price of the scrap was slightly lower and the EX30 was developed and produced by Geely. So therefore, we didn't get that scrap to trade. That said, there was also the state of Volvo on Demand, that we're going to wind up, which is the right decision for the company. But from a circular revenue perspective, that's an impact. But all of these things, I think, lead into the way that moving forward now, we are looking at how better we can produce a sort of direction of travel towards 2030 that really incentivizes the company to expand our cost saving and revenues that are circular and drive the right behavior in the company. I think we're dealing with some of the learning curves of an ambition that we set as a pioneer in the industry in 2018.

Thank you, Owain. And then the last question that has come in. Why has the share of recycled and bio-based materials in new models gone down in '24?

Yes. I think this is really based on when we launched the EX90. So actually, if you look at the trajectory of the recycled content levels, it was 15 and then 17, and we're towards 17 with the ES90. The EX90 came out a little bit later than we were expecting. So actually, if it had come out when originally planned and we started the design process, like Jonas was talking about, then it would have actually been in line with our sort of increasing recycled content goals and direction of travel.

It's not always a straight line, right? It's a bumpy road, and we move along. But the important thing for us is to make progress all the time, right? It's not perfection. We continue to make progress. We continue to take steps forward, as I think you see with our recent models that we've released.

Thank you. It appears to be no further questions at this point in time. So I think with that, we thank all the presenters, and thank you very much for the interest, for watching this online. And if there's anything that you want to sort of clarify or further questions, just reach out to us at the IR team and we'll be happy to get back to you. So with that, we wish you a nice day, and thanks again for watching. Thank you.