Auto1 Group (Xetra:AG1) Q1 2026 Earnings Call

0:00 Hello, good afternoon, and good morning or good evening to our international participants. Welcome to the Auto1 Group First Quarter twenty twenty six's presentation. I'm Philip Roy Castorfa, Group Treasurer. I'm joined today as Augusta Christian Berterman, our Co Founder and CEO as well as Christian Valentine, our new CFO on his first full earnings call. We will start with the presentation followed by a questions and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please raise it via the usual Zoom Q and A tool at the bottom of your screen. We will then call on you to ask your question directly after the presentation. Also, as a quick reminder, before we start, our AGM portal will open our our IR web page this Friday, 05/15/2026, and you can submit your votes.

0:46 If you or your governance teams have questions or comments on any agenda points, please feel free to contact Maria or myself. Before I hand over, I must make you aware of the safe harbor provisions at the beginning of the presentation here. These will apply to any forward looking statements made by management today. And now over to you, Christian. Hi, everyone. Thank you, Philip. Welcome to the Auto1 Group first quarter twenty six earnings call. Q1 was a record quarter. We sold 249,000 group units across the retail and merchant segment, a new company record,

1:25 growing 22% year on year. Total gross profit reached also a new high of €289,000,000 up 22% year on year. We achieved adjusted EBITDA of €60,000,000 for the quarter. This is €2,000,000 more than in Q1 of last year and €15,000,000 more quarter on quarter. Group GPU was slightly up year on year, a result of the higher Auto Hero unit share. The results overall are a testament to our value first strategy, the excellent work of our teams and the structural advantages of our vertically integrated business model. In Q1, we realized operating leverage from the investments into additional capacity executed in Q4.

2:15 Primarily driven by higher utilization for the newly added capacity, total OpEx per unit reduced by €82 quarter on quarter to €923 the best OpEx per unit value we have realized for the last four quarters. Together with a slightly increased group GPU, we also reached the best adjusted EBITDA per unit of the last four quarters with €241 Against the background of our strongly scaling retail business, which traditionally carries bigger absolute OpEx per unit than merchant, this is a particularly strong outcome. Let's dive into the Merchant segment's performance. We made excellent progress in our Merchant business in the first quarter.

3:03 We sold record 216,000 units to our partner dealers, crossing the 200,000 quarterly units sold mark in Merchant for the first time. This is an increase of 19% year on year. Merchant gross profit grew to $2.00 €7,000,000 up 15% year on year. GPU was €957 for the quarter, a slight reduction of around 3% compared with Q1 €25 a result of the already discussed severe weather impact in January. Our network of active buying partners across Europe grew to 36,200 partners. This is 6,800 more compared to Q1 of last year and an increase of 23%. Our merchant offering continues to be in strong demand, driven by the superior value of our selection paired with highly attractive financing options.

3:57 The average quarterly basket slightly reduced year on year as we currently prioritize dealer market share over basket development. Auto1 merchant financing continues to be an important growth driver for us. In Q1, we financed a total of €330,000,000 of merchant sales. This is an increase of 22% compared to previous year. The number of units financed grew by 19% year on year to 35,800 units in Q1. Our portfolio balance grew from two fifty eight million euros in Q1 of last year to a new high of €322,000,000 this year. This is an increase of 25% compared to Q1 last year. We are continuing the rollout of our financing products to additional markets and partners with Italy next in line and expected to launch in Q2.

4:54 Let's switch to retail. Taking a look back since launching Auto Hero in 2020, we have seen remarkable growth across the business for both units sold and gross profit. In parallel, we have realized constantly improving unit economics. We are really excited about the long term opportunity in AutoEuro changing the way people buy and finance cars. Driven by the advantages of our unique, vertically integrated business model, we will be offering an even bigger, high quality selection of used cars at great prices, paired with the most convenient customer journey in the used car market. Many of these structural advantages have started to kick in over the last couple of quarters, but we're barely scratching the surface at the moment when we compare with their long term potential at critical mass.

5:47 In Q1, Auto Hero's growth rate surged to 48% year on year, delivering 32,500 units, a new quarterly record. Retail gross profit reached €82,000,000 a 47% increase year on year. Retail GPU was €2,555 for the first quarter. We are pleased to see that we can maintain a stable retail GPU year on year while we accelerate our growth rates further to a new high. While we're focused on scaling quickly right now, we remain fully committed to growing retail GPU over the long term. Aided brand awareness reached 35 across all markets at the end of Q1, up nine percentage points year on year and two points higher than at the end of 2025.

6:41 We're currently launching brand ambassador campaigns with well known public personalities in Germany, France, Italy and Spain to ensure even more customers discover the highly differentiated and exceptional Auto Hero customer experience. We also see a major opportunity to accelerate Auto Hero's growth by leveraging our established B2B purchasing brands and setting the stage for an integrated trusted customer journey. That's why we're introducing Buy Auto Hero co branding and branches that now serves as purchasing drop off and retail pickup locations.

7:19 With this approach, we are able to deliver a seamless trade in experience, bringing together the best of both worlds for our selling and buying customers. At the end of Q1, we had 82 co branded locations and 77 AutoEurope pickup locations across Europe.

7:37 Let's close with a look at our long term goals. By leveraging our proprietary pricing technology, our unmatched physical infrastructure and our outstanding trading capabilities, we continue to create the best products and solutions in the industry. Our products deliver outstanding value for our merchant partners and consumers alike as we offer them better prices, lower cost, more choice, greater convenience, highly motivated staff, increased trust, fast delivery and competitive financing. All of those elements together create the superiority of our vertically integrated business model, the engine behind our growth and profitability track record. We accelerated our market share growth, reaching a record 3.1% market share in Europe at the end of twenty twenty five, which was a 50 basis point increase and a key step towards our 10% long term target.

8:33 We increased our adjusted EBITDA margin to 2.5% in Q1, a 40 basis point increase compared to Q4 of twenty five. We continue to be thrilled by the immense long term opportunity in both merchant and retail, given the €700,000,000,000 size of the European used car market. In other news, five years after our IPO, we will host our first capital markets event on Wednesday, June 17 at three p. M. Central European Time, which is nine a. M. Eastern Time. We invite you to join us for a live webcast in which we will present historic segment financials and lay out long term targets for both our merchant and retail businesses. We're excited to provide you with a deeper understanding of each segment, and we very much look forward to welcoming you. The registration link to the event will be available in the IR section of our Auto1 Group website right after this call.

9:28 With that, let me hand over to Christian for a detailed financial update. Thank you, Christian, and hi, everyone. Q1 was a record quarter. Group sales and gross profit grew by 22%, adjusted EBITDA was at CHF60 million, up CHF50 million over Q4. We grew merchant units with 19% and we had record growth in retail units of 48%. We believe that this is a testament to our strong customer offering driving strong growth throughout both our segments. In Q1, we drove greater operational efficiency compared to Q4. We achieved 17 quarter over quarter growth in adjusted EBITDA per unit. We did this by increasing payroll utilization and also managing per unit marketing investments.

10:18 These results highlight the operating leverage as we grow the business going forward. Our strong unit sales and operating leverage drove Q1 results with adjusted EBITDA growth of 32% compared with Q4. We grew gross profit by roughly EUR33 million in the quarter. As discussed in February's Q4 call, severe weather in January temporarily lowered merchant GPU by 3% for the quarter.

10:46 As Kristian noted, we prioritized retail unit growth during the quarter to reach critical mass faster in the business while sustaining our retail GPU. Operationally, we increased utilization and actively managed core OpEx, reducing the per unit marketing investment versus Q4 substantially as we kept absolute marketing spend stable. Finally, higher unit volumes drove up internal logistics, while increased payroll reflects ongoing investments in key growth areas. Our balance sheet and cash position remain very strong. We ended the quarter with CHF652 million in total cash, an increase of CHF48 million from year end and zero corporate debt.

11:32 We had inventory stable over the quarter. This highlights our faster trading speeds as we successfully grew in sales. On the financing side, capital finance assets increased by almost CHF90 million. We utilized committed securitization lines to refinance CHF71 million of these additions. As a result, our capital finance cash flow cash outflow was around CHF 19,000,000.

11:56 In Q2, we expect normal working capital patterns to reverse some of Q1's overall CHF 48,000,000 strong cash inflow. Now looking ahead, we are confirming our guidance previously communicated. So for the full year, we expect the total units sold to reach between 940,000 units and 1,000,000 group units, consisting of 815,000 to 865,000 merchant units and 125,000 to 135,000 Altiira units. We expect an absolute adjusted EBITDA of $2.50 to CHF $265,000,000 and a gross profit of CHF 1,100,000,000 to CHF 1,200,000,000.

12:41 Given our Q1 performance and run rate, especially in units, we are targeting the top end of our guidance range. While early data indicates the potential of the Hero volumes to exceed the current guidance range, we are striving to best balance unit growth and profitability going forward. To wrap up before my presentation, Q1 was a record quarter. Our vertically integrated business model enabled us to deliver a highly differentiated customer offering, which continues to drive outsized market share gains in both our retail and merchant segments. And this quarter marked another important step towards our long term financial model of 10% market share at 5% to 9% adjusted EBITDA margin. As highlighted by Christian, we look very much forward to diving into the details of our segments, their historical performance and long term targets with you at our Capital Markets event on June 17.

13:36 With that, I'd like to open up for questions.

13:48 The Q and A portion of the call, I'd like to go over a few brief technical points. If you haven't already, please feel free to submit your questions using the Q and A tool located at the bottom of your Zoom screen.

14:01 Philippe will call on participant interns. Once your name is announced, I will unmute your line and hand the floor over to you. Kindly ensure that your microphone is enabled and that you are ready to speak when prompted. Thank you. Thank you. And we will start with James Goldman. Our first question comes from James Tate. Please unmute your line and ask your question. Hi, good afternoon. Yes, it's James Tate from Goldman. I've got three questions, please. I guess, firstly, the acceleration in auto sales to almost 50% was really strong in Q1. But so have you seen any deceleration so far through Q2?

14:47 And maybe how should we think about the cadence of growth through the year, given you mentioned finding that balance between growth and profitability and the guidance, but even the top end of guidance implies quite to less than 30% for Q2 to Q4? Secondly, on the slightly weaker merchant GPU, you mentioned the impact of the adverse weather in January that maybe greater discounting. So is it fair to say that February and March GPUs were in line with the sort of nine seventy five you guided for the full year and that trend has continued through Q2? And thirdly, on OpEx per unit, that improved quarter on quarter in Q1 and is in line with what you implied by the full year guidance. Given auto and marketing costs per car should come down through the year, could we see improvements in OpEx per unit? Or are there other investments offsetting this?

15:44 Thank you, James, for those questions. So yes, indeed, we're very happy with the acceleration of auto euro units to the 47%. And we are expecting,

16:04 if we talk absolute increases quarter on quarter, so sequential increases on the units, the overall Q1 performance

16:18 can mean in certain scenarios that we will be able to beat the upper end of our unit guidance. However, this is a little bit too early to tell. So we're very happy with the auto euro

16:41 results in Q1. There are likely scenarios where we can beat the upper end of the unit target. But for us, it is too early to say right now. However, you can expect

16:57 inside the current guidance a slight to substantial increase sequentially in absolute units quarter on quarter. Does that clarify the first question? Yes. That's helpful. Yes. So merchant GPU,

17:14 yes, indeed saw some slight reduction, I mean, 3% reduction versus Q1 of last year. And yes, 80%, 90% of that effect was the weather. We are expecting a sequential increase of merchant GPU for the quarters to come. So let's say, Q2, a slight increase. I mean, we're in the middle of Q2. So this is a pure expectation right now, but this is like how we see things, so slight increase and then stronger increase in H2.

18:00 And Christian, on the on the merchant GPU, we saw James improvement during the quarter. So we started lower and then ended higher. So just confirming what you've done. Yeah. So the intra Q1 walk was indeed yeah. So January was the weakest and March the the highest out of the three months, but that was a typical seasonal pattern. It was just, you know, way more pronounced and and way more pressure on the gen GPU because of the slow start, and that was overall manufacturing, the the current one.

18:40 And on the third question, so OpEx per unit overall. So yes, there's a lot of things in there, right? So we're expecting to see improved marketing costs in retail over the coming quarters. But as we haven't split out the segments yet, and we're talking about total OpEx per unit for the group, then we are expecting to stay in the seasonal pattern. So this means

19:14 we are expecting a slight increase on OpEx per unit for Q2, then reduction for Q3 and then back up for Q4, in line with the typical patterns that we see. However, we're aiming to achieve relatively better values year on year, like we have now started with ramp. So it's not yet obviously with the track, right, on Q1. So we have we're not able to beat the Q1 OpEx per unit. But given auto euro scaling, that is also,

19:57 I think, yes, not not a realistic scenario. However, for the quarters to come, we would like to get better in the year on year absolute euro comparison when you compare OpEx per unit with the quarter. Does this answer your question? Yes. I think so. Just trying to understand if auto here EBITDA per unit is improving through the quarters, through the year, what's sort of offsetting that at the group level?

20:33 I mean, it's also just the absolute higher amount of retail units. Right? So OpEx per unit in Auto Hero is, yeah, I think, more than, like, rough like, roughly three x or more. So if we are changing dynamics and we're getting a higher retail unit share, then this is one effect in the overall OpEx per unit. But I think, yes, this will all become a bit easier once we give the segment disclosure. Next

21:12 question comes from Andrew Ross. Please unmute your line and ask your question. Hi, guys. Good afternoon. Two for me, please. So I just wanted to ask about the inventory levels in retail right now. It looks by looking at the number of cars on the Auto Hero site, are fewer cars listed today than there were a few weeks ago. And so you could conclude that you've been kind of clearing through some inventory. My question is kind of how to interpret that. Like should we be assuming that you guys built inventory at the end of last year, now you're kind of turning through it more effectively, which I guess is good to your unit economics, but you still have enough inventory to grow units quickly from here? Or has there been a kind of deliberate calibration of the inventory in the context of the uncertain macro? That would be helpful to get comfort that you're sat on enough inventory to kind of keep growing those retail units in that 40% zone through kind of the end of the quarter and going forwards?

22:12 That's the first question. And the second one is one about the annual report, which we haven't had a chance to ask you about since it came out. But one of the things that was in there was that the impairments on your merchant receivable stepped up quite a bit in 2025. And I was hoping you could give us some color as to the drivers of why it stepped up and your comfort levels as to the credit that you're holding on the books as you kind of scale that merchant receivable business. Yes. Thank you, Andrew. So I will take the first question and Christian the second. On the inventory retail, I think the observation in general is correct. So what's happening there is that we are in the process of rolling out a version two of our Auto Euro trade system.

23:02 That version two is geared towards higher inventory turns and higher inventory efficiency. So it does not have anything to do with macro Iran or anything else. So it includes a renewed stocking algorithm that, in many cases, reduces inventory size and plus the structure with the aim to trade faster and we're in the process of rolling that out. And yes, we're really excited about that

23:28 because it might lead to higher efficiency. But yes, we now need to see this in action. Nevertheless, we remain fully committed on our unit and gross profit guide for AutoEuro. And on the second question,

23:50 on the merchant finance, we recognized, as you noted, the credit payments of CHF11.8 million in 2025, this is net of recoveries. And this was due to, this was a one off in underwriting. We rolled out one market and where local process and leader behavior encouraged a very high level of sold out trust cars. So we've taken the learnings from this and did this over one or two months last summer in Q3 and this has now been intact integrated in the new underwriting and the credits monitoring on this. So we're seeing that this is coming down significantly since then. So it's a legacy issue that we fixed in our underwriting. So we see that we have a net interest margin around 7.5% or so on the merchant finance and for 25% including this, it was

24:46 clearly still profitable and an attractive business and they support to the demand from the merchant base. That's helpful. If I could follow-up on the first question. So it sounds like the interpretation is you're just improving the stock turn of merchants, which I guess means sorry, of retail, which means you're probably buying fewer cars

25:10 this quarter, relatively speaking, to your unit growth than you might have done in previous quarters. And I'm guessing that must be, therefore, good for your SG and A per unit because you don't incur purchasing costs. So how do I then square that with your guidance for the SG and A per unit for the whole group might be a bit higher in Q2 than it was in Q1? And I hear you've had a negative mix effect from more retail units, but I would have thought the dynamics that are going on in retail would be quite positive to the unit economics.

25:41 Yeah. I I think I mean, there's there's a couple of drivers or many drivers at work, right, when we come down to OpEx per unit. We're expecting overall for total units a slight decline, right, on absolute volumes, Q1 to Q2. And this is probably like a yes, this is a lower merchant units and a bit higher audio units. But overall, this creates, obviously, an upward drag on the OpEx per unit. There's also a seasonally higher marketing cost in Q2 than in Q1 when you look at TV score.

26:31 So and at the same time, we are in the process of, you know, rolling out the system. This is now, yeah, pretty much started since the beginning of the quarter. We are in the middle of it. So it's too early to derive any conclusions at the moment. Yes. So we're carefully tracking this. At the moment, it's exactly on plan, but it's too early to draw conclusions for the full quarter. Can just clarify one thing, Christian? You said in your q two guidance, you said slight increase sequentially in retail units, right, not substantial. You said slight increase, just to be clear. Mhmm. I had a slight increase in retail units and slight reduction in merchant units. Thank you.

27:17 Thanks, Andrew. And with that, over to Ms. La Neiser from Deutsche Bank. Thank you. I have two questions from my end as well. The first is the contribution from the financing product to the Auto Hero GPU and merchant GPU. Could you maybe give us some numbers as to how much financing contributed to each? And connected to that, do you expect this share to grow throughout 2026? And how is the health of your finance customer? I understand that last year, there was the one off learning, but given the current macro climate, has anything changed when you look at sort of the delinquency rates, etcetera? Some color there would be great. And my second question is, again, you mentioned briefly, Kirsten, but like the macro environment, the conflict, etcetera, how is that affecting your Auto Hero customer behavior and also your merchant the health of the merchant customer that you're catering to? It would be remiss of us not to ask you this question given the current situation. So some color there would be great. Yes.

28:22 So I suggest that Christian takes the question on financing, and then I go back on the macro one. We're rolling out both internal consumer finance and also the merchant finance. So the contribution from this will increase gradually. So in terms of merchant finance, it's a smaller long term potential given that it's a profitable product, but however it's a demand support for our merchants in order to drive units as well. So in that, it's more limited. And in the consumer finance, it's now becoming a higher proportion of internal finance versus the external finance.

29:10 So it's adding on quarter on quarter for the rollouts that we're doing. And about now, say, between 300 and 400 for the internal overall on the debut contribution, but we have this in rolled out. In terms of do you wanna take the credit risk question, Krishna? Should I go for that? No. I think that's that's your area. Yes. So in terms of what we see in credit risk, we've actually seen in Q1 improvements versus 25% I think this is largely driven by that we're learning a lot as we roll these things we roll the internal financing out to more and more markets and more and more clients.

30:01 And all of that said, so we haven't seen in Q1 so far any negative impact of the macro situation. And that said, clearly, we are really closely monitoring the macro and having our eyes on both new origination and existing books. On the macro in general, right, so we can't really comment on how this will play out on geopolitics because like anybody else, we don't know. It's a fluid situation. What we can see, the current impact is limited. We have very good ways to measure this. It is there. It is, however, limited and contained, and it is within our guidance. Thank you. Very helpful. Thank you.

30:50 And to put that over to Murat Lamidi from BNP at Saan. Murat? Yes. Hello. Sorry, Philippe. I just unmuted myself. Yes, I just want to ask about the used car market across Europe and in the countries where you operate, especially with Aramis this morning highlighting the weak used car market in France, for instance, and in our market. Have you seen trends that are similar? And has it been a headwind to the business so far?

31:38 Thank you for this question. The used car market in general, when we talk about Q1, so as far as we can see in the data, it's roughly stable for the markets that we are operating in. So we are estimating this to be at a negative 1.3%, which we consider roughly stable. The January value for the European market and the February value was particularly lower, and then there was some huge catch up in March. So far for April, not all markets have published their data, some are a little slower.

32:25 So we're seeing that France has quite a strong impact in April. But as you know, we are trading across the continent. We're trading into 30 markets. We're buying in 10 plus markets. So we are currently not seeing the market as a major driver in a negative way for Q1. I think Q2, the dynamics are at the moment playing out. But from what we see, similar to what we said on the question, the macro impact is limited and contained.

33:12 Could there have been a little bit of a tailwind with higher units and the weather being not so icy at the beginning of the year? Yes, I think our results in Q1 could have been a little bit better. Okay. Thank you very much. And I have, if you allow me, a follow-up. When you published the full year results back in February, you talked about the year being back end loaded in terms of EBITDA generation. Is there any reason for your stance to change on that? Should we expect a much higher EBITDA in the second half versus first half? I think we yes, I would still back that statement back in the full year earnings call. So yes, we expect absolute EBITDA generation will be stronger in H2 than in H1.

34:16 Thank you, everybody, for dialing in. Thank you, Christian and Christian. I think that concludes the Q and A session then. As a quick reminder, we are in London next week on conferences, but they're UBS on Wednesday and JPMorgan on Thursday. And also just to confirm, if you go to IR webpage, the registration for the Capital Markets event on June 17 is live. I'm sure that, we will probably meet a lot of you latest back then. So thank you very much. And, again, if you have any other questions, please feel free to get in touch. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you. Goodbye.

35:01 Bye bye.