Vertu Motors plc (VTU) Q4 2024 Earnings Call

Investor webinar replay

Replay transcript excerpt

Good morning. My name is Robert Forrester, CEO, and I'm joined by Karen Anderson, CFO, and we're here to present our full year results for the year ended February 2024. While it was a more challenging year from a market perspective, the group remains in very good shape, both operationally and strategically. And for the first time, we're now the only listed company of size in our sector on the London Stock Exchange. If you look at our investment case, we believe that our significant scale delivers benefits. We've got a stable management team. We've got the widest and growing portfolio of manufacturers within the business. We've got strong tech expertise with our own software house and very low debt puts us in a very strong financial position. We have a robust business model with very diverse revenue streams. And also I think it's unrecognized just how much the OEMs support the group during crises and support the industry in general. We've got a very strong database that helps us deliver high retention, both in sales and service. We've got over 2 million customers. We have very strong brand recognition. Bristol Street Motors is the England's strongest motor retail brand. We thirdly have a strong focus on cost optimization. We need to because motor retail is a low margin business. Scale certainly helps to spread costs. We have 56 in-house software developers who can therefore spread their work across nearly 200 outlets. The work they do not only helps from a scale standpoint, but removes third-party software costs and fundamentally helps increase productivity of our colleagues to make us more efficient. The board is also committed to maximising returns and there's a strong focus on capital allocation. And you can see this in the active management of our portfolio, both ...