D'Ieteren Group SA (SIETY) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

2025-03-10 19:01:06 ET

D'Ieteren Group SA (SIETY)

Q4 2024 Results Conference Call

March 10, 2025 01:30 PM ET

Company Participants

Francis Deprez - CEO

Edouard Janssen - CFO

Conference Call Participants

David Vagman - ING

Michiel Declercq - KBC Securities

Alexander Craeymeersch - Kepler Cheuvreux

Kris Kippers - Degroof Petercam

Jeremy Kincaid - Van Lanschot Kempen

Presentation

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen welcome to the D'Ieteren Group 2024 Full Year Results Conference Call. Throughout the call, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please note, this call is being recorded.

Today, I am pleased to present Francis Deprez, CEO; and Edouard Janssen, CFO. Gentlemen, please go ahead.

Francis Deprez

Thank you and good evening to everyone. Welcome to the publication of our results of 2024. I suggest we just go into the key messages right away. We have three key messages for you tonight. One is that, we've delivered another strong set of results in 2024, both in our adjusted profit before tax Group share, where we've increased with 9.6% or even 12.7% if you take it at constant-currency and excluding the additional financial charges at Belron and Corporate segment that were linked to the transaction of last year. But also, in the free cash flow group share, we increased to 22.2%, reaching a number above EUR740 million. That's message number one.

Message number two is that, our guidance for 2025 is that, we expect a slight increase in our adjusted profit before tax group share on a comparable financing perimeter in both years. And that is because we do expect the operational performance of most of our businesses to continue to improve throughout the year. And the third message is that, we have repaid or reimbursed actually EUR250 million of the EUR500 million bridge loan at the Group level today, and that we will also propose a dividend to the General Assembly in the June of EUR1.6, as a normal ordinary dividend.

So, these are the three key messages. To give you a little bit of more flavor behind those numbers, so the plus 9.6% or 12.7% in PBT group share basically leads to a number of EUR165 million so a bit more than EUR1 billion basically in PBT. And the free cash flow, the EUR741 million is basically driven in particular by D'Ieteren Automotive, but also by the other activities. The operational performance has been across the board. At Belron, for instance, we continue to increase our operating margin with 70 basis points.

And so, we landed in our adjusted PBT Group share 1.4% higher. Of course, there were some additional financial charges as of October, not surprisingly given the refinancing we had done. D'Ieteren Automotive saw a very nice increase in its adjusted PBT Group share plus 13.4%. They reached actually a return on sales margin of 5.1%, a very nice percentage for them a record number. That despite the fact that the market of new cars in Belgium was actually decreasing with about 6%. ...

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