Ron Banerjee: Good morning, and a very warm welcome to the presentation of Volvo Cars' second quarter financial results. We are coming to you from our new headquarters here in Gothenburg. My name is Ron. Those images that you saw up front were, of course, the first Volvo customers getting behind the EX60. The focus now is, of course, to ramp up the car to meet the strong customer demand. We will talk more about this on this earnings call. As always, in the morning, I am joined by our President and Chief Executive, Håkan Samuelsson, our CFO, Fredrik Hansson, and our Chief Commercial Officer, Erik Severinson. At the top of this earnings call, we will have Håkan, Erik, and Fredrik walk us through our performance during the second quarter, thereafter, we will throw it open for a question and answer. Either you participate by simply typing in your questions, you should be able to see the chat window at the bottom of your screen, or simply use the phone lines, we can hear you in the room. I will come back with more details closer to the Q&A, for now, Håkan, I will give you the word.
Håkan Samuelsson: Thank you, Ron. Let me frame this quarter. Welcome to all of you listening and watching. We had a very challenging business environment, and low consumer confidence worldwide, of course, all the conflicts in the Middle East. We saw for the volume, a very sharp decline in China, which I think is severe than we thought a quarter ago. That has, of course, also an impact on our financial results, where we report a very modest 1% EBIT margin. In this situation, of course, what we can do is to focus on what we can influence and what we can control. We have had a very good development on the cost side, as one example. I come back to that. Also following through on our electrification strategy, that has been a core element of this company. We do not see electrification as a threat. We see it as an opportunity, therefore, we are very glad to see the figures here in the quarter, 14% up BEV sales, and reaching now a share of 25%. A quarter of all our sold cars are all electric and also very impressive, 52% of all cars sold. This is the first time we are above, the majority of our cars are now electrified. That is, they are chargeable. This is, of course, a foundation for growth, and that you can see with the market share multiplier. We have a 2.5% higher market share in electrified cars combined with combustion cars. That is, of course, a very good factor for growth as the market transforms. Independently how fast it goes, it is still an underlying growth factor, very positive. That was before we launched our new EX60, which is, of course, targeting the main part of the BEV market. This is a midsize SUV. That's where the majority of the cars are sold. Our EX60 is here, a game-changing car. Deliveries to customers started this week, and we are now ramping up production in the second half to really meet the strong demand, which is coming in from Sweden, Germany, and Belgium as leading market, but also a lot of other markets. Other key highlights during the quarter, we were granted the approval from the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding the ICTS requirements, data handling, securing data integrity with connected cars. We have demonstrated how we will do that, and we were given the approval here some time ago. Another very important thing is, we signed an MOU with the Belgian government some days ago regarding support to the Ghent factory to really make that factory competitive, which secures then the future of that plant. We can build the Volvo cars we plan to build in that plant, but we are also open to assemble other car brands in that plant. XC70 is a good example what will happen in China. Products in China need to be much more regional to comply also with all customer requirements of software and other features. This car is really the first one which we developed with Geely, and it's demonstrating really the way forward. We will have an all-regional program some years in the future for China. I think with that, we have a unique opportunity to really have a strong product offering, securing our presence in China looking forward. Last but not least, we are also pioneering now AI control, voice control, and assistance into the car. We are introducing Gemini from Google as standard in all our cars. They are now standard equipment in new cars. We also rolled out retroactively to 2 million old cars also this AI assistant, and that is also, of course, a good example on how we can upgrade cars also after delivery, which is something new which can be done with the software-defined cars. As I said, cost saving is a good example of what we have been working with, something you can control independently of the external factors. We had a target of SEK 5 billion cost saving for the full year. I'm very glad to see that we achieved SEK 8 billion already in the first six months. That, of course, encouraged us to continue setting new targets and focusing on further cost reductions in the second half year. Last, charts, I would like to invite you to a strategy update in Stockholm on September 17th. Around a year ago, we invited you to a similar event where we laid out our strategy looking forward, and now I'd like to come back to you and report this is what we have done, how are we now taking the next step to make Volvo a winner in this very tough competitive market with electrification and new competition from China. We will report about the most ambitious rollout of products in our history with a really regionalized adapted cars for China, regionally adapted for the U.S., and regionally adapted electrification in Europe. A very strong offering is being developed and being rolled out. We will also have a much more regional structure, not just organization and governance, but also to product offering and marketing, as I just said. We will talk about our very unique synergies, which are offered through our collaboration with Geely, helping us to create this regional approach, helping us to bring down the material cost on the hardware side in Europe and U.S. We will talk about we are not just a factory building hardware cars. The product from Volvo in the future is going to be much more than a hardware car. Join us on September 17th. We will give you more information on our challenging and interesting, exciting future. With that, I will leave it over to Erik to talk a bit about what has happened on the market.
Erik Severinson: Thank you. Hello, everyone. I'm going to take you through a little bit more details on where we are in terms of sales and what the market looks like and a slight update on our commercial turnaround plan and strategy. Looking at the world right now, it's a quite mixed basket. If I start in Europe, we have a very resilient sales performance in a highly competitive market in Europe. We're seeing a lot of competitors coming back into Europe after decreases in China, trying to build momentum to offset some of the tough times that you're seeing in China, which brings competitive pressure to the market. We are maintaining a strong order increase with the stable pricing in this very competitive market, that is only driven, I will say, that is primarily driven by our fully electric cars, where we can see that the BEV sales are up 23%, driven by the EX30 and the EX40. This is before any effect of the EX60, which we see on the order side is bringing up a very strong momentum and currently actually also is the most profitable car we're selling in Europe. A proof point that the electrification strategy works. Moving over to the States, we do see some positive signs of recovery in May and June. That is in a very difficult market as well. The market is heavily impacted by tariffs as well as the changes in regulations around electrified cars. We have managed to increase our premium share by end of June to 4.95%, up almost one percentage points versus last year. We rose our sales by 9% in Q2 in an otherwise contracting market. There are some positive signs in U.S., and we are very deliberately on how we are competing in U.S. right now in terms of price, in terms of models, and also looking into the future, bringing more local production into the United States with the XC60 production coming online at the end of this year, early next year, will be very important for that market. Going to China. China is right now the most difficult region, I would say, in the whole automotive industry, but so also for us. We are seeing that our sales are heavily affected by the severe market downturn. The overall market is down 20%. We are deploying and continuing to deploy a strategy to protect our premium price position, not going into the discount wars, if you put it that way, and trying to really maintain our premium pricing on our products, which of course, does have a negative impact on our volume. At the same time, we are tapping into the potential we have with the Geely Group, trying to really get access to that lower cost base that the Chinese automotive industry have. A positive sign in China is the increased premium PHEV share with driven by the new product XC70. We do think that PHEVs is a growth segment in this market, and we see we have a very good product to compete with. Let me give you a little bit more detail on the commercial strategy and where we are in terms of transformation. Also one of the pillar of Volvo Cars growth is to grow profitably with electrification. What we're seeing in Europe right now is exactly that. We're seeing that we have record sales on EX30, double-digit increase in deliveries as well as in retail orders, and also maintaining margins on that car with the help of cost synergies with Geely. EX60, Håkan talked about the first customer deliveries have already happened. We are outperforming our very ambitious target in terms of sales and orders on the EX60. We are very positively surprised by the fantastic reception among our customers on that car. It's also now, as I said before, not only one of our most ordered cars in Europe, it's also the most profitable car we're selling. Proving the point that electrification does work with profitable growth. Another encouraging fact is that we have doubled order pace on the EX90. That comes on the back end of a updated hardware and software in the latest model year. The car now has 800 V, for example, and the latest software also deployed in the EX60, which we see is making an impact in the market. It's not only about the products, it's also about the commercial machine. We are running a commercial turnaround or commercial strategy we call Perform and Transform. I'll give you a few nuggets from that one. One thing we have talked a lot about as a pillar in this is regionalization. We talked before about China and U.S., but we also regionalized Europe in a completely different way, taking away layers, creating five very independent and very mandated sub-regions. This is supporting what the positive development around electrification and around growth we're seeing in Europe right now. It's also very much giving the customer a different experience when they have the car. It's not only about selling the car the first time. We are actually selling a experience on how to live and be with your car. That is the care offer, which we now have put in place with Sweden, giving customers that peace of mind, hassle-free way of using your car. We're seeing great interest in that from our customers. We're now working to scale that in other markets in an efficient and asset-light way together with our retailer partners in each market. On top of that, we're also running now a commercial performance program, starting in some of the key markets where we are addressing all the pillars within the commercial machine, marketing, retailers, offerings, and sales company structures. Starting that in Germany now, we think we'll have a very big impact on our future performance in that market. We will continue to build this in a structured way in other major markets where we see we can improve our performance. Overall, we feel well on track in terms of our commercial strategy and our rollout, and that we have a strong growth on electrification. With that, I'd like to hand over to Fredrik.
Fredrik Hansson: Thanks, Erik. Let's go into the financials. Summarizing it was a tough quarter, and as indicated by the others, this is a lot driven by China. We see that retail sales is down 6%, pretty much all driven by China. Retail is also in line with the wholesale drop. Revenues is further down. I will double-click on this, but in part, this is due to a one-off we had last year where we sold off a U.K. subscription portfolio. On profit, we had a very negative quarter last year due to the impairment. The underlying EBIT there was 3.1%, excluding the impairment. This quarter, we are down to 1.1%. Tough quarter. On cash, we had a strong cash flow last year, in part helped by this one-off subscription portfolio sales. This year, negative, but also as expected and planned. We have increased inventory as we're trying to optimize the total factory output as we're launching the EX60 in the Torslanda plant alongside the XC60 and XC90s, which are, of course, very critical models for our sales. Double-clicking on revenue. This was impacted by volumes and also some one-offs. We started the last year at SEK 93 billion. SEK 3.3 billion of those SEK 93 billion was a one-off sale of a subscription car portfolio in the U.K. The volume drop, especially in China, is of course taking revenues down as well with SEK 5 billion. We see sales mix and pricing taking it down, largely driven by car line mix and lower PHEV sales in U.S. due to the 45W and ripple effects of the consumer subsidies going away, and in Europe due to reduced demand as we not yet have a 50 g version of the PHEV. FX continues to be a headwind. We do see a slight turn towards the end of the quarter and also going into this month. Other is down. A big part of other there is that last year we sold CO2 credits to a higher amount, and we also did revenue recognition of CO2 credit sales for both Q1 and Q2 in last year's second quarter. That's not happening again this year. We take it quarter by quarter. A bit of a bigger hit on the other bucket. On EBIT, we last year had this very negative result due to the platform impairment and also the restructuring cost that came together with the big cost and cash action plan that we launched in the second quarter. With adjusting for that, we started at SEK 2.9 billion. We see this year, in comparison, that volume is taking it down SEK 1.1 billion. Sales mix and pricing is taking it down SEK 2.9 billion, this is on the back of a very challenging development in China. I think the positive, though, is that we have managed to control what we can. We see a strong year-on-year improvement in variable cost, and also on indirect spend, where we are significantly down. This actually more than offsets the market headwinds. However, the indirect spend is a cash item. Taking that back to EBIT means we need to look at how much of that we capitalize as well, and we see that we capitalize significantly less this year than we did last. That takes the result down. We also have slightly higher depreciation and amortization. FX is still weighing down the result. In the other bucket there, we had SEK 1.2 billion less of CO2 credit sales this year as compared to last year. It takes us to the result of SEK 0.8 billion or 1.1%. Double-clicking a bit on the cost savings, this is now showing the year-to-date walk. As we started the year, we said we're going to achieve at least SEK 5 billion cost savings as compared to 2025. What you see here is really that we have achieved that in terms of real cash-out cost savings. Summarizing the variable cost and the indirect spend, we have achieved over SEK 8 billion in cost savings thus far. Looking to cash, it was impacted by the planned inventory buildup. We started the quarter at SEK 46 billion in cash liquidity. EBITDA brought it up another SEK 7 billion. Investments, SEK 8 billion. Noting here that we are now starting to approach affordable levels on investments. This is significantly down versus last year. We had SEK 14 billion in the quarter as a reference. Other working capital, slightly positive, and the net working capital weighing it down, largely explained by inventory and, as I said, the very planned and communicated buildup of EX60, EX90 inventory to protect full-year output, as we're ramping the EX60. We end the quarter still with very sound liquidity. Looking ahead a bit. We see that we had a very tough first half of the year. We knew that, and we've been talking about it. It also became even tougher, I think, than expected due to the China developments that we did not fully foresee in the second quarter. We've also been clear that the second half will be better, we still see this, and we expect a recovery in the second half. In light of this and the China development, we've also adjusted our forward-looking statements. What we see ahead now is that we will have significantly stronger sales in the second half of the year versus the first half of the year. What that means is basically we will have 10% stronger growth in the second half than we had in the sales in the first half, plus minus probably 5%, depending on how China develops, as there is uncertainty. That's on the back of growth led by Europe, a continued recovery in China, a very challenging China environment, to a large extent pricing. We also have stronger headwinds. Costs are increasing, especially from raw material and oil prices, and this is really starting to kick through in the second half. We continue to focus on cost, as Håkan said. We continue to reduce indirect spend beyond what we have planned and delivered. That said, the variable cost will be challenging, especially in the third quarter, both as raw material prices are increasing and flowing through further into the result. In the second half, the year-on-year comparison is also harder, right? Because if you remember last year, we executed well ahead of time on our cost and cash program, which means that the comparison half here is a tougher one to compare with. If we look at cash, we see that we will have very strong positive cash flow in the late second half. That is really from the inventory buildup that we had in the first half due to EX60, but also from seasonality, which we are now emptying in the second half towards the end of the year. That means that we expect to end the year approximately at break-even full-year cash flow. With that, let me hand over to Q&A.
Ron Banerjee: All right. Thanks, Fredrik. Thank you all. All right, we're now all geared up now for the Q&A session. For those of you who want to use the phone lines, remember, to be able to ask a question, you need to press star one one, then we'll be able to hear you in the room. Let's get this started. A lot of questions coming in. Let me take a few coming in from the media that's come on chat. Maybe I'll turn to you for this one, Håkan. You talked about strong BEV performance in Q2. How do you see BEV performance for the remainder of the year, especially since you talk about strong growth in H2? Will that come from BEVs primarily?
Håkan Samuelsson: Absolutely. It will come through BEVs because I think Erik showed here both our existing cars also have a positive development, and the very impressive growth we reported came really from those two cars. That's really not the biggest share of the market available for BEV cars. Mid-size SUVs has been a blind spot for us so far, and that's where the EX60 will come in. Of course, when we now have EX30, 40, 60, and 90 well-performing. I think we have a very good foundation to really follow through on our strategy, which is this company should grow by leading the transformation to electric cars. Absolutely, that very strong factor for us.
Ron Banerjee: Right. Maybe the next question is for you, Fredrik. In your slide on cash flow, you talked about lower investments, lower than SEK 8 billion. Should one extrapolate that for the rest of the year as well?
Fredrik Hansson: As I said, I see we're starting to approach affordable levels, that is around the level we should be at. Hopefully, slightly lower.
Ron Banerjee: Okay. All right. Let's take the first caller, that's Jose Asumendi from JPMorgan. Good morning, Jose, please go ahead with your question.
Jose Asumendi: Good morning. Thank you very much. Two questions, please. Can you comment on the cost savings you plan to generate comparing second half first half, which actions do you think you foresee will generate these cost savings in the second half? Are they different versus the cost savings you generated in the first half? Second, when it comes to the cost savings with Geely Group, I was wondering, is there a change in mindset or, in other words, what has not been achieved before or planned before? What do you think is the opportunity when generating cost savings with Geely Group in terms of purchasing, will this mainly be then related to maybe potentially building cars together in Europe? Thank you.
Fredrik Hansson: Maybe I start with the first.
Ron Banerjee: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Fredrik Hansson: I think we've achieved great cost savings in the first half. If we look at the full year, that will not double, so to say. A big chunk of the full-year savings you already see realized now. Because we expect indirect spend to continue to go down slightly. On a year-on-year comparison, we had a big decrease in the second half already last year. On variable cost, as I stated, I think especially in Q3, we have strong headwinds from raw materials that will kick through to the result. We see underlying savings still on variable cost. We see more results of the work we're doing together with Geely in terms of negotiating together with suppliers. That will help us underlying, but the raw material headwinds will be very strong. The bulk of the cost savings for the full year, you've seen now in the first half.
Ron Banerjee: Right.
Håkan Samuelsson: Looking forward, the synergies with Geely, of course, so far it's been mainly procurement savings together. Looking forward, we'll be much more developing a regional product offering for China. We will be able to do, including software then, we will be able to do to a much lower cost, of course, in cooperation with them. We will also see increased usage of common hardware parts in Europe in the platforms we have been developing. Building cars together, of course, our Volvo Cars will be built mainly in Volvo factories, also in the future. Some of them might be built with the platform technology from Geely, especially in China. That is what's going to happen. Including then, of course, the Ghent factory, which we announced the other day. There, of course, one option is to assemble other brands, of course, that could also be Geely brands, then it's a contract assembly, of course, totally fulfilling all regulatory requirements for an ICTS-approved plant, which Ghent is.
Ron Banerjee: All right. Thank you. We are actually getting some more questions on the Ghent announcement yesterday. Question from Jonas Fröberg from Dagens Nyheter, from also the Belgian press is dialing in. If you can give some more color again on the contract manufacturing piece. Do you mean brands within Geely, could that be optioned with other brands?
Håkan Samuelsson: I think first thing is, of course, Geely, the plant there needs to be competitive. I think that's really glad to have now a possibility to really have a world-class competitive plant. That, of course, opens up a lot of opportunities. First is we will feel very comfortable building the cars we want to build there, and we don't need to think about alternative scenarios. Of course, if there is excess capacity, we are open to look into other options. Realistically, of course, the most realistic probably the assembling other Geely brands product in this factory. That is still a process where you really have to look in how that will be done and how you can do it with complying with all regulatory requirements. We will come back to that when we have an agreement in the future.
Ron Banerjee: Yeah. Good. Staying in Belgium, this is Bas Goetens from Belgian local news. On the future of Ghent again, will Volvo produce new EV models in the plant? Will you be investing in megacasting? The contract manufacturing, you've answered. Will we be investing in megacasting? Will we be producing new EVs?
Håkan Samuelsson: No, I will not reveal any details about what cars and exactly what type of process, think the important thing is for Belgium and the factory that if we have a competitive price level, there is a lot of opportunities. Of course, building the cars we want to build there. Of course, there will be new generation of the cars that we are building in Ghent, which is planned. Now we can plan that first priority to continue building them in Ghent.
Ron Banerjee: Right. A question from Auto Express, Ellis Hyde. In your Q2 report, Håkan, you mentioned Volvo will reveal two new exciting models later this year. What can we expect? Is there any possibility for a new Volvo estate based on SPA 3?
Håkan Samuelsson: That's an interesting opportunity, probably not during the autumn this year. We are indicating something differently. There are, of course, requirements in Europe for emissions and so on that we would like to fulfill. Let us wait with revealing those cars. I think they will be two very exciting cars for the market.
Erik Severinson: I think so. Also maybe you can add that SPA3 is a very capable architecture to do big cars, small cars, and high and low cars, which is a prerequisite for any estate discussion.
Ron Banerjee: Okay. Very good. Let's take the next caller. That's Harry Martin from Bernstein. Good morning, Harry, and please go ahead.
Harry Martin: Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. The first one is just on the China market. The downturn, the level of discounting this year took most by surprise compared to where we were at the beginning of the year. I just wanted to understand how tough a second half of the year is in your planning. Are you assuming some improvement in that situation, or is your internal planning now that that market stays tough for a matter of months? Secondly on the EX60, you mentioned previously that you expect this vehicle to be margin accretive. I wondered what is the run rate volume that is needed to fulfill that margin accretion, and do we get to that level of production in Q3? Do we get to that level of production by the end of the year? Any color that you can give on that would be really helpful. Thanks.
Ron Banerjee: Maybe Erik you can start.
Erik Severinson: Let's start with the China question, Fredrik you can chime in on the EX60. It's very difficult to judge right now where the Chinese market is going. We are not expecting any immediate strengthening of the underlyings in the market. What you can see is it is a massive competitive landscape in a contracting market. TIV were down 20% the last few months, with multiple new car launches happening after the auto show. We're seeing a continued commercial pressure in that market. As Håkan alluded to, and I said before also, our remedy to that is to protect our price position, because to have a premium price position, a strong brand, and a legacy is an asset in that market. While tapping into the synergies with Geely, making local cars for that market at the cost levels, which is needed to have a decent margin. It will be a continued difficult market. Do you want to comment on the margin piece on the EX60?
Fredrik Hansson: Yeah, on EX60, we're gradually rolling out, ramping up production. Currently as we speak, I guess as always in summer shutdown, you are re-shifting the plant. Then we will over the course of the year, step-by-step increase production. In terms of where this turns fully positive into margin, that's towards the end of the year. Then scale up continues given the high demand.
Erik Severinson: We can see that we're building a quite strong order book on the EX60 right now, which I think is a prerequisite for any margin improvement in the coming time period, even if that's this year or next year.
Ron Banerjee: All right. Staying with the EX60, you give some color on the production, but this is from Agnieszka Vilela from Nordea. Do you still expect volumes or production of 40,000 EX60s in 2026? What is the planning for 2027? Is it fair to assume next year, that is 2027, you will double the volumes produced in 2026? There's one more, I'll come back to you for that, Erik, yeah, go ahead.
Erik Severinson: We are keeping our ambition of producing up to 40,000 cars of that vehicle this year. Now we should always say that it's called ramp-up for a reason. It's always a period in time where you're trying to hone in the industrial system, it takes some time to get the production going. We are seeing an underlying very strong momentum, which gives us confidence also for next year. I will not comment on the absolute numbers, of course, for next year, but I can say that we are over-performing on our orders on the EX60, we will get the ramp-up done. Then we will have a very solid business case for that car.
Ron Banerjee: All right.
Håkan Samuelsson: It would be very strange if it was not twice the volume we achieved this year, as we are only producing half a year.
Erik Severinson: Yeah.
Håkan Samuelsson: With the ramp-up this year.
Erik Severinson: Yes.
Håkan Samuelsson: Will be a very modest forecast.
Erik Severinson: Can say that the sales pace is considerably higher than our production pace during the ramp-up.
Ron Banerjee: Yeah, okay. One question, I'll turn to you again for that. Do you expect EX60 to cannibalize XC60 volumes?
Erik Severinson: No, we're actually looking at that quite diligently now. Of course there is some cannibalization. We have not had an offer, as Håkan said, in that segment. Actually we can see that the net order intake of those two cars is very positive still. At least 50%-60% of that is pure growth.
Ron Banerjee: Good. All right. Let's go to the next caller. That's Stephen Wilmot from The Wall Street Journal. Good morning, Stephen, please go ahead.
Stephen Wilmot: Good morning. Can you hear me?
Ron Banerjee: Yes. Go ahead.
Stephen Wilmot: Good morning. Can you hear me?
Erik Severinson: Yes.
Stephen Wilmot: Can you hear me?
Ron Banerjee: We can hear you, Stephen. Can you hear us in the room?
Stephen Wilmot: Great.
Ron Banerjee: Yeah.
Stephen Wilmot: Yes, I can hear you. Just two questions. One, interesting to hear your comments on the competitive situation in China just now in response to Harry Martin's question. Håkan mentioned that the competitive situation in Europe is also being affected by what's happening in China. Can you just give a bit more of a sense of how that's affecting the premium segment in Europe? Are you seeing the competition from Chinese brands in that premium segment, or is the concern that you have more around all the pressure you're seeing more around the other European premium brands that are becoming sharper in Europe in their pricing because of what's happening in China? Maybe you can perhaps just mention that. Second question about regionalization in the U.S. You've talked about this before, beyond the localization of the XC60, isn't it, in South Carolina, do you have any further plans? Can you talk a bit more about what you're doing to regionalize the U.S. business? Thank you.
Håkan Samuelsson: Let's start with the first. I think yes, both factors as you indicated. Despite then new tariffs limiting entrance to Europe, we still see a growth of Chinese electric cars in Europe. That is one factor. I think even though it may be difficult to have exact examples, if European players are losing volume in China, it's very likely to assume that they will try a bit extra to sell more cars in Europe. That is definitely also something that will heat up competition in Europe. The downturn in China will influence Europe, I'm absolutely sure about that. Turning to U.S. and the more regional offer, which we will have. In China, you will have a very special offer, very much developed together with Geely. In U.S., you will also have a regionalized focused program. The cars will, of course, also be sold in Europe. In U.S., we will see more multi-fuel cars, electrification a bit slower, and of course, a preference for SUVs, we believe will stay in the U.S. First step is the introduction of the XC60, and after that, we have also said that there will be more investments in Charleston into a very attractive, bigger car for the U.S. market. Give you some idea, a more attractive car for the U.S. market would probably be something similar to an SUV. It's probably maybe also something which could offer a bit more flexibility on the fueling side, and not just being an all electric. I think I stay there in giving more details. Yes, there will be an attractive second car coming to Charleston.
Ron Banerjee: Very good. Let's take another question from Dagens Nyheter. Will Geely use the SPA3 platform?
Håkan Samuelsson: They will not do that according to plans and decision today. It's of course not to rule out. We would like to promote common platforms in the group, we will use some of their platforms for cars now we will build in China. Then, of course, we would discuss if they would use the SPA platform in the future. We will be open for that. No news.
Erik Severinson: I think maybe you can add also, it's not only about platform sharing, it's also about components within a platform where we are collaborating a lot to find common key components. Could be everything from battery cells to E-motor. Sometimes this platform question is a bit misdirected. It's more about finding the synergies on the component level as well.
Ron Banerjee: This question is from Nordea, I will probably turn to you for this, Håkan. What is your ownership strategy in relation to Polestar? With the stake close to 20%, would you consider any capital investment through equity or debt if the company needs it and other owners are participating?
Håkan Samuelsson: I think we should not speculate about in the future. I think we have a close to a 20% share right now, Fredrik, I think we have no ambition to change that.
Fredrik Hansson: No.
Ron Banerjee: Yep. Very good. Let's take another caller. That is Pushkar Tendolkar from HSBC. Good morning, Pushkar. Please go ahead.
Pushkar Tendolkar: Hello. Hi. Thank you. Thanks for taking my questions. Good morning, everyone. My first one is just on the sequential development. What gets better in Q3? We'll only be seeing the initial volumes of EX60. Does it actually get worse in Q3 before it gets better in Q4 in terms of profitability on a sequential basis? Second one is on your cost and cash program. We've seen strong benefits of that. Most of that has been offset by the decline in the operating environment. Is there a scope, and do you feel the need to expand this program, given also the announcements by some of your European peers in the last month or so? The last one on the Ghent announcement. If my understanding is correct, the support from the Belgian government, that should be in the form of a grant. Is that milestone driven or it's a one-time payment, and when does that hit your PNL and cash flow? Just related to that, you talked about having contract manufacturing at Ghent. Are you also open to sharing your capacity at the Slovakia plant with other car makers? I believe that plant would have a better cost structure. Are you open to doing that? Thanks.
Ron Banerjee: Lots of questions there, Pushkar. Maybe I'll take one by one, if I can read my own notes.
Erik Severinson: I can do the first one.
Ron Banerjee: On the Q3.
Erik Severinson: Your question was basically what would be better in Q3 versus Q2 in terms of sales and top line. It's important to remember, as you stated correctly, the EX60 will have a more meaningful effect in Q4 than in Q3. It's also important to see that we have an underlying momentum in Europe on the other electrified cars. We are having a double-digit order pace increase on the EX30, the same with the EX90, while protecting a strong position on the legacy cars, the XC60s and the XC90s. The other piece in Q3, which we are seeing some positive indications around, is the trend in U.S., where we saw both May and June coming in slightly stronger than we expected. We can also see that we have a good market equation between pricing and offers in U.S. That would hopefully also continue into Q3. Those would be the key points between Q3 and Q2.
Fredrik Hansson: On cost and cash. As you state, we see a lot of positives and we've done a lot of great progress on getting costs down. We have market headwinds that is offsetting that. We're still focusing and continuing on this path. On indirect spend, there are some more steps we will take. That said, as compared to others, as you mentioned, we started quite forcefully and reduced 3,000 positions. Was it 10% or 15% of white collar employees already last year. We have been quite proactive, and I'm very glad that we have done that, because this is really helping us now. I think the big longer term kicker is really on variable cost and the Geely synergies. We've started working together in terms of sourcing. As Erik alluded to, there are parts sharing, there's more component and platform sharing in China. There's a lot of midterm variable cost opportunities, which we are pursuing. We're far from done on that. Maybe I stop there, actually.
Ron Banerjee: Yeah.
Håkan Samuelsson: He will.
Ron Banerjee: Something about on Ghent, maybe cash flow effect, like what sort of the support, when do we see the real effects of that around financials?
Fredrik Hansson: As I hear, we will come back with details as this unfolds. We now have an MOU. I think what's important with that MOU is that we have very clear backing from the Belgian government to make sure that we together can build a plant for the future at extremely competitive cost levels.
Ron Banerjee: Maybe on Slovakia, Håkan. Would there be potential contract manufacturing there as well?
Håkan Samuelsson: Yeah. Could potentially, but right now there are no further plans to do that, and that factory will build only SPA3 cars. I think we would like to keep it like that to really keep down the complexity in the plant to have it very efficient. Of course, if there will be SPA3 cars used by other brands, we could discuss that, but very hypothetical right now. No decisions taken.
Ron Banerjee: Good. Maybe I'll turn to you, Erik, for this one. Auto Express again. You've talked about big growth in your EV sales in Europe. However, PHEV sales have also increased considerably. What advancements are you making with your hybrid technology to satisfy customers not ready to go electric?
Erik Severinson: Well, maybe the short answer, there is more to come. Without revealing any details about the future product upgrades, we have said that we will continue to invest in our PHEV technology. We have been very successful in terms of market share, both on the XC60 and the XC90. I would argue in all markets. That is obviously a position which we will continue to protect, and there will be more news coming very soon, at the end of the summer, I would say. We've more to come, and we're seeing the potential.
Ron Banerjee: Okay, good. Staying with products. This is from Autocar. Retail sales of EX90 has fallen 24% in H1 2026 versus H1 2025. It represents a very small portion of your overall sales, particularly when you compare that to the XC90. Why is that the case? What are you doing to stimulate sales?
Erik Severinson: Well, I think one thing which we have done, which I talked about as well, we have done a major upgrade of the car in the latest model year. Both on hardware and software, the car now has an 800 V system, for example, which we know is very important for the fast charging. It's important to see that the BEV segment in that size of car is still quite small, but we have a very high market share in that segment of seven-seater premium E-SUVs. We have right now double the order pace on the EX90 in Europe. That on the back end and combined with us lowering the costs of the vehicle as well, I have big hopes for us having much better numbers on that car in the coming months and the coming years.
Ron Banerjee: Okay, good. One more question. I'll come back to Slovakia. With Slovakia factory, your global production will be close to 1.5 million. With your volumes running at 700,000, you have a lot of excess capacity. Do you see the risks of unabsorbed costs in your factories once Slovakia comes online?
Håkan Samuelsson: No, I think you also have to keep in mind that, of course, the capacity also have to include, of course, if the factory is manned or not. Of course, the investments are done there. They are there. We need to, of course, utilize the factories. I think the best way for us to utilize the factories we have is to increase the number of electric cars. We showed we have two and a half times better market share with electrified cars than with others. I think it would be very difficult to fill those factories with conventional cars. They have to be electric. If we can continue having a 2.5% high market share, I see no problem with filling that capacity. It will be. Highly appreciated.
Ron Banerjee: Mm-hmm. Good. Let's go to another caller then. That is Nikita Papaccio from Deutsche Bank. Good morning, Nikita.
Nikita Papaccio: Hi.
Ron Banerjee: Please go ahead.
Nikita Papaccio: Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. A lot were asked already, but I will have two remaining. The first one on pricing. You mentioned you will safeguard your pricing, also volumes are declining. To what extent you can do that and how do you see the rest of the year? Should we expect further rather stable pricing and at the cost of volumes or will you adjust here? My second question on China specifically. You mentioned the strategy is to partner more with Geely and have localized products, but this is more for the midterm, right? What can you do to mitigate the issues in the short term? Thank you.
Erik Severinson: Okay. Good questions. Thank you. It's very difficult to answer the first question, to be honest. To what extent can you protect pricing, sacrificing volume? I think that is always the balance we need to do every day in the commercial system, being very close to the market. We also recognize, especially then in China, which is where we have this strategy, that the power of having a very well-recognized brand and a strong heritage actually also helps in the pricing discussion to a large extent because customers are asking for Volvo products world-renowned for safety and whatnot. We are constantly balancing that. What I can say that is it will be more and more important for us to look at the cost side, the variable cost side of the vehicles in China as the price will continue to be under pressure for everyone in that market. That's where we have a unique strength with Geely. I think that will be the enabler for us protecting our current strategy. In China, what short-term efficiencies can we have by partnering with Geely? Well, we can comment on the cost side. Again, there are short-term wins to do there if we can combine purchasing contracts and whatnot. Also in the commercial system, we can look into coverage in the commercial network. For example, can we collaborate with Geely brands to increase coverage addressing a bigger size of the market? Also we're seeing products such as the long-range XC70 is actually taking a very strong market share way beyond our other Western competition in the growing PHEV segment. That, I think, will probably be the key enabler in the short term to do more with that car.
Ron Banerjee: Mm-hmm. All right. I think we have a few minutes left, so maybe we'll take a last couple of questions. Maybe probably the last caller then. That's you then, Ross MacDonald from Citi. Go ahead, Ross.
Ross MacDonald: Thank you very much. Just one question from me, but it is quite a big, let's say, existential long-term question. Just be curious, if we look across the regions, obviously the Europeans are losing share in perpetuity in China, difficult to call when that stops. The U.S. now you have tariffs, so free trade obviously starting to disappear in that region. We have in Europe, continued hope that free trade will come back and massive competition from the Chinese in the European market putting pressure on that profit pool. My question is, what role do you think the European Commission should play here to protect the local European industry? Obviously, you've seen the Volkswagen capacity cut headlines. Just be curious if you think this cycle of constant restructuring in Europe will continue, or what would the ask be from policymakers to protect local players? Do you think that the policymakers understand the threat to the industry here? Would tariffs on Chinese BEVs be enough at this point to shore things up? It's a big question, but I think it's an important one. Thank you.
Ron Banerjee: Okay.
Håkan Samuelsson: A difficult one. In principle, we are, of course, always been for free competition and leveled field competition. You could, of course, question if we have that today. I think you can understand, and I have to accept that there will be tariffs into Europe in the years to come. I think going back to Volvo, our position as a premium car maker in Europe, I think we have a unique opportunity, and that is, of course, transforming our premium combustion cars into premium electric cars, because that is an area where it will be much tougher for newcomers to penetrate. I could assume that first it will be more in mass markets, lower priced cars that will have problems with Chinese newcomers. If we follow up and continue our strategy and transform faster and offer our Volvo customers, say, Volvo delivering everything they expect from a Volvo, but also being electric, that is our future in Europe. I think we see signs already that that strategy is working. I think for maybe a year ago, there were more doubts about electrification. I think we are very happy today to see that there is a solid transformation going on, which really will help Volvo being stronger in the future. That's exactly what we will talk more about then on this special event that we are planning in September, where we will reveal more of that. All of those products, of course, that we will then develop to meet this more regional approach will still be done within the normal investment levels that you talked about, Fredrik. Not making anybody nervous of us going back into big spending again.
Erik Severinson: I will maybe add as well. I think especially in premium in Europe, it's a big asset to have a strong network, to have a good customer base, a loyal base. A service business for retailers. Also looking at the ownership side or the usage side of the product. It's not just shipping metal. We can do a lot in premium by different offerings, more simplistic, hassle-free peace of mind offerings like the care offer. I think that will be a differentiator to Chinese competition, other competition as well, to be honest.
Håkan Samuelsson: Absolutely.
Erik Severinson: Yes.
Håkan Samuelsson: Difficult for newcomers.
Erik Severinson: Yes.
Håkan Samuelsson: Volvo should definitely be more than a hardware car.
Erik Severinson: Yeah.
Ron Banerjee: All right. Maybe this is a good question perhaps to end this earnings call. Maybe I'll turn to you for this one, Håkan. Clearly, the first half has been tough for Volvo Cars. What gives you confidence that you will end 2026 with a stronger performance in H2?
Håkan Samuelsson: It's really first that we have been using the time taking down our cost structure and taking down our costs. I think that's always a good part going ahead. You see momentum in the form of picking up electrification transformation, picking up in Europe, a comeback in the U.S. after the market went down with the end of the incentives. You see those signs. Of course, in Europe, we will have a car for the mid-sized electric SUV segment. That together make me confident about that the second half year will definitely be better than the first half year. Of course, also our cash earnings will also improve. I think the second half you will see a turn of this company moving into the right direction.
Ron Banerjee: All right, Håkan, Erik, Fredrik, thank you, and thank you everybody for tuning in this morning. From all of us here at Volvo Cars, have a great day and have a great summer ahead. See you.
Håkan Samuelsson: Thank you.
Erik Severinson: Thank you.