Message from the CEO

A growing, engaged and supportive family of businesses

It feels good to see that the strategy we have been pursuing for the past four years is working so well. Today’s D’Ieteren Group is very different from just two years ago, in terms of portfolio composition, results delivered, the momentum and talent bench in our businesses, the investments made for the future and, last but not least, the way we interact across all activities.

The level of responsiveness and resilience that everyone has shown during the unexpected turbulences of 2022 has been remarkable

A growing family of businesses

During 2022, we have been very fortunate to expand our family of businesses with Parts Holding Europe, thus adding a fifth growth platform to the Group, after our 40% investment in TVH in 2021.

This has allowed us to generate combined revenues in 2022 close to 12 billion euros, 42.6% more than the 8 billion euros of the previous year. In Group’s share revenues, we landed at 8.2 billion euros in 2022.

This has also led to a substantially growing bottom line, reaching 1.5 billion euros in combined adjusted operating results vs 990 million euros the year before, or 836 million euros in the Group’s share of adjusted operating results for 2022.

As to the key performance indicator that we typically use for our guidance, we have grown the Group’s share of profit before tax by 50.9% to 733 million euros. With that, we are fully on track to achieve our medium-term goal of around 1 billion euros profit before tax, Group’s share, which we communicated during our Investor Day at the end of April 2022.

An engaged family of businesses

I am particularly enchanted by the exceptional level of employee engagement throughout 2022, and this despite the many uncertainties and unforeseen challenges that the world has been confronted with. Belron maintained an all-time high score of 86% in employee engagement, with D'Ieteren Automotive not far behind at 84% and TVH close after at 81%. Moleskine and PHE have also continued to operate with highly energized teams. I would like to take advantage of this CEO letter to express my heartfelt gratitude to all our 46,000 collaborators for their outstanding work and commitment.

This letter is also a tribute to the strength of the leadership teams at our businesses: it is thanks to them that engagement levels have remained so high. During 2022, we continued to add talents to our corporate team by incorporating a Digital Director. We also broadened the management benches at our activities across different levels and functions, both with internal promotions and by recruiting external senior leaders. Most notably, we have appointed Carlos Brito as the new CEO of Belron. On 1 March 2023, he stepped into the very big shoes of Gary Lubner, who is retiring after 22 highly successful years as CEO but will remain a Belron Board member. Let me also use the occasion of writing our Annual Report letter to thank Gary once more for his exemplary and inspiring leadership in building the exceptional company Belron is today.

We have put the same enthusiasm into continuing to build our ESG journey. In particular, we have committed to having 100% of our businesses with a validated science-based target by the end of 2025. In 2022, Belron was the first to submit a concrete target to SBTi.

A supportive family of businesses

The level of responsiveness and resilience that everyone has shown during the unexpected turbulences of 2022 has been remarkable, ranging from tackling the continued supply-chain issues for spare parts and cars across the world to taking emergency decisions in response to the fallout of the war in Ukraine or to the rapid rise of inflation in both Europe and the US during the year. Corrective measures were taken rapidly where needed, support was given and solidarity was shown.

2022 was also the year where we continued to invest massively in the future development of each of our businesses. At Belron and TVH, the implementation of their respective digital transformation programs, Fit for Growth and Innovatis, moved forward, and substantial investments were made to guarantee their success. At D’Ieteren Automotive, several acquisitions were undertaken to expand the scope of mobility services, for instance of bike shops, taxi services and solar panel services. And PHE continued moving forward with its consolidation strategy, making additional acquisitions across its footprint, in particular in Spain and Italy. The same goes for TVH, with acquisitions in Portugal and the UK, and for Belron, with no less than 23 bolt-on acquisitions during the year.

Finally, now that we have five growth platforms in the Group, we are in an ideal position to intensify the exchange of best practices across the businesses, be it in ESG, digital transformation, logistics and supply chain, or finance-related topics. In 2023 we are embarking on a more structured best-practices exchange program, bringing together functional leaders from across the portfolio. We let them build communities of executives so that they can compare notes and start learning from each other. This initiative fits very well with our D’Ieteren Group values, which are about entrepreneurship, courage, curiosity, respect, and care.

We look back to 2022 with deep gratitude. While the environment remains highly uncertain, we look to 2023 and beyond with great confidence that our family of businesses will remain agile and resilient.

Francis Deprez, CEO D’Ieteren Group