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Message from the CEO

Growing Together at D'Ieteren Group

In June 2023, the top 200 managers from all D’Ieteren Group (DIG) businesses got together for a couple of days during our very first Global Meeting: we call it the DIGathering. It was a very energizing, family-like event in the middle of nature. It was all about growing together as members of a group that is more than the sum of its parts, with the objective of connecting, sharing and celebrating. With hindsight, those three words also best summarize the year 2023.

Connect

2023 has been the first year where our 6 businesses – Belron, D’Ieteren Automotive, Moleskine, TVH, Parts Holding Europe (PHE) and D’Ieteren Immo – were all part of the Group for the entire calendar year. It was a logical year, therefore, to create and explore connections between the different businesses and their people.

Our family of businesses has become very coherent. All of our businesses are active in distribution one way or another, either for spare parts, as is the case with TVH Parts and Parts Holding Europe, or for the sale and marketing of finished products, like in the case of D'Ieteren Automotive and Moleskine, or by offering service operations themselves (Belron & D’Ieteren Automotive).

Our participations are also more balanced than before. Belron continues to be a major part of our D’Ieteren Group investments. At the same time, our four other businesses combined represented a share of almost half the group’s profit before tax (47% to be precise) in 2023, which is a great achievement compared to just a couple of years ago.

Share

Throughout 2023, we have created and brought together a number of functional communities across our different entities. Our existing ESG and legal fora have deepened their collaboration and exchange, with a focus on preparing for the upcoming CSRD reporting requirements. Three new communities were set up for the following areas:

  • Logistics and supply chain, where a lot of complementary competencies exist, and where comparing notes and exchanging best practices is a very natural thing to do;
  • Cybersecurity, where we used the hacking crisis at TVH as a catalyst to raise awareness across the Group, and accelerate the upgrade of systems and policies;
  • Financial planning & control, where colleagues started to exchange knowledge and ideas on forecasting tools and other topics of interest.

As a follow-up to the DIGathering, new bilateral and multilateral exchanges have occurred among IT managers on the use of AI to drive business efficiency, among transformation project teams on lessons learned, and among the innovation crowd on comparing the different approaches used to foster continuous reinvention.

Celebrate

Our global gathering was also a great opportunity to celebrate the success of our journey from 2019 to 2022, not forgetting the fact that 2023 provided lots of reasons for celebration as well.

We have delivered record results once more as a Group, reaching group share revenues of close to 12 billion euros, with an adjusted operating result of 1.2 billion euros, and an increase in our guidance KPI of groupshare profit before tax of over 28% versus 2022.

There are also many reasons to feel good on the non-financial side of things: we have obtained a first encouraging B rating from CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) and maintained a low ESG risk rating from Sustainalytics and MSCI. We also obtained validation of our CO2 emission reduction plan by SBTi. Even more importantly, our businesses made big strides forward. Some noteworthy examples of how they made progress on their sustainability roadmap include:

  • D’Ieteren Automotive remained the Belgian leader in electric vehicles with close to 50% of vehicles sold being new energy, close to half of which were fully electric, while providing B2B and B2C clients with charging stations and solar panels to complete their electric offering.
  • Belron continued to make significant progress in returning used vehicle glass for recycling, with 97% glass waste recycled in 2023.
  • Moleskine recycled 36% (250 tonnes) of unsold products while deploying creative commercial initiatives to give a second life to other unsold products.
  • Both PHE and TVH took concrete steps to reduce their packaging waste.

All in all, 2023 has been another year to be extremely proud about. I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to all my colleagues at Group level and across our entire family of businesses at D’Ieteren Group for their drive, their commitment and their achievements.

Thank you!

Francis Deprez, CEO D’Ieteren Group