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Message from the CEO

November 10, 2024: Denis Van Weynbergh leaves the port of Les Sables d’Olonne on his D’Ieteren Group IMOCA class sailing boat, as part of the Vendée Globe solo race around the world. Exactly 117 days later, Denis completes his tour around the globe, and becomes the first Belgian ever to finish this ultra-challenging“Mount Everest of sailing” race in one go. During the last year and a half, Denis has become a true hero within the D’Ieteren Group community, in Belgium and beyond. No better person than him exemplifies our values of entrepreneurship, courage, curiosity, respect and care. A true inspiration to us all!

2024 has also witnessed a major entrepreneurial milestone at D’Ieteren Group, with the once-in-a-generation restructuring of the family shareholding. Nicolas D’Ieteren and Olivier Périer, the two family shareholders of the seventh generation, agreed to concentrate the family ownership into a single branch, thereby simplifying the family control of the publicly listed investment company that we are, with Nicolas D’Ieteren now serving as the firm’s family anchor for the decades to come. From our point of view as management, this positions the Group optimally to continue executing its existing
strategy efficiently and creating value for all stakeholders.

In terms of financial results, 2024 has brought us a double record. We surpassed the €1 billion mark both in Profit before Tax, Group share - the KPI we typically use to guide the financial markets, and in pre-tax pre-acquisition Free Cash Flow, Group share, an internal metric we use to track the cash flow generation of our businesses. This is not a minor symbolic achievement, when compared to the couple of hundred million euros we were generating less than a decade ago.

These records were achieved despite an increasingly turbulent and uncertain macroeconomic environment in which our businesses operated in 2024:

  • D’Ieteren Automotive reached an operating result of €270m with a record margin, despite delivering 5000 less vehicles than last year in a declining market.
  • Belron continued on its growth trajectory, increasing its margin in a highly polarized market. In the US, Belron increased its market share in a declining insurance claims market while and in Europe, the company was able to capture significant growth in several countries. The trajectory remained rock solid, but to get there, the management had to muster a lot of agility and determination.
  • TVH and PHE, our two spare parts businesses, both operated in environments with very limited pricing tailwind, and patchy – sometimes negative – volume demand. Nevertheless, both businesses achieved top line growth, as well as higher margins, which is a tribute to the resilience of their business models as well as to the active steering and performance management of their leadership teams.
  • Moleskine too operated in markets with subdued consumer demand, where brick & mortar retailers remained very cautious in their investments, and online channels no longer experienced the same level of growth as before.

In 2024, the financing structures of our Group and several of our businesses have also changed. Some of these changes were part of the day-to-day planning and optimization of capital structures, as seen at TVH, PHE or D’Ieteren Auto, while others, especially at Belron and at the Group levels, were made in anticipation of the extraordinary dividend of €74 approved by the Special General Assembly of December 6, 2024, and subsequently paid out to all shareholders. At Belron, a combination of TLB and SSN financing was used to refinance the company and raise €3.8 bn of additional debt. By the end of December, Belron‘s leverage ratio stood at 5.15x, down from the 5.5x communicated in September. At the Group level, we raised a two year bridge loan of €500m of which €250m was already repaid in March 2025, and a bank-syndicated five year loan of €500m. These two facilities combined represent a very moderate loan-to-market cap ratio.

On May 14 of this year, we will hold our Investor Day in London, three years after the previous one. This will be a great opportunity to take stock of the recent past, give an outlook for the next three years, and allow the capital markets and our investors to meet with and ask questions to the CEOs and CFOs of our businesses.

I would also like to take the opportunity of this message to say thank you. First of all to the colleagues of the Corporate team at D’Ieteren Group, who demonstrated extra commitment and flexibility especially in the second half of the year. We also added some new expertise in the central team, most notably in treasury, tax, and ESG, and strengthened our investment professionals team.

Second, I would like to express my gratitude to the management teams of D’Ieteren Automotive, Belron, Moleskine, TVH, PHE and D’Ieteren Immo, for their leadership, creativity and drive, throughout the challenging year 2024. In particular, I want to thank Daniela Riccardi, who retired at the end of December 2024 after five years with us, and welcome Christophe Archaimbault, who took over the helm from her as the CEO of Moleskine. And I want to welcome Steven Boel, who joined over the summer as the new CEO of D’Ieteren Immo.

The 2024 Annual Report is the first to include a sustainability statement aligned with the relevant European reporting standards. Building on the progress made in recent years, it offers a comprehensive view of our Group and businesses’ ESG strategies and performance. Most importantly, it underscores our unwavering commitment to guiding the Group towards resilience and creating meaningful impact.