Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Polestar Q1 2025 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star-one-one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star-one-one again. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Polestar.

Thank you Operator. Hello everyone. I’m Anna Gavrilova, Head of Investor Relations for Polestar. Thank you for joining this call covering the first quarter 2025 select financial results for Polestar. I am joined by Michael Lohscheller, CEO, and Jean-François Mady, CFO, who will give the operational and financial update, and then we will open the floor to analyst questions. Before we start, I would like to remind participants that many of our comments today will be considered forward-looking statements under the U.S. federal securities laws and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that may cause Polestar’s actual results to differ materially from what has been communicated. These forward-looking statements include but are not limited to statements regarding the future financial performance of the company, production and delivery volumes, financial and operating results, near term outlook and medium term targets, fundraising and funding requirements, macroeconomic and industry trend, company initiatives and other future events. Forward-looking statements made today are effective only as of today, and Polestar undertakes no obligation to update any of its forward-looking statements. For a discussion of some of the factors that could cause our actual results to differ, please review the risk factors contained in our SEC filings. In addition, management may make references to non-GAAP financial measures during the call. A discussion of why we use non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measure can be found in the appendix to the press release and in the Form 6-K published today. I will now hand over to Michael.

Thank you Anna and to everyone for joining us today. In January, we announced our plan for Polestar with ambitious growth targets and clear milestones. The first important milestone for us as a new leadership team is our Q1 volumes and financial results, and I’m pleased to say our Polestar plan is off to a strong start. We are delivering, both from a commercial and financial point of view, after reporting 76% increases in retail sales for the first quarter compared to last year. We are also improving our financial performance with revenue growth of 84% driven by sales of Polestar 3 and 4, significant margin improvement with a 15% point swing to a positive gross margin of 7%, significant fixed cost reductions, net loss and adjusted EBITDA improvement. Polestar is in execution mode. We are making significant changes to our commercial operations, leveraging our growing model line-up and increasing efficiencies across all areas of the business. This is what we are doing and what we remain focused on. Consistency in our actions and conviction in our decision-making over the last few months has created strong momentum, and we are making good progress. Firstly, let me talk about our commercial transformation. During the last few months, I have had the opportunity to meet with customers and retailers across all markets. What I’ve seen has really impressed me and reaffirmed the importance of our focus on commercial transformation, making it easier for more people to experience our cars because when they do, they get excited. That’s why we are signing up new dealers across all markets. Our ambition is to grow our sales points by 75% until 2026, and in the first quarter of this year compared to Q1 last year, we grew these by 33% excluding China. The renaissance of…

Thank you Jean-François for running through the financials. Operator, we are ready now to start the Q&A session. We look forward to taking your questions.

Thank you. [Operator instructions] Our first question comes from the line of John Babcock from Bank of America. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. I guess first of all, you didn’t really touch on this too much, but could you talk about the impact of the tariffs that the U.S. is considering and ultimately how you’re adjusting the impact on demand, recognizing it may be early, but any color you could provide on that would be useful.

Sure, thanks for your question, John. Happy to do that. First, I think we obviously see that Q1, lots of things going in the right direction. We have around 75% of our total business in Europe. The U.S. business is around 11% for us, and I think it’s fair to say that we are relatively well positioned in the U.S. because 100% of our volume is localized in the Volvo plant in Charleston, South Carolina. But of course, tariffs do then have an impact in term of the different parts, right, and therefore we monitor this closely. It’s also changing quite a bit--I’m sure you guys all saw the changes in terms of tariffs paused for 90 days between China and the U.S., so I think localization is good. We are well positioned there with a product, which gets a lot of momentum, but obviously we have to work through the different cost element on the pricing, and it will accelerate our need to bring costs down overall. But we had good momentum also in the U.S. - we grew, I think by 74% on the retail side, so the U.S. is an important growth market for us, but obviously now it’s about making sure that we have optimized costs and worked through the different tariffs which are out there.

At this juncture, does it make sense to revisit the supplier base and/or maybe find localized suppliers in the U.S. market to compete there, or does it perhaps make more sense to adjust the sales footprint and focus more on other markets, like say Europe or other areas of Asia, etc.?

Yes, as I’ve said, if you have 75% of your volume in Europe and see strong growth, I think we did exceptionally well in the U.K., then of course the focus of our work is on Europe. As you know, we’re going into markets like France, also more European markets to come because what we see is what we do has an immediate impact. Our brand is well established, we have now new cars which are being well received, so Europe is working well, but of course the U.S. is a very interesting growth market for us. With 75% growth, it’s important, but obviously we will make sure that we stay very competitive from a cost point of view, and with more certainty coming, I think we will also have better view than on the mid and long term view of the U.S. business, but it’s an important market for us.

Got you, thank you. Then next question, you did talk about the new commercial strategy and particularly using dealers. If you could just talk a bit more about how that transition is going, how far along are you, where do you expect to get to by the end of the year.

Yes, happy to do that, John, and it’s, I think, a key point because Polestar in the past had direct distribution, which works for several people; but I’m a big believer that the dealer model is much, much better because customers want to go to the dealers, want to know where the service is, want to know what’s happening, also all the explanations. I think it goes extremely well, and that also explains why, I think, our first quarter was so good. But it’s also fair to say a transition from a direct distribution model to a dealership model takes more time, and we are in the middle of this. It requires more locations, it requires more sales people from our retail partners, it also requires more digital process, so I think we’re in the middle of this and we will continue to grow the retail partners quite a bit during this year but also next year, so we have started and more to come.

Good, thank you. Then just a last question, I know you talked a fair bit also about driving efficiencies through the business. I was wondering if you might provide maybe some examples of where you see opportunities to improve efficiency, and especially as you go through ’25, what are the areas you’re going to focus on there?

Yes, maybe I’ll start and then hand it over to Jean-François. First of all, efficiency on the cost side, while we now ramp up some of our cars really nicely, I mean the Polestar 4, I think it’s fair to say it’s now a big success, and of course then with the right level of volume, you can optimize this, you can bring much more efficiencies into the different product line-ups, and then also on the cost side, there is more to do, but maybe Jean-François, you can give a few examples here. Jean-François Mady: Thanks Michael. On the cost side, as you know, we are still an immature organization, so we have to work around the organizations. When we are speaking about organization, we are speaking of headcount efficiencies, right-sizing. As we mentioned during the last call, we have decreased our head count by 25% from 2023 to the end of 2024, so we don’t want to stop here. We are going to continue and to look at for more efficiencies on this matter. I would like also to speak briefly about cash optimization and to look for more efficiencies on this side, because we have also to improve. We finished the year end 2024 with a quite high level of new vehicle inventory that impacted, I would say, our cash flow and our working capital, and we have definitely to improve, I would say, the way we are managing our cash flow, and that will be reflected in our working capital improvements, and to mention to you that versus [indiscernible], where we had the high level of stock at the end of 2024, we are improving a lot on this aspect at the end of Q1.

Thank you.

Thank you. Once again, to ask a question, you will need to press star-one-one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star-one-one again. Our next question comes from the line of Daniel Roeska from Bernstein Research. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Good morning and good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Congratulations on the breakeven on gross profit in Q1. I wonder if we may dive a little bit deeper, because it looks that the vehicle mix [indiscernible] was a little bit better year-on-year because its Q1 ’24 into ’25 seems roughly stable, so I’m wondering what prompted, or what were the key drivers for the reduction in the COGS per vehicle? Could you maybe split out if there was a mix component to that decrease in the COGS per car, and how much of that was battery cost relief? If I kind of backtrack the numbers you published, I get to a number of about $51,000 COGs per car in Q1 ’24 and then $46,000 in now ’25. Just any color what that progression was, and maybe ex-tariff, what your targets for this year would have been? How do you see that COGS per car going forward? Jean-François Mady: I think to your first point, the improvement in terms of gross margin is mainly coming from, I would say, the product mix when you are comparing Q1 2024 to Q1 2025. We have much more profitable product with PS3 and PS4 now, and that explains why we are moving from a negative gross margin to a positive gross margin and of course is reflected, I would say, in the cost of goods sold of those products. Moving forward and taking into account, I would say, the uncertainties that we are facing due to the geopolitical context and the ongoing discussions about tariffs, it’s too early to say how it’s going to evolve, so let’s wait when those discussions will be concluded and when we are going to have much more visibility, I would say, to come back to this point, but mentioning as well that this is the reason why we paused our guidance for 2025.

Very clear. I’ll press you on one thing on the tariffs, though, to ask what is the share of non-USMCA parts in your South Carolina production, so if we think about the Polestar 3 manufactured in South Carolina, what’s the share of non-USMCA parts in that car?

The main component is the battery.

Okay. Would it be fair to compare you to other OEMs instead, like there’s a fairly low share, 10% or less in the build materials that are sourced from elsewhere, and then there’s of course the battery. I’m just wondering, with your connection and the platform also connected to Geely, whether there is higher Chinese content in the Polestar 3 made in South Carolina than is in other cars in the U.S.

I don’t know. I don’t have any reference with the other cars in the U.S. and our competitors.

Okay, thanks.

Thank you. We’ll now move onto our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Tobias Beith from Redburn Atlantic. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Great, good afternoon to both. Hope you’re well. My first question is this: how explicit are contract manufacturing volumes in your multi-year contracts with Volvo and Geely? Does Polestar have any protection against both of these companies reallocating capacity to their own models, which is a more profitable activity for them?

Maybe I’ll get started. To put this into perspective, we have obviously various agreements in place. We talk a lot about the one in Charleston, but I want to remind everybody this is only 11.3% which we have in the U.S. More important, for example, is the Polestar 4 coming out of China and then also later during the year out of Korea. This probably in terms of size and magnitude is much more important. Then of course in terms of the different contract manufacturing agreements, we wouldn’t disclose it at this stage, but rest assured we have flexible agreements and obviously discuss it, depending on what the different situations in the various markets are.

Sure, okay. But is it fair to assume that--I guess that there is a world where Volvo says hey, actually I would prefer to use the capacity in South Carolina to produce more Polestar 3s--or sorry, EX90s or ES90s, and therefore limit Polestar 3s’ volumes in that country?

Yes, but if we came to a situation where capacity was a bottleneck, then of course we would have a dialogue and would say, look, how do we make sure we prioritize, and we would always find good solutions. But at the moment, we have a situation where I think it’s fair to say we have sufficient capacity, especially in the U.S., so we actually don’t have that discussion which you referred to. But of course, in case we came to that, also to the other Geely factories, we would have exactly that debate, and then we find preferences, of course.

Sure, all right. Thank you. How do you as a management team plan to navigate Polestar through the next few years in a world where Polestar’s equity value is unfortunately temporarily impaired due to changes in global trade and mismatched contract manufacturing footprint?

Yes, sure. Great question Tobias, and I would word it like this. First of all, we look at where do we have our strengths and where is also our business model working extremely well, and while we always talk about tariffs, I think probably [auto interference] doesn’t have any tariffs with regard to China, and we do exceptionally well in the U.K. - I mean, 28.6% of our total volume in the first quarter came from the U.K., right, so a market where the tariffs are not there. We focus a lot on our strengths and the strengths are really in Europe for sure, right, because we see we have a good service network, we have a lot of dealers together with Volvo. Our brand, I think has very good awareness, it’s also being recognized standing for design, sustainability and performance, so for us Europe has absolutely the highest priority and therefore also introduction of new markets like France, also Eastern Europe, and a much better penetration also of markets like Germany. Then of course as I said earlier on, the U.S. is a growth market, but of course we need to consider the increasing costs through tariffs and obviously make sure we find mitigation. Also, it’s fair to say that in some of the other markets, we can’t put all the resources because Europe is a key focus, and I think focusing on where we are good at and also see immediate impacts, therefore I am pleased to see that the volume was increasing so much that the margin was improving, and that also the costs are coming down, and I think that’s the way forward. I think we are off to a good start.

All right, great. Then just hopefully a quick final last one from me, if you feel comfortable, may you share the amount of income that was generated from the sale of regulatory credits in the first quarter? Jean-François Mady: Maybe Michael I will take this one. We are not going to communicate, I will say, on the CO2 credit sale in the first quarter. What I just would like to say is we have an ongoing portfolio of CO2 credit sales that we are still confident that we will reach the three-digit millions U.S. dollar target in 2025.

Sure, all right. Thank you.

Thank you. We’ll now move onto our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Andres Sheppard from Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Hi everyone, good morning, good afternoon, and thank you for taking our questions. I just wanted to maybe follow up again on manufacturing in South Carolina. I think I recall in the past the production capacity here is about 150,000. I believe Polestar’s production mix will be roughly about one-third, and so are we to understand that that is meant to fulfill the demand in the U.S. and that the priority will now be shifting more towards Europe and other markets, or--you know, is that how potentially you expect to mitigate the tariff impact, by maybe shifting strategies to European and other markets rather than the U.S. since the production there is roughly only about 50,000? Just any color there would be helpful, thank you.

Yes, thanks for the question, Andres. Happy to give some more color. Again, I think Europe, as I said, we do well, we make good progress, and in Q1 75% of our volume was in Europe, which is good, right? At the same time, U.S. is a growth market, we also had a lot of momentum there. We had some really good campaigns out there, and the Polestar 3 has just been really in the market. I think dealers see a lot of momentum, and if you are up in the U.S. by 74%, you have momentum - I think that’s fair to say. Obviously still on a small scale, but we have the facilities, we have enough capacity, then by the end of the this year we will--or in the second half of the year, we bring the Polestar 4, a good addition for the portfolio in the U.S., so we are convinced that especially also with [indiscernible] and other things, U.S. consumers are open for zero emission mobility and we will continue to do that. But obviously, we need to be mindful, steering through the different frameworks which are changing quite a bit, and if I want to remind all of us, the tariffs from China, which has been obviously in a different set-up but were paused now for 90 days, before our understanding was it was 145% tariffs, now for 90 days at 30%, those are big changes, and I think we need to be mindful going through this. But there is no change of strategy - Europe is our home market, this is where we do well, and the U.S. is an important growth market for us now and in the future.

Got it, okay. That’s super helpful. I appreciate that. Maybe just as a quick follow-up, can you just walk us through your liquidity position again, so with $732 million, maybe can you remind us what kind of cash burn you expect, and how are you thinking about additional capital needs? Thank you. Jean-François Mady: During the last quarter, we had, I mentioned, an average cash burn of US $100 million to $120 million [indiscernible] in 2024. This level of cash burn is not sustainable. We need to [indiscernible] decrease this level. We have a plan, we have a plan starting with, I will say growing our top line, improving our profitability, reducing cost and expenses, and improving as well our working cap and starting to look for efficiencies in terms of capex spending. The level of the debt so far is at US $4.8 billion. As you know, we have a debt covenant of US $5.5 billion, so it is not a situation which is satisfying, and of course with the decrease of the cash burn during 2025, we will have to look for alternative sources of financing, of which new equity, so we are working actively on this new equity story in coordination with Geely. We’ve had discussions with some potential investors, but it’s too early to give you more details, so more to come.

Got it, thank you so much. I’ll pass it on.

Thank you. We’ll now move onto our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Dan Levy from Barclays. Please go ahead, your line is open.

Hi, thank you, and good afternoon to you. I wanted to first start with a question on model mix. If you could just run us through again what the mix of Polestar 3 and 4 is, and how much more you can push the mix towards 3 and 4 to at least improve the profitability and de-emphasize 2?

Thanks Dan for your question. I’ll take this up and give you some color on the different product lines. Obviously Polestar 2, basically our starting model really and also the foundation of the brand, we saw 31% of our total volume in Q1 was Polestar 2. Polestar 3 was 19% or 20% rounded, and Polestar 4 was 49%, so by far the biggest portion was Polestar 4. That is an important achievement because as we all know in the industry, SUVs and larger SUVs in general in the industry have better margins than, for example, sedans, and that’s good. That is also one of the reasons, as Jean-François highlighted, that our margin has improved. Especially when you launch cars, it’s important that you get this momentum, and I think it’s fair to say that we have a lot of momentum for Polestar 4, but also Polestar 3, and that’s encouraging to see because that is the way to go. I think obviously now we try to exploit this even better with more retailers, but I think product mix is absolutely going in the right direction and we’re happy to see this development.

Great, thank you. I know it’s a ways out, and I think this is something that was addressed on the last call, but the U.S. ban on China connected cars starting model year 2027, I know there’s a ways to go, but have there been any developments on your end on ways to work around this?

Yes, absolutely, and as I said earlier on, the U.S. is an important growth market for us. That’s why we have many dialogues obviously to find good solutions for the model year ’27, because there’s still a bit of time but obviously preparations are happening now. This is exactly what we are doing to make sure that we are compliant in the U.S. and continue our growth story, so we are very focused on making sure we comply with this new legislation.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Once again, to ask a question, you will need to press star-one-one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star-one-one again. There appear to be no further questions at this time, so I’ll hand the call back to Michael for closing remarks.

Yes, thank you Operator, and thanks everybody for joining this Q1 call. Thanks for staying with us, and hopefully we could bring across where do we see the improvements. For us a good quarter, and looking forward to the continued dialogue with all of you. I wish you a very good day. Talk to you soon, bye bye.

This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.