Ferrari N.V. (NYSE:RACE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Benedetto Vigna: I take this question about the Purosangue. What I would like to underline is that here in Ferrari, the product development process is very robust. So thanks to our — the way we qualify, we validate the cars, any new car we have. I mean when we go in production, the product is very well tested and is mature. So we do not expect any surprise in this direction. I think this is 1 of the key assets of our company, is the maturity and the stability of the product development process.

Operator: And your next question comes from the line of Martino De Ambroggi from Equita.

Martino De Ambroggi: On the guidance, I know very well, you do not provide any volume guidance. But am I right in assuming volumes ex Purosangue roughly similar to last year in ’23 or slightly up, plus the Purosangue, considering Daytona will offset Monza. And on the free cash flow, you already answered, Antonio, on the net working capital. Could you split the impact of down payments that you have underlining your guidance? And if this kind of down payments will become mainly recurring going forward? Or should we see a decline at a certain point. And if I may, very last on the single-digit price increase, offsetting inflation. So roughly EUR 200 million inflation, but you also mentioned during the call, that the cost inflation is unknown.

So I was wondering if you were referring to next years or also the current year, and specifically, I ask you if you have any comment on the cost of labor because we know — the negotiation is ongoing in Italy. So it takes probably time and you cannot talk about, but just to understand what you can comment about it.

Benedetto Vigna: Martino, I leave the second 1 is the most difficult 1 to Antonio. Now the first one, I understand your curiosity to understand what we will do exactly. And I would do the same thing in your shoes. Also, you cannot — we cannot disclose exactly what we want to do by each specific model. So we have to wait still 12 months to see what we will do in 2023 in this direction. The free cash flow and the other question, I will leave to Antonio.

Antonio Piccon: I’ll be disappointing, Martino, for a number of reasons. No, first. In terms of your question on working capital, I can’t give you the exact size of the negative outlook on the deposits. And going forward, our assumption obviously depends on the mix that we are assuming year after year because as you know, we collect deposits on strictly limited series. So it very much depends on how many we will have for sale in each single year and we’ll start collecting in advance. I said at the Capital Market Day that I remember very clearly that I mentioned the fact that over the planned period, this is going to be a wash. So there are years when we collect more and others where we have relative outflows, meaning less collections than it could have been otherwise.

The second question, I think, was in respect of inflation. I said it’s a known unknown. Obviously, when we make price adjustment, we look at the future — we try and look at the future and make our best guess based on the data points that we obviously have, I mean, so we have assumptions. Then reality will be different by definition. In respect of labor cost, obviously, even there, we mad an assumption, but the negotiation around the new labor agreement is still ongoing. So we’ll see what the final outcome is, we made assumptions around the number, which is what we currently think is more probable. But I cannot be more specific on this.

Operator: And your next question comes from the line of Tom Narayan from RBC.