Among others, the listed automotive company intends to use the available sources to speed up the international expansion of its Retail & Services Business Unit, while the Distribution Business Unit plans to add new Asian brands to the current line-up of the vehicle brands it represents.

 As the Wallis Group considers its investment in AutoWallis Plc. to be a long-term strategic investment, it supports the company’s plans for regional growth by providing HUF 5.7 billion in new capital, explained Tamás Czibere, CEO of Wallis Tőkeholding Zrt. As part of the current capital increase, Wallis Tőkeholding Zrt. is acquiring 46,416,938 shares at the average stock exchange rate of the past 30 days, equal to HUF 122.8, for which it provides a 12-month lock up. Regarding the step, Zsolt Müllner Chairman of the Board of AutoWallis Plc. explained that the fresh capital raised by way of the cash capital increase will continue to improve AutoWallis’s already strong balance sheet structure, which means the company will implement even more dynamic international and regional growth in the coming years. He also added that the company closed its fifth record year in 2023, successfully implementing its intensive growth strategy since it was listed in 2019; to do so, it uses funds from the capital market while increasingly relying on the profits generated by the company. As is already known, AutoWallis achieved an EBITDA of HUF 14.5 billion in 2022 with a revenue of HUF 270 billion, which figures it already surpassed in the first three quarters of 2023 with an EBITDA of HUF 17.5 billion and revenue of HUF 283 billion, almost 60% of which was generated abroad. The record results show that AutoWallis has prematurely exceeded several points in the growth strategy announced when it was listed in 2019 and then revised with higher figures in 2021, which is why the company is expected to again increase, in the first half of 2024, the previously set sales and finance targets. In regard to the capital increase, AutoWallis CEO Gábor Ormosy pointed out that the Group’s expansion in the past years was based on a number of value-adding transactions while even its organic growth surpassed industry trends, showing that the company is on a stable path of growth. The capital to be injected now ensures additional funds that enable AutoWallis’s Retail & Services Business Unit to increase its international expansion while the Distribution Business Unit starts providing representation for new Asian brands in addition to developing the existing ones, allowing the company to continue to react quickly to market consolidation and to quickly and effectively implement acquisitions.

You can download the press release from here.