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>> Luxury sports car manufacturer Aston

Martin revving up its newest vehicle,

the Aston Market Martin Valon from its

V12 series. The company touting it as

the most powerful front engine Aston

Martin in its 113-year history. And it's

limiting production well to just 150

cars worldwide. Joining us right now is

the chief executive officer of Aston

Martin, Adrien Hallmark. Adrian, uh,

great to have you here. Uh, I I mean, I

am curious. Uh, just talk to me about

the specs real quick. When we talk about

the most powerful, uh, I mean, I

remember the Vanquish. I mean, what was

that? Something like 135 uh, uh,

horsepower. What are we talking about

here uh, for the new Valon?

>> Okay, so thanks for having us on the

show. And the Veilen is more powerful

than a Vanquish. It's 850 PS and 1,000

Newton meters of torque. And I forget

what those numbers are in imperial

measurements, but a lot more than any

car that we've done before. So, it's the

fastest 12cylinder front engine car from

us, but also from any other car company.

It's the it's the world's fastest.

>> Well, so give me a sense here, though.

Um, I mean, why why did you feel the

need to go from whatever that 835 PS up

to the the 150 plus uh PS? I mean, it's

it's notable, but did you need to do

that?

Um,

>> it's that segment of the marketplace.

So, the car is not all about the engine.

The engine is absolutely the heart of

the vehicle, but if you take the whole

concept of the car, it uses our

components from that aluminium space

frame technology and then a full carbon

fiber body. It's way lighter than any of

our 12cylinder cars that we've ever

built, apart from the Valkyrie hypercar,

of course. uh and combined with this

engine uh a GT motorsport gearbox, a

different rear axle ratio, the whole

driving experience is completely

different to any road car that we offer.

So, it really is a specialist car, the

top of our range for collectors and

connoisseurs. That's the whole point of

the car. Well, let's talk about those

collectors and connoisseurs. Only 150 of

this. So, that by default makes it a uh

a collector's item. Uh roughly uh $2

million each. So uh definitely uh you

have to be not only a connoisseur but

also have deep pockets here. What is the

goal uh of releasing a product like this

overall for your business model uh with

Aston Martin as it's a relatively new

CEO?

>> Uh it's it's absolutely essential for

our future success. Um we have a core

range of cars that we're very proud of.

We go from an SUV to a mid-enine

hypercar to three amazing front engine

GTs. But we're one of the few brands in

the world that can and have successfully

in the past offer cars in the one to $3

million range at at significant volumes

and the contribution we get from those

cars is a real boost to the overall

performance of the business. So we now

have about a,000 customers worldwide

that spend more than a million dollars

with us every year. And for those

customers, we like to create every two

years or so something extraordinary,

very collectible, very special and at

the leading edge of design, technology

and our capabilities. And this is one

such example.

>> You know, it's funny. I I I thought V12s

were were dying out here. I mean, uh,

yeah, regulation,

uh, electrification, you know, all the

sort of push back there. And I know that

this is obviously a a somewhat niche

product here, but I I am curious as to

whether this maybe is sort of a

testament of the V12 maybe outliving uh

all of those concerns and all of those

forecasts about where it seemed like we

were going a few couple years ago.

>> You're right. I mean, the change in

policies in many countries around the

world in the last 24 [music] 36 months

has been pretty dramatic. Uh we're now

in a situation where all of our future

planning indicates that we can continue

to sell the 12cylinder versions of our

cars through to 2035 in most countries

and in most regions. Uh we will of

course make them compliant with the next

level of [music] emission standards that

appear in 2728 calendar years. Uh but we

have a clear road map for the next 9

years to still be able to offer 12

cylinder engines. And the reason we do

it with this car is very clearly that

for the the real collectors and the car

enthusiasts of which this is the biggest

collection in the world [music] at Quail

and Pebble Beach, they just love this

kind of powertrain. Uh it may be close

to the end of the this era of automotive

history and they want to make the most

of [music] it and we help them to do so.

>> Uh you're coming up on your uh 2-year

anniversary uh as head of Aston Martin

Laganda. I am curious uh about the sense

of uh how much sort of the path back to

profitability for this company runs

through cars uh like uh the new Veilen

uh versus say you know the core that we

all tend to think about with regards to

the DB12 etc advantage.

>> Yeah. Um I think first of all we need to

be more profitable with our core

products. So you probably recognize that

over the past year and a half or so, we

made major strides to basically bring

down the cost structure of the company

so that we can be profitable [music] and

cash generative at a much lower volume

than we previously planned. Uh this

isn't a retreat from growth. It's a

different way of getting there. It's to

create a solid foundation of a business

with the core models to the Valhalla of

which this year we'll probably sell 500

cars at 1.4 for $1.5 million. These cars

then really give us a a turbocharge, if

you pardon the pun, uh to the financial

performance of the company. So, in the

second half of this year and certainly

into next year, we should be in a

position where we can demonstrate we've

turned the corner. We can generate

positive cash rather than burning cash.

We can generate positive EBIT instead of

negative EBIT. And we're on that path

with a volume per year of about 6,000

sales with a credible mix of these

specials at the top end. And that's the

basis for the new business model [music]

at least for the next 3 years, four

years as we transition to the next

generation of cars. Yes, we've

definitely seen the revenue up, the

volume up. Obviously uh the loss is

still there but uh as you sort of work

your way back uh to uh cash positive. I

am curious about how you view the

valuation of the stock particularly

given uh your one of your main

competitors in this luxury space uh

Ferrari trades at a luxury multiple uh

certainly uh compared to where Aston has

been trading which is let's just be

blunt it kind of like a distressed uh

car maker.

>> Yeah. I mean there's no question that

the the performance of the shares has

been pretty dramatic over the past well

four or five years actually um I think

as [music] soon as we demonstrate that

we can deliver consistently from a

financial point of view the fundamentals

are there we have restructured [music]

the cost structure we have got the

product portfolio that can generate

credible contributions [music]

uh and with that cost structure and

those contributions we have a clear

business plan and a roadmap [music] to

get to profitability and a much stronger

business model. That's been the work of

most of my last two [music] years to get

us a clearer strategy, a winning

strategy that's not driven by achieving

super high volumes, but instead getting

a much more valuebased growth strategy

rather than volume based. And that's

been the the change over the past 18 24

months. Talk to me though about the

people you need to do that because as

you were sort of trying to get cost

under control you did cut uh uh several

hundred jobs and then you're launching

these ambitious products a product that

is you know if not bespoke certainly

very close to it uh and that requires a

lot of human beings I mean it can't all

be automated it can't all be done uh uh

by machines there's a obviously a lot of

thought a lot of design etc that goes

into that so how do you maintain the

craft and quality of a $2 million car

say or even the more pedestrian you know

three or400 $1,000 car while cutting

back such a huge amount of your

workforce.

[music]

>> Yeah. Um it's the same conundrum that

most businesses face in our situation.

Uh but the good news is actually as you

improve quality, you need less people.

I'll give you a simple example and we've

used these numbers regularly in the

past. When I first joined a couple of

years ago, about 25% of the cars that we

built [music]

came off the production line and then

had to be reworked post production. Uh

we've got that figure down to about 1%.

Which means instead of spending extra

hours at the end of production, the cars

run straight through. They also then

[music] run straight through to dealers

and there's virtually no activity

required in the dealer network. So in

many [music] aspects of the business

process, improving quality is a key to

releasing workforce and people. It's not

the only thing. Of course, losing people

in any organization is not the strategy.

It's not something that we want to do.

But we had to become more efficient. We

had to bring the cost structure down to

meet the revenue and contribution

profile that we could predict and rely

upon over the next 2 3 4 years. And

that's what we've done. Not the expense

of quality. In fact, quite the opposite.

So that hasn't hampered us at all. Quite

the reverse.

>> Do you think you're going to need to

raise more capital to go back to capital

markets

in a minute?

>> No. I think the last financing that we

did a few weeks ago has now given us

more flexibility than we have before.

Sufficient flexibility to allow us to

deliver on this new business plan and

deliver both the current products and

all of the innovations that we have in

derivatives. these tactical uh products

like the S versions, but also get us

ready to deliver the next generation of

cars with brand new technologies uh

compliant engines for the next level of

emission standards etc etc and of course

the newest level of electronic

architectures, connectivity, autonomous

capability where necessary. So no, we're

we're well now set up to deliver on the

the strategic plan that we agreed with

the shareholders and we're where all

systems go. All right, Adrian. Uh, I'll

let you get back to it. Obviously, very

busy behind you and uh uh I would love

to hear how that car sounds one day.

Adrien Hallmark, the CEO of Aston

Martin, unveiling uh the most powerful

uh front engine supercar out there uh at

the Quail uh at the Peninsula in Carmel,