AUSTRALIA’S biggest automotive retailer, Eagers Automotive, has presented an optimistic outlook at its annual general meeting of shareholders this week, outlining a strong 2025 result on a bigger order book, record trading by Easyauto123 and a modified retail joint venture with BYD.

Eagers’ CEO Keith Thornton told shareholders that while he was optimistic about the current year, he said that the automotive industry’s “dynamics” over “the past couple of years and ahead of us” was “not something we have seen before.”

“In February this year we communicated our outlook for 2025, including our goal to deliver another year of more than $1.0 billion in revenue growth,” he said in his address.

“We also communicated that we expected the challenging market conditions of the second half of 2024 to trough during the first half before recovering in the second half of calendar year 2025.”

Mr Thornton said that the trough in the first half of 2025 was attributed to factors including the federal election, limited interest rate relief “and the challenge of an unfavourable April public holiday schedule” along with a cyclone in Eagers’ biggest region of Queensland.

“For these reasons, we expect our profit to be below the first half of 2024 on a year-on-year basis, before we expect it to outperform in the second half of 2025,” he said.

The improvement will be triggered by “tailwinds associated with improving industry conditions, interest rate relief and without some of the other disruptions experienced in the first half.”

“At the end of April YTD, our underlying PBT was marginally ahead of the same period in 2024. “We expect this trend to continue based on May trading, taking us to a year-to-date underlying PBT increase relative to the very strong May YTD results achieved in 2024.

“Despite the fact that we are cycling a very strong June 2024 monthly result, the 2025 YTD performance gives us confidence in our outlook for the full year.”

Mr Thornton said the retail joint venture position recently changed, with BYD taking over the importation and distribution of the brand from EVDirect, in which Eagers has an association.

Eagers has now signed a new long-term agreement directly with BYD Australia – owned by the BYD factory – to provide retail representation for the brand.

The new agreement is for five years with a further five-year option period which he said aligned with BYD extending its role to become both importer and distributor.

But unlike the previous arrangement with EVDirect, Eagers no longer will be BYD’s exclusive retailer.

Keith Thornton

Mr Thornton said BYD considered Australia to be a key strategic market as part of its global growth ambitions.

“This new agreement demonstrates BYD’s commitment to Eagers Automotive as a long-term preferred retail partner,” he said.

Shareholders were told that subject to formal documentation, the new agreement will see Eagers:

• Retain the extensive existing network of retail sales and after sales service centres across key metro and regional Australian markets
• Be granted specific rights, subject to BYD approvals, to apply to increase its BYD retail network, and
• Have the opportunity to continue to evolve the unique retail partner model to support the growth of the BYD network.

“Although the new arrangement is not exclusive, other authorised dealers will be limited in number and we are very excited to be able to confirm our future partnership with BYD,” he said.

“It is extensive, valuable and rewards the investment and relationship Eagers Automotive has built since BYD launched in Australia.”