Aston Martin - comment

A £48m increase in inventory impacted Q1 working capital, but given >£400m of liquidity, the outflow doesn't change our view that AM is fully funded. After the supply chain issues last year AM is stockpiling to ensure it can deliver its new models, so we do not expect this to reverse soon, given the launch schedule (six models across three vehicles over the next 12 months). There was a further £20m outflow related to deposits, as Specials were delivered and deposits released to revenue. There will be some further (<£20m in our estimate) deposit outflows in the next quarter as more specials are delivered before new model orders begin to balance deposits out. H2 was always going to be more interesting than Q1 and so it proved in the Q1 results.