Aptiv PLC (APTV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Glad to continue Day 2 of the Barclays Global Automotive and Mobility Tech Conference. I'm Dan Levy, I lead U.S. autos research coverage at Barclays. I'm very pleased to have with us Aptiv, one of the companies in our supply base that's really the best levered to the megatrends in our coverage, EVs, the software-defined vehicle, ADAS. Many of you are very well aware of them. Kevin Clark, the company's Chairman and CEO; Joe Massaro, CFO. So what we're going to do is I have a series of questions that we'll discuss fireside chat style. Folks in the room, if you have questions, please raise your hands. Anyone who wants to ask questions through the webcast, please feel free to e-mail my colleagues, Joshua Cho or Daniel Lai. They can ask the questions. And obviously, first name.last name at barclays.com. And with that, let's get started.

I want to start with just a broad narrative question. Earlier this year, you laid out a very ambitious and really impressive plan at your Capital Markets Day, growth not only in the next few years, but really through the end of the decade. I think since that time, we've seen a few things change. Obviously, the market environment has gotten better, higher LVP, more production stability, but there's still some macro uncertainty. And obviously, the big thing that's changed is the narrative around EVs has shifted. So when we think about the Aptiv narrative and your opportunity just in light of what's happening, how much of this is still very much intact versus maybe there's pivots around the opportunity set ahead?

Yes. Maybe I'll start and Joe can certainly chime in, and thanks for having us here. I think as we had our Investor Day back in February of this year, and we laid out our plan for the foreseeable future and the underlying macro trends and our reaction to that, quite frankly, we didn't find them to be ambitious. There are a number of trends, whether it's active safety solutions, software content in the car, smart vehicle architecture, software-defined vehicle electrification, that are trends that are naturally happening today, will continue to happen. At that point in time, there seems to be a dampening of maybe investor views on the adoption of battery-electric vehicles. As we've talked about for the -- on a regular basis, we've always had a fairly balanced view on BEV adoption, right, certainly, a much lower level than what you'd see from IHS and from other industry experts. The bulk of our focus had been on -- in terms of business pursuits have been in Europe and in China, which we continue to believe those are the areas where you're going to see the most aggressive growth. So those are the customers that we focused on. And our business model, our view of the business and how we're positioned, the opportunities, we would say largely remains unchanged. Now there may be quarter-to-quarter, some shifts in reductions in inventory, increases in inventory, like what happened in North America in Q3 and in Q4 with the strike, with Japanese OEMs, rebuilding inventory in North America where they were at historically very low levels previously. Those things are going to happen. But when you look at the pull and the demand for the solutions that we sell, whether they're active safety, smart vehicle architecture, high-voltage electrification, still a significant demand there.

Is one of the best proof points to this that you're going to do what -- in excess of $30 billion of bookings this year? And that tells us everything we need to know that the story is still very much on track?

Yes. bookings are lumpy, right? So -- and we've -- as we've said in the past, but when you look at the areas where we're booking business, whether it's ADAS, smart vehicle architecture, user experience, vehicle electrification and you look at those bookings over the last 3 years, which will show up as revenue really kind of '25, '26, you look where it's located and who it's located with. Yes, it definitely stays intact.

Right. Let's pivot off of that and talk about growth. And I think since 3Q, the investor feedback we've gotten is just questions about growth remarks. So let's set the record straight, growth of our market story is still very much intact?

Yes, very much. Joe can maybe walk through the puts and takes.

Yes. No, listen, I think when we fully appreciate, Q3 was maybe lower than folks had expected. But we've always talked about for years, growth over market being lumpy. And it also is a calculation, there's a market effect, right? It's our growth over market. So a lot of it depends on what's happening in the market in a given quarter. And we had a number of times in the past where -- and I appreciate this was on the higher side. But we would have been above our range and folks would ask us, are you going to be at 12% or 15% forever? And we said, no, there are things going on in the market that whether it was our customers launching or a new technology we were rolling out, where our customers on a relative basis were higher than the market. In Q3, we had a situation where our customers on a relative basis were lower than the market. The big driver -- the biggest driver in that difference was really North America. We had 2 impacts. One, you had our customers. We're weighted towards the D3. About 60%, 65% of our North American business is D3. They produce less because of the strike. September was heavily impacted. We also cautioned that we saw the heavy impact in October. And so you'd expect -- we would expect Q4 to look lower than expected as well, which was the caution we had. Kevin mentioned one of the other aspects that I think created a little bit of additional pressure on the numbers. The J3, the big Japanese North American manufacturers, who we don't have a lot of content with, had very strong year-over-year recoveries. In 2022, as the Japanese OEMs were triaging semiconductors, they would tend to favor Japanese plants, Japanese production, kept those plants up and running. So you saw very low production rates in the North American plants last year. Picked up, you saw a 19% growth in the Japanese manufacturing in North America, right, well in Q3. About 20% is expected in Q4. They will not run at that rate forever. As a matter of fact, the IHS, if you look at sort of the expectations for next year, they have the J3 flat to this year. So you did have both a numerator and denominator impact. On the global calculation, that was worth about 4 points of growth over market. So that 2 has become 6. We've always said it's been lumpy. But really, that North America contribution was the biggest impact.

If we could just unpack a couple of those points, double-click for a second. One, if I just focus on 4Q for a second, I think if I recall correctly, D3 was like down 9% in the third quarter versus industry flat. If I just look fourth quarter, and I don't remember the last IHS update, but that gap has widened dramatically because you're getting the full strike impact. So should we just be braced for North America, growth of the market could be especially weak in the fourth quarter?

We guided to 5% for the full year, right? So we have that growth over market number coming down. That was in the discussion on the earnings call. So yes, you could flow that through now. We're not using IHS for our customers. We're obviously on our customer schedules at this point for the fourth quarter. But certainly, relative to what you see from IHS, I think they have the J3 up another 20%. October was a heavy impact, and we've gotten this question a bit. I think one of the things we started to see in late September and October, where you had schedules coming down from -- in some of the larger plants from our customers to D3, and I think they were anticipating ultimately, those plants getting shut down as part of the strike. Now they got shut down very late in the strike, but I think some of the industry -- some of those inventory adjustments probably created a bigger strike impact than maybe people thought just given the timing of the strike resolution. But plants are back up and running. I think an important point here, and we don't -- we haven't talked about this number before, and I'm not suggesting we will go forward. But one of the things, when we looked at North America in Q3 and why we were so low, we looked at growth over market by customer, took our growth at a customer at the D3s relative to their production. And we grew 14% above market as it related to the D3, which, again, that was a -- for us, and that's not how we traditionally calculate growth over market. I'm not suggesting we will. But for us, I think it's an important data point of relative to our take rates, relative to our technology, relative to our penetration at our customers, are we still seeing the kind of growth we would expect? And we are. That shows us that we are. They're just on a relative basis, we're a much lower portion of the North American production.

Great. Let's unpack another piece of the growth over market. China, you were flat in the third quarter. And I think this was a theme really across all the suppliers was this very heavy mix shift toward the domestic OEMs, away from the multinationals, where most of the publicly traded suppliers are more heavily weighted toward the multinationals. I think all of us assume this trend is only going to continue of domestics taking on more share. So how should we think about the drag on China growth over market in the coming quarters as you get more of this mix shift?

Yes. So that's aggregate. So you've seen local OEMs in China continue to penetrate and gain more share. We've talked about this in 2 ways: current revenue mix as well as bookings. When you look at our revenue mix today, it's roughly 60% multinational -- a little less than 60% multinational, it's 40% Chinese. When you look at our bookings, and the trend has been improving or increasing kind of year in, year out, we're now at a point where 60% of bookings are the local OEMs, 40% are the multinationals. And as we head into 2024, you'll see a more balanced kind of starting with roughly a 50-50 mix between locals and multinationals from a revenue standpoint, and then that significantly accelerate beyond 2024, 2025 and beyond.

And so fair to say that as you get even, you really won't feel that mix shift in the growth over market, that should even?

Certainly wouldn't feel as much of it.

Great. Okay. Let's talk about 2024 and beyond. And I want to start with the framework that you've laid out through 2025, the 8 to 10 points, 10 points plus beyond 2025. Is that framework still intact?

We got to look at 2023-'24 schedules. We have to see what customers are providing. We would say kind of in general, yes, the framework of exceptionally or significant high growth relative to overall market, when you look at areas like -- your follow-up question will be high-voltage electrification. When you look at areas like the impact on high-voltage electrification, that's been worth about 1 point to 2 points of our overall outgrowth over the last roughly 2 years. So it's a contributor. As I mentioned, the bulk of our business is outside of North America. There's been a lot of narrative with respect to BEV adoption, quite frankly, with the D3 that Joe referenced and a slowing pace there. We'll have some impact with that customer base, but it's a smaller proportion of our overall customer base.

I would just add, if you're speaking to the revenue framework, there's 2 components, right? There's vehicle production growth over market. The framework that we provided in February of this year had relatively modest growth in vehicle production, right? We had for 2024, 87 million units. The world, obviously, is much -- we're at 91 million now. I don't think anyone is anticipating going back. We've historically -- when we've provided the longer-term forecast, have been fairly conservative on global vehicle production because we wanted to make sure our plan was sort of our ability to get there, right, based on not needing a lot of help from the market. So we've got a, I think, some tailwind from global vehicle production. And then to Kevin's point, as we get to 2024 schedules over the next 6 to 8 weeks with customers, we'll get to see exactly where that growth over market component shakes out. But certainly, the total vehicle production component of that framework is a positive.

I think your point here is that we should think about this holistically in terms of revenue, that even if there is some movement on the growth of a market piece, because the production side is so much better than what you were originally assuming, that revenue could still very much end up being intact.

Yes.

Let's unpack, and you said high voltage, obviously getting a lot of focus. BEV story is intact in China. North America, weaker. Europe, obviously, still structurally there but this year has been a tougher year on penetration. How -- you said 80% of your high-voltage exposure is Europe and China. How should we think about the slowdown that we're seeing even within Europe impacting your numbers? And then I would just ask, as far as fungibility of production, to what extent should we think of, okay, if I'm producing one less high-voltage system on an ID.4, I'm making one more electrical architecture system on a Passat and it's fungible, maybe less content but...

It depends. I mean it's specific to a program to a platform in terms of the amount of high-voltage content versus low-voltage content that we have. But to start with your point on the extent you assume a BEV adoption or high-voltage adoption is slower, there's going to be an incremental vehicle producer that has an ICE powertrain. And when you think about our product portfolio, whether it be vehicle architecture, it will need connectors. It will need a low-voltage vehicle architecture. It will need an ADAS solution. I don't need a user experience solution. So all of those things, whether it's a BEV vehicle or an ICE vehicle, it doesn't make a difference, right? It doesn't make a difference, so there'd be no impact there. I think there's one additional item just to talk about. In terms of our view on BEV adoption has always been more conservative than what the broader IHS and some other industry experts estimates were. So the overall penetration rates were, I don't know, roughly 15 points lower than what IHS would talk about in 2030. We saw a slower trajectory. We're very focused on OEMs that had global capabilities for their BEV platforms and that they had BEV platforms. So it was easy for them to rotate out of particular markets into other markets and benefit from maybe faster trends in certain areas. We've never been optimistic about BEV adoption in North America, just given the mix of vehicles that are here, given consumer preferences, given just the amount of overall kind of uniform pressure on CO2 emission reduction. So again, our focus has tended -- has been more -- much more in Europe and especially China.

If you could just unpack the China piece for a second. Obviously, we've seen significant amount of export of Chinese vehicles to Europe. So, a, maybe you could just remind us, I know you said you're going to be next year roughly 50-50 domestic/multinational. Maybe you could double-click, what does that look like on high voltage or where are the content requirements? Any comments on what your exposure is to BYD? And then to the extent that we're seeing more exports from China into Europe, what's the impact to you?

Yes. Most of our exposure from a Chinese OEM standpoint is amongst the top 10 or 12 OEMs in China. With the local players, most of our exposure is with those who are focused on growing in China and actually exporting and building manufacturing capacity outside of China. So again, it gets back to our strategy as it related to BEV adoption. We recognize that OEMs are going to have to go through a transition that, that transition will be somewhat challenging. In certain markets, given government support and consumer preferences, that would be easier than others, that we wanted to go with those OEMs who, again, we're building platforms that could be taken across markets so that we were much more confident in the volume levels. And we've done that with European OEMs. We've done that with certain BEV manufacturers here in North America and have carried that into the China market as well.

Let's talk about the other piece of the backlog and your drivers of growth over market. ADAS, user experience, you have other nonautomotive end markets. I think the question that's emerged is, yes, these areas are powertrain and an ADAS system is powertrain agnostic. But the challenge is, is that automakers were generally reserving premium content for their EV platforms. And so when we're hearing that automakers are slowing the ramp of those platforms, all of a sudden, that's limiting the growth of some of these other non-powertrain related products, but that are exposed to those platforms. So to what extent is the high -- is the non-high voltage portion of your backlog exposed to EVs, and if EVs are maybe slower a little bit near term, that impacts the uptake of these other products?

Yes. I wouldn't have an exact number. But I -- listen, there's someone sitting in an OEM who's focused on mix and optimizing mix. And if there's a transition of -- from highly contented BEVs, if there is, in a particular OEM, a slowdown in the production in sale of those vehicles, there are a lot of folks focused on how do we increase the content on the balance of the vehicles that they're selling. So I sit here today, I would tell you, I think it will be -- there could be an impact. I think it will be minimal. We think it will be minimal.

Yes. I think there's a couple of aspects there. One, the end consumer expect BEVs are highly contented because the competitive benchmarks for BEVs are highly contented vehicles, right? If a consumer's in the market for BEV today, they're thinking about a model Y or model S, expect that level of functionality. I don't think a consumer who doesn't have a BEV available to them is then going to accept lower levels of technology in the vehicle. A matter of fact, we see some of the -- particularly in North America, some of the biggest investments in Level 2-plus quasi-Level 3 systems going into the large truck and SUVs, which is 75% of our North American business. So I think there's an end consumer aspect to desiring this technology which is going to, I think, continue to drive, even if the powertrain mix changes from some of their original expectations.

Yes. I -- listen, to Joe's point, safety sells. We talked to any of our OEMs, it's a feature that sells. It's a feature that has, from a rebuy rate, I think it's roughly 95% or 96% consumer rebuy rate. If you had a vehicle with a ADAS solution, the next vehicle you buy is going to have an ADAS solution. The margin or profitability associated with that particular feature is, if not the highest, it's amongst the highest.

For the OEMs.

Yes, for the OEMs. So as you look at them optimizing profitability as well as the consumer demand, that's a trend that we're confident will continue.

And you're seeing that in the bidding -- I mean I guess the bookings is the answer, right? You're getting just as much on ADAS booking.

Well, on the ADAS side -- so on the ADAS side, the programs we pursue tend to be across large programs that cover multiple platforms, right?

Now one of the largest active safety systems we ship today, a German OEM, that same exact system goes on their electric SUVs, it goes on their internal combustion SUVs, the same system. If that mix was to change at that OEM, we really don't see them decontenting at this point. You would not impact that particular product line.

Right. So full fungibility. Maybe just one more on this SVA. It is powertrain agnostic. But I think -- we're all sort of hard-pressed to see automakers making significant investment in ICE platforms. Even if that tail is getting pushed out, they want to milk those platforms for what they are. So if there is maybe a near-term slowdown, how does that impact SVA rollout of revenue, bidding?

Listen, our SVA revenues are kind of 2026 and beyond. So when you think about those particular platforms and when they get introduced, that's when they're going to be introduced. There are a few OEMs today that we're working on their next generation of smart vehicle architecture platforms. You are right, as you think about your -- an OEM thinks the value is their portfolio of vehicles. The time to consider those architecture changes are as they introduce battery-electric vehicles. We haven't seen a slowdown in the introduction of -- or the development of new programs. Maybe revenues today are a bit lower and capacity has been pushed out to some extent. But so far, we've seen no impact.

Let's pivot to margins. You laid out at your Investor Day earlier this year, a path to 14% margins by 2025. You're running at, what, mid-10s right now? Maybe you can walk us through some of the puts and takes of what's changed since then. Obviously, LVP seems better. We know there's some FX headwinds that -- obviously, in that environment -- puts and takes on the margins?

Yes. I don't think there's many negatives at this point. I think that walk that we had from Investor Day 2022 to 2025 is very much intact. Listen, I certainly appreciate all the discussion around growth over market following the earnings call. That was -- that earnings call was also a beat and raise of $200 million of OI, right? We have $120 million FX impact and an $80 million strike impact, and we held the guide from February. I think that speaks to the flow-through on volumes that we're seeing. It speaks to the amount of performance we're getting out of the business. And it speaks to -- I think we've done a very good job of containing our labor costs to the original estimate that was in that Investor Day guide. So that performance walk remains intact. Like I said, though, on the revenue side, we're going to have a benefit from light vehicle production. We've seen a bit of that in this year as well. But we've also seen the performance muscle of the company come back, and we had talked about when you're in such a heavily disrupted environment in 2021, 2022, a lot of the horsepower in the organization that works every day in a typical environment to make the business better and make the business more profitable is really dealing with that disruption. They're now allowed to go back and focus on how to make the business better. So we're starting to see that performance come back. And the supply chain disruption costs, which were $315 million in 2022 have come down significantly this year, and we continue to expect them to be very low next year, if not close to 0.

Maybe you could just talk about the commercial recovery environment with your customers. Just remind us what you were assuming in terms of inflationary recoveries. And you've already gotten a number of price recoveries. But b, I think a common narrative is each of the D3 just absorbed a couple of billion dollars of labor costs through 2027. EVs, there are some cost challenges along the way. How does this change the tone and tenor of discussions? Or it's always difficult and it never changes?

Yes. It's always difficult. The last couple of years -- from a customer recovery standpoint, 2022, 2023, the numbers have been extremely large. And at times, those conversations or discussions with our customers are less than pleasant. I think given where we sit from a technology standpoint and the platforms we provide them, how important they are, I think given the recognition that during COVID and during the semiconductor crisis, we didn't interrupt one customer. Now it cost us. It certainly cost us investment to do that, but I think a recognition of that fact has been extremely helpful. So we've met all of our targets as it relates to 2022 and 2023 from a recovery standpoint. At times, there's a timing aspect associated with it, quite frankly, closing those discussions out, so quarter-to-quarter, you can see a little bit of variability there. As it relates to the UAW, the UAW strike and the agreement and the cost implications for the OEMs, that obviously puts them under more pressure. The positive aspect from our standpoint is the solutions we provide lower their costs. So as OEMs talk about whether it's a distributed solution or a solution that they want to develop internally, the reality is the economics associated with their cost structure versus our cost structure, hourly as well as salary, are quite different. So we think that, again, better positions us to be awarded and executed on our business in the future.

Can we talk about raw mats and specifically chips? If I look at the bridge, at least what's disclosed in the Qs and Ks, I think like '21, '22, there was something like $800 million of commodity headwinds in aggregate. The vast majority of that, I believe, is chip. So obviously, there's been -- the supply chain now feels more stable. To what extent could we see some cost pressures easing on the chip side and some opportunity to recover some of those commodity headwinds [ as you see it ]?

So we'll see. Our focus has really been on how do we -- when you think about semiconductor and other kind of strategic inputs to our solutions, how do we structurally change the narrative in the game? So how do we validate multiple opportunities to create incremental competition? How do we find alternatives that weren't available 3, 4, 5 years ago and engineer in new solutions? We're very focused on that. We have a very focused initiative where we have, I think it's over 100-plus programs with over 100 engineers who are working with our product organization on how do we validate, develop and then ultimately build products with chips out of places like China and elsewhere that are easier replacements for what we typically use in terms of North American and European suppliers. And that's something that you're going to see more and more of from us.

What's the timing of getting benefits on that? The redesign or resourcing?

We've had some amount this year. Although small, you'll begin to see more next year and into 2025. Joe?

No, I think that's right. And I think -- listen, I think part of that performance bridge that we talked about at Investor Day and I've talked a lot about since, included that level of material performance coming back to the business. So that's part of what we've been delivering on and fully expect to continue to deliver on.

Just one last one on the margin front. You have a lot of backlog. But at the same time, in the last few years when you were booking that backlog, we've since seen costs rise. What's the confidence that as you're launching the backlog that you're still going to get that typical 25% incremental margin on volume that you've historically seen?

Yes. I think part of the -- and we've talked about this in the past. There's a couple of elements there. Part of the commercial negotiations on the price increase for the in-production cost increases also included things launching, call it, over the next, round numbers, 18 months, right? So we have looked at things that we're launching on the next 18 months and made sure those are included in those price discussions. For things beyond that, we were pricing using the updated pricing, obviously, in the bookings, right? So we've got updated pricing in. We've got wording in around significant changes in pricing, and those have gone into effect at this point. There's another process we've had, and this was well before the semiconductor inflation. This was a really good, I think, muscle within the company. We typically book business and it doesn't go into production until about 2 to 3 years out. A lot of that first 2 years is the advanced development work. It's the samples. It's making sure the technology integrates through the vehicle, it's the testing. But before we actually start to put capital into the ground, we go back through the economics of those transactions, of those bookings. That is a mutual -- the customer wants to do that as well, right? There's a lot of times there are things that have changed. Whether the customer now expects more volumes, whether the customer expects different outcomes, they want to have that discussion as well. And that gives us the opportunity to talk about a formal opportunity within the contract to talk about pricing, should they move significantly. And again, that's something we have historically done. That's not just -- that's just not a new mechanism.

Great. We have a few minutes left. Folks in the room, any questions? Okay. I will just -- Motional, a, I would just take that back. Obviously, like the topic du jour is yet another sort of broad market reset on autonomous driving expectations. So maybe you can just give us a reminder of where Motional is in its path of commercial development? And how critical is Motional to the Aptiv opportunity going forward?

We're at the underpass. So in line with kind of the past plan, so launching a Gen 2, referred to as a Gen 2 vehicle on the Hyundai IONIQ 5 on the Uber network late this year, early next year. So from a technology standpoint, fully driverless. That's what you see. The Gen 3 vehicle launching in 2027. So from a technology development, strong; from a commercial revenue standpoint, I'd say, slightly behind relative to what we would have said 3 years ago. But behind not a very big number, so progress being made. As it relates to Aptiv's dependence upon Motional for value creation, we would look at it 2 different ways. One, we've always viewed autonomy as kind of the furthest extension of active safety. And the development of perception systems, driving policy and other solutions which we apply those -- that technology and those learnings into our advanced ADAS solution. So there's certainly leverage there. And then out into the future, viewed it as an alternative or an opportunity for a different set of revenues, and we'll see how that plays out. Now for us, it's a 50-50 joint venture with Hyundai. Our partnership with Hyundai, both within Motional has gone extremely well. Our partnership on Motional has created significant uptick in business with Hyundai for Aptiv that has been beneficial. So from that standpoint, we've got those benefits as well.

Is there any potential strategic pivot within Motional that right now, we've generally thought of it would be as fleet applications, fully driverless fleet applications. I think today, the view is that scaling this is really hard and perhaps, more importantly, like really expensive. And then once it's scaled, what margin are you planning for? Is there any thought around, okay, maybe we pivot this strategically to be a bit more focused on learnings or technology or product that enhance the more scalable L3?

Well, there has -- there is work that we're doing and we have done with Motional on L3 and advanced ADAS solution, so whether that be a perception system or driving policy. So that has taken place. There's also application of autonomy in other markets, whether it's consumer from an OEM, but there are other applications outside of the traditional automotive market. So those are things being evaluated as well.

Okay. Great. We'll leave it there. Kevin and Joe, thank you. So CES, do you want to give a plug on CES?

So CES, second week of January. So we'll have a pavilion where we'll feature our Gen 6 ADAS solution, user experience solution. Wind River, and they're both embedded as well as their engineering tool chain, Wind River Studio. How we're going to market together within automotive and then for them, how they go to market within A&D and telecommunications. So most of what we show will be things you can actually experience, get into a car and actually drive.

Okay. Great. Looking forward. Thank you so much.

Great. Thanks.

Thanks, Dan.