Aptiv PLC (APTV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good morning, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us for this session with Aptiv as part of Deutsche Bank's Global Automotive Conference. My name is Emmanuel Rosner, and I'm the lead U.S. autos and auto tech analyst here at Deutsche Bank. I'm incredibly pleased to be joined this morning by Joe Massaro, who is CFO and Vice Chairman of Business Operations. As you probably all know, Aptiv is a leading global supplier that develops solutions to make vehicles safer, greener and more connected with a focus on signal and power distribution, connected vehicles, ADAS and user experience among others. So very pleased to have you here to discuss how the business is going and some of your long-term trajectory?

Great. Thanks for having us. Good morning, everyone.

So maybe just to set the stage, could you describe for us the industry conditions you're seeing out there? How are you feeling about volume in each of the main regions? And how is Aptiv doing so far this year?

Yes. I think that's a good place to start. So our full year outlook, we've got roughly 93.5 million vehicles of production. So I think we're back to global vehicle production being in a good range, obviously, recovered from the last few years of supply chain constraints and COVID impacts. We have Europe down 2%, China up 3%, and North America flat. So a bit of a regional mix. But again, an overall good number. I think the story this year is more what's going on within that number versus the number itself. So we did see over the course of April and adjusted the guide, as most folks know on the Q1 call, some fairly significant schedule reductions in a couple of large customers on both the electric side, but also the internal combustion side. And those schedule adjustments, as we talked about at that time, I think were very consistent with sort of the news that you folks would have been hearing around inventory levels and OEMs that were struggling with higher-than-expected inventory levels. So we took the Q2 forecast down as a result of that. We put some revenue conservatism, some hedge into the back half, just assuming those production schedules don't come back maybe quite as robustly as our customers would like. But I think the real question, as we get into the midyear point, is going to be for a couple of those customers in a couple of those regions, where are we really sitting from an inventory perspective? And have they been able to get it down enough that they sort of come back to a normalized sort of level of production. So we'll start to see those schedules in July, but I think that's more of a macro vehicle production question that we're working through. The 2 other dynamics, I think, what's behind the overall numbers. Obviously, the EV transition, we've seen that slow down considerably. Going very well in China, but certainly in North America and Europe, EV production has come down. We have an EV product line that's a little less than $2 billion of revenue. That product line over the last couple of years has grown 25% to 30%. We now expect it to grow sort of low to mid-single digits this year. So have seen a significant come down in EV production, but again, the total unit number is held. So what we're seeing in a lot of cases, OEMs, if they are cutting back from an EV production perspective, are replacing those units with internal combustion. The third dynamic, I think, within vehicle production that we and our customers and the industry in general is working through is really the customer mix change in China. We're seeing local Chinese OEMs take a more significant share of the market. That's been happening over the last couple of years. It feels like it may be accelerating. We're very well positioned to take advantage of it over time, but we are going through a transition mix. We had our Chinese -- we were up about 20% with our Chinese customers in Q1, up low single digits with the international. So obviously, seeing a difference there. And I think how that plays out over the next 6 to 8 quarters is going to be interesting to see. And to what extent the international can sort of regain their footing and start to grow more in line with the market there and also just where the Chinese -- particularly on the EV side, where the Chinese competition goes. So that's really sort of the top line dynamic. Like I said, maybe not a headline unit question, but a lot going on underneath. From a business performance perspective, we're doing quite well. The questions we got last year, for the better part of the year, was really around the margin expansion. We talked about a lot of performance initiatives that were coming online in our Capital Markets Day in February of '23, and I think we're really starting to see the benefits of it. We saw those come in line in the back half of last year as we were able to hold our guide despite headwinds in the Mexican peso and the UAW strike, and you really saw that in the Q1 margin performance. So initiatives around manufacturing performance, engineering cost center rotations, really moving the engineering footprint to low-cost or better cost countries and then remaining very diligent on the SG&A side. I think that's all resulted in strong margin performance across both segments. So operating performance, I think we've done quite well so far this year.

That's good to hear. And you hit on a lot of the topics I want to come back on. So maybe starting with the EV side. So you've revised down your high-voltage revenue goals earlier this year, as you mentioned. What are you hearing from customers? Are they still dedicated to electrification? Is the time line being pushed out? And how does Aptiv -- how are you positioned to deal with it?

The North American time line is certainly being pushed out. I think, and to some extent, maybe a bit of a push out in Europe as well. China is well down the EV path, and we see that continuing and really on the original thesis that folks talked about a few years ago. Our customers globally remain very committed to EV despite the push outs. I think some are focusing on the products they need to effectively sell, whether that be at a price point or a model that can penetrate beyond sort of where some of those initial launch models. They were somewhat unique, particularly in North America, somewhat unique vehicles or sort of limited markets. So we've got a lot of customers focusing on how to expand their markets -- how to expand their product portfolio to address the markets. Also very mindful of what the Chinese are doing, right? If you looked at Chinese EV players, they've clearly got a model for a lower-cost EV. The cars are very appealing from a style perspective, from a technology perspective, digital cockpit. I think we all know the Chinese export numbers are up significantly. So I think everyone's mindful on that potential competitive dynamic and what can they do. So they're very excited about their future launches, but we're clearly going to see a gap here, I think, in North America and Europe, certainly against the original projections for the next couple of years. From a positioning perspective, we remain very well positioned. Our electrification portfolio, which, again, is a little less than $2 billion, is sort of the only piece of the business that's truly focused on EV. The rest of our product portfolio is very agnostic. But that portfolio is very well positioned to help our customers lower cost. That product portfolio works effectively on hybrid platforms as well as full battery electric platforms. So I think as they roll out new products, as we start to see what some of the new opportunities are, including maybe some hybrid opportunities here in North America, I think we're very well positioned, albeit the growth certainly has slowed from the last couple of years.

And then you were mentioning some of the dynamics in China with some Chinese automakers gaining tremendous share in the region with electric vehicles. Several of them also seem to have global aspirations. What are global OEMs doing about it? And how are you positioned to benefit from this?

Well, let me start with how best we're positioned. So as I said, we were up 20% in Q1 with local Chinese OEMs. A large part of that is on the battery electric side. So we're very well positioned locally. We've been in China for almost 30 years now, very well-established business with really strong customer relationships with all OEMs, but including with the Chinese. If we're having this conversation a few years ago, 2017, 2018, our revenues at that time in China would have been 70% multinational, 30% local. As we sit here today, we're about 50-50. So the business has done a really good job of transitioning with the market share shift. Our bookings, which are our advanced awards. So we book something today, it tends to convert to revenue 2 to 3 years from now. Our bookings in China are about 60-40 in favor of the locals. So we've done a really good job of positioning our product portfolio and positioning ourselves with the right customers. We're very selective in China. We tend to do business with all of the top 10 OEMs. A couple of reasons for that, but primarily, they're the ones really building for the global quality standards. So they are the ones that are most interested in our various types of technology. I think the other thing that's very helpful to a company like Aptiv in China, when you get to those top 10 Chinese OEMs, when you think about safety critical systems, whether that be high voltage systems or the active safety type systems, they are very focused on being globally competitive. And they're interested in using, for some of those safety critical systems, I think Western suppliers. It puts them at the global standards within the local markets. I think eventually, it also helps with regulatory and warranty-type concerns as they get into the international markets. So very well positioned there, although, as I said in the vehicle production comments, we do expect a bit of a bumpy ride here in China over the next 6 to 8 quarters as this market share sorts out. And again, it would be great. I think the international customers are working hard to sort of get their footing and regain some of that share, which I think would be obviously important for them and would be helpful to us, but we are very well positioned with the locals.

[Operator Instructions] And I guess, finally, just in terms of setting the stage of industry conditions, are automakers still committed to developing software-defined vehicles? What is the impact on Aptiv over the short and longer term of some of these decisions?

Yes. Listen, we've seen no real pullback from the long-term aspirations of our customers as it relates to software-defined vehicles, the new architectures and where our customers believe they need to be towards the end of the decade. Clearly, I think we're seeing a slower ramp curve in EV. But as you look out beyond 2028, 2030, the benefits of smart vehicle architecture, software-defined increasing functionality allowing basically fewer computes to get into the vehicle. Right now, the current architectures have a lot of smaller compute platforms in the vehicles. That creates a lot of challenges from a manufacturing, from an architecture, from a warranty perspective and how to consolidate that and gain more functionality over time. All of our customers continue to be very interested in that. We've seen only one real pullback from a customer perspective. We did have a customer that canceled an SVA program for about $2 billion. That was going to be revenue in '27, '28 sort of start of production. And that's really -- that customer relooking at how they think about their architecture. So there's a couple of different paths to go down, as you know, Emmanuel, when you go into smart vehicle architecture. And this customer is choosing a different path and would very much remain an opportunity for us in the future as they sort that out. But our SVA bookings to date are over $7 billion adjusted for that cancellation, and we see customers doing a lot of work to think through that. And we've seen a lot of interest in Wind River, which is our software solution for the software-defined vehicle, providing that full stack containerized applications on a vehicle compute and then cloud-enabled life cycle management. So again, as we look out towards the end of the decade, have seen no real change broadly in the industry's interest in those technologies.

So let's remain on some of the near-term dynamics for your business. When you reported Q1 earnings, you pointed to limited sales growth expected in the second quarter with some acceleration in the back half. Is this still the right framework? And can you just remind us what are the drivers of this dynamic?

Sure. Yes. I think generally speaking, that's the right framework. As I mentioned in my opening comments, we saw a couple of large customers really pull down schedules, their vehicle production schedules, significantly in sort of that April time frame, on both EV but also on internal combustion. As I mentioned, I think the sort of the headline news around where some of these OEMs are on inventory levels in certain markets is very consistent with the scheduled pullbacks we saw. So that's really what put the pressure on Q2. I do think Q2 is going to be a relatively low growth quarter just based on what we've seen. That certainly was our expectation and that's playing out. The back half of the year, a little different. We've obviously got to look through and understand where customers are going, broadly speaking with sort of the vehicle production macro, but driving our revenue in the back half of the year are some very specific launches that we talked about in detail on the earnings call a couple of months ago, really around internal combustion platforms and launches in all regions. So we've got a launch in the vehicle architecture side, sort of a mid-model refresh on a large SUV pickup truck platform that we're on. And that's a big launch, right? That will contribute about $100 million of revenue to the back half. Active safety launches in both North America and Europe are close to $300 million of revenue in the back half. So we've got a very good line of sight to that. In that case, we have existing systems with existing customers that are being proliferated across other platforms. So again, real high confidence line of sight to launch activity. And I've seen no indications from customers at this point around slowing that launch activity. So those launches in the back half remain on track. As I mentioned, I think our operational performance initiatives remain on track. And it's really, I think, going to come down to, as I said in my opening comments, just where is the overall vehicle production and particularly with some of the nuances around the larger customers, their inventory challenges, and exactly what happens within China with the locals and the foreign and to what extent the foreign find their footing more quickly than not.

The last quarter, you reduced your growth over market outlook for the year to 6 points. I think the framework was 6 to 8 points. That was mostly driven by the high voltage business as we discussed. Can you give us a sense of where you're mostly seeing these reductions in EV volume outlook? And then now that we left with the 6 points of growth over market for the year, where is the bulk of that growth coming from?

Yes. Obviously, let's start with the growth. Active safety remains a significant contributor to our growth over market. Our active safety business will end this year roughly at $3 billion in revenue, and is growing north of 20%. It was up 24% in the quarter. So it's a large product line at this point that continues to have a very strong growth rate. As I mentioned, those launches over the course of the back half of this year and even into next year, will help continue to drive that active safety growth rate. Other places are growing strong and it's pockets, right, where we talked about the Chinese local OEMs. We're growing plus 20% with them in the first quarter. There'll be continued strong growth there. Our interconnect business, our engineered components business, tends to be growing at that 6% to 7% per year. That's a fairly consistent number. So we've got a lot of pieces that help offset the headwinds in the business, which, again, the EV business has gone from a 25% to 30% grow to sort of low to mid-single digits this year. So again, have some puts and takes, but our view at this point is really with a global vehicle production down 1% for the year, we should grow at about 5%. So that's your 6% over vehicle production.

And with this lower growth over market assumption for the year, you're calling for most cost tailwinds to help offset it. Can you walk us through what you're expecting on the cost and performance front? And how much we're looking at for 2024?

Yes, Kevin talked about, well, we obviously have the performance initiatives we talked about at our Investor Day last year, that $1.7 billion of performance that we felt came into the business over the course of '23, '24, '25, right? And we're starting to see the benefits of that. The biggest single piece there of that $1.7 billion, and again it wasn't that long ago, we were talking about just significant disruptions in the industry. In 2022, supply chain disruptions cost us about $315 million. We expected that number to come down significantly in '23, which we saw. It was about $160 million in 2023 and is effectively 0 for the year. So that's one of the bigger individual tailwinds coming out of that Investor Day discussion. As Kevin, our CEO, mentioned on the most recent earnings call, we also have initiatives underway to add an additional $50 million of savings for this year. Part of that is to help offset the volume that has come down. We've got a very strong, I think, reactive muscle within the company. We can flex very well, particularly on the variable cost side with changes in volume. And we've demonstrated that on both the up and down. As well as continue to take a fairly hard look at SG&A, back office costs and some engineering spend. As things have slowed down or look like they're slowing down, there is an ability to pull some additional costs out of the business.

Let's focus a little bit on the longer-term opportunity. Beyond this year, for how long can your high-voltage revenue growth remain more muted. Has your longer-term view of EV penetration change at all?

The longer term as we were, I think, at the time, viewed as being fairly conservative, if not overly conservative. I mean our view of global EV penetration in 2030 was right around 30% to 35%. I think this was at a time when the world was north of 45%, viewed our numbers as being fairly conservative. As we look out today, look at our customers' ambitions, look at where some of the longer-term forecasts are, the world has sort of come down around that 30% level, plus or minus a couple of points. I think we generally agree with that. We see it's possible. Obviously, you're going to need a much more significant ramp in places like North America and Europe to achieve that. We think China could be well on its way to 100% by then of light passenger vehicle being electrified. If not at 100%, getting close to it by then. But yes, there are still opportunities in Europe. Europe is committed to electrification. There are certainly customers there that need to work on their product portfolio. And it's possible you see some loosening of 2035 requirements in Europe, but it's a pretty high standard at the moment, right? It's 100%. So you can still pull back a bit and I think [indiscernible] have a good longer-term revenue ramp on EV between now and 2030. I think North America is the biggest question, right? If you look at the legacy OEMs, our legacy customers, clearly, they are working hard on their next generation of products. We know they're excited about it. We're looking forward to participate with them in that, but there are some use cases in the U.S., in particular, for EVs that really need to be solved around the big trucks and SUVs. And it's possible you have a period of time in the U.S., and I know a couple of our customers are talking about this publicly, where you see a more robust hybrid portfolio, electrification of some of the existing platforms to achieve, whether it's fuel economy or emission standards. That's something we haven't seen yet in terms of plans from customers or opportunities to bid on significant pieces of work, but it's possible, it's still coming and that's something we'd be very well positioned, particularly with our North American business is 75% truck and SUV in the U.S. So to the extent that hybrid strategy applies to those vehicles, we'd be very well positioned to benefit from that.

So based on this, is 6% to 8% of outgrow still the right way to think about your business beyond 2024. What specific businesses would help Aptiv growth accelerate beyond this year?

Yes. Like I mentioned earlier, as we look at it right now, we do think the 6% to 8% framework is a reasonable sort of midterm outlook here. And again, I'll remind folks, our growth over market range isn't guidance for a particular quarter, right? That gun is not going to shoot straight every quarter. A big question there, when you get to the growth over market, is the denominator. Obviously, it's something global vehicle production. We don't see that any sooner than everyone else does. And I do think things like China and the customer mix there could create some bumpiness in that calculation on a quarterly basis over the next, call it, 1.5 years, 2 years. But generally speaking, when we take a step back and look at the business, where our product lines are positioned, we do feel like we're in very good shape, particularly with active safety driving 20-plus percent growth and some of our other core product lines.

That was my follow-up question with active safety seemingly the biggest contributor now to your growth over market framework. How confident are you in sustainability of strong growth there. What product or technology drives the strong bookings that you consistently report?

Yes. There's a couple of things within the active safety business at the moment that we're very excited about. If you think about revenue at the moment, this revenue growth of plus 20%, that's really being driven by our existing Level 2+ systems. We have a number of OEMs who've adopted our systems and are now proliferating it across all of their vehicle platforms. So that provides us good line of sight, sort of the near-term revenue growth, as I talked about the launches in the back half of the year. From a bookings perspective, what we're selling today, for launch 2 to 3 years out, would be more of the Level 2+ systems, again, some to existing customers, some to new customers. Very excited about that. Those Level 2+ systems will have the ability to continue to evolve into Level 3 type systems over time. That's the customer's expectations. So we feel we're very well positioned there. And we also remain, I think, a very large and significant component supplier to the active safety market. Over the last couple of quarters, we've announced, which was exciting for us because [indiscernible] some new opportunities, some large radar bookings or radar awards to Japanese OEMs, which for us, Japanese OEMs for production in Japan, Japanese production -- has been a market that we have not played significantly in. And I think our radar technology has been recognized by a few of those OEMs as being really world class and has allowed us an opportunity to get in the door there. So I think there are opportunities on the systems. There are opportunities on the components. And then over the next few years, we still firmly believe we're going to see more and more software opportunities, driven by both Wind River as well as some of the application software, things like radar algorithms, policy, path planning software, those types of software applications Aptiv has been working on for a number of years.

So how important is it for Aptiv to win this L2+ business in order to keep this ADAS growth going? And I'm curious, are we still interested in offering these hands-off eyes on capability, which seems really popular in China but also very, very competitive. While in the western market, there's not a lot of data on whether consumers are actually interested. So what is the OEM feedback you're getting on L2+, and how important is it to maintain this growth?

Yes, the L2+, as you get out into '27, '28, right? If you think again about our bookings, we'll book something today, it turns into revenue, start of production 2 to 3 years out. So continued sale and continued strength in our active safety systems business is important. I think we're very well positioned to continue to do that with those Level 2+ systems. Functionality in those systems do include hands-off, eyes-on. It is something our OEM customers are very interested in, and it's something we're very capable of providing. We had our Generation 6 active safety system on the road at CES. It does have that functionality for both highway and selected urban applications. I've spent a lot of time in that car. I think the functionality is very strong and very competitive. Those cars are now out in all different regions of the world running demonstrations for customers. And that's something we do pretty much on, certainly on a monthly, if not a weekly basis at this point. So there's a lot of interest in those types of systems. And it's going to be an important part of the product offering. I'll come back to your comment on China, because I think it's relevant. It's relevant here and it's relevant on the powertrain discussion. China is the world's largest vehicle market, right? We all know that 31 million units are still going to be produced this year. There's definitely challenges for the global OEMs potentially coming from Chinese exports. But Western OEMs going to have to remain competitive, right? Which means if the largest automotive market in the world is an eye-on hands-off market, you're going to have to have, as a western provider, technology that's competitive in that market, right? And you're going to have to do it in a way that's cost effective. Our Gen 6 active safety system runs at about 20% less cost to the OEM than the current system. So we think it's very cost effective. It's good for all of the markets. So I think it's hard, whether it's on the active safety, on the digital cockpit or on propulsion as well, if you're a Western OEM to not -- and we see our customers doing this, right? China in certain technology areas is now leading the way in terms of where OEMs think their products need to be. And I think this is another -- and again, I know we're going to bump along here from an EV perspective in North America and maybe Europe over the next couple of years, but if you're an OEM looking at being globally competitive 3, 5, 7 years out, you're going to need an EV solution. The world's largest automotive market is going to have EV. It's going to come to Europe. It's eventually going to come to the U.S., maintaining multiple propulsion systems is very expensive. So at some point, you're going to need to move to where the consumer trends are. So we don't see any indication of something that's important in China, not being important to our global OEM. It's quite the opposite. They continue to view that as an important market.

That's a great point. And then are you still targeting 14% margin in the midterm? And what do you need to see in order to get there?

Yes, 14% margin was our original target for 2025. We've updated that to be 12.5% and 13%. That was primarily driven by the increased cost of doing business in Mexico, which have gone up significantly even since our Capital Markets Day last year, particularly the strengthening of the peso. And that's one of the biggest drivers there in terms of that margin wash down. We're talking about 14% being pushed out a year into '26. To do that, and we've got the actions underway, we're going to aggressively address the Mexico cost structure. Mexico is still a great place to manufacture. It's proximity to the U.S., the supply chain within Mexico, particularly for automotive, remains very robust. For our type of products and I think there's others in the automotive industry and even some of our customers with their vehicle assembly plants are seeing this. It's becoming a much more expensive place to do business. The government for the last 1.5 years, 2 years has pushed through some significant labor wage increases, particularly at minimum wage. We don't pay minimum wage, but eventually, those types of things bubble up, where we're seeing 20% to 25% labor rate increases over the last year and expect that to continue for the next couple of years. You're also seeing a very strong peso relative to where it's been historically. And typically, a gradually weakening peso has helped deal with any inflation pressures that folks are in Mexico, and you no longer have that offset. So we're working with our customers now looking at opportunities to produce outside of Mexico. As we talked about on the earnings call, we're introducing automation to the next generation of electrical architecture to help reduce labor content in Mexico, and we think there's an opportunity to take about 30% of the direct labor hours out of Mexico by 2030, just based on automation alone. So a lot of work going on there to address that and really being driven by some of the near-shoring activity going on in other industries. There's a bunch of industries that are looking at pulling manufacturing out of the Asia Pacific region, following supply chain disruption following COVID. And again, Mexico is a very attractive location from that perspective, just becoming less attractive for certain parts of the automotive industry.

Maybe last one for me would be around capital allocation. So in the first quarter, you doubled your buyback target to $1.5 billion for the year from $750 million, which was before. What is the message you intend to send by doing this? And now if you even deliver on this year's free cash flow, even after this buyback, you still have large excess cash on the balance sheet. So what is the right amount of annual share repurchase on a go-forward basis?

Listen, I think we've demonstrated really -- since the IPO, right, over the past 10 or 12 years, we tend to work very hard to have a balanced capital allocation approach. We've done a good job of investing in the business. We've, I think, done M&A that significantly enhanced our product lines and our global scale and reach. We've also returned $9 billion of cash to shareholders since our IPO. So we've tried to stay balanced. Again, it doesn't happen the same way every quarter, right? There's different things that impact timing. Kevin has said this, I think, even on the earnings call, I mean, our view is the stock is not at the right place. We're not happy with where the stock is. As we look at that relative to other investment opportunities, we think buying back the stock is the right thing to do now. Again, we've done that in the past. If you look on an LTM basis, by the time we get to Q4, where we bought back about 10% of the market cap of the business around numbers. We also had onetime proceeds coming in from the Motional transaction, where we divested some of our investment in the joint venture we had with Hyundai. That brought in almost $450 million, and that's really one of the big drivers of increasing the buyback this year. And Kevin says this all the time, we're committed to shareholder value creation. We believe we've got the right products and portfolio to do that, albeit with the challenges of the EV slowdown, but we think there's a lot of opportunities to continue to grow with the business. Operating effectively from a margin expansion, we're going to generate a lot of cash and certainly near term, we think the right level is -- or the right capital allocation to share buyback.

Great. Looks like we've ran out of time. So Joe, thank you so much for your time and insights.

Thanks, everybody. Good to see you.