Aptiv PLC (APTV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. Great. Thank you, everybody, for joining. My name is Mark Delaney, and I cover Aptiv for Goldman Sachs. I'm very pleased to have Kevin Clark, the Chairman and CEO; as well as Joe Massaro, the Vice Chairman and CFO. Thank you both for joining us.

Thanks for having us.

Kevin, first question for you. The company is targeting $35 billion of bookings in 2024, modestly higher than the $34 billion the company achieved in 2023. Maybe talk about some of the key areas of strength supporting that level of bookings.

Yes. So we continue to see strength in and around vehicle architecture and we break that down into kind of a couple of different areas. One, on the wire harness side, both low voltage as well as some element of high-voltage electrification, certainly on the engineered component side. So from a connector standpoint, cable management solution, strong demand there across our portfolio in automotive, but also there's a big piece of that business that's nonautomotive, that's military -- A&D, military and industrial, strong growth there. Seeing some strong demand for Wind River in the telco space. So doing well there. Back half of this year, expecting some big announcements as it relates to awards, especially in and around telco and A&D. So as of the end of the second quarter, well on our way to equaling or exceeded what we did last year. On the ASUX side, solid awards in and around active safety, some big awards with some of the Japanese OEMs, specifically on radar. So nice rotation of our customer mix, the customer mix there. So excited about those opportunities. And then as we've talked about with China local OEMs, we're seeing across all of our businesses a significant growth within that customer base on the SPS side as well as the ASUX side.

Yes, that's a great overview for us to dig into. Maybe we can continue on the topic of China. And can you elaborate more on the progress you're seeing with bookings with the domestic Chinese OEMs?

Yes. So today, roughly 55% of our revenues are with the China locals. This year, roughly 65% to 70% of our bookings will be with the China locals. Most of those programs relative to what we see in Europe and North America tend to receive an award and launch a program. [indiscernible] is 12 months shorter, tends to be 6 to 9 months. So you're going to continue to see significant rotation of customer mix from the multinational JVs to the China locals. I would expect next year, roughly 70% of our revenues for example with the China locals. So a pretty big pickup on a year-over-year basis. Now we're very focused on -- we'd say the category or the top 15 local OEMs, those that have strong market positions in China, but also are focused on export out of China. That's where we can bring incremental value when you think about regulatory quality system solutions. And today, we're working with 5 local OEMs on their plans to bring production or move production out of China into Europe and into the Americas. So that we feel as though we're very, very well positioned to take advantage of that. And that's both for the SPS segment as well as the ASUX segment.

Some of the bigger Western auto OEMs companies like VW and Stellantis have now sourcing partnerships with the China domestic car companies. Can you talk about any implications for Aptiv from that?

Yes. We haven't seen, quite frankly, any impact on our business to date, whether it's VW with Xpeng or it's Stellantis with Leapmotor, in fact, with Leapmotor, they're one of the OEMs in China that actually were looking at more strategic opportunities across the globe. So we view it based on a relationship at the local level based on a relationship with the multinationals, the large OEMs, just given our knowledge of vehicles, how both operate the markets. It actually provides us with incremental opportunities.

In June, after the customer had canceled the smart vehicle architecture program, which was supposed to SOP in the 2027 to '28 time frame, that brought the backlog in SVA at the time of just $7 billion. But at the same time, on the last earnings call, you spoke about an engagement and pipeline with over 20 auto OEMs for SVA. So maybe talk a little bit more around what you're seeing in SVA and what it might take to expand that backlog?

Yes. Listen, our customers are going through a lot of transition, right? Whether it's software defined, whether it's electrification or it's rearchitecting the car. So to the point, Mark, you made, if you went back roughly 1.5 years ago, there were 5 OEMs that we had visibility to, who we're working with from a smart vehicle architecture standpoint, mostly in and around the year of zone controllers. That's most of the activity is today. On our Q2 earnings call, we talked about more than 20. Today, it's over 25. The dollar value is significantly in excess. So the industry continues to progress. It continues to evolve the end state is clear, whether it's electrification, battery electric or plug-in hybrid. We continue to see investments and new program opportunities in those areas. And as OEMs look for vehicles that are more appropriately designed or architected so they can be more software-defined. All of them are investing in those opportunities. So there are a number of them that in terms of commercial opportunities that we'll see play out during early 2025. So it's an area where we'll continue to see business awards.

In ASUX, in the first quarter, Aptiv announced a Gen 6 ADAS award with an emerging EV player. Can you talk more about the interest you're seeing in the Gen 6 ADAS platform?

So a lot. So our Gen 6 ADAS platform is really -- it's the amalgamation of everything that we do in ADAS. The historical experience within radar, sensor fusion, driving policy, ADAS controller. We've rearchitected that solution, so it's an open platform. So we've refactored all the software, so it's all modularized, all containerized. It operates off of the Wind River, VxWorks, RTOS and Helix Linux platform. It provides customers with full flexibility. So our standard vision solution comes from StradVision, which is a partner out of Korea, but we offer opportunities for our customers to choose other vision suppliers. It's open to where we do all the features or customers can do a portion of the features, so we're giving them flexibility. From a radar standpoint, obviously, the standard system includes our radar solution. But again, OEMs have flexibility if they desire to use a different supplier that's something they can do. When we look at on cost for customers, it's about a 20% reduction in on cost relative to any of the competitors out there. So the cost effectiveness of it, the scalability from L0, all the way up to L2++, which covers a broader line of vehicles, gives them flexibility. So we see a tremendous amount of demand. There's a number of OEMs that we're working with today on opportunities for the full Gen 6 ADAS solution. But as you stated, I mean, there are a number of OEMs out there that we're very focused on penetrating with a portion of our Gen 6 ADAS platform, like radar to the Japanese OEMs that we mentioned that we think will ultimately lead to more share of wallet within those OEMs in places like Japan.

Yes. I mean it's been interesting in my opinion, how important radar has become with some of these next-generation systems and the newer capabilities that radar has been bringing to market, complementing vision. And I know you've got a really strong history in radar.

Yes. We've been in the radar business for -- I think our first radar solution was in 1999 on a Jaguar vehicle. So now we apply AI, ML to our radar sensing solution. So we can significantly advance the performance. So there are certain situations where even a few years ago, if you're looking at L3 solutions, it would really require a LiDAR solution. We've obviated the need for a higher cost solution like that. And we marry that with vision and develop our perception solution that is very high performing, but lower cost. So it's less compute going into the car. That's an opportunity to take out cost from a technology standpoint. So there's a lot of interest in that from our customers. As you know, they're under a lot of cost pressure. They're trying to introduce advanced technologies into vehicles. They continue to work to make them more safely, both from a -- due to regulatory demands as well as customer preference. So we feel like we're sitting in the sweet spot from an overall solution standpoint.

Joe, I wanted to go to you for this question. The active safety business in total, maybe remind investors how big that business is, but also what's the growth rate and any deviation by region?

Yes, the active safety business has gotten to this year will be over $3 billion in revenue. So it's become a pretty significant, obviously, product line. Still growing right around that 20%. So you've got a little bit of growth rate coming down over the last couple of years, larger numbers as that top line has grown, but still a very significant growth rate. It's a product line that we sell all over the world. So growth rates vary a little bit region by region, depending on launch cycle and cadence. But it's a global product line. So we've got a very strong position in North America with a couple of the larger OEMs there, strong position in Europe, and then it's a lot of opportunity for growth in China, particularly with the local OEMs, including the local OEMs that are looking to export or eventually build in Europe, because it is viewed as a global system, a global standard from that perspective.

In the L1 and L2 era, Aptiv had one, 7 out of 11 opportunities for ADAS systems integration. Can you help us better understand what the win rate looks like for L2+ and L3?

So L2+ is that's really where our Gen 6 solution is targeted. Again, it scales from L0 to L2++ and then we'll get to L3. We talked about that award that we received with the European electric vehicle manufacturer. There are a number of programs that are in front of us that will play out over the next kind of 6 to 12 months. So we're well positioned. We'll see how those play out. But again, it's important when you decide a Gen 6 ADAS. But we're selling a solution that gives our customers choice, and that choice includes, at some point in time, all of it. So we've launched an L2+ system. It's not our Gen 6. It's the previous generation with a European OEM that's a part of -- that's launching -- started launching earlier in the year, continues to launch for the balance of the year. We'll see other awards where it's a part, where it will be all the features, some of the features, driving policy, maybe separate radar solutions. So I'm not sure it's a complete apples-to-apples comparison. But again, given performance and costs, we're seeing tremendous -- we're pursuing tremendous pull forward.

I want to switch gears slightly, talk about the high-voltage part of the business. I think that was $1.7 billion of revenue in 2023. Historically, it was growing over 20%, Joe. For the last quarter, it was down. Maybe help us better understand how to think on high-voltage growth rates from here?

Yes. That product line is our, sort of, what I'll call our EV only product line. So it's products that would only go on electrical architecture or electrified vehicles. There's obviously other products we sell that can go on both internal combustion and EV. Have seen it slow down. I think there's a -- clearly, if you look, it's really a regional discussion. If you look at Europe and North America, there has been a slowdown in EV retail sales, and as a result, EV production. China continues to be very strong from an EV perspective. We really believe they, as a region, have sort of rounded the corner on electrification. So that's -- we're seeing that impact from a European and a North American customer perspective. But again, that product line, very robust. It is a product line that will serve well for hybrid vehicle platforms as you start to see, I think, some of these European and North American OEMs who originally thought about sort of a midterm phase of having hybridized powertrains, both internal combustion and electric powertrains in the same vehicle. And sort of if you go back 4 or 5 years, opted to sort of push more quickly into EV. We do see those customers starting to come back to, particularly in North America, with a view that they'll need a hybrid solution for a period of time, whether that's for customer adoption, affordability reasons. And that product line will fit very well into the hybridized need as well.

Maybe you can talk about your traction in terms of getting designed into some of these future plug-in hybrid vehicles, especially as you're seeing more of the production plan shift in that direction.

Yes. We're clearly in, for a few of the OEMs, we have existing hybrid technology. I would say where the customers are, the large European customers, North American customers at this point, they're still really scoping out their hybridization plans. So would platforms get hybridized and why, you can see a lot of interesting use cases, right? One of the things hybridization will give you the ability to do is particularly on some of the larger vehicles that are obviously very popular in the U.S., the trucks and SUVs. You get the ability to maybe downsize an engine from a V8 to a V6, introduce hybrid technology to sort of offset the loss of power, loss of electrical capability. So you're basically putting a vehicle that you know your consumers want, right? It gives the OEMs the ability to take a popular high-volume vehicle, but ensure that it's compliant for the next 5-plus years with whether emission standards or fuel economy standards. So that's what we're seeing. It's still early days from an award perspective, but that's really what we're seeing our customers working through, and that's what we're helping them through at this point.

On the outlook for electrical architectures and vehicles more broadly, OEMs are trying to take out wiring from vehicles. What are the implications adaptive from this?

Yes. We would say OEMs are more focused on taking copper out of vehicles. So they're trying to reduce weight, right? They're trying to reduce mass. And in doing that, it's quite frankly -- and it's something that we work with OEMs to actually do. So when you think about copper content, that's index. So that's not an input at the end of the day that we're really generating much profitability on. But that's being replaced by more advanced connections, high-speed cable assemblies, Ethernet solutions, areas like that, that are much higher value add, that are much more engineered in, so much stickier and tend to bring with them more connector engineered component content. So that's a trend, quite frankly, we really encouraged. We're trying to drive.

Within the $4 billion per year connection systems business, Aptiv has been seeing some strength in other end markets, industrial, A&D as well as automotive. Maybe talk a little bit more on the components business that you have and what the prospects are for connection systems?

Yes, what we refer to internally as engineered components is close to a $7 billion a year business. To Mark's point, it includes about 4.5 billion round numbers of interconnect. So from a public comp perspective, I think something like a TE Connectivity, and Amphenol and Molex, really a business that's geared around ruggedized, harsh environment electrical connection systems. And over the last couple of years, we've been expanding beyond automotive. We acquired Winchester Interconnect, which is a high-end interconnect business serving, particularly aerospace and defense, industrial applications, really rounding out that portfolio. On top of the interconnect business, we have a business called HellermannTyton, which was an acquisition we did in 2015 of a cable management and fastening business, which, although not truly interconnect, is very much an engineered components business. When you're taking ruggedized or harsh environment electrical systems and putting them into whether it's a vehicle, an aircraft, a commercial vehicle, how that system is fastened, how that system is attached to the vehicle itself becomes actually a key part of its safety and its longevity, right? Just the ability to fasten that system. So we've got about, like I said, about $7 million, what we call engineered components revenue. Very typical interconnect margin in that business, so north of 20%. And it's a business that is sort of one of our underlying growth engines. That business will grow somewhere between 4% to 6%, 7% pretty regularly from an annual perspective. Really driven by, as Kevin said, a lot of the content increases. And again, going into automotive, going into aerospace and defense, a lot of the content increase, a lot of the additional electrification that goes into these edge devices, right, these vehicles, a lot of the additional electrification requires connection and it requires a robust connection, whether it be on the signal or on the power side. So for us, it's a very important part of the business. It's a business we've invested in heavily over the past 8 to 10 years, both organically and inorganically. I don't know if I left anything?

No, you got it.

Maybe speak a bit on the Wind River software piece of your portfolio. It's been growing at the mid-teens revenue CAGR. Maybe to start on Wind River, remind us in terms of the end market exposure, how much is telecom, aerospace, defense, auto?

Yes. So aerospace and defense is roughly 40% of the revenues. Telecom is roughly 30%. There's -- I don't know, 15% or 20% that's medical, industrial, other and then roughly 10% automotive. There's -- the major product areas are Wind River, VxWorks, which is a real-time operating system, mission-critical, safety certified, significant military applications, as you can imagine, significant automotive applications as well when you think about the nature of the vehicle and performance requirement of the vehicle. Helix hypervisor, which is a big piece of the overall product portfolio. Wind River just launched a new Debian-based Linux solution actually about a month ago, which so far, we're seeing a lot of traction. It's for enterprise solutions, which is different than embedded edge-based solutions, but they feel like they're very well positioned given their experience in Linux across the multiple industries where they operate in from an embedded standpoint. So we're seeing strong demand there. They've also launched a couple of years ago a product called Wind River Studio Developer, which is an engineering tool chain solution that allows software developers to actually take existing tool chains, bring it or integrate it pretty easily frictionless into the Wind River Studio Developer solution, and drive significant increases in quality and improvements in productivity. So for example, for us, over the last year, we've been -- all the new programs that we've been launching, we've been launching using the Wind River Studio developer tool chain. And we've seen 20% to 30% productivity of our software engineers, so significant quality improvements, significant savings. They're making a lot of progress in terms of commercial adoption. So for example, large award with Hyundai. So Hyundai is actually utilizing the solution, and then a number of other customers across the other markets that they serve.

Aptiv, of course, has very strong relationships throughout the automotive ecosystem. What do you think it might take to get more auto OEMs using Wind River products?

So everything that we quote within our ASUX business that is dependent upon software includes the Wind River, either the Linux solution, Helix solution or the RTOS solution, VxWorks. I think the bigger opportunity for us is as we roll that out, and they have relationships with Continental, with Bosch with the other Tier 1s as well as they push through their programs. But we're really excited about the Wind River Studio Developer, driving productivity with the engineering base with the OEMs. So all of you have -- if you follow the automotive industry, you read about the challenges from a software development standpoint, whether it's General Motors, or not picking anyone, but General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen. You go through the litany, the list to the extent you can bring a more structured disciplined approach to software development, improve quality and reduce the level of friction to implement, it's a huge benefit. So we've seen a lot of interest there.

And Joe, maybe for you. Wind River generated $400 million of revenue in 2021. Do you still expect Wind River to become a $1 billion business? And if so, what kind of time frame should we expect for that?

Yes. So we move towards the end of the decade. We clearly see the revenue structure. That business will finish right around $0.5 billion of revenue this year. And as Kevin mentioned, that's really based on its existing end markets. We really haven't seen the automotive revenue kick in yet. So that gets you get out to '27, '28, just the strength of the A&D, the industrial, the telecom business within the added revenues from automotive, we think that it's very well positioned to be $1 billion plus of revenue as you get out there.

Maybe we could talk a little bit more on business conditions this year in financials. Can you talk more on the auto production environment overall and also by region for 2024?

Sure. Yes. I think this is going to shape up to be certainly a down year for global vehicle production, and you've seen it weaken over the course of the last couple of quarters. We think global vehicle production will be down about 3% this year. So put it right around 92 million units. Europe, with the biggest downdraft, are down about 5%. We expect North America to be right around 1% down and China to be flat. So down -- that adds up to about down 3% globally. We'll grow 4 points above the market. So we continue to see good mid-single-digit growth above market, driven by some of the things we've talked about here, right? The active safety revenue contingency is very strong. engineered components continues to grow. High voltage, obviously, a headwind to that. But we view that as a more of a temporary headwind over the next year or 2 here as the European and North American OEMs sort out their electrification portfolio. By no means do we think electrification is going away. So vehicle production will be down. I think as we talked about in the second quarter, some of the revenue headwinds we're seeing, though, is more customer specific. I would say it's less of a broad industry impact to us. We have a couple of customers that are going through some what I call, sort of model updates or new model launches as you get to the back half of the year and into early next year, particularly a large global OEM, U.S.-based EV OEM. So we've seen some of those schedules come down midyear here with an expectation they ramp towards the back half of the year and into next year. And we've also got one of our larger customers, and we're slightly over-indexed to this customer relative to their share of global vehicle production, a large European OEM with a big truck and SUV platform here in the U.S., that is -- I think it's public knowledge, is struggling from sort of a retail perspective at this point. Dealer inventories are high. They're obviously going to have to work through that before they take production back up, which we think is something that gets sorted over the next couple of quarters. They've got expectations for new model launches as you get into 2025, and they're going to want to clear that inventory. So some near-term headwind from a very customer-specific perspective. But overall, I do think global vehicle production will be down this year.

I think some of those changes that led to those level of declines that you were just talking about occurred later in 2Q. I think specifically in June, there were some schedule changes in particular. Have schedules been stable since then?

Yes. We saw a lot of schedules come in June, July time frame. As I think the reality of some of these inventory positions at dealers' lots, particularly in North America, and I think some of the order flow on some of the electrified platforms, waiting -- started to slow as people waited for some of the new model launches. So we really saw that get reflected. I'd say it's been stable at those levels, certainly more stable than it was mid-year. We're still very mindful. I mean, like I said, you can -- it's publicly available, right? You can look at dealer inventory. You can look at order flows for some of these OEMs. When we updated our full year guidance in June, we did take sort of an added level, which we talked about at the time, sort of an added level of conservatism against customer schedules. We have a lot of our customers maybe a little bit optimistic with what they tell the supply base in terms of production, when it comes back and how quickly it starts up. Part of that, I think, is to manage the supply base and make sure everybody is ready to participate at higher volumes, but we've been a little bit cautious. From a revenue forecast perspective, we're obviously ready to do what the customer needs us to do. But from a revenue forecast perspective, I think we're a little bit conservative there.

Okay. That's helpful. Despite the lower revenue outlook for 2024, Aptiv raised its operating margin outlook. Now expecting 11.8% to 12.1% EBIT margins. Help us better understand some of the things that are supporting the margins for this year?

Yes, Yes. Listen, I think last year -- and fully appreciate, there's been a lot of discussion strictly with EV around top line. But I think even if you went back to 2023, we delivered on our original OI guidance despite absorbing a couple of hundred million dollars of UAW strike impact and some unexpected FX changes. So we've been performing well now for 2 years. If you go back to the Investor Day discussion from February of '23, we laid out what in total about $1.7 billion of operating performance initiatives that would take -- we thought would take place over the course of '23, '24 and '25, that would significantly improve margin rates across both segments and basically get the business back to where we thought -- where we were pre-COVID and pre supply chain disruptions. And those programs are tracking very well. So the largest single piece of that $1.7 billion was $315 million of supply chain disruption costs that we had called out the prior couple of years. 2022 was exactly $315 million. Plant shutdowns, temporary layoffs, just really the disruption in the industry, I don't think you could overstate it, that our customers were going through, particularly around semiconductors, right? And so we were heavily impacted with those types of disruptions. We expected those costs to come out of the P&L. In 2023, there were $160 million versus $315 million and they're effectively 0 this year. So that's been a big help as we've gotten those costs out. We always felt at the time that those were not structural changes in our cost structure, that they really were transitory and a result of disruption costs. I think there was an expectation people wanted to see them, which is understandable. People wanted to see them come out of the numbers before they -- before we sort of get credit for that. But they are out. The remaining is really performance initiatives around improved manufacturing, logistics, supply chain performance. Some of those annual improvements, some of those -- making the business better every year that we had a very good track record pre-COVID of doing. We're seeing that muscle come back and work very well. And then as Kevin talked a little bit about our Gen 6 radar, our Gen 6 active safety systems. One of the areas we've really focused on over the past 5 or 6 years is productizing -- unless you, productizing our systems, right, trying to get away from systems that had a heavy degree of bespoke design, bespoke build for a particular customer. That used to result in a lot more engineering. We had -- need more people. If you're launching 3 very bespoke systems over the course of 2 years, you need 3 large teams to launch bespoke systems for 3 different OEMs. The more we can productize, the more we'd standardize. We've been able to bring in our engineering spend. And we talked in February '23 that we thought engineering spend would get to the sort of that, call it, high single digits, that's 7% of sales. It had been running double digits. And we've really seen those initiatives play out, right? And I think the Gen 6 active safety system is a very good commercial example of that. But you've also seen the benefits in the engineering spend.

You mentioned this year, the company expects 4% growth over market. I think for '25, you said roughly mid-single digits as an initial way to think about what growth could look like for '25. Any visibility or updates you can share on how to think about growth over market for next year?

Yes, I would stick to what our prior comment quite frankly. If you look at our product portfolio, setting aside the near-term headwind as it relates to the 4 customers we talked about [indiscernible], the reality is all the areas we operate, our customers are investing significantly in advancing those technologies and we enable it. On the growth over market, there's an element we ask investors to recognize. We control the numerator. We don't control the full denominators. So we talked about China as an example. There are more than 100 OEMs in China. Very relevant in China, we've been there for 30 years, strong positions with multinationals, stronger strengthening positions with the local OEMs there. So taking share. But we're focused on 15 Chinese local OEMs. We're not focused on the other 85, and that's for profit reasons, and it's for risk reasons, right? So overall risk. So there are points in the -- at certain points in time, things we don't control from a mix standpoint that can affect that. And so we feel like we're very well positioned for growth next year. We're going through our planning process, and we'll obviously give guidance and update on outlook for vehicle production and our revenue outlook and how that translates into growth over market. And we're in areas where content in the vehicle is growing.

Do you want to talk on capital allocation on your last earnings report? The company announced a $5 billion share repurchase authorization. That was over 25% of the market cap at the time. Out of that, $3 billion was an ASR [ public. ] Better understand what led Aptiv make that type of capital allocation decision?

Yes, I'll start and then Joe should add to it. Listen, our strong view is set aside growth, the company has never been better positioned. And in reality, all the trends, electrification, ADAS, user experience, software going into the vehicle, our position in China, those are all tailwinds. Now we're running into choppy periods at this point in time, and that's reflected in our stock price. And we view our stock as a great investment at this point in time based on the visibility that we have today and how strong the business is operating. You look at the margin profile of our business during a period where revenue is actually down. It shows the strength of the business model we've created. The 4 customers that we talked about, our view is those will fix themselves. They'll fix themselves over the fairly near future. And again, our stock is a great investment opportunity. And Joe, I'll turn it over to you in terms of outside of stock, M&A and other opportunities.

No, listen, I think if you go back, just to give some perspective, between 2011, when we went public, and the end of 2023, we deployed over $25 billion worth of capital. About 30-plus percent of that was returned to shareholders. The remainder was invested in the business both organically and inorganically, almost even. So we have a track record of returning cash to shareholders. We have a very strong track record of deploying capital in the business. To Kevin's point, we really -- and over time, I think it will continue to balance out, right? So we're obviously at the moment, returning a fair amount of capital to shareholders. But it was the right time, and I think the ASR allowed us for a very effective mechanism to do that quickly and with a lot of certainty.

Great. Well, unfortunately, we are out of time. Kevin, Joe, thank you both for joining.

Mark, Thanks a lot.

Thanks, Mark.

Thanks, everybody, for your time.