Aptiv PLC (APTV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. Great. Thanks, everyone. As we start day 1 of the Barclays Industrial Select Conference, the Auto Tracker Conference. I'm Dan Levy. I lead Autos and Mobility coverage. Very pleased to have with us Aptiv's Kevin Clark, the company's CEO and Chairman; Varun Laroyia, the company's CFO. Aptiv is a staple at this conference, so we're grateful for your ongoing presence. So we're going to go through a series of fireside chat questions. Anyone that has questions, please raise your hands, and we'll cover those. But why don't we start actually just with -- to set the tone here, all of you have your clickers vote early, vote often.

Why don't we start -- if we can pull up ARS question number one. ARS question number one. ARS question? Okay. All right. All right. Why don't we start with just a big picture question. And this is something that I think I've asked you before, there's -- Aptiv has been tethered to a growth narrative. That's always been the narrative for Aptiv. I think we've seen though a very rapidly changing environment in the auto industry the last few years that for many players in the industry, it's changed the growth narrative. So if we look at what's happened over the last few years with all of these industry factors, to what extent has the strategy or the opportunity at Aptiv changed?

Sure. Great question. And first, thanks for having us. It's a great conference, and Dan, it's a pleasure, obviously, to be here with you. So I would frame it a little bit differently. I wouldn't say we're tethered to a growth narrative. I'd say we're a growth company. And what do I mean by that? With the automotive sector, certainly, we operate in places from a product and a capability standpoint, where content per vehicle is growing. So that's clearly areas like advanced safety solutions, automation, electrification. Now the last 12 months have had challenges, obviously, and it's impacted our customers. It's impacted Aptiv in our top line, but as we look at kind of our outlook for 2025 and we look at our outlook beyond that, we're certainly in a position where we can profitably grow at relatively high, solid, strong growth rates, right? And we'll continue to focus on those areas where there's growth opportunities that we have in [indiscernible] technology so that we have a right to play that we're able to do that with attention in cash flow generation within the automotive space as well as a real focus on how do we take those technologies or capabilities outside of automotive into other growth areas like aerospace and defense, like telecommunications, like the broader industrial market. So I would say we've gone through a very challenging 4 or 6 quarters as it relates to for us, kind of customer mix, 4 or 5 specific customer mix issues. But in terms of the overall narrative, it remains intact.

Okay. Great. Is the ARS ready? No. Okay.

We could do show our hands. We can one of those.

We could do that. Okay. So let me double-click on one of your comments there, and let's just talk broadly about growth. So I think you said that growth -- customer mix was a 5-point headwind on your growth in 2024. I think you had organic growth -- adjusted growth of down 2%. How should we frame customer mix in 2025?

In terms of the impact, the -- how much it improves on a year-over-year basis?

Yes.

So as you look at it from those 5 customers and maybe give you a little bit more specifics, just to remind everybody. So in North America, significantly impacted by a European OEM with a big truck brand in North America. You all know who that is. In Europe, principally one, but 2 relatively large German OEMs, one mass market, one luxury. And then three, when you look at China, 2 multinational joint ventures, one from a European-based OEM, one from a U.S.-based OEM. So you can navigate that, that all of those had significant reduction in production schedules. About half of that related to vehicle electrification, quite frankly, electric vehicle platforms. The balance, just ICE plant platforms and buildup of inventory or product that was less competitive in the market for a period of time and significant impact -- impacting Q1, significant continuing impact through the balance of the quarters last year. As we head into 2025, there'll be some of that headwind that continues in the first part of the year, and that's reflected in kind of how we talk about our growth rates for the full year, but an improvement in the back half. And in reality, what that improvement is, is a stabilization of schedule. So it's either a lower decline, no decline or in one particular OEM, a slight increase in their year-over-year vehicle production schedules. So as we've talked about 2025 and provided guidance given the environment that we're operating in, given not wanting to go through what we went through last year and quite frankly, put you through that as investors, we went through a very significant platform by platform, OEM by OEM, literally region by region, PowerPoint by PowerPoint analysis of customer schedules versus IHS versus other third-party sources, historical experience with OEMs, launch curves from a program launch standpoint and mapped out what our expectations were and then layered in an incremental amount of conservatism in it. So that's been our approach. So that's how we view it playing out. I'd say the one area that we expect to continue to see decline in revenues is with the multinationals in China. So those joint ventures, we're going to continue to see fairly significant reductions in their vehicle production schedules. It will impact our net growth in China by about 1 point. So we're growing roughly in mid-teens with the China local OEMs. The decline with those multinational JVs is less than that, but they're a fairly significant piece of our revenue base still. So we'll work through that, and we'll be past that in 2025.

And as far as the guidance for 2025, I think one of the interesting regional guidance assumptions you made was for North America, LVP down 5%. Now the third party -- the primary third-party forecaster out there is, I think, closer to down 2.5%. But we even just saw yesterday that GM's large truck platform, which I believe is one of probably your largest platforms that was revised up. So is it fair to say that there's some layers of conservatism on some of the schedule assumptions?

Yes. So we were most concerned and conservative about North America schedules, OEM strategy, as it related to price and relatively high levels of inventory. And based on that, that affected our outlook for vehicle production, especially in the first quarter in North America.

Okay. Can you talk about your ADAS business, that was up mid-teen percent in 2024, which I think is quite impressive in light of maybe the slowdown of megatrends. So given the choppy launch environment, what can we expect in 2025? How much are we seeing your Gen 6 platform contributing?

So our outlook for our revenues on ADAS are basically low double-digit revenue growth. So that would be our outlook off of a baseline of roughly $3 billion in revenues. And that's driven principally by further penetration of ADAS on existing program awards as well as we begin to get the benefit of launch of Gen 6 ADAS on -- we announced Geely program last year in China. We'll start to get the benefits from that program in the back half of the year. For those of you who are less familiar with us, we have a strong position in Aptiv safety. We would say that is a trend that is not slowing. Aptiv safety cells, Aptiv safety has a rebuy rate of over 95% with consumers. Aptiv safety is a place where it helps OEMs sell cars and actually, they make money on those Aptiv safety solutions, which is really important. We have a strong 3 decades. We started with radar. Over the last 3 years, we've been focused on building out a productized modularized ADAS platform that provides a tremendous amount of flexibility to our OEM customers. So they can choose the vision provider. They can choose the SoC provider for the ADAS controller. It's open architected from a software standpoint. So we can integrate features they develop into the platform, if that's what they'd like or provide them excuse me, with the full platform. And we estimate, based on our reference design, if you were to use exactly what we've designed with the vision solution that we're recommending, which is from a company called StradVision out of Korea, we can save OEMs roughly 20% or 30% relative to a comparable performing platform. So we would say that's an area where we continue to see growth. Look, we -- from an electrification standpoint, has it slowed clearly in North America, it has. But as you look at the globe, IHS forecasts vehicle electrification to grow our production on EV vehicles 20% in 2025. Our outlook is a little more conservative. We're at 15%; our guidance assumes a 10% growth in our revenues for EVs, and that's a mix of where we have exposure from an OEM standpoint as well as, again, that incremental layer of conservatism that we've layered in.

Okay. Just one last 1 to put a bow on growth. And it's just the concept of bookings that you're guiding. You are guiding for $30-plus billion this year -- $31 billion plus this year. You've done $30 billion plus over the last, call it, 3 years. How should we look at this booking number? Is this to say that even with the slowdown in EV uptake and maybe some areas of advanced uptake, you've still seen -- there's still this commitment from automakers. And how do we square this with the comment we've heard from some of your supplier peers that overall program bidding activity from automakers slowed in 2024.

Yes. I think there is an element of it did slow a bit in 2024. So I think that explains from a quarter-to-quarter standpoint, we always comment about there's lumpiness in bookings. So we had a massive fourth quarter from a booking standpoint. Part of the reason is as they were going through and thinking about electrification, adoption of electrification, other market dynamics that it just makes it a little bit longer for them to make platform decisions like that, at least where we play, where we operate. And it's understandable, given where we play, given our capabilities, I think our OEM customers recognize that. As I said, we're very focused on how do we bring technology and deliver it at lower cost, how do we support them and doing what they want to do. So we have a high level of confidence that we'll be north of $30 billion in bookings in 2025.

China. So I think you said you're looking for domestic to be up mid-teens. You have a couple of your sort of large multinational customers. They're going to be down. Should we expect -- if you're guided to underperform versus the market this year. At what point should we expect your China revenue to be in line or start outperforming the market? When does the mix dynamic sort of flatten out?

So our outlook for 2025 is effectively, you'll see that happen in Q3 or Q4 of this year. We'll get to a net even mix between growth with the locals versus decline in the multinationals. Our general view is multinationals are going to continue to see downward pressure and loss of market share. It's going to continue for the foreseeable future. I'd say our internal plan actually sees a more aggressive reduction in that, and that shaped our commercial strategy as it relates to our pursuit of business with the local Chinese OEMs. So that's going to continue. But that happens back half of this year.

Okay. And the margin dynamics in China, how similar are those to the West?

So for us, in China, we tend to provide a broader mix of full system solutions. So we tend to have a more revenue per customer and more margin opportunity given the nature of what we provide. That still is the case with most of the local OEMs. There is price pressure there. You've all heard that. We've addressed that price pressure as it relates to how do we maintain or increase margins by rotating manufacturing footprint to Western China, rotating engineering out of Shanghai to places like Wuhan and even, quite frankly, to India. We do more in India from an engineering standpoint for some of our China products. And you've heard us talk a lot about supply chain in localizing supply chain in China from SoC down to other inputs, raw materials. We've had a big initiative over the last 3 years, implementing and executing on that, and that's given us incremental cost savings in that market.

Okay. Let's pivot to margins more broadly. And I want to just set the stage with zoom out. Let's look at 2024 in totality, which was interesting because your revenue declined by $300 million, but your operating income improved by $65 million. You had, call it, 140 basis points of margin expansion. What's driving this margin strength in the face of revenue weakness when we know you're an operating leverage type model? And what cost opportunities do you think can continue into 2025?

Varun, do you want to?

Why don't you do and I will then chime in, please.

Sure. Okay. So I think for -- again, those of you who followed us for the last few years, when you think about COVID the semiconductor shortages that we went through COVID 2021, semiconductor shortages, '21, '22, part of 2023. We made a very concerted effort to keep, obviously, our employees safe, our customers' employees safe and keep them connected. So we absorbed a massive amount of cost into our system. So for a business that typically works with customers on a year-over-year productivity standpoint. The inputs we were receiving for materials, especially things like semiconductors, we weren't seeing productivity. We were seeing 10%, 15%, 20% price increases. And then on top of that, given the choppy supply chain, we were seeing starting and stopping of production, TLO with employees, premium freights and -- premium freight. And through that whole period, we never impacted a customer, never, not 1 shift did we -- and we did that conservatively. That was our plan. We absorbed that cost beginning in late 2022. We started going back to our customers with -- these are the costs we've incurred we need support and offsetting those costs. Those conversations weren't always easy, but ultimately, we ended up in a satisfactory resolution with our customer with most. And starting in late 2023, we finally got to the point where that semiconductor crisis, by and large, passed, we're starting to see stability in schedules. We're resolving those pricing issues with our customers, and we're starting to see the benefits of all of the supply chain initiatives that we put in place. So dual sourcing, dual validating, engineering out higher cost solutions for lower-cost solutions. So as you look at 2024, we started to get that net benefit from a cost standpoint. So schedules are stable, so less TLO, less inefficiencies in our manufacturing process. starting to see productivity from our suppliers starting to getting the benefit from that. At the beginning -- at the end of 2023, given concerns we had about the overall economy and outlook, we reduced our salary payroll by 10%. So we had the benefit of that flow through and then just the benefit of operating more efficiently in those COVID costs and disruption costs coming out of the system, that translated into margin expansion. Now as we head into 2025, we're pushing to get another 5% out of our salary workforce. So we're trying to continue to drive efficiency. We're further contracting our manufacturing footprint. So consolidating manufacturing facilities out of Eastern Europe into North Africa, within Mexico and at the same time, starting to move out of Mexico. We've had a big initiative that we started to get benefits last year on engineering productivity where -- especially in the software development side, where more taking place in India. So we continue to rotate out of high cost into best cost and more efficient engineering tool chains where -- that we're introducing into the software development process that are driving 20-plus percent productivity [indiscernible]. So that [indiscernible] improvement or one of the drivers of the margin improvement in 2025 in addition to the volume growth.

Yes. No, I think you've kind of covered that, Kevin. So again, these are programs that, Dan, you and the teams are kind of well aware of what we've been doing in any case. That is a continuation into '25. So whether it be footprint, rationalization, refootprinting across every region and that is an ongoing process in any case and then the other productivity elements that Kevin mentioned.

Okay. The pricing element, if we look at your 2024 pricing, it was actually positive by 80 basis points. Typically, it's 1.5%, something like that. negative. Can you just provide a little color around that positive pricing, which I assume is recovery of costs and how much more headway there is on positive pricing?

Yes. So I would say we're through. So the examples I mentioned the material inflation. Last couple of years in Mexico. So last year, we had 20% wage rate inflation from a direct labor standpoint in Mexico. The year prior was roughly 20%. This year, it will be roughly 15%, so down a little bit. So that was basically pushing through those cost increases to our customers. So it's in peace price. You're right. Last year, we had -- we received net price. This year, I think we basically have price net of recoveries down about 1 point. I think it's one rough estimate.

$100 million.

So in that the bulk of that recovery is the flow-through of negotiations we've had with customers last year into this year and getting the full year effect.

Let's talk about the EDS spin, which you announced last month has gotten a lot of discussion. Maybe we could just start with structurally on the spin. Is there something about the dynamics of the EDS business? I think we've known your track record of you're always looking at the Aptiv or Delphi portfolio and where things are going. Is there something about the way that, that business was shaping out the dynamics of wire harnesses that make this maybe a little less similar to what the rest of Aptiv is today?

It's a different business than what we've built in the ECG business and the ASUX business. So let me start with -- it's a great business. It's #1 or #2 across every market that it operates in. It has a margin profile that's roughly 2x any of its competitors, strong customer demand and customer relationships, critical to OEMs from a vehicle production standpoint. So competitively, it's very, very well positioned. It's it versus those -- the new Aptiv businesses or the business that will remain in Aptiv. It's more of a program business. So I would say at its roots, it's a program business that's a mix of supply chain and manufacturing -- highly complex manufacturing process. It is a good business that has real growth opportunities, especially with electrification. That's -- the transition to EVs is important from a growth standpoint. It is a tailwind. The move to smart vehicle architecture in some areas is a bit of a headwind, but in our view, as you head towards electrification, it will be more than offset. There's opportunities within that business in our view to consolidate -- the industry should be consolidating. There's opportunities on automation. And as we look at allocation of capital within the portfolio of Aptiv as it sits today and you look at that in a business that drives 10% EBITDA margins versus businesses that are at high teens that allocation of capital, it gets to be a tougher decision. And that's a great business that should have more flexibility to allocate capital, more flexibility to consolidate the industry, more flexibility to drive automation of the wire harness, and do that with a shareholder base that it will deliver solid returns for a shareholder base that is okay with that margin profile. So that was the rationale for the spin of that business. Now you're left with the engineered components business and the ASUX business, both high growth, both high margin, both will generate a lot of cash flow, strong competitive positions that we can use to acquire and build -- continue to build out the portfolio of both businesses, more focused on doing that outside of the automotive space in a smart way and then returning incremental cash flow or excess cash flow to shareholders.

As far as -- just one more and then -- is ARS ready? Maybe could you just talk about the risk of dissynergies? And specifically, I think we know vertical integration [indiscernible] voltage solution is a combined ECG connector wire. So what is the risk of the vertical integration edge fading a little bit when...

It's a great question. We spend a lot of time thinking about it. But when you look at the organization, we run separate organizations within our business. So those businesses are run with by general manager with global P&Ls with unique objectives for each of those businesses. And with separate sales organizations, separate go-to-market strategies, we'll just continue that commercial go-to-market rhythm, right? So we're confident that we can continue if it results in incremental revenue across the portfolio, our team will continue to work together on those pursuit opportunities.

Okay. Great. Okay. If we could pull up the ARS question number one, maybe do these lightning round style. Okay, do you currently own the stock? You get your real time.

Yes.

You should own even more. Look at your real-time feedback to these.

Okay.

Okay? Okay. What is your general bias toward the stock right now? And I think this -- you can start the clock. I would say this should be viewed in the context of all auto suppliers where sentiment has been muted. Okay. positive. All right. Okay. Third question, EPS -- through cycle EPS growth. And here, I think peer is versus the other auto suppliers. So I suspect most people would view your growth to be above peers. Okay. That makes sense. All right. All right. What to do with excess cash and here we're going to -- if you could go to ARS question number 4. Question number 4, please. Okay. Okay. Excess cash. So if you could start the clock, but not to influence the crowd, your view on what to do with excess cash?

Yes. So near term, we're focused on paying down debt. I would say, near to medium term, as we talk about the business and where we sit, will -- and obviously, we have the ASR that's executing on the share repurchase. So that's occurring. But near term, paying down the debt used to fund the ASR. And then for us, it would be basically a priority to return back to bolt-on M&A in the ECG business and in the ASUX business. And that's really principally targeted doing a couple of things. One, how do we diversify revenue base? So you keep kind of characterizing or qualifying within the automotive space. So how do we leverage our 22% plus revenues in RemainCo that are outside of automotive to continue to expand our revenue mix? So how do we continue to do that? How do we drive synergies and margin expansion and be the second piece? And then again, to the extent we have excess cash flow, which we're confident we will, we'll return that to shareholders through share repurchases.

Great. Question 5, please? Right, multiple. And this is obviously, I think we've seen. Right now, you're trading at 9, 10x. I think there's probably an opportunity here if we could start the clock on that, please? Start the clock. Great. I think here, there's probably some opportunity for multiple rate for yourselves and for the space, okay? And then maybe question number six, the most significant investment. I think this takes us full circle. Your focus right now, if we could start the clock is -- I would venture to guess it's growing profitably is probably the summary. So it's a combination of growth alongside margin? So there's an execution element here as well. I can't end this without a comment on tariffs, right? [indiscernible] is yours. I would just ask very simply, I think there's a lot of policy uncertainty. How do you prepare at all for any of them?

Yes. So the guidance we've provided didn't include the impact of tariffs because it was impossible -- as you all understand, it was impossible to predict how that all plays -- how that plays out. We're very focused near term on executing well. There's an element of coordinating with our customers in terms of more standardized predictable schedules in the near term for deployment of some of the inventory in region or into the U.S. where there's production. We have great visibility to our supply chain. I would say the only place where we have exposure, quite frankly, from a true dollar standpoint, meaningful standpoint in Mexico. And that's by virtue of how the 2 things: one, the supply chain has been built up for -- to support North American automotive OEM for the last 3 to 4 decades. And two, it's wire harnesses for us. The industry produces wire harnesses in Mexico. So all of us are in this particular position. And economically, other than moving out of Mexico to Central America, which we're -- we've done and will continue to do, moving that to North America, the reality from a labor standpoint only, labor cost standpoint only, tariffs would need to get north of 55% for the math to make sense on the labor differential. And that's not UAW labor. That's a much lower cost than that. So listen, we think this is about other things. We're taking it seriously. We're doing everything we can. We're coordinating with our customers. We're trying to support them and avoiding the tariffs. But if we end up impacted with we see 10% to 20% to 25% tariffs in out of Mexico into the U.S., our customers are going to have to pay for it. That a reality.

Great. We'll leave it there. Kevin and Varun, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.