Cooper-Standard Holdings Inc. (CPS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Cooper Standard Second Quarter 2026 earnings conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in listen-only mode. Following the company-prepared comments, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. At that time, if you have a question, you will need to press star 1 in your telephone keypad. To draw your question, please press star 2. As a reminder, this call is being recorded and the webcast will be available on the Cooper Standard website for replay later today. I would now like to turn the call over to Roger Hendrickson, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Joining our call this morning. The members of our leadership team who will be speaking with you on the call this morning are Jeff Edwards, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and John Bannis, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I need to remind you that this presentation contains forward-looking statements. While they are made based on current factual information and certain assumptions and plans that management currently believes to be reasonable, these statements are not just statements do involve risks and uncertainties. For more information on forward-looking statements, we ask that you refer to slide three of this presentation and the company's statements included in periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This presentation also contains non-GAAP financial measures. reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures compared to their most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the appendix to the presentation.

With those formalities out of the way, I'll turn the call over to Jeff Edwards. Thanks, Roger, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining the call this morning. To begin on slide five, I'd like to highlight some key second quarter data points that we believe are reflective of our continued outstanding operational performance and our ongoing commitment to our core company values. In terms of operations and customer service, we continue to deliver excellent performance. For product quality and service, 99% of our customer scorecards were green in the quarter. For new program launches, we also continue to deliver strong performance with 97% of the customer scorecards being green. And for the most important operating metric, safety performance continues to be excellent. A shout out there to our plant employees. Thank you all. Just further on safety, listen to these stats. Pretty impressive. During the second quarter, we had a total incident rate of .17. reportable incidents per 200,000 hours worked. That's well below the world-class benchmark of 0.35. Importantly, 44 of our plants have maintained a perfect safety record with a total incident rate of zero for the first six months of the year. That's 75% of all of our production facilities achieving a perfect safety score. and demonstrating that our ultimate goal of zero safety incidents is achievable. We're proud of our entire global team for their focus and achievement in this most important operating measure. In terms of cost optimization, we had another solid quarter with our manufacturing and purchasing teams delivering $15 million of savings through lean initiatives and other cost-saving programs. These cost reductions and operating efficiencies are always important, but I would call them critical in periods of hyperinflation, such as we just experienced this quarter. So I want to give a special shout out to our purchasing team and our manufacturing and engineering teams for their continued excellent work and achievements. We appreciate all you're doing. addition, we did a nice job managing working capital and spending in order to optimize cash flow. During the quarter, we were pleased to deliver a solid $16 million in free cash flow, $40 million improvement over the second quarter of last year. Finally, we're continuing to leverage our world-class service, technical capabilities, and our award-winning innovations to win significant new business. In fact, during the second quarter of 2026, we received $118 million in net new business awards. which will drive additional profitable growth as they launch over the next few years. Turning to slide six, putting this strong commercial performance in context, this brings the total net new business awards for the first half of the year to $246 million. This remains ahead of our plans for the year so far, which we believe puts us in a strong position to achieve the full year goal. of over 400 million dollars in 2026 and topping 700 million dollars when combined with last year's award As you can see in the chart, our new business awards have been accelerating over the past few years as the financial strength of the company has been improving. And the good news is that we will have available capacity to launch much of this new business over the coming years with minimal capital investment. We're certainly proud to be the supplier that our customers are increasingly turning to for quality components, consistency of delivery, and collaboration of critical design and development of new technologies. With these awards in hand, driving incremental variable contribution margins and a strong outlook for new business wins ahead, we're increasingly confident that we'll be able to execute our plans and achieve our longer-term strategic financial targets for growth, margins, and return on capital. Now let me turn the call over to John to discuss the financial results for the quarter.

Thanks, Jeff, and good morning, everyone. In the next few slides, I'll provide some details on our financial results for the quarter and discuss our cash flows, liquidity, and aspects of our balance sheet and capital structure. On slide 8, we show a summary of our results for the second quarter and first half of 2026, with comparisons to the same periods last year. Second quarter 2026 sales were $721.3 million, an increase of 2.2% compared to the second quarter of 2025. The increase was driven primarily by favorable foreign exchange and, to a lesser extent, favorable volume, mix, and customer price adjustments and recoveries. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was $53.9 million, compared to $62.8 million we reported in the second quarter of 2025. The year-over-year change was primarily due to higher costs for materials, duties, and tariffs, and other general inflationary pressures. On a U.S. GAAP basis, we reported a net loss of $18.8 million in the second quarter of this year to a net loss of $1.4 million in the second quarter of 2025. Adjusting for restructuring expense net of tax from both periods, adjusted net loss for the second quarter was $2.3 million, or 13 cents per share, compared to adjusted net income of $1 million, or 6 cents per share in the second quarter of 2025. Our capital expenditures in the second quarter of 2026 totaled $13.8 million, or 1.9% of sales. This was higher than the prior year period due to increased launch-related investments and automation, but in line with our full expected run rate of 2% to 3% of sales. We continue to exercise discipline around our capital investments, consistent with our goals of maximizing returns on invested capital. For the first half of the year, sales were $1.4 billion, up year over year, primarily due to favorable foreign exchange. adjusted EBITDA for the first six months was $104.9 million, and adjusted net loss was $7.6 million. A I'll provide some additional detail on the drivers of the year-to-year changes for the quarter and the first half in the charts on the next couple of slides. So moving to slide nine. For second quarter sales, favorable foreign exchange was a tailwind of approximately $10 million in the quarter versus the second quarter of 2025. Favorable volume and mix net of customer price adjustments and recoveries had a positive impact on sales of approximately $5 million compared to the same period a year ago. For second quarter adjusted EBITDA, lean initiatives in purchasing and manufacturing positively contributed $15 million year-over-year. demonstrating continued strong performance from our global teams. In addition, favorable foreign exchange added $2 million compared to the second quarter of last year. More than offsetting these improvements were $10 million of higher material costs around rubber, metals, and resins, as well as $8 million in increased wages and general inflation, and $8 million in higher duties, tariffs, and other costs. Most of the commodity inflation was driven by higher oil prices, which averaged about $30 per barrel higher in the second quarter than before the Middle East conflict began. As discussed during our first quarter conference call earlier this year, the gross commodity inflation incurred during the second quarter is really a timing difference based on the structure of our commercial agreements. We expect to recover most of these incremental input costs, as well as tariffs, in the second half of the year, according to the index-based contracts and agreements we have in place, as well as through typical commercial negotiations. This is really the first time that our index-based contracts have been significantly tested since we put them in place. and we're pleased that they are working as intended. Price increases have already gone into effect in the third quarter, which will allow us to recover much of the material cost inflation we have seen. Moving to slide 10. Looking at adjusted EBITDA for the first half of the year, our teams have generated $31 million in savings or increased efficiencies in manufacturing and supply chain optimization, which continue to benefit our results. We have also seen $3 million in savings from past restructuring initiatives, Nonetheless, these positive drivers were more than offset by $15 million in wage increases and general inflation. $11 million in higher duties and tariffs, and $10 million of higher material costs, as well as $8 million of unfavorable volume and mix, along with $6 million of other costs. As mentioned, despite ongoing cost pressures from materials and tariffs, we remain confident in our ability to recover or mitigate the vast majority of these impacts through commercial recoveries and operational actions. Accordingly, we expect only a modest net effect on full-year results and will continue to proactively manage changing commodity conditions and recovery timing throughout the remainder of the year. Turning to slide 11. As Jeff mentioned earlier, we had a strong quarterly performance in terms of cash flow. Free cash flow, defined as cash provided by operations minus CapEx, was $16.3 million in the period. This was an improvement of $39.7 million compared to the second quarter of last year. driven primarily by our successful refinancing in the first quarter and our continued focus on optimizing working capital. Year-to-date cash usage was higher than the prior year period, reflecting lower first-half earnings driven by elevated material and tariff costs, volume and mix dynamics, as well as increased capital investments supporting new program launches and automation initiatives. As material cost recoveries take effect and operational efficiencies ramp up further, we continue to expect positive free cash flow generation for the full year. We ended the second quarter with a cash balance of $126.6 million. coupled with $167.6 million of availability on our ABL facility, which remains untapped, we had total liquidity of nearly $300 million as of June 30th, 2026. We believe that this current level of liquidity, combined with expected future cash generation, provides us with sufficient resources to support the continuing execution of our strategic plans to deliver profitable growth, lower our net leverage, and maximize returns on our invested capital.

This concludes my prepared remarks, so let me turn it back over to Jeff. Thanks, John. And in this last portion of our call, I'll comment on our high-level strategic imperatives and how we believe these are positioning us for continuing profitable growth over the next several years. Then I'll wrap up with a few comments on our outlook for the business and our industry in general in 2026. So if we can turn to slide 13. Our strategies and operating plans are built around the four key strategic imperatives that you see outlined on slide 13. By aligning the company around these common objectives, we continue to drive significant improvements in virtually every aspect of our business. And by the continuing execution of our plans and strategies, we're positioning the company to deliver deliver continued profitable growth, further improvements in margin, and significantly improve returns on invested capital. Slide 14, the charts on slide 14 provide concise summary of the progress we've made in restoring the financial health of the company. Through our successful strategic execution, we've been able to increase our gross profit margins by 160 basis points over the past two years. despite reduced or flat production volumes in our two largest operating regions. This includes the impact from the significant decline in production on one of our key programs here in North America that resulted from a customer supply chain disruption beginning in the fourth quarter of last year. and carrying into the first half of this year. Because of our success in driving sustainable efficiencies and fixed cost reductions, we believe we will continue the trend of expanding margins in 2026 and beyond, even if production volumes remain flat. we would expect to leverage any increases in production volume to drive further profitability and returns. In addition to our cost optimizations, we're benefiting from continuing launches of new programs and products with enhanced variable contribution margins. As the new programs ramp up, they're replacing older programs that have lower margins on average. Our book business launch cadence and the timing of run-out business give us a high degree of confidence in our expanding margin outlook. In addition, our enhanced commercial agreements with top customers allow us to recover most material and tariff cost increases, such as those we experienced this quarter. quarter. This significantly reduces the risk for turbulent market conditions that might otherwise disrupt our strategic execution. turning to slide 15. both of our business segments are continuing to to execute their sound strategies to drive profitable growth and improve returns on invested capital. Specifically in our ceiling segment, where we're already a global leader in the industry, we're leveraging our leading technologies, expertise, and innovation to capture additional share and profitability. We've also deployed sophisticated digital tools, and we're in the process of implementing several automation initiatives within our manufacturing facilities to drive further efficiencies and improved asset utilization. Finally, as we continue to deliver exciting innovations, that provide incremental value to our customers, we're winning more than our share of new business. Turning to slide 16, we provide a few examples of the ceiling innovations we've introduced into the market that are beginning to gain traction and drive sales. Our flush seal system has been very popular and is already in production on more than 20 vehicle programs. A more recent innovation, FlexiCore body seals, is an award-winning technology that we expect will be in production on two vehicle programs later this year. In addition, we're advancing development projects for FlexiFit glass and FlexiFit hidden outer waist belt technologies with several customers and expect to add these innovations to our list of new business awards very soon. Turning to slide 17, in our fluid handling system segment, we believe we've unmatched portfolio of products and innovations that position us well to take advantage of increases in ICE and hybrid powertrains in the U.S., the continuing adoption of EVs in China, and the evolving mix of hybrids and EVs in Europe. Europe. This flexibility around powertrains combined with our ability to design and deliver engineered solutions to optimize vehicle efficiency is creating opportunities for increasing content for vehicle and profitable new growth. Additionally, the current challenges in our market are creating difficulties for some of our competition, resulting in opportunities for us. Recently, we received a call from an OEM with whom we'd had traditionally stable business, but frankly, a lower level of revenue. They shared that they had a problem with a direct fluids competitor and asked if we'd be interested and willing to invest in growing our relationship with them. beginning immediately. Together, we move fast to make modest capital investments and preparations in our plant in this customer-moved business that was already in production and awarded it to our fluids group. And this was not a one-time event. Over the past 10 months, our fluids group have been awarded mid-production conquest business nearly 10 times, with the awards totaling nearly $40 million in annual sales. And that's effective this year. So our continued commitment to providing world-class quality, service, and overall value to our customers is certainly being recognized, making us the clear supplier of choice for vehicle fluid handling systems. As we've said in the past, our longer-term strategic target, make no mistake, is to double the fluid handling business within the next five to seven years. With recent new business wins and a long list of target business opportunities coming up, we believe we're on track to achieve this goal. Turning to slide 18, to conclude our prepared remarks this morning, I'll shift focus to the near term and our outlook for the rest of 2026. As we look forward to the remaining five months of the year, we're optimistic that certain headwinds we've faced over the past few quarters will be resolved or mitigated in the back half of the year. We are seeing a more normalized production volume on certain key platforms, and we expect that to continue. Additionally, while our costs for materials remain elevated due to oil prices and disruptions in the Middle East, we've begun recovering these incremental costs for the terms of our commercial agreements. and through further commercial negotiations. It's important to note, with the enhanced commercial agreements and index-based contracts that we've put in place over the past few years, we've structurally improved the business to limit the potential risks in precisely these types of hyperinflationary markets. Meanwhile, we're focusing on delivering high value for our customers, optimizing our operations around the world, and successfully executing our strategic plans to drive profitable growth, further expand our margins, and once again maximize return on invested capital. turning to slide 19. So despite the higher material costs that we've discussed and the timing of commercial recoveries that impacted our results here in the second quarter, we believe we remain on track to achieve our full year plan for sales and profitability. In terms of adjusted EBITDA, this was reflected in the midpoint of our guidance range, which we've kept unchanged. Even though we tighten the upper and lower ends of the range to reflect better visibility mid-year, which is traditionally how we've done it. We did make a few minor adjustments to other elements of our guidance, including a small increase in capital spending, reflecting incremental investments for the unplanned new business launches that I described earlier. an increase in restructuring expense as we accelerate initiatives to optimize fixed costs in our overall operating footprint, and a decrease in expected net interest expense to reflect the terms of our successful refinancing. So in summary, we're confident and believe that we will deliver strong four-year results in 2026. And importantly, we believe we are solidly on track to achieve our longer-term strategic financial targets that we've reviewed with you for adjusted EBITDA and return on invested capital as we continue to grow and improve the business over the next four to five years. As we wrap up, I certainly want to thank our customers, our suppliers, and all of our stakeholders for your continued confidence and support. We also want to thank all of our employees for their continued hard work, dedication, and their commitment to driving sustainable long-term value. This concludes our prepared remarks, so let's move into Q&A. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one in your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before entering your request. To withdraw from the queue, please press star 2. One moment, please, for your first question as we assemble the queue. Your first question comes from Michael Ward of Citibank. Your line.

The line is already open. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Mike. Jeff, when you talk about these Conquest Awards, is that unique to the fluid business where you can pick it up that quickly? Normally you hear about Conquest ones and they're one, two, three years down the road.

It sounds like it's impacting business today. Yes, that's right, Mike. As I said, it is unique. We are well positioned with technology and with our ability to execute. And as we've talked many times, the fluid business is critical components, right? I mean, if it leaks, it shows up in your driveway or your garage and there's a big problem. So I think customers are really taking a look at the... the innovation we have, the technology we have, how well we're executing in that business. when they have issues, you know, they're addressing them quickly. So I thought it was important this morning to share that because it is different, it is unique. That's happened actually to our ceiling teams a couple times as well here in the past 12 months. But we're proud of the fact that we have those relationships. Our footprint allows us to be nimble and quick and flexible. Obviously, moving ceiling programs is more challenging than some of the fluid businesses, Mike. So I think both of those things play a role. play a role, but really hats off to our manufacturing and engineering teams and obviously the commercial folks that are on the front end there making that happen, but we're pretty proud of that. And look, I said we're going to double the business in five to seven years, and we said that two years ago, so we're on track to achieve that as well. our fluid team and our ceiling team are performing at a very high level. We're proud of them.

So a combination of the product innovation as well as some types of weakness on the competitive.

where they're struggling. Yes, or decisions that they made. I'm not sure which it is. Maybe it's a combination of both. You know what I mean? Right.

John, I just want to make sure, confirm your second half outlook based on your guidance. and what it suggests. If I'm doing my math right, you're talking about adjusted EBITDA margins in the second half at the midpoint of the range, 12% plus. And when I look at the cash flow numbers, $100 million in surplus cash or free cash flow, am I looking at it in the right way?.

You are. Your math triangulates, Mike. That's the expectation. Certainly, when you think about these recoveries coming online, that'll benefit EBITDA and then fall through to cash flow both. So both of those metrics will benefit in the second half. And And all the focus that we put on the call today earlier about purchasing performance and the manufacturing team's performance, they had a strong first half, but they're looking forward to even better half as you look at the overall bridge going across the page. They're in line with another $50-plus million in the second half of incremental savings year over year. So that will go a long way towards completing the walk in the second half.

Okay, now that's not going to be the run rate for next year, but it certainly is, you the next six months or so, you have a pretty positive outlook. So that's good news.

Thank you very much. Okay, Mike. Thanks. Your next question comes from Dog Carson of Bank of America. Your line is already open.

Thanks, guys. Thanks, Jeff, John, and Roger. job on the business wins. It's impressive. Year to date. It's a big number. I just want to maybe double-click on the guidance as we – Look at the $105 million you've done in the first half. that would suggest an 80 plus million EBITDA each quarter on the low end of the guidance. around 95 million a quarter to reach the high end. So when we try to get that goal, I'm looking at the recoveries as a big part of that. Help me think about that. a bit of what type of recoveries would we be looking at? Cause I look at slide, slide, on slide 10, the kind of year-to-date bridge between Like where are we getting the recoveries? The duties and tariffs, the general inflation? That number's got to be kind of quite big to get to your guidance given the kind of unit volume and mix has been kind of negative.

year to date, negative eight. Yes, Doug, I'll take it. This is Jeff. So clearly the $30 some cases higher variance that we had in oil that John spoke of in his prepared remarks. In essence, we said this in the last quarter call that there's a quarter or so lag, in some cases a little bit longer. effective July 1st I mean we had a significant price increase from our customers that went in for all purchase orders to begin collecting the difference between what we had in in the plan with them which was I think around $65. to a price increase of over $90. So that's kind of how it works. And now we're collecting that back. Obviously the price of oil is below that number today, but the way this works is each quarter that average gets adjusted into the price. So we've been very clear about that really for a couple years now. And as I mentioned and John mentioned, it's really the first time we've had to put it into action. It's working. It's working well. Our customers have lived up to every single deal they made with us. And the rest is what we call the normal negotiation. I mean, anytime you have energy costs spike like they have for everyone, You know, there's negotiations that go on, you know, every single day. either to offset those or get help in other ways to offset those. And that's what we refer to as other commercial negotiations. And then most importantly, it isn't just all about that. We have to continue to execute on the cost side. as we talked about in the beginning of the year, we had significant plans. We had 95% of our cost initiatives for the year already identified before we started January of 26. So the teams are executing. That's what you heard us talk about in the first quarter. That's what we quantified here in the second quarter. So we're well positioned. to continue to deliver. Most of those things have already been implemented and we're reaping the benefits of those cost initiatives that were started last year, implemented beginning of this year, and paying bills as we go forward. So that helps offset some of the wage inflation that John spoke of, and it does every year. So that's not unusual. And then finally, the supply base. I mean, we're very engaged. This is just a really challenging time for any material science company, right? And so we're engaged with all of them doing our best from a purchasing point interview to leverage supply and demand and scale. We have choices too. And so that's been going on here. the last couple months, and we expect that to pay dividends for us the second half to help recoup what we funded for everybody in this second quarter. So I know that's a long explanation, but hopefully you get the context of it. There's two things that go on. We drive cost out and and we have to receive compensation back, both of those things are happening.

that's a very good summary to kind of summarize for myself it driving the cost is the lean manufacturing improvement that we see in that big bar. and then capturing your refunds and also the pricing, you're coming through and oil a lot different than it was at the beginning of the year, and there's a lag. So we should expect a net. to get in front of it, but a Q3 that's going to look a lot different than Q2 as far as EBITDA.

That's correct. Okay. And again, that's what we sort of highlighted to you last quarter, Doug, that we expected these headwinds in Q2 and that we expected to recover in Q3 and Q4, and that's exactly the way it's playing out. So I don't have any magic beyond that. I mean, that's just what's happening.

No, that's perfect, and you did say that, and it's helpful to kind of review it, and I appreciate the data and the slide deck.