Forvia SE (FRVIA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

So ladies and gentlemen, good morning, and welcome to our 2023 results presentation. The agenda today, we will start with the 2023 highlights, the '23 result review, which will be made by Olivier. We would speak about 2024 onwards and especially focusing on a new project we have, which is EU-FORWARD. And then we will -- I will give you the guidance for 2024 and confirm 2025, our POWER25 ambition. 2023 highlights. So the key achievements in '23, I think we were able to achieve our POWER25 targets and the deleveraging is on track, and you will see it in more details. We achieved a strong selective and profitable order intake of EUR 31 billion. We are going ahead with our integration and corresponding synergies ahead of our road map. And again, we will give you here more details. And we have an effective focus on ESG performances. And here, we will show you the concrete results we have. I suggest to go through now in video, which will summarize what we achieved in 2023. [Presentation]

We are not used to look back, but I think that it makes sense to see what we did with the teams around the world. 2023 in three key figures. The first one, the growth, organic growth of 14%, an outperformance of 430 basis points, an operating margin at 5.3% of sales, plus 100 basis points versus last year. And net debt reduced by close to EUR 1 billion, about [indiscernible] through and strong net cash flow of EUR 649 million and the completion of our first EUR 1 billion disposal program. Just as a reminder, we started in the second half of 2022, so I think it's a pretty good performance, considering also the environment in which we are working. The net debt to adjusted EBITDA multiples reduced to 2.1x, again, improved by 100 basis points versus June 2022. In a nutshell, all 2023 guidance targets met on track with POWER25 priorities and targets. Maybe to tell you here also one point, we have decided to be back on dividends with a dividend of EUR 0.5, which is not the historical level. We will progressively go back to the historical level. But this is to show you our confidence in our capacity to deliver. But also it is taking into account the investments we will have to make to achieve euro -- EU-FORWARD. About our growth momentum. We achieved EUR 31 billion of order intake. We did it being selective, so we could have done much more than that, and you see here some highlights, 25% of this amount was related to electronics, 46% on electric vehicles. But I wanted to highlight that EV1 and EV2 are 2 pure electric customers, one of them being Chinese. And you have, in Asia, the 36% achieved, more than EUR 11 billion. The 36% is you would see allowing us to get closer to our new international balance. Profitability consistent with our POWER25 targets, in fact, even slightly above. And with a significant reduction of our upfront cost, we had targeted EUR 1.6 billion, and we achieved EUR 1.3 billion, so EUR 300 million of upfront savings. Here, just for information, a few vehicles we have launched in 2023. We have launched more than 330 programs last year's -- last year. So you see the Jeep Avenger, European Car of the Year; the Peugeot 5008; the Porshe Cayenne; the Ram 1500; the Ford Transit; and the Mercedes E-Class. This is for Europe and Americas. Let us have a look on Asia: the Nissan Ariya; the Changan Avatr; the Lotus Elite; the BYD TANG; and the Li Auto X03. It's just a few samples. About our integration and the way we are working together with HELLA. We are pleased to tell you that we are considering an increase of our synergies. Previously, we communicated above EUR 300 million. We are now proposing above EUR 350 million. And here, we have a net cost synergies, EUR 190 million achieved in 2023 for a target, which was at EUR 120 million. So it works, and we are probably not at the end of story. We are continuing to work together. We have found new possibilities to achieve these synergies, and I will show you in particular for the FORVIA Excellence System how we are collaborating. We have completely rewritten our FORVIA Excellence System. It's now really a system, which is a combination of the strengths of both companies, HELLA and Faurecia. So this is a foundation to ensure a safe work environment, deliver total customer satisfaction, achieve POWER25 objectives and reach our Scope 1 and 2 carbon neutrality targets for 2025. In terms of the digitalization, more than 80 plants are today already digital model plants. We want to add to these ones in 2024, 30 plants. We have 5 lighthouse plants. What are lighthouse plants? They are fully automated plants with a minimum of operators. And here, our target until 2025 will be to have one main -- one lighthouse plant per main product line. So it means that we will add 10 lighthouse plants until 2025. But the easiest or the best way is probably to show you with a video how we are dealing with this. [Presentation]

So speeding up hydrogen activities. We have achieved about EUR 500 million of order intake on hydrogen in 2023. And I think it's important because we have now put in place an industrial tool, which has a scale 100,000, you see it in Allenjoie. 100,000 tanks per year is the capacity we have installed. We also have inaugurated the Symbio's gigafactory, which is called Symphon'hy, with the capacity of 50,000 fuel cell systems by 2026. This, with Stellantis, which entered into the capital of Symbio, we are now free shareholders at equal level. It was very important to have Symbio with us -- to have, Stellantis, sorry, with us because we need this knowledge about the use cases and all what is related to the vehicle use cycles. We are also starting in North America, and we will very soon communicate our new facility in North America, most probably in Mexico, in the weeks to come. By the way, I believe that America might be the region, which will take off, and this is because, for the light trucks and the big SUVs, hydrogen is probably the right solution. We -- you see it in the video, we are passionate about our CO2 reduction. And during the CES at the beginning of this year, it was really our main focus, Scope 3, designed for Scope 3. We have 6 years in front of us and not more to achieve our target, which is to reduce by 45% until 2030 the Scope 3 CO2-related level. In order to do this, we have, in 2023, created and kicked off MATERIACT. So MATERI’ACT is a division, which is focusing on formulating new materials using recycled material, but also biosourced material for plastics, but also for foils, for surface materials. And you see here that we have worked and we have first results with strategic collaboration, several strategic collaboration, a joint venture, which was signed in North America with PCR. We have more than 400 materials, which are formulated today, tested with artificial intelligence. And maybe, more importantly, we have started with 12 automotive programs with awards. And we are confident to achieve EUR 2 billion of sales by 2030. So it's something, which is of very high interest for our customers. We have discussions with most of them about how to deal with that. You need also traceability. You need to be able to calculate the CO2 savings. All of that is not easy. You need to have the feedstock in the right volumes for the automotive industry. But I think it's a very interesting business we are currently developing. Related to this, we have, of course, our net zero targets for 2045. Two intermediate steps, the carbon neutrality on Scope 1 and 2 in -- by 2025 and, what I just said, the minus 45% on Scope 3 by 2030 through, what we call internally, it's a project, designed for Scope 3. What I can tell you is that all the business groups, all the business groups, and you will see it through some examples Olivier will demonstrate -- will show, we have the means, we have the technologies, we have the solutions to make it happen. It's not only to reduce the CO2 level, but it's to do it without increasing the costs, which is really the challenge we have. We are doing whatever we can in order to compensate cost increases on materials through new solutions, less weight, less components, less energy to transform these materials. On Scope 1 and 2, we are 1 year ahead of schedule, so we are very confident to deliver this first intermediate target in 2025. When you compare our energy consumption in 2023 versus 2019, we saved 26%, and we invested in renewable means, solar and wind. And this will allow us to achieve up to 700 gigawatt capacity in 2024. To give you an order of magnitude, we are consuming a little bit less than 2,000 gigawatt hour worldwide. This is also demonstrated by the ratings. We have improved all our ratings with these 4 main agencies we are working with. And you see that on MSCI and on CDP, we are at the A level. And we have significantly improved with Moody's and Sustainalytics our ratings in 2023. So Olivier, I pass you the floor for the results.

Thank you, Patrick. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. We'll go through the '23 results in more details. And starting with this page, which is showing that your company, FORVIA, has progressed on all its financial metrics in '23. In revenues, strong sales increased 14% organically. We are at EUR 27.2 billion. Operating margin, plus 1 point, and we are at 5.3% of sales, and in absolute value, EUR 1.3 billion of operating margin. The net cash flow is up 34%, getting to EUR 649 million, 2.4% of sales. This is not only 34% improvement year-on-year, but is double the level of 2 years ago. And the net debt has reduced by EUR 1 billion in 1 year, EUR 1.4 billion in 18 months. And the leverage has gone down from 3.1 to 2.1, i.e., the majority of the improvement we are targeting in the context of POWER25. One message before I go through further pages, the '22 numbers are reflecting the implementation of IFRS 5, which means that SAS is reported as a discontinued activity, so deconsolidated, in fact, retroactively from January 1, '22. If we go first on the sales level. So sales level, EUR 27.2 billion, 14% organic growth, 430 basis points of outperformance. This is true, in fact, in all the business group. We'll go through that. You have 2 other elements to take into account. One is the scope effect. In the scope effect of EUR 515 million, you have, first of all, the fact that HELLA was consolidated from the 1st of February '22. So in all the numbers that I'm showing you, you have 11 months of HELLA consolidation in '22 and, of course, 12 months in '23. You have a small negative of EUR 100 million, which is related to the disposal of Commercial Vehicle exhaust systems sold early October to Cummins, which is linked to this net EUR 515 million. We had a significant negative ForEx impact, close to EUR 1.3 billion. The main contributor is, of course, Chinese yuan. But you had also, in fact, contribution related to the hyperinflation and devaluation in Turkey and in Argentina. You remember that there was a major devaluation, 15th of December, in the country and a little bit on the U.S. dollar. So this evolution means that from a reported basis, we are close to 11% increase year-on-year. On the operating margin, we are improving by 1 point from 4.3% to 5.3% of sales. This is driven by the growth in volume. This is driven also by what Patrick mentioned, which is that we are in advance of our road map on synergies, leading to a contribution of EUR 139 million in the P&L of '23. We had also the ends of our problematic contract in Michigan. We have, in fact, closed the plants in Highland Park, transferred the contract in agreement with our customer, Stellantis, at the end of October. So we had "only" EUR 30 million loss in '23 versus EUR 80 million a year before. You have the ForEx impact inside this presentation, which is sizable and is sizable because of the devaluation in Argentina and Turkey, which represents EUR 60 million inside this number. On the more negative side, 2 elements to mention. One is on the recovery on inflation. We are a bit lower compared to what we were targeting at the beginning of '23. We had make sure that we are not taking deals that will be short term, okay, but in fact, unfavorable midterm. So that's part of the element as well as, in fact, strong attention with customers. And the other one is that you see that the contribution of the volume is a bit of the low side, which is reflecting improvement in operation, but progressive during the year and partial. Now if I go business group by business group, we are starting with Seating. Seating has improved performance. It has also recorded a strong growth in revenues. You see that it's 16% organically. This is on the back of a strong level of activity in China not only with BYD, but also the growth in Li Auto and, in fact, also the development with activity with the U.S. EV carmaker. So on the growth side, strong progress. We benefit from the development in China. Improvement of the profitability, 40% of this improvement or 110 basis points comes from the end of Highland Park contract, but it means that we have also progressed elsewhere. But we have to recognize that we are below our potential, we are below our targets on this activity, and this is reflected headwinds in some JIT activities, but also structural overcapacities in Europe that we will address, and Patrick will comment further in the EU-FORWARD presentation this morning. On the Interior side, we are, in fact, having a growth, which is at 11.5% organically, which is solid, but we have an operating margin that is between "only" stable, so at 4.1%. So this is reflecting, in fact, that on top of the operating leverage, we had compensation from currencies. Interiors is sizable in Turkey, so has been impacted by the impaired inflation in the country, the level of inflation pass-through and also similarly to Seating by some of our capacities in Europe and operational performance in the region, which is one of the topic we are talking about this morning. On Clean Mobility, we have 2 things to mention. First of all, this is an activity that is continuing to grow and is actually growing above the market. So in the context of electrification, in the context of an activity that could be more on the decline, we can say that we have a strong activity with Clean Mobility not only in volume, but also in profitability. You see 9% operating margin. If I exclude the investment we are doing in hydrogen and solid cash flow performance, we are managing this activity clearly as a cash cow, as we said, we will do in the CMD in late '22. On electronics, you see, of course, the growth -- organic growth of 14.8%. This is, in fact, not only in electronics, but also in the Clarion Electronics side. And we should mention also that the improvement in margin by 130 basis points to 5.3% is the reflection of both the strength of the HELLA electronics portfolio, but also the turnaround of Clarion Electronics, which is clearly positive in H2 and actually positive for the first -- for the full year on the back of the structural actions that have been done on the industrial footprint, on the R&D activities in the different countries and the start of strong growth, more than EUR 200 million during '23. Lighting. Lighting is actually ahead of our POWER25 ambition. We are already at 5% that we targeted in the context of the CMD. This is on the back of solid growth, 15% organically. This is on operating leverage. This is also on synergies. Lighting is the business group benefiting the most of the common synergies, and you see it in the bottom line. And last, but not least, we have life cycle solutions. Life cycle solution is, in fact, able to pass through the inflation completely to customers, to expand these revenues and to have, in fact, 12.8% organic growth as well as an operating margin improving significantly year-on-year and hitting to 12%, reflecting the strength of the B2C model that we have in this activity. Now if I go to the region presentation, I will start from the right-hand side, and I will go right to left. So first of all, Asia. So Asia, we have not only stronger performance, 760 basis points of outperformance on the top of the growth of the market, which is sizable. We have also improvement of the margin, which is going even further than the year before to 11%. This is the Asia number, meaning that, in fact, we are not only having a solid model in China, but we have a good development in the rest of the region not only on the back of the growth with BYD, but also with other Chinese OEMs, plus the development of our Japanese OEM activity. So this is very positive, very solid and a good foundation to go further on the -- on this region. In Americas, we have, in fact, we are recording a selective growth, only 10.9%, which is also a reflection of the choices we have made, including Highland Park. But at the bottom line, we have an improvement of 170 basis points, getting to 4.3%, which reflects that the structural operational actions that have been taken are starting to bear fruit. Now we have Europe. On Europe, we have, in fact, a good growth in '23 on the back of a strong recovery of the volume market. We have improvement on the operating margin. However, we are getting only to 2.5%, even on the back of the 90 basis points improvement year-on-year. So Europe is where, in fact, we have some of the elements that I mentioned before in seating interiors. And this is also an area in which we have to address structurally our cost base in order to get back, in fact, to the level of profitability we had in the region. And for information, we were at 6.6% pre-COVID in EMEA, to give you a reference. So a different situation between the regions.

Yes. I'd just like to make a comment here. You see that today, we are dependent on what is happening in Asia/China. It would be stupid not to benefit from the growth in Asia. Asia will be the only growing region -- remaining growing region. In a few years, Asia will produce about 60% of the world volumes. And out of these 60%, China will be at 60% of the Asian volumes. So it is absolutely critical for us to reduce our dependency, not reducing our profitable Chinese growth or Asian growth, but improving our European profitability. And I think that this is one of the key triggers for EU-FORWARD I will speak about.

Thank you, Patrick. I will go to the operating margin and the full P&L. So one comment to make on this page is, in fact, we have the move from 11 months to 12 months of consolidation of HELLA, which impact all the lines. So in reality, you see that the R&D growth cost and the SG&A, in fact, is increasing less than what you are -- than what you see. 50% of this is related to this 1 month consolidation. So the result is that in '23, we have been able to contain the cost on R&D and SG&A, so that it is impacting less the P&L by each of them 20 basis points. The good news is that we still have room for improvement, in particular, on the R&D, but also in some of the SG&A. And we will, in fact, be able to deal in an accelerated and more comprehensive manner about this in the context of the EU-FORWARD program. If I go to the net income, we are recording a net income. We are back to profit. This is one more element of the return to normal and the progress of the company in the last 12 months. The net income is at EUR 222 million, EUR 1.13 per share. And in fact, contrary to '22, has not been impacted by extraordinary negative impact. '22, we had, in fact, the impact of our disengagement from Russia, which is now completed since the 27th of December. We had one-off restructuring, and we had a specific cost of the acquisition of HELLA. In '23, we have, in fact, only positive one-off, which is the contribution of the sale of our stake in Symbio, which means that we had a capital gain of 158, and the other operations have been basically not whole. The good news is that the net income without those capital gain is also positive, which is an encouraging factor on a going-forward basis. On the net cash flow, the net cash flow has been, as mentioned earlier on, improving by 34% year-on-year to EUR 649 million. This number has been done on a recurrent basis. The factoring -- the positive EUR 111 million in factoring is actually reclass of the end of the factoring SAS to the rest of the company. But actually, you can see that the level of tax is particularly high. And this is related, first of all, to a withholding tax on HELLA dividend and also some timing on the VAT in 1 country, which has been sorted out, in fact, in '24. So in reality, even excluding the factoring and this element, this is really the number that we will have done. Now if you look inside, the main contributor is, of course, the working capital. And the working capital improvement means, in fact, that what we are doing in the Manage by Cash program is starting to pay off. This is related to, in fact, good collection from customers, limited overdues, synergies on payment terms as well as a better inventory management. I would like to say, however, that on inventories, we have been flat. But this is only the beginning because with the evolution on shortages, we have much room for improvement with an absolute decrease on inventory in '24 and '25. So I continue to expect that we will have a positive contribution of working capital also in '24 and '25, maybe a bit less than the EUR 659 million, however, that you see. On the financial expense, of course, increasing year-on-year. This is the reflection of the higher interest rates, but of course, the hands of the purchase -- the refinancing of the purchase of the HELLA acquisition, in which we replaced the bridge loans by, in fact, structured debt, but structured debt after the Ukraine war. We expect this one to progressively go down a bit in '24 and much more in '25, with the full effect of deleveraging and refinancing we are doing. On the leverage, so on the leverage, we went down, in fact, from 3.1x mid-'22 to 2.1x end of '23. This is on the back of the cash flow generation we have done in '23, but also, of course, the EUR 700 million of cash proceeds from the disposal program. We had done EUR 320 million in '22. The remaining part of the EUR 1 billion was done in '23, with 3 operations that we communicate early on. So the net debt reduction of EUR 1 billion is coming not only from cash flow, but is coming also from disposal. And we have a debt now below EUR 7 billion. On the -- of course, if we have net debt reduction, we are also making sure that we have gross debt reduction. The gross debt has reduced by close to EUR 900 million. We have, in fact, improving also the rating. The 3 rating agencies during the year have moved from negative to stable in their ratings. And in fact, we have diversified our funding sources with a syndicated loan in Mexico, but also with the first Samurai in the Japanese bond market, and we have started liability management in H2. You can expect, in fact, that we will be active in '24 to continue in this direction, diversification of the sourcing fund, strong activity and reduction of the gross debt in '24 and '25. And last, but not least, we are, of course, on the back of the success of the first disposal program, we did 5 operations in 15 months. We have launched in October a second disposal program of EUR 1 billion. The first operation has been signed, which is the sale of the 50% stake of HELLA in BHTC. That will represent EUR 200 million of proceeds in H1 '24. And we are active on the other operations. We have good prospects. We will communicate in due time when we have additional signed deals in '24 and in '25. And this is for the present at '23 before moving to the future, starting with '24 with Patrick.

So I would like to speak about the new project we have decided to address European challenges and which we have called EU-FORWARD. Let me start with the strategic goals. This project will last between '24 to '28. Its target is to reinforce competitiveness in Europe. Why? First, we have to adapt to the structural drop of volumes. We enjoyed 21 million vehicles. It included Russia at the time. Russia was considered in the European scope, 21 million vehicles. In 2023, we were below 17 million vehicles without Russia that time. In fact, 16.5 million vehicles. We believe that this is structural, this will not improve, and we might even see a further reduction, depending on imports of vehicles coming from Asia. We also have to take into account the ICE ban in 2035. This ICE ban has one consequence immediately, it is increasing the fragmentations of the volumes. So we have less volumes in Europe, and we have less volumes per vehicle in Europe. The second point is we need to get prepared to an evolution of the OEM landscape with the arrival of newcomers from Asia. This is true for OEMs, for sure, and this is impacting us less. But these OEMs will not come alone. They will also come with some of their traditional suppliers. We have to improve our competitiveness, and we have to secure our strong European positions. Finally, we have to rebalance FORVIA's regional performance, especially on the dependency we have currently, I just spoke about, in Asia and, more importantly, from China in terms of margins, margin balance between Europe and China. And as I said, we want to improve Europe, while continuing to benefit from the profitable growth in Asia. How to do this? By adapting our manufacturing and R&D setup. In the past years, we adjusted our headcounts to the new situation. But we spoke about Seating, and we spoke about interiors. Seating on all the metal part, the mechanisms and the frames, and interiors on all their products, they are at a high level of capital involved. So here, when you are not using these manufacturing capacity, you have a significant handicap. We need to make sure that we adjust our manufacturing footprint and our R&D footprint to these new volumes. This will be supported, as we did in the past, by recruitment freeze, reduction of short-term and temporary workers on top of the natural attrition. We will have a specific focus on R&D and program management through the introduction -- or the massive introduction of AI and GenAI tools, which will allow us to change completely the level of productivity we can generate. EU-FORWARD could impact up to 10,000 jobs over the period. This, to be compared, to the current situation of 75,500 employees, including nonpermanent employees in Europe at the end of 2023. About the financials. On the P&L side, we decided to invest EUR 1 billion of restructuring costs for '24 to '28. This is the cost dedicated to Europe, broadly equally split between '24, '25 and '26 to '28. Maybe just to make here a remark, we had already planned restructuring costs for '24 and '25. This plan is increasing the means by about EUR 100 million per year during these 2 first years. The savings and the cash -- sorry, the cash, EUR 800 million for this period of time dedicated to Europe, broadly equally splitted between '24, '25 and '26, '28. The savings we are expecting from this plan are about EUR 500 million to be achieved in 2028 and which should allow us to increase the margin from 2.5% in 2023 to above 7% in 2028. Back to AI, AI at scale. So here, we are very concrete on how we are dealing with this. We are dedicating AI teams in all our business groups, plus on a central platform for our infrastructure and our data management. We ensure best-in-class data management and IT environment. We have more than 200 data products. We promote and prioritize the most promising AI use cases. We have more than 250 AI use cases identified. And we have done PoCs. So what I would tell you related to what we ambition in terms of productivities are checked through these PoCs. So we have, I think, a very good estimate of what is possible. And what is possible, we believe, is to achieve a 50% efficiency gain on R&D and program management. And to give you an idea, the accumulated costs on these 2 elements are about EUR 2 billion per year. It's an ambition because it has to be seen in the frame also of our EU-FORWARD. And some of the technologies we would need are not yet available on the market. So that it is very difficult to time it, but we will do it as quickly as possible. And in any case, it should happen before 2030. This is not a European initiative. This is, of course, a global initiative and will impact our R&D and program management resources on a worldwide scale. So here, a few information about differentiated regional strategies. You see, and Olivier showed it to you, the 2023 regional exposure, Europe, 46% of sales and 22% of operating income. On the right-hand side for 2028, you see the targets we gave ourselves, 40% -- about 40% of our global sales in Europe and 35% of our operating income in Europe. When we now dig in, in the different regions, Asia, I said, it will soon represent 60% of the world vehicle volumes, out of which 35 million will be produced in China. We have very strong positions in China. We have a high intimacy with the major players in China. We did in 2023, 45% of our Chinese sales with Chinese OEMs. So we are close to the market balance. We are also considering Japanese OEMs. They are still producing 25 million vehicles. It's the first single country in terms of production of vehicles. 70% of these 25 million are staying in Asia. And to make it simple, the remaining 30% are in America. India. India is currently producing 3 million vehicle per year to 1.4 billion inhabitants. The target, which is given by the Indian authorities, is to grow to 7 million vehicles, sorry, in 2030. I believe that this might not be ambitious enough. For your information, they are producing 44 kilometers of roads per day currently, and the increase of the middle class is very impressive. So we believe that this is a reservoir of growth in Asia, which is considerable, and we have to be there. So Asia, China, Japanese OEMs, India are our focus points. North America, we want to pursue our commercial selectivity. We finalize our well-advanced footprint optimization. We are very strong in Mexico. And we want to achieve our structural industrial efficiency gains. We moved a lot of our activities from the U.S. to Mexico. These massive transfers costed us in terms of efficiency and productivity. Now it's done. It's behind us. Now we can really focus on the FORVIA Excellence System. Europe, we have to address industrial capacities. We have an -- and R&D capacities, I should add. We have to reduce our dependency on our Chinese profitability. And we have to reinforce competitiveness globally and agility. So we want to massify in a smaller number of plants. We want to specialize our plants, and we want to further invest in automation of these plants, as we showed it to you through the digitalization plan. Now the last part the guidance and the POWER25 ambition. The '24 guidance, we propose sales between EUR 27.5 billion and EUR 28.5 billion, an operating margin between 5.6% and 6.4% of sales, and net cash flow equal or above the 2023 level in value, a net debt to adjusted EBITDA below -- 1 point below or equal to 1.9x at end of 2024. This guidance is based on worldwide automotive production broadly stable versus 2023. We might see in '24 a drop of battery electric vehicles in Europe. This is mainly due to the stop of incentives decided in Germany. It's a temporary situation, as the CAFE regulation will impose a CO2 reduction of 15% in 2025, and I'm pretty convinced that we will see a recovery in 2025. This is not an issue for us. The impact might be marginal to us, as it will not impact China where we have the vast majority of our electric vehicle programs. We stay perfectly on track to POWER25 ambition. We reiterate our full year 2025 objectives as presented at the CMD held in November 2022, with sales at circa EUR 30 million, an operating margin above 7% of sales and net cash flow 4% of sales and a net debt to adjusted EBITDA below 1.5x at the end of 2025. As Olivier said, the second disposal program we have, while getting implemented, will improve this last figure -- should improve this last figure. To conclude my last slide, FORVIA in 2025, what should it be? A global leader; a high-value technology supplier, much stronger in Europe; CO2 neutral for Scope 1 and 2; well-developed solutions on design for Scope 3; highly digital and efficient in operations and R&D, we are very clear here and KPIs, targets; deleveraged financial structure, it is still our priority #1; and attractive for all our stakeholders. Thank you. I think now we will continue the session with the Q&A, if any.

So the first question from Pierre-Yves Quemener, Stifel. What is the share of expected revenues derived from sales to BEV in 2024 and 2025, not just to pure BEV players, but all your product sales fitted to BEV vehicles? Are your sales to BEV platforms accretive? Or is the profitability in line with that of ICE hybrid cars? So the vast majority of our BEV-related sales are made in Asia/China, with a few customers, BYD, Li Auto and an American pure player. This is representing about 70%, 75% of our BEV sales worldwide. So that -- this is why I said that the impact in Europe where we might see a drop of battery electric vehicles might be marginal. Because if we sell less or if our customers are selling less BEVs, they might sell more ICEs/hybrid vehicles, including an ICE. So even if our content per vehicle is not the same, I would estimate it at around EUR 300 per vehicle on BEV, while it is below EUR 150 for an ICE for profitability, which is about the same. So yes, the BEV sales are accretive, yes. You -- we have made an estimate. We are around a potential drop in Europe -- of -- in Europe globally, but it is happening in Europe, of about EUR 30 million of operating income, worst case.

And maybe to complement the comment of Patrick. Let me remind you that we have the Clean Mobility activities, which, in fact, represent on the ICE passenger vehicle something a bit above 4 billion, in which the revenues have gone in '23. So in fact, we have activity dedicated to electrification, electronics, lighting. But we have also, in fact, the remaining ICE-specific activity, which is Clean Mobility, which means that, in fact, if there is a slowdown of electrification, we will see a trend more positive than initially expected on Clean Mobility on the back of strong profitability, strong cash flow conversion. It does not change, what we will do in the activity in terms of rightsizing. The actions are underway. And some of it is, in fact, related to EU-FORWARD. But in fact, the conversion can be better than what people anticipated, let's say, 6 months or 1 year ago.

The next question from [ Gabriele Galivanon ], sorry for the pronunciation, from Mediobanca. You said you could have done much more than EUR 31 billion order intake due to selectiveness. Can you be more precise on what you do not accept in terms of revenues? And what was the margin attached? So maybe I will make one general comment. Before, we made some discount on the OEM volumes, but we did not challenge the capacity an OEM had to put these vehicles on market successfully. This is over. We have to be more vigilant. We need to be more marketing risk oriented. We have to understand if a given vehicle in a given segment by a given OEM has a high probability of success. That's point number one. This means that we are doing discounts on the volumes, which are significantly higher than what we were used to do in the past. This means that we are much more vigilant on the upfront related to these vehicles, especially when they are financed through PPAs, so through and part price depreciation. We also -- we have also thresholds. We have our limits related on the margin. And [indiscernible], we have contractual now, our constraints we have put to ourselves. We call them the 5 stops. If these critical elements to us are not fulfilled, are not verified, we don't go for it. And you give me the possibility, the opportunity to tell you that this is a real constraint to our salespeople. And the fact that, despite these constraints, we were able to achieve EUR 31 million, I think, is a good sign of our technology and our attractiveness to the market. The next one, Stephanie Midler from Original Events. [Foreign Language].

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Mr. Asumendi of JPMorgan.

José from JPMorgan. Patrick, thank you so much for the very thoughtful European forward plan. This is for me, the benchmark in the supplier industry. A couple of questions, Olivier. Can you elaborate a little bit on the key positives and negatives for the profit bridge in 2024 versus 2023? And then Patrick, can you please elaborate on what is the structural overcapacity in Europe when it comes to Seating and interiors? How do you plan to tackle this overcapacity problem that the overall supplier industry has in Europe, specifically for FORVIA? And then can you elaborate on the opportunity to grow revenues with the American electric vehicle company, BYD and Chery? And what does this mean for your CapEx and geo locations in European region?

Thank you. You start?

Jose, so let me start by the bridge '23 to '24. So as you see, the growth from the market is flat. So we are not expecting that. But we are expecting, in fact, the continuation of the outperformance. Hence, in fact, the guidance we show in revenues with the operating leverage that we see currently. We have 2 elements of self-help. One is, in fact, the full impact of the end of Highland Park. So the EUR 30 million loss of '23 is gone. The second is that, as we mentioned, the benefits of the combination and the synergies with HELLA are continuing. The raise of the expectation to EUR 350 million is related to the fact that there will be further contribution in '24 and actually in '25 to the tune of EUR 80 million to EUR 90 million. And last, but not least, the impact of the cost savings we are talking about, the ones that we engaged already before, plus, in fact, what we are doing with the launch of the project of EU-FORWARD, which would -- should add something like EUR 75 million, in fact, to the bottom line. So if you do the math, you will get, in fact, to the neutral point of what we are mentioning in terms of guidance operating margin. In '25, it will not have, in fact, the equivalent of Highland Park, but you will have more benefit from the savings plan and the actions that we are talking about in EU-FORWARD, plus elements of R&D optimization related to the digitalization that we mentioned before, which is leading to the next step to get to above 7% in operating margin.

About the overcapacity in Europe, it's a mixed picture. When you look at electronics, for example, we do not have overcapacity because we are growing fast. We have overcapacity on our traditional metiers, Seating, interior. Lighting, the growth is partially compensating it, but we have to make some efforts on investing in standards and the massifications. And of course, we have overcapacity on Clean Mobility. If I take it as an average, I would estimate it to slightly more than 20%. We have, in Europe, at the end of 2023, 133 plants.

Our next question comes from Mr. Jacks of...

We have not answered to the last one, which is related to BYD and Chery.

And there was a question also on the impact on CapEx and locations related to EU-FORWARD, I guess.

Okay. So maybe one thing about BYD, because I think it's an important one, we grow -- we've grown with them very rapidly after having both the in-house production on seats. In 2019, we were at EUR 220 million, about this level. And last year, we were at more than EUR 1 billion, yes? What I would like to tell you that in cooperation with BYD, we agreed that BYD would open up their supplier panel because it makes sense considering the growth they have and because it is also important for us not to be again too dependent on BYD. So according to this policy, we have grown and we will grow significantly with a few other Chinese OEMs, like Li Auto, with -- which we will do more than EUR 500 million of sales in 2024; with Chery; and with Leapmotor as the main ones. You have in China 20 OEMs, which are doing more than 90% of their production figures, the full Chinese volumes. We are a supplier of 19 out of these 20, yes, so we have strong ties to them. And we will, of course, support them in the globalization, in their international projects. It's the case for BYD in Hungary, where we will be very pleased to follow them and to supply them in Europe, and this is the case of some others. I would like to make 2 remarks on this, on what is happening in Europe because all of that is related. The one thing is the CIR, the Crédit d'Impôt Recherche we have in France. I'm insisting, my message to the politics, is keep it. Keep it because this allows us to be competitive on R&D in France. Without it, it would be a different picture. The second one, incentives to BEVs. We saw what the Germans have decided. We need these incentives. For the moment, our European customers have a too significant gap between an BEV and an ICE in terms of costs. They need to be supported until we achieve in Europe a critical mass, which will allow our customers to be competitive against their Chinese colleagues. And so we should not stop that. It is absolutely critical. We are speaking about a heavy industry. And for this heavy industry, the rules of the game cannot be changed from 1 day to the other. I think that this is -- allow me this double message, which I believe is very important.

And to complete the 4 questions of José. On CapEx, of course, the consequence of what we are talking about in terms of adaptation of footprint and capacity in Europe will have a CapEx reduction impact. And you can anticipate to see some of this in '24 and '25, and I'm talking absolute value. So absolute value should go down.

Our next question comes from Mr. Jacks of Bank of America.

My first one is just a clarification on the restructuring. On Friday, HELLA reported expected cost savings of around EUR 400 million from its own European restructuring plan. Could you please just clarify how this fits in with the plan announced today and how to understand this in the context of the overcapacity numbers that you mentioned, Patrick, which appeared to be more weighted towards the traditional Faurecia businesses rather than at HELLA? That's my first question. The second one is just around your growth and net cost inflation expectations for this year. Just trying to understand if there is any expectation for compensation from customers this year again or if that is now behind us. And then finally, a question just for Olivier on taxes, and I apologize if you already alluded to this, but cash taxes were in the region of around EUR 500 million this year, which will -- sorry, in last year, which were seemed rather high in relation to the profit before tax number. Can you just help us to understand what is driving that and if this is something that will continue into 2024?

So on the savings, so indeed, HELLA has announced an element of the plan. And when we talk about EU-FORWARD, we are talking about FORVIA project. So all or parts of FORVIA concerned, including, of course, HELLA. Now related to the numbers, HELLA mentioned a EUR 400 million gross savings until '28. The net savings will be between EUR 200 million and EUR 300 million. So what it means is that when we talk FORVIA, we were talking this morning, net savings of EUR 500 million. So you understand that a significant part of the savings of the total group is coming from HELLA, but a sizable part is really about the overcapacity also we mentioned, in particular, Seating and interior. So you have a contribution in net savings that will be either equal between ex-Faurecia or even a bit higher on the Faurecia side. Now the contents of this -- of those actions are not exactly the same. Indeed, in the context of HELLA, you have a lot, which is related to optimization of the cost, minimization of the increase in people and in cost in the period. Hence, in fact, the cost of restructuring being lower than the total. So when we talk about EUR 1 billion of restructuring charge for total Europe, we are talking about total FORVIA. And HELLA mentioned, Friday, EUR 200 million, which is part of this EUR 1 billion.

You also asked what about HELLA, and you said that I rather spoke about the traditional metiers we have. One of them is belonging to HELLA, which is lighting, and I mentioned it. You understand that we are focusing here on 2 things: the manufacturing footprint; and the R&D footprint. And what I said about HELLA and about electronics is that they don't have an overcapacity on the electronics footprint, while growing fast in Europe. But yes, we have to deal with R&D in -- inside HELLA as much as we do it in our other business groups. The relative weight of electronics in terms of R&D is significantly higher than what we have in Seating, in interior or even on Clean Mobility. So you will understand that you have here again different targets and adjusted targets per business group. But HELLA, and when I spoke about EUR 500 million of net savings, the contribution of HELLA is about EUR 200 million. So it's a very significant contribution versus the full target in terms of savings -- net savings for Europe. You asked about inflation compensation. We have put in our plan, until 2028, some noncompensated inflation we will have to tackle on the top of what we are speaking here about. So this is so why HELLA is speaking about 2 figures and gross savings and a net saving. I think that we have to deal with the labor inflation, and that it will not be possible to get compensation, excluding very exceptional cases where we would have something absolutely abnormal. We have to compensate through our internal productivity, the labor inflation. We will have to contribute to the management of the potential energy inflation through energy savings, yes, and through the PPA contracts we have. On the other hand, we need the raw material compensation because there's nothing we can do about this. We need to work on the JIT business model, which, from my point of view, is obsolete in this new environment, especially when you are in high-cost countries. The principle of a JIT is that you have to deliver in -- at the tech time of the customer. So it means that -- and customer is working in 0 or 1. They are not reducing the speed. They are full speed or stopped. And so you understand that in this kind of situation, with the uncertainties, with the fragmentation, which is existing, it is very difficult, and we are working on that, yes? So I think that this is the picture of inflation compensation. As I said also previously, we have to take our own risks about customers and programs decided by customers, yes? In the past, we went to the customers and claimed when we had a significant drop. We will have to take this better into account and manage our risks.

You had finally a question regarding the cash tax charge in '23. And thank you for the question because, indeed, this level is abnormally high. The EUR 515 million includes 2 elements that are nonrecurring. One, the EUR 68 million of withholding tax on the dividends of HELLA. The dividend of HELLA and the results of '22 paid in '23 was particularly high because it included, in fact, the proceeds of the Edge BPO sale that happened in '22. So we had EUR 68 million, which is a cash out in '23 that will be recouped in '24. The second item is related to VAT timing in 1 country in Americas, which has been, in fact, since then resolved, which was another EUR 40 million, EUR 50 million. So in reality, the recurrent cash tax charge of '23 is more of EUR 400 million. So it means that it's an offset of the factoring contribution. That's why I mentioned earlier in the call that the EUR 649 million of net cash flow is a clean number because the 2 offset items. And it means that you will see a tax charge on the cash basis in '24 that will be significantly lower because we will get back this withholding tax and this VAT. The VAT part is already done for more than EUR 100 million, EUR 120 million to be exact.

Our next question comes from Mr. Bhagwani of Citi.

I have got 3 questions as well. My first one is on organic growth outperformance. So from the volume and mix this year, the organic growth that is in '23, the organic growth outperformance is somewhere around 250 basis points. How should we think of this going forward in '24 and given that the growth of the BEV may decelerate, and I think you flagged that the content on the BEV is much higher? That is my first question. Second question is a follow-up to Mike's question on growth and net inflation. If I understood it correctly, the labor inflation is what will be difficult to pass through, but energy and material net debt, probably zero. So how should we think of the growth in overall net inflation in '24, that is basically the labor inflation? And my final question is on '25 targets. So if we look at the '25 sales target of EUR 30 billion, at midpoint of '24 target, this implies a top line growth of somewhere around 7%. Now assuming, let's say, auto production growth of flattish, that still means around 700 basis points of outperformance. So could you maybe outline some of the key drivers of this outperformance accelerating, maybe some of the program launches you have done this year, they start to pay off in '25? So those are my 3 questions.

If I start with the organic growth, as I said previously, the vast majority of our battery electric vehicle sales are made in Asia/China. And we do not expect a slowdown of battery electric vehicle sales in China. So I said that we might see a slowdown in Europe in 2024 with a recovery in 2025. In 2024, we think that this is not very significant. We have made a calculation where we believe that it should not exceed EUR 300 million on this type of vehicle. Labor inflation in 2024, here, I would like to tell you that before the crisis, our labor inflation worldwide, I'm speaking under your control, Jean-Pierre, was around 2.4%, 2.5% per year. It peaked to 1 point in addition, so 3.4%, 3.5% worldwide. So keep in mind that the inflation was existing in the Eastern part of Europe very significantly and in China, especially also. In China, this inflation dropped in 2023 and will further be at a lower level in 2024. So I think that our -- I think our assumption for 2024 is an inflation at the level of 2023.

On inflation, there will be a marginal impact on the P&L because the remaining inflation, as Patrick mentioned, is lower on the labor side. The energy is more tame, but there will be a slight negative on this one. You had one question regarding this...

And just, I'm speaking about these 3-point something percent. You understand, we have some specific countries where we have an unused inflation and for which we need a compensation. But excluding these countries, around 3% is something we should be able to cover through productivity.

Related to your question about '25, which is the EUR 30 billion revenue that we are targeting in our POWER25 ambition. Two comments. Number one, this is based on uncertain ForEx assumptions, which are a bit different from the current level. The second is that we expect that the slowdown of electrification in '24 will change course a little bit in '25, in particular because of the obligations in Europe in terms of evolution of carbon level, which the carmakers will have to face in '25. So electrification impact, a bit different between '24 and '25 year.

Our next question comes from Mr. Laskawi of Deutsche Bank.

It's Christoph Laskawi from Deutsche Bank. The first one would be just on the order intake comment that you made and the margin in that. Is the above 7% including the EU-FORWARD program already? Or would that come on top? And then the second point, just on the working capital comment of inventory. Could you give us a rough point on the net positive for cash flow in '24 and '25?

EU-FORWARD is not taking into account a specific order intake level, so there's no change on this, yes? By the way, with the order intake we will achieve in 2024, we will cover most of the period '24 to '28 in terms of sales made with new programs, yes? We stick to this selectivity. We want to privilege operating margin and lower -- higher operating margin, lower upfront and less risks in our order intake.

On the working capital, so on inventories, actually, we have been flat to slightly up in the period '23, if you take the total inventories. This is an encouraging performance because it means that the evolution in terms of number of days has been better since we had strong growth in revenues. What I expect in '24 and '25 is a net decrease on inventories. We don't need, in fact, a lot of inventories that we had since shortages are, in fact, basically gone. And we are in a more normal working environment. You can expect that this is the main driver of the working capital contribution '24 and '25. We -- and you can count something like EUR 300 million per annum inventory, plus some elements of the working capital.

We need to keep, and this is clearly our intention, our performance achieved in 2023 on receivables, on overdues and claim collection. We had some advanced payments, yes, but I think they are comparable year to year. So this might continue. And if not, we will have to find ways to compensate that. We believe that we have room for improvements on the payables, especially when we look at the payment terms, Faurecia versus HELLA. And we believe that we can significantly improve -- further improve our inventories. We should not forget that we were obliged on the electronics side to make significant inventories related to the supply crisis. This has to normalize. And here, we have some room for improvement.

Our next question comes from Mr. Niedzielski of Roce.

I have a question on your 2024 guidance. Especially, the net debt to EBITDA was under 1.9 or, as you said, during the call, equal to 1.9. When I do the math, if I include the EUR 1 billion of proceeds from the disposals, I get to a number that is much closer to 1.6. And even if I exclude the EUR 1 billion of disposals proceeds, I get to 1.8. And that is using the midpoint of your guidance on sales and profitability and including the restructuring charges. So I was just -- I just wanted to have more color on this. Does the guidance include or exclude the disposal proceeds? And if it does, I mean, are you being conservative with 1.9? Or are there any cash outflows that I have not taken into account?

So regarding '24, there is no abnormal cash outflows. So what it means is that, indeed, we hope to be conservative on this 1.9 and the -- and if we have cash disposal -- cash proceeds from disposal on top of BHTC, that will help this number. This is true for '24 as it is true for '25 in the 1.5x.

Okay. So just to make it very clear, the 1.9 does not include any disposal proceeds, right?

Besides BHTC, because BHTC is underway.

Our final question comes from Mr. Spina of HSBC.

Sorry. We cannot hear you.

But maybe we have one on the written form from Michael Foundoukidis, ODDO. Could you explain the free cash flow 2024 guidance, which stands at more than 2.3% of sales at Faurecia -- at FORVIA level, sorry, versus more than 3% at HELLA level? Despite the fact that most of the restructuring seems focused on HELLA, what should take into -- what should it take into account? Could you give us more color regarding the expected net run rate of savings of the new competitiveness plan from 2025 towards 2028? Could you give us more color regarding the seasonability of earnings in 2024? Is it in line with HELLA comments with H2 performance stronger versus H1?

So regarding the different questions. So number one, related to respective net cash flow objective of HELLA standalone and FORVIA as a whole, let me remind that, in fact, the depth of the acquisition is sitting at FORVIA level. So it means that the majority of the financial expense are not in HELLA. They are at FORVIA level. Having said that, we are not saying 2.3%. We are saying above the level of this year, and I hope that we will be able to be also above in percentage. But as you have seen, we are trying to be prudent on the net cash flow generation. You have seen that in '23. You have seen that in '22. And I hope that we are continuing to be on the same level. The last comment I would make is that 3% in HELLA means that we are continuing the progress of cash conversion in HELLA, which has been seen in '22 and '23 since the acquisition. Related to run rates of savings of the competitiveness project that Patrick mentioned this morning, we expect EUR 150 million to EUR 200 million of savings annually in '25. So you get to something like 40% of the gain already in the '25 number, which means that over '24 to '25, this plan is self-financed. And the benefits, of course, are going further after '25. On seasonality of earnings in '24, we have -- you have indeed to expect both on operating margin and on the cash flow that H1 will be lower than H2. On the profitability, you have factors a bit similar to this year related to a specific one-off, plus seasonality of inflation recovery. And on the cash flow side, I mentioned some items related to withholding tax, VAT and others. The -- and we have also the [ IPSA ] recovery, which are more H2 than H1. So you have volatility between H1 and H2 related to this. It should not be as much as this year. But still, you will have, in fact, H1 lower than H2 in net cash flow as well.

The next question, Ross MacDonald from Morgan Stanley. How should we expect net financial interest expense to develop in '24, '25?

I will talk from a cash perspective, which I think is the most important for the company. So in terms of cash financial expense, net of the income, we expect, in fact, to be at the same level in '24 as in '23, in relation to the fact that interest rates are potentially going down. But for the time being, we are not sure. So we are taking that into account and taking into account our different action. On '25, I expect, in fact, a decrease, something like close to EUR 100 million, on the back of the reduction of the gross debt, the actions that we will do on the financing and, hopefully, some decrease of interest rates that will be more a '25 event than a '24 given the latest, let's say, feedback we see from the different actors in the financial markets.

[ John Swift ], Morgan Stanley. Can you please emphasize on what you mean when you talk about actively managing '26 and '26 refinancing needs? Do you intend to return to the bond market shortly?

We say actively managing '25 and '26 refinancing needs. And yes, you can expect that, in fact, we will be active in the bond market.

'26 and '27.

We will be active on the bond market dealing with the different maturity. But clearly, we -- you will see us on this front.

Alexandre Raverdy from Kepler Cheuvreux. What should we expect in terms of CapEx, capitalized R&D spending over '24 and '25? Do you confirm a flattish trend? Number two, what should we expect as far as net financial expenses are concerned over '24 and '25? You just answered the second question. So what should we expect in terms of CapEx and capitalized R&D?

So I think consistently with what we are mentioning in terms of addressing the capacity in Europe and benefiting, in fact, from the digitalization and artificial intelligence capability on R&D, you should expect this number, in fact, to be better than flattish. I think it should be in absolute decreasing a little bit. I'm counting on EUR 2 billion for the aggregate of the two in '25.

And it will not be related to capacity, I'm sure. It will be related to new standards and automation, but we will keep it at least at the same level.

So -- and just to be clear, the EUR 2 billion I just mentioned is to be compared to EUR 2,180 million in '23 to make sure we are talking about the same indicator.

I think that this was the last question. I would like to thank you very much for your attention, and see you in May. Goodbye. Thank you.

Thank you.