Gentex Corporation (GNTX) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Well, thank you all for being here. I think it's time to start with our company presentations. We are delighted to have Gentex Corporation and Steve Downing here. Steve is the company's President and CEO. It's very unique to have a company that has over an 85% to 89% market share of what they do, and that's exactly who Gentex is and what they are. They are a designer manufacturer of electrochromic mirrors and vision systems along with the multiple devices for a variety of [ industries ], the automotive, obviously, no debt at all, $170 million in cash and it's about $5 billion total enterprise value. So we'll bring Steve up. He's been great with us for a number of years, and we're delighted to have him back. So Steve, come on up.

Great. Steve, thanks for being here. Why don't you take a few minutes to give our audience an overview of Gentex and what's what makes the company so compelling within the auto industry.

Yes. So I mean, if you look at what we are, I think your overview was a really good one. If you look at what we've done for a long period of time, you talk about the dimmable technology. So it's an electrochemistry company at its core, very focused on automotive electronics, emerging technology. We're very unique [indiscernible] and that we manufacture almost everything in the U.S. And while I'm sure we'll get to one of the headwinds we faced this year is with counter tariffs in the China market. We entered this year, we are anticipating about $250 million in exports into China out of the U.S., which is obviously very unique. And with the counter tariff situation that's happening, obviously, that book of business has been impacted. And so we're working on how do we restructure the business and focus on how do we take advantage of automotive markets outside of North American market to make sure we remain competitive there. But what's unique is the headwinds are immediate. The tailwinds [indiscernible] and what we're seeing in terms of interest in the industry, in terms of onshoring, is very real. The problem is it's a 3- to 5-year lag versus the headwinds that are immediate. And so if you look at overall book of business, we recently completed an acquisition of VOXX International. So it's interesting that you're talking about automotive aftermarket distribution and some of the bankruptcies, quite frankly, those are very entertaining to us right now. As you -- after you acquire a distribution company and you see some of the competitors start to fall apart from excessive M&A and leverage that I think is disproportionate to the industry, we sit very, very conservative balance sheet. I always joke, we're Mid-westerners, so very, very simple, very centralized processing, very lean, very focused. And so one of the things we're working on as the market has undoubtedly caused some pressure on margins. We've worked really hard in the last 2 years. We've rebuilt the gross margin profile, continue to work on new products and new technologies that we believe can drive a tremendous amount of value through our income statement and to shareholders. And quite frankly, I love it when you talk about value, we're kind of value people ourselves. And right now, I can't tell you a better time to look at a company like Gentex and invest. Right now, the share price makes absolutely no sense as best I can tell, based on the numbers and the trajectory we see. And so I think it's an entertaining time to be in this industry. There's no doubt. There's been a lot of headwinds we've gone through the last few years. We believe we've outperformed the marketplace and our technology portfolio is really set for growth.

It's a great overview. I want to talk about the environment that you're operating in the start. Clearly, tariffs, supply chain has played a major role. As you think about the end of 2025, really into 2026, Talk about both global and -- your Global and North American exposure and production schedules and basically how you see this market evolving as automakers have adjusted to the current environment.

Yes. I think if you -- when you look at your numbers, I think you're absolutely spot on in terms of your trajectory and projections over the next few years. I would say that during that '20 through '23 time period, the market, North America, in particular, was underserved by about 3 million units a year versus if you just look at cars, average age of vehicles on the road in the North American market, there's undoubtedly some -- there's some -- definitely some pent-up demand as it relates to automotive production in North America. So I'm a little bullish on North America. I'm a little more bearish on European market if you look at overall economics in Europe right now. I think there's a lot more challenges on the European front, especially with the higher end automotive OEMs in Europe. I think Japan and Korea as global producers. I don't think those markets from a consumer standpoint are going to change that much. I do believe, I mean, one of our largest growth customers has been Hyundai, Kia. They continue to dominate the global stage in terms of automotive production. And luckily, we're exclusive with them, and we have a lot of technology offerings through there. So we're hopefully going to take advantage of what is Hyundai Kia's growth and how they're, quite frankly, dominating a lot of automotive production market. China, welcome to the Wild West. It's a very, very difficult cut through. There's still hundreds of OEMs in the domestic China market. Not all of them are going to survive the next few years, but it's very difficult to predict which are going to be the winners and losers in the domestic China market.

So how do you, as a CEO, decide which OEMs within that type of environment that you're going to basically partner up with on what is supposed to be a 3- to 5-year program when you get it.

Yes, it's very difficult. And if you throw darts at a wall, and hope you're right. I mean, I'd love to tell you it's more strategic than that, and it really is. We tend to look at as best you can find publicly available information on each of these OEMs, which ones are capitalized well, which ones are most likely to survive. You can usually tell in our industry who is going to make it and who's not based off their payment terms. If you're not getting paid, it's a pretty early indicator that you -- they're probably in trouble. Now China is wild. I mean everything is delayed. Payment terms are extremely long in that market. So it takes a while before you realize what's actually happening. I mean it's not uncommon for 120, 180 days payment terms inside of the domestic China market. It's pretty typical. And then it goes through a bank draft system. And so you'd never really know for sure exactly what's happening until 6 months after it already gets bad. What we tend to do is identify the OEMs that we think are going to be the winners. We will do custom development from them. Everyone else, what we try to do is sell off-the-shelf products to. In other words, try to limit your R&D exposure and try to get business just to fill out the relationship to find out whether or not it's going to work longer term. But you try to minimize the amount of upfront capital you have to deploy to get a program with those OEMs early on.

Going back to U.S. and European markets. We've talked a little bit about electric vehicles. And obviously, if you're making mirrors, it really shouldn't -- propulsion shouldn't really matter, but mix does. And so the question I have is in this movement to try to get to lower-priced electric vehicles, where it seems that everything from the interiors being trimmed down, is that a risk for you at all from an electrochromatic mirror standpoint where you could potentially be teched out in order to be able to get to a lower priced EV.

Yes, that's the single biggest risk factor for all of our technology is we are higher end, right? So I always joke, right? We're not -- we don't do brakes or lug nuts, so if you walk on, we want to be on your Windows sticker of your vehicle, right? That's how you make money in our industry. It's how we make money for our customers and it's something that the consumer values and will pay for. So when you start talking about your -- I think the single most important chart you put up there is what percentage of total sell price is incentives. For us, that's something we look at. That's a leading indicator of 6 months or a year out is the industry in a good shape or in a bad spot in terms of what is the average transaction price and how much incentives does it cost for an OEM to get that sale because as incentives rise, OEMs start looking at ways to save money on that vehicle, that's the cycle we're in right now as take rates are definitely being impacted as OEMs look for cheap ways to get a car onto a lot at a lower cost point.

I should -- and I didn't say it before, I should note that this is very much a collegial atmosphere. And so if you all have questions for any of our management teams, please raise your hand and we'll get a microphone to you. The other technology that I spoke about is autonomous driving. And clearly, it would stand to reason that an AV would not need electrochromatic mirrors or mirrors at all. Talk about that from a risk standpoint and where you think that market goes? And how do you factor in that risk as it relates to Gentex?

Yes. So there's no doubt about it, in a fully autonomous vehicle, there's a lot of technologies that have existed for all time that won't be necessary in that vehicle. One of the things that we're really focused on and have been for the last 10 years, really, is what types of technology will be more relevant in that autonomous vehicle than they are in today's. So if you look at our dimming technology, one of the things if you came back out here at CES or even at SEMA this week, we'll be showing things like dimmable visors, dimmable windows, sunroofs. So now suddenly, on an average sale price basis, what was a $20 inside mirror for our standard base auto-dimming product, now it's something you're talking about hundreds of dollars in available technology and larger area devices. So how do I take something and make it completely controllable so you can control side windows, sunroofs, everything with our dimming technology. It's something we've been putting a lot of R&D effort into over the last few years. And we believe that product will absolutely more than outweigh the headwinds that come from losses in traditional mirrors. More importantly, if you look at a lot of our technology now is cameras and displays, user interface type products, a lot of vehicle electronics, those are going to be growth trajectories that will continue on. They become even more relevant than as the autonomous vehicle starts to roll out, the ability to have more interface, more interaction and controllable substrates, we believe, are going to be trends that will help us over the next several years.

Staying in the -- this is a little bit more of a near-term question that I'm going to ask, but it speaks to how you run your organization. We've had a number of near-term supply-related issues, whether it's the Novelis fire, Dutch/China chip issue. Clearly, nothing Gentex specific, but obviously, if there are disruptions to production schedules that impacts you, what have you learned since really 2020 that has helped you mitigate any sort of risk that comes from these one-off -- I'd say one-off, these one-offs that happen every 3 months, these one-off situations from a supply chain perspective.

Yes, I'd say, first of all, it's a riot, right? The last 5 years have been nothing but extraordinary. It seems like every time there's something new, which is amazing, like, I mean you can't script this stuff, right, like Dutch/Chinese company ceasing control. It's unbelievable. Now I will say 2 things just to clarify quickly, I joke all the time about we are Mid-westerners, very conservative. We tend to carry a lot of, I always joke, just-in-case inventory. We look at -- we do have exposure to Nexperia. We do -- we believe we're full all the way through the spring. So we have a ton of raw materials on hand. We feel like we're in a great shape there. So it won't impact us immediately. The biggest risk factor is what does this mean for the entire industry. Now Novelis is a truly unique one, too. I mean this one really impacts Ford probably more than anyone else. Our exposure to Ford is disproportionately low. I mean, yes, we have exposure to Ford. However, if you look at -- they're not in our top 10 largest customers when it comes to our total technology risk factor. So we're in pretty good shape there. It is, I believe, something that as a company we try to look at and say, "hey, these are going to continue to happen", so how do you position the business to able to survive, move quickly. One of the things I do love about the way we're structured. We are very centralized. We make decisions very quickly [indiscernible] and bureaucracy and very little overhead. We're able to move much quicker than a lot of people in our space, and that allows us to adapt to these situations. I always -- I hate to be that optimistic guy that [indiscernible] causes problems, opportunities. But for every one of these that do arise, there are opportunities that do come out of them.

A great answer. I'm going to take now more strategic and more your vision for the company. Can you share more about some of the newer adjacent markets that you're targeting? And which of those are the most likely to start becoming a relatively meaningful portion of your revenue over the course of the next several years?

Yes. So what you're referencing, Brian, is really a lot of tech investments that we've made, taking our core competencies. If you look at what we do, we're an applied materials company, a [indiscernible] commission company. We do expand our aerospace business. So we do dimmable windows on a 787, 777, Airbus A350 because we decided as a business, automotive wasn't bad enough, let's go into a slower industry like aerospace because that makes a lot of sense -- sorry, sarcasms' all I have left. But we also have been working on taking that same type of technologies and some of the skill sets on the vision system side, expanding into fire protection space where we've been forever. But our fire protection business for all time has been focused on these type of buildings. So great detectors, mainly focused on hotels, conference centers, office buildings. We recently launched 1 series of products that's designed for the home, direct-to-consumer, app-based, series of technologies that don't exist in the home automation space today. And each of these products are designed around a different room in your house. So a base unit, smoke, CO, air quality monitoring. We have 1 design around the garage environment, 1 specifically designed for the kitchen space which is semi-ironic because if you look at your house, you don't have a detector in your kitchen today because of nuisance alarms. And so we've designed 1 specifically for that space. Also 1 for nursery. These include video, audio, push-to-talk, smart night light, a series of features that really don't exist in the space. So really looking to take our core technologies and move more into direct-to-consumer electronics. Beyond that, we have some medical plays. So we've acquired a small company called eSight. This is a wearable for people with centralized vision loss, think macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, basically, it takes a vision system and then uses a projector display to help offset the eye. In essence, you can trick your eye by putting the entire vision into the portion of your eye that is still functioning. People can actually return sight to them. And so taken -- if you look at what these are, though, we make CMOS imagers in-house in West Michigan, which if you've not seen before, it's pretty wild, but we actually make cameras, we do displays. And so taking the same kind of skill sets and starting to move into the med space.

That's all fascinating and remarkable from a technology perspective. I'm curious as it relates to your R&D. How do [indiscernible] best allocate dollars to your highest potential profit -- potential revenue path, given that you have 6 or 7 irons in the fire.

Yes. So I mean in a room like this, I think you guys will love it. I mean, basically, we approach R&D like a VC and so best idea wins. There's no emotion. You kind of look at the maximum potential over a long period of time, what that profitability looks like, strategically, what that could look like for the business. And then we choose the best of those ideas to invest and we scale that based on what's going on with the business? How much on the R&D -- I have an old-fashioned bake off to see which technologies are going to get funded and which aren't.

Talk about VOXX for a second. Just go back to because it was a substantial acquisition that you are already a part of. And I think it's really unique kind of fits in the organization as you look over the course of the next several years.

Yes. So VOXX -- VOXX is an interesting play. If you look at it, we made the initial investment in them when we chose them as our distribution -- part of our distribution channel for the aftermarket. As an OEM supplier, we've always struggled with how to [indiscernible]. And over the course of the last several years, their stock price has plummeted. We hadn't done a public-to-public deal before, so it was a little challenging. If you look at it, the harsh reality was way undervalued. And quite frankly, there was definitely some management struggles there as to why it was undervalued. And so if you look at it longer term is basically a balance sheet play for us. There was about a little over $300 million in revenue associated with that acquisition. And quite frankly, total enterprise value was just a hair over $200 million, right, Kev?

Yes.

I'm a recovering CFO. So you got that deal. I mean on a market cap versus sales side, there was no justification for that price other than the fact that they hadn't made money in a while. And so one of the things we are focused on is cleaning up the mess. One thing we're really good at is we're very efficient operators. We know how to drive income statement improvement, and that's what we're focused on right now. Really after only owning the business for 6 months, it turned profitable already last quarter. And so we're really focused right now on how do we trend the [indiscernible], make sure this thing executes. The harsh reality is that it was a very low-risk acquisition. In that, we thought the balance sheet -- basically, we got it for the balance sheet value of the organization. And so it's a perfect timing with the headwinds in the China market to bolt on some additional revenue. It's always easier to fix things once you have some sales, obviously. And so we're really focused right now on how do we make sure we operate and get that highly efficient. We believe there's a tremendous amount. If you look at it on a little over $300 million in revenue, we believe we can, in the course of 18 months, to generate $40 million, $50 million in free cash flow off that business.

[indiscernible] Gross margins. We'll stay with profitability -- so we'll start on profitability. Our gross margins have been a real focus for you really over the course of the last 2 years. Over the next 2 -- really next 12 to 24 months or say, where do you see the most tangible opportunities to drive margin expansion? Is it pricing? Is it scale? Is it mix, overhead absorption, et cetera?

Yes. I would say right away, it's -- for us as a business, given our model, if we can get to 5% to 10% growth rates, that's when margin expansion is right in our skill set. The last 2 years have been focused on, okay, a very tough operating environment from a revenue standpoint, how do we improve profitability, which we've done. So if you back up in the middle of the COVID era, we hit just sub-30% gross margins, which I know in this industry, that sounds fantastic. But for us, we believe that was a bottom, that was unacceptable. And so we're hitting closer to high 34s, low 35 percent gross margins. We think that's a sustainable gross margin for us over the long run. In this industry right now, we're hitting those numbers even with 90 basis points of headwind last quarter on tariffs. And so we're more than offsetting the tariff exposure right now through operational improvements. So for us, it's a combination of sales growth level can give us that margin expansion opportunity. And then more importantly, how do we make sure we're running a very, very efficient operation, which I would tell you right now, this is the most efficient we've been in the last 5 years.

Stay on -- can we get a microphone to Harry, please.

Thank you. Just curious strategically, VOXX came with some -- an interesting collection of assets and -- how strategic would the Klipsch audio brand be for you long term?

So thank you. I've -- I blanked out there when I was talking about VOXX for a minute. But one of the correlations that you see there is with that product on the fire protection side that we're launching direct-to-consumer, audio is one of those that we thought was really important to us. So if you remember the HomeLink brand, which we acquired in 2013, there's about 100 million cars on the road right now with our technology, vehicle-to-home connected product. We've been working on expanding that and creating a series of smart home applications and feature sets that we can leverage that brand in automotive to bring in automotive connectivity right to the vehicle. You look at our PLACE product, which is the smart fire protection device in combination with audio. We believe these offer up a lot of strategic opportunities for us in terms of what can geography look like in the home where Gentex can leverage that, not only for Smart Fire, but also for smart audio.

I'll add one more thing. If you look at the Klipsch lineup, they have 2 OEM awards in the automotive space as well, both on the Infinity program and the Ram program where they're doing Klipsch audio in those executions.

Want to stay with -- or go back to tariffs. Talk about your exposure? Is it direct? Is it indirect? Is it -- and how difficult has it been for you to work with the government as far as understanding labor value-added content and understanding what is exactly exempt from tariffs?

Yes, it's wild -- now suddenly, like you're talking -- once this tariff conversation happened, you had a calculus problem. It used to be pretty simple. And I always joke my hillbilly math could carry me most of the way there. Suddenly now it's very, very difficult. It's rules and interpretations, country of origin. So it impacts us primarily on the supply side. And that's where the most of the cost exposure is. However, on the sales side, you have a series of counter tariff now into most of our export markets. So if you look at Gentex's historical business model, was centralized manufacturing in the U.S. exports all over the world. And now suddenly, we're having to have conversations with our customers about what does our manufacturing footprint need to look like to best satisfy the customer base to help them control their costs as well. And so one of the things we're actively engaged in right now is primarily -- if you take the China market out of it, most of our exports into Korea, Japan, we feel like we've got those pretty well handled as of right now. The European market is probably the next risk factor that we have to -- that we're working on addressing currently. And that can mean something similar to do your core technology in the U.S. set up light final assembly in the end markets where you need it. Not a huge negative on the cost side, but definitely something that we need to show support to our customer base on to make sure we're set up. There are a lot of content. You're probably going to hear this week. All of our customers are asking for local for local, meaning if I have manufacturing in North America, I want localized suppliers, great tailwind for us over the next several years. On the flip side of that coin, though, the European market is going to want as much manufacturing and local content out of the EU as they can get. We do have a facility there, and we will continue to grow and expand that depending on what these market conditions change. The hardest part you see in this industry right now is you've got 1 million balls in the air. No one's really deploying capital yet because the rules still aren't defined. We don't know if we're playing baseball, football or basketball, this is where opportunities for us start to emerge, though. If you look at our overall ability to supply not only electrochromics, but electronics, automotive electronics, we believe there's a lot of growth opportunity for us just on the pure electronic supply side.

So pickleball.

Lot of orthopedic injuries, pickleball. Ryan?

[indiscernible].

Yes. So did everybody hear that question? No, he was just asking with everything going on and how fluid this market is, are we waiting for more clarity? Well, are we making kind of miniature decisions every day. And that's more of the answer is for us, it's -- I always joke, right? You have to be the airborne rangers, you got to fire and maneuver. If you sit down and wait, you will die or you'll die slowly. And so for us, we constantly update all the time based off of -- and make little decisions over the course of time. We don't believe that there's a way for us to survive or at least thrive by waiting for all of this to be figured out and all the rules to be fully defined. And so we're constantly meeting with our customers saying, what do you want, what do you need, how do we help you and that starts with there's an immediate one right now on the onshoring conversations that are happening currently. And so we want to be forefront with our customers in terms of our willingness and ability to use unique business models, even products that we may have not considered in the past as part of what we're going to do going forward.

You have one of the more unique balance sheets in the auto industry in a net cash position with no debt. How do you think about M&A? How do you think about allocation of capital? Clearly, VOXX was an opportunity for you? And how do you view leverage given that you typically always been in a net cash position?

Yes. So I mean, like you mentioned, I mean, we are very, very conservative with the balance sheet side. One of the things we joke about just that same VC model that we use for technology internally. We use that same thing and the way is always that conversation, which is what is the balance between M&A and share repurchases. At the end of the day, whatever is the best return on invested capital, that's the model that we use. So right now, especially at these prices, you saw us this year -- first half of this year get much more aggressive on the share repurchase side. This valuation in terms of our long-term trajectory doesn't make a lot of sense. And so we're value buyers of our own stock, just like we are of other opportunities. We typically do not overpay for acquisitions. We are very value focused. So we love a hell of a deal. And we're not afraid to just buy back our own stock because we believe in that over a long period of time. And honestly, the M&A side, we tend to do much smaller deals right now, mainly focused on tech. If you look at our last few big ones, the HomeLink deal in '13, the VOXX in just recently. Other than that, it's small, targeted acquisitions of technology. Otherwise, it's share repurchases.

How does that pipeline of deals look now from a tech standpoint and obviously without giving targets, just areas of focus.

Yes. So if you look at -- on the technology side, we're really a sensor company, and so we tend to look at a lot of different sensing technologies because we believe, especially in a fully autonomous world, strategically, that's part of what needs to exist in that vehicle of the future. So everyone talks about the car driving itself. And sure, 10 years ago, we had the right technology to try to compete in that space. But you're talking tens of billions of dollars going into that fundamental technology. We just didn't see a way to provide any shareholder return by competing in a very crowded space. On the flip side of that coin, though, if you think about it, you're the ultimate sensor in your vehicle today. Something is loud, noisy, not working [indiscernible] or if something is wrong with the car as long as it gets you to where you're going. You're certainly not going to go out of your way to report that to whoever the owner of the vehicle is and so we're looking at sensing technologies that can replace the human to say, how do you do maintenance, how do you make sure everything is functional in that vehicle and people aren't misbehaving in that vehicle. I'll -- Kevin hotbox in my cab right before I get in -- or you, Brian -- you young guys. I don't know what ...

Very accusatory. Well, we're bumping up against time unless there are any questions from our colleagues. Steve, I want to thank -- Steve and Kevin, I want to thank you for being here. The question was asked, when will we potentially see you again, it will be November 2 and 3rd for our 50th, I hope. So thank you very much for being here.

No, thanks for having us. We'll be there.

Great.