Lear Corporation (LEA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. So thanks, everybody, and looking forward to a really lively discussion with Lear. We have Jason Cardew, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, to my left. And to Jason's left, we have Frank Orsini, Executive Vice President and President of Seating. Really good to be able to have a subject matter expert to delve deeper into the Seating business, particularly after the June seating day. But maybe Jason and Frank, if you want to kind of have some messages at the top that you want to convey to investors here.

Yes. Thanks, Adam. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today as well. We're very optimistic about the business, our financial outlook for both business segments is very strong right now. We got a lot of momentum really built on strong customer relationships, strong product capabilities, driving backlog growth in both of our business segments. In Seating, we're the clear industry leader in that space, and we're only extending that advantage through the acquisitions of late IGB this year and Kongsberg last year. We have fantastic product capabilities. We have great customer mix, and we're continuing to take market share and expand margins at the same time in the Seating space. And we're the clear leader in luxury with nearly 50% market share in luxury, we look to further extend that through the acquisition, again, of IGB and Kongsberg. And it's not just our view. If you look at J.D. Power's most recent results, we had 9 top 3 finishes in the Seating category, more than twice as many as any of our competitors for the second year in a row, and we dominate the luxury category specifically. And in E-Systems, we've really built some positive momentum, both in terms of growth and margin recovery, 4 straight quarters now of expanding margins year-over-year. Expect that to continue into the third and fourth quarter. Top line growth has been excellent as well, looking at our third straight year of a 3-year backlog above $1 billion. So we're continuing to win new business there. And then from a free cash flow and capital allocation standpoint, we're increasingly confident in our outlook, and we've recently increased the pace of our share buyback program. We've bought back more shares in the third quarter than we did in all of the first half of this year, and we look to continue that through the balance of the year and beyond.

Jason, you make it sound so easy, but I know it's not. And clearly, Lear is benefiting from the continuity and the financial strength that you've demonstrated before COVID and then during and you're still getting some of those benefits here -- consistency of an execution. Frank, maybe some messages from your side, you wanted to kind of -- after the glow of the seating event that you wanted to kind of convey to the audience that might not have been familiar with that or seeing it.

Yes. We're really excited about the Seating business right now, Adam. And by the way, thank you for having us today. We're excited to be here. Some general messages, as Jason mentioned, we're really doing great in the market right now. We've been winning conquest business. The business outlook is very strong. We're heavily focused on areas that will drive value for the business, innovation and segments in terms of vertical integration. We'll talk more about that today as we work through the agenda. But from an overall basis, I'm also very optimistic about the business environment and where we're heading from a Seating perspective and very important how we're positioning our Seating business in the market. And like I said, we'll wait on some of that in today's discussion.

All right. Thanks, Frank. Thanks, Jason. So maybe let's start with your outlook on global production. Obviously, the situation was recovering. You were seeing some of the supply issues start to ameliorate and we were getting some ongoing logistics up, but overall, a period of recovery. We got contract expiry within 24 hours, that's going to add a little volatility to the outlook. So kind of where are we? Where are you on global production? Anything you want to highlight from now to the rest of the year? And kind of how do you prepare or kind of prepare your organization, not your first rodeo of seeing these kinds of things for those inevitable disruptions, I shouldn't say inevitable -- highly probabilistic production disruption from strike action?

Yes, I'd say in terms of the global production overall, we guided to 4% growth year-over-year, 5% on a later sales weighted basis. We still feel like that's the right assumption. And it does have a modest strike impact embedded in the outlook. We expect North America to be up about 5%, Europe to be up 8% and China to be down 1%. And certainly, the strike risk is lingering out there, but all other indications are a strong production environment for the remainder of the year. Now the chip issue is largely behind us, there's spots where there are issues. But for us, it's been kind of different issues. Some of our customers are dealing with shortages and other components. In the third quarter, for example, General Motors had a number of down weeks in the full-size pickup truck plant as a result of issues from other suppliers. And so that's kind of weighed on us from a mix standpoint. But Europe has been stronger than we expected. China has been a little bit stronger than we expected. So overall, the production environment is about what we had anticipated when we updated our guidance on our second quarter earnings call. In terms of the strike, sort of look at that similar to how we looked at the COVID situation. So depending on the severity, the length, the number of plants that are down will dictate our cost reduction offset plan. And so if there's a modest strike with one customer. Obviously, the impact would not be significant. We would maybe have discretionary spending reductions and things like that, very modest actions. And if it extends longer than that, then we would look at more drastic actions. And Frank can talk a little bit about the way we're thinking through that.

Just a double-click on that. You said you've allowed for some strike disruption within your 4% global production for the year, give us a sense like a week, 2 weeks? And then how much would -- how long -- what could you recover? Like what's the breakeven point between length of a strike. I know there's nuances between what you could recover within the calendar year.

Yes. So what we've assumed is a $350 million revenue impact, which is 2.5 weeks. So it's about $140 million a week if the entire North America production is shutdown for all 3 of those customers. And so if you've got a 2.5 week strike, you could probably make up a portion of that in the fourth quarter through over time, but you're not likely to make up all of that within the calendar year. It's more likely to make that up in the first part of next year.

Anything you want to highlight from 3Q that you've seen as we rounding out this quarter in terms of progress versus prior expectation?

Yes. In terms of our overall financial outlook for the quarter, we didn't provide guidance for the third quarter. We did provide guidance for both of our businesses for the second half of the year. And we did expect lower sales in both Seating and E-Systems in the second half because of the strike provision because of the normal seasonal production, holidays that take place in North America in July in Europe in August. And so -- but as we sit here today, I'd say the second half is essentially on track with what we had expected. We expect the third quarter revenue to be $5.6 billion at this point, operating income of $240 million operating margins of about 4.2%. In terms of each of the business segments in Seating, we're expecting $4.2 billion of revenue in the quarter, 6% or so on the operating margin side. It's a little lower than the first half of the year. We have higher launch costs in the quarter, lower volumes in the quarter as well. In E-Systems, we're expecting sales of $1.4 billion, operating margins of 4.75% and probably a wider range of outcomes there could be plus or minus 50 basis points just depending on our commercial negotiations. We're in discussions with several customers around inflation and commodity recovery and we're making great progress, but we do expect a fairly wide range of potential outcomes in E-Systems in the quarter. And Seating at 6%, although lower than the first half, would have been about 30 basis points better than that, having not experienced that extensive GM downtime on the T1 platform. It's our most vertically integrated platform. We have a lot of content on that in addition to jet seating, we have structures and foam and trim and other content there.

Thanks, Jason. So look, we could get lost in the outcomes around the strike and whether it's all 3 or 1 or the duration, but what's going to happen is the OEMs are going to see their labor costs and all-in wage costs go up materially. And then you're going to throw in the Canadian auto workers as well. They're going to be coming under pressure as their pricing is also may be peaking by their own admission. And they're going to look for areas to cut costs and they're going to come to their Tier 1 suppliers. So tell the audience here, what kind of things are at your disposal, whether it's lower hanging fruit, somewhat low hanging that you could kind of dig into yourself because your own labor costs will, directionally, I mean, this is just the world we're in. How can you help offset that?

Yes. I think that's 1 of the advantages in our seat business specifically, and Frank can elaborate on this, but as the most vertically integrated seat supplier, we have more levers to pull. So we have a great queue of what we call CTO or Cost Technology Optimization ideas that we can help our customers lower their costs while still preserving margins in the seat business. And we have that same process on the E-Systems side, as well. But Frank, why don't you talk a little?

Yes, to Jason's point, Adam, our CTO process is really built about benchmarking the industry and understanding what opportunities are to reduce cost. We have all of our engineers that get engaged on these types of timing. So we look at manufacturing cost synergies, product cost synergies. And to Jason's point, with the level of vertical integration that we do have, it really puts us in a great position to offer ideas and solutions to our customers that will allow them to benefit from cost reduction as well. So ultimately, in some of the cases where labor rates are rising and things of that nature, we'll include those into our commercial negotiations, we'll also offer cost offsets and cost reductions for our customers.

Thanks, Frank. Demand, Jason, what are you -- were you seeing any signs of weakness?

Surprisingly resilient. U.S. demand has been strong. I know inventory levels have come up a little bit, but they're still well below historical levels. Europe. Sales in Western Europe, in particular, very strong. August was exceptionally strong. China is even holding up a little bit better than we expected. So it feels like demand is still intact overall. And we see that continuing. I think really for the rest of this year and into next year, even with a modest recession risk that may be lingering out there, there's still a ton of pent-up demand in auto.

Okay. Let's move into some questions on each of Lear's divisions. We'll start with seating now. Frank, again, following your June day on the division, can you talk about the thermal comfort offering. How does the acquisition of Kongsberg and IGB expand the offering and anything else you want to elaborate on your thoughts and the justification for that -- those acquisitions?

Yes, absolutely. So Adam, just to begin with, product innovation for us is a priority. It's been a focus for our company for many, many years, well over a decade. And if you think about where we've tried to take seating innovation over the last several years. We've tried to use it as a lever to be extremely differentiated in our product offering and how we approach the market. We've invested organically. We've invested inorganically. And if you take a look at some of those -- some of those areas into Seating, for example, was an organic development that we put in place as a seating company. ConfigurE+ was something that came to us through the Grupo Antolin acquisition, but we took these long rail systems that we inherited through the acquisition and elevated that technology by including some of our E-Systems proprietary terminals and connectors technology and powered those rails. And most recently, to your point, thermal comfort is our area of focus. And there's a reason for that. It's a growth area for the auto industry. The content in terms of thermal and comfort, and I'll talk about both in a second, are areas of priceable content in areas that will continue to grow in terms of seating content. So Kongsberg and IGB were 2 great acquisitions for Lear. Both brought great talent to the table, but they also brought great product capabilities. Kongsberg had a blend of both. They had heat invent technology on the thermal side, but they also brought lumbar and massage, which was great for our product lineup. IGB takes thermal comfort to the next level because they also have cooling technology and steering wheel heat and things of that nature. So the product portfolio is very strong with both these companies now in the Lear family. And our goal was to take a look at these types of products and optimize the design of all of them by incorporating these technologies into 1 module. And the idea there was both thermal and comfort. So lumbar, massage and vent for example, have common components. They have bladder systems that are similar, electrical systems that are similar, valving, hoses, all of that type of stuff. We saw an opportunity to reimagine what those products could look like in the market. And in doing so, we created a thermal comfort module that is 50% less in complexity, 20% less in mass. The time to sensation of heat or cool has been improved by 40% -- up to 40%, and the cost competitiveness is better than anything else in the market today. So we really think we've created an undeniable value proposition with this innovation, but what really gets interesting is we're incorporating that module into our FlexAir alternative cushioning system as well to create a seat complete module for the industry. And just a comment on that, FlexAir is 100% recyclable, low-density polyethylene product that will replace polyurethane foam. And the reason it's meaningful is it's 100% recyclable, 100% breathable. It is 50% less in CO2 emissions than polyurethane foam is, so a great, great product. And as I mentioned, we're incorporating both those technologies into our trim business and providing a value to the industry by even selling those components externally. We're willing to sell them to other Tier 1s. We're working with all of our customers on generating a revenue stream from that innovation and that technology as well. So there's a lot going on in this area. We're extremely excited about Thermal Comfort Systems because it is a way of differentiating our products. It's a way of continuing to grow our business. It's a way of continuing to improve our margins and it's all in areas of priceable content, but we're still going to offer a value proposition to our customers that's undeniable.

Now is it fair to assume that Thermal Comfort even further justifies the reason why it's good to have seating and electrical systems together within 1 roof. And that the strategic blend and actually in a product that -- that affects content. This is like for the sum of parts junkies out there saying, "Hey, why don't you spend E-Systems? Let's put that to bed, right? I mean fair to assume?

Yes, absolutely. I mean if you think about it, Adam, I mentioned ConfigurE+. That was a direct combination of both divisions coming together to provide a new innovation to the industry. Thermal Comfort System is exactly the same now. INTU seating is high-level technology, software driven, where we're implementing innovations that are health and wellness benefits to the end consumer. A lot of that is module software-driven technology, and that's all coming together in partnership with our E-Systems business. So yes, they're very complementary in terms of how we're bringing innovations to the market.

Thanks, Frank. Can you also discuss Lear's elaborate a bit more on the vertical integration capabilities and your plans for a modular solution?

Yes. I think if vertical integration falls right in line with the discussion we just had on product innovation. For us, it's always been and always will be part of our core strategy for Seating overall. For those of you that don't know, we are the most vertically integrated seat company in the world. We've taken our vertical integration capabilities from 36% back in '08 to now 82% this year. And the reason that's important is because we have a philosophy that if you want to be the best in the world, you have to have the best capabilities in the industry. And that's exactly where we've positioned our business. Jason just mentioned, we are the leader in premium luxury segments with approximately 50% market share. There's a reason for that. We have great capabilities. We have great innovation and technology around the world and our customers choose Lear because of it. So the J.D. Power's awards that we won in collaboration with our customers for first place finishes on the premium luxury segment. That doesn't happen without having very good capabilities and a very strong knowledge of every single component that goes into the seating system. So again, for us, it's about competitive differentiation. It's about positioning our Seating business for growth above market. And candidly continuing to drive margin enhancement.

When you're seeing the customers change -- the customer sourcing model seems to be accelerating giving more trust in you and designing the system itself, like why is that? Why are they trusting -- and why are they trusting you? And is that a broader industry phenomenon? Or is it kind of more Lear specific?

It's very Lear specific. And what I would tell you, Adam, is I think when you're bringing a value proposition on the level that Lear is bringing to the table globally with this new technology, whether it be the enhancements to thermal comfort or what we're doing with areas like FlexAir or ReNewKnit, which is part of our modular strategy, which is a 100% recyclable [ state ] alternative in the auto space. They trust us to design and engineer these products. We're demonstrating to them that there's a value proposition to be had. And we're delivering the customer sourcing language that you referenced. The last time we were in a public forum, we talked about 7 OEMs, allowing us to source our components or our innovations and now we're up to 9. We had 16 development contracts with global OEMs. We're now up to 23. And I see that trend continuing. And in 2024, earlier in the year of 2024, we're going to launch FlexAir in production with an OEM in Asia. We spoke at the Investor Day that we've won into seating technology with Bentley, which is going to launch in the 2026 time line on multiple car lines. The high value. But the beauty there, Adam, is -- it's part of the VW family. So if you can launch with Bentley, it has the ability to trickle into other platforms as well. And most importantly, today, we're going to announce that we also won our first piece of ventilation business with General Motors. GM is one of our largest customers in Seating. They're also one of our strongest relationships. So opening that door on thermal comfort systems with GM is very meaningful and very impactful to our growth potential, and where we're going to take our innovation.

So my [ Tahoe ], you don't currently do the blue button error?

We do not. We're hopeful to do it in the...

If this would be back it's nice, [ loud ].

Yes , that's one of the things. That we've been very focused on when you go to a modular strategy and you reduce some of the hosing and some of the valves and the pumps through 1 of the acquisitions through Kongsberg, we picked up SMA technology, which is a low-volume valving system in terms of noise, and it's for premium luxury platform. We're going to bring that innovation to General Motors.

Especially, it's a [indiscernible]. So it's beast. But like if that goes electric, and it's quiet and then that noise is not going to cut it. It's just...

Yes, absolutely. And we have in our plan to improve that through our shape metal alloy technology, which has SMA innovation.

Just I want to add 1 point to Frank's earlier comments, too. So the seating vertical integration capabilities helps us in a couple of different ways. One, it's the catalyst for growing our JIT market share because we provide a better value proposition thermal comfort being the most recent example of that. But we also have an opportunity to grow revenue, grow margins through our component business overall. So we haven't really talked much about that publicly, but we have a $5 billion seat component business, about $2 billion of that is sold to competitors. We look to see that continue to expand through modularity through some of these proprietary technologies that we're offering. So it's a catalyst to improve JIT market share, but almost more importantly, it's a catalyst to increase our share of the seat market more holistically as well.

Maybe just to make a comment on that as well. When we're talking about thermal comfort systems and modularity and FlexAir and these types of technologies, talk about soft trim components. When you think of a timeline to introducing new inventions into a seat system, in this case, we're not touching the frames or the interaction with the vehicle and the floor and the structural integrity of how these systems come together. So our ability to introduce these technologies could come on a mid-cycle enhancement and on a much shorter timeline to introduce products to market. So we are being very aggressive in terms of driving these innovations into the market. And our customer feedback is off the chart. Ray and I spent a lot of time with customers on a global basis, and we're talking a lot about these innovations, and we're extremely excited about where we're going with them in the market.

And so Jason, I mean in addition to the commercial success, I mean, the margin resiliency of seating over the last couple of years has been -- that stood out. It's particularly impressive. What do you attribute that to? And what might investors be missing?

Yes. I think it's been a deliberate strategy of investing organically and inorganically in the business. If you go back 10, 15 years, we're the only seat maker that has consistently invested in this business, been committed to it. And that's the reason that we're number 1 in the space in terms of financial returns and margins today, whether it's the Eagle Ottawa acquisition in 2015 or Thermal Comfort acquisitions most recently, also some of the process acquisitions that we've made over the last 5 years to really differentiate our manufacturing capabilities. I think that's maybe something that investors don't have as much visibility to and we're looking to continue to make those investments in automation and Industry 4.0, take cost out deal with labor inflation in a different way in our manufacturing plants as well. I think that's been a factor.

Thanks, Jason. Any questions for Jason and Frank. And wait for the microphone if you don't want to put your hands otherwise, of course. Calm down, everybody, we're going to get through this, I'm going to count to 5 in my head.

Just on the thermal like possibilities in the future, is it both heating and cooling? And what is the time frame to really start rolling that out?

Yes. So it's a combination of heat, vent and cool are the options that we're going to provide to the market. We're going to couple all of that with the module and the FlexAir capabilities. And we've kind of laid it out over 3 phases. We have a business integration phase that we're in the process of going through right now with the acquisitions. And then over the next couple of years that spreads out through 2025 and then on to 2027, we'll have component modularity in place and then complete seat modularity. And candidly, we're looking to accelerate all those timelines as quickly as possible. The traction with the customers has been truly, truly amazing. There's a lot of interest in the opportunity to optimize these systems and bring sustainability into the equation as well. So it's global. We're working with our customers globally on this. And as I mentioned, the sourcing agreements with 9 of our customers now are global customers as well. So we're pushing very hard to get it in production as quickly as possible.

Yes. I mean it is in production. Obviously, today, we have $600 million in sales in these categories today. So we have a pretty well scaled business as it stands today. see that growing to $1 billion over the next 4 years. And so that was one of the appeals of those 2 acquisitions taken together, it gave us a top 3 position in all of those product categories, heat, vents, lumbar and massage.

Yes. On the Seating side, I just wanted to -- if you could elaborate on the statement. I thought I heard you said you could potentially phase out polyurethane foam. How we think of the time frame there and what that means from a margin or cost structure perspective? Or does that get passed on to your customers? Or is that a Lear margin opportunity over time?

Yes. So we do see it being cost competitive against polyurethane foam. What I would tell you is I mentioned we're going to launch already in the first quarter of 2024 with the innovation. And what we're doing right now is many of those '23 development contracts that I mentioned are centered around FlexAir. So it's actually an engineering development process with many of our customers worldwide on many different car lines. So the time lines vary depending on the program, but our goal is to get that into production as quickly as possible. And the validation that we've gone through already is validating exactly how we want it. We've got production plans for the product. And like I said, we're really excited because we are going to launch it in the next coming months here in the first quarter. So our customers are excited about the innovation. It truly is a game changer in terms of performance. And it weights 20% less, as I mentioned, and from a comfort standpoint, we're actually developing programs right now that are proving out to be more comfortable than the existing polyurethane foam programs.

I just want to touch with the time left on E-Systems. What are you most excited about? Any messages you want to convey on that side?

Yes. I think we've really got some positive momentum in that business. Margins have been expanding, recovering. And at the same time, we've continued to grow the business. So we've really simplified the portfolio, and that's given us better visibility and better financial performance. We're continuing to grow that business at 6 points above the market. Electrification is one of the catalysts for that, but we're also taking share on the low-voltage side on wire, expanding business with customers that we're underrepresented with in the past, like General Motors, for example, we've launched a number of new programs in Asia and in North America with GM this year. So we see a growing portfolio with them. And now we're adding new customers that we previously didn't have exposure to on the Lear side. Most recently, we won a BMW program that launches kind of mid-decade and a little bit beyond that, but that's our first Lear program with BMW. We have a great seat business with BMW, has a great electronics business with BMW and now they're bringing us into the wire portfolio as well. So we've got a number of different catalysts for growth. At the same time, some of the margin expansion is really our own improvement in the operations, restructuring and operating performance generally. We talked about our North America wire business. We struggled at the beginning of this year a little bit. We had a supplier that had a fire shortage of material. That had a pretty significant impact on the first quarter and into the second quarter. We've seen the supply improved, and we've seen financial performance in that segment improve as a result of that.

And what about the battery disconnect and interconnect board business? How big is that business? And what's it -- how is it growing?

Yes. I mean the battery disconnect unit business will become the cornerstone of our electronics portfolio. Electrification overall is a -- was a $565 million business, last year $750 million business, this year [ $3 ] in 2025. So it's a rapidly growing business and the GM BDU is the key part of that. But we also won a battery disconnect unit with Stellantis. The Intercell Connect Board, we're just shipping prototype components at this stage that will launch into production next year. That will be another key catalyst for growth and as well.

Isolating that electrification portion of E-Systems. What -- how are you managing expectations in terms of margin gap between that business and the total unit and how that might progress?

Yes, I'd say overall, the margins are a little bit better in the electrification portfolio than in the core business portfolio. The electronics margins are a little bit higher. And then more importantly, the connection systems piece of that are much higher margins. And so we're seeing growth there, again with the GM ICB and also with the Volkswagen MEB plugboard that's scaling up too.

Thanks, Jason. And Frank, just I got to ask you about the ring. I've never seen a wedding ring -- is that electronic.

Extremely in love...

That's beautiful. I don't let my wife see that. All right. This concludes the session with Lear. Jason, Frank, thank you very, very much.

Thank you.

Thank you.