Stellantis N.V. (STLA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

A little bit from me and then I'll open it up to the audience.

But maybe we could start with North America, no surprise, probably. We've seen some positive signs, improving share, stable pricing post 2024 adjustments. How sustainable are the trends that you're seeing currently in the North American market?

Very well. Well, I believe that is very sustainable. I believe that because I have already some proof points of what I'm seeing. And I see all the conditions in the market internally and externally to promote this sustainability. So let me give you some numbers. So half 1 U.S. only, Stellantis market share was at 7%. Quarter 3, we went to 8% more or less. We stayed in around 8%. And now we are launching new products. The new products that we are launching or some of them we have already launched, by the way, they have been already immediate strong and positive acceptance reaction from the markets, right? So for instance, in quarter 3, we presented the return of Ram Hemi V-8 engine. This is a legendary engine that we did phase out in the past. In less than 12 months, it's a record time, we returned the engine to the pickup trucks, and we launched in quarter 3 the pickup trucks with this engine. First day of announcement, we received 10,000 orders, 6 weeks after those orders went up to 50,000 and growing, right? So huge acceptance. By the way, in quarter 3, just last week, we shipped already and we delivered to customers 10,000 of the V-8 equipped engine Ram. In quarter 4, we mean to increase from 10,000 to 20,000 and then grow from that. So we had 7%, now we're 8%, and we are shipping a bit. Now this month, at the end of this month, we are launching Jeep Cherokee, right? Jeep Cherokee is a very credible name plate, it is the car that invented the midsize SUV segment that by chance, it became the largest individual segment in the world, right? This segment in the U.S. makes 3.2 million, 3.3 million units per year. This is in 1 segment having a full U.K., a full Spain industry, right? And we invented through Jeep Cherokee this segment. We decided a few years ago to phase out the product, but now we are relaunching. And by the way, we are relaunching a much improved product versus last generation. For instance, last generation Jeep Cherokee that sold a lot received some complaint of customer around the fuel economy. The new Cherokee is hybrid. So fuel economy is just good, right? The average American family we spend $100 per month to drive their Jeep Cherokee, so great fuel economy. Internal space, this Jeep Cherokee will be built on top of our biggest platform, STLA Large, so a lot of space internally. Trunk volume, the trunk volume of these Jeep Cherokee just best-in-class in the industry and Jeep capabilities. So we are getting back to the largest individual segment in the world, that being reinvented with a much improved Jeep Cherokee. So obviously, we will have volumes opportunity there. The muscle cars. So the muscle cars are coming back with ICE engines in U.S. that was all what Dodge community was expecting. Now they have it. We presented the car, huge interest. So this will be a sequence of product launches that will make this volume growth, as you were asking, highly sustainable and progressively better quarter-by-quarter.

So it sounds like a tremendous amount of momentum in North America in the second half, volumes, mix, price. Are you -- can you comment a little bit on the profitability expectations for the second half?

Well, well, I will not comment because we will have to close the year and we will have those information properly shared by the end of the year when we close the year. We already said something in Q3, right? Through the end of November, we are on track on our guidance. But obviously, I'm cautious by nature also as an engineer. So the job is done when it is done, right? So let's wait the end of the year.

Okay. So you're making incremental progress. Stellantis is taking corrective actions. What kind of business decisions and strategic shifts are driving these actions, sort of product planning and?

Yes. I believe that many, right, because we realize that we have obviously many opportunities. We need to be fast and rigorous the way we explore them. So -- but we can talk a lot about product, if you want, and product planning and what we have learned, right? So what we have learned is that some assumption of the past strategy resulted to be wrong, right? So we were thinking of a battery electric vehicle penetration in U.S. up to 50% by 2030. Last month was less than 6%. It will say 6% or 7% a few years, right? We are planning to have a BEV penetration in Europe at 100% by 2030. It will be, for sure, higher than U.S., but not at that level, we believe. So we understood that was needed to change strategy around those assumptions, number one. The other thing that we learned was on ourselves, right, by listening more to our customer, we discover what they really wanted from us, right? For instance, the return of the Hemi V-8 engine is exactly the results of listening to them and understanding that they badly wanted that engine back in our cars, right? And this is what we are doing. So by mixing what we keep discovering about ourselves and our customer base and the change of strategy that we are implementing, I believe that we have a good recipe to do what you said, which is incremental improvement quarter-by-quarter on all KPIs, including profitability.

And the execution is also sort of seems to have improved and that's in addition...

Yes, so execution is improving. You see that the product launches now are much more on time, right? So we promised by the end of the year, Jeep Cherokee is coming in this month. We promised in quarter 3, the V-8, it came in record time. We promised by quarter 4, the new Dodge Charger with ICE engine, we presented it -- we launched it in production last week. So we are getting sharper and more rigorous in execution on product launches, we have a lot to improve, and we will do that heads down, working rigorously day by day. But I believe that we have a clear part on how to move forward.

Excellent. So there's some anticipation, I think, amongst investors for the EU's December 10 announcements, the regulatory, the industry, I think, has been lobbying fairly hard. Do you have any personal sort of expectations? Or what do you expect to happen? What's the impact -- the potential impact for Stellantis?

No, that's interesting. That's a very interesting question. It comes in a very special moment for me because yesterday I was at White House talking about CAFE standards with -- a new regulation on CAFE standards with President Trump and President Trump administration, together with other competitors we see how different is the approach to CO2 emission in U.S. and Europe. There is not a perfect recipe, but we see a lot of differences. So what we believe is going to be in Europe. So first of all, we appreciated a lot, the recent messages delivered by very important European political leaders to the commission, right? So we saw recently Chancellor Merz's letter, right? We heard -- I personally heard when I was in Turin on the 25th of November for the launch of Fiat Cinquecento hybrid, the words and the messages delivered by Minister Urso. And I believe 2 days ago, we also heard to the French government message around local content. All of them are creating a new story, I believe, and a new opportunity to rethink together about regulation in Europe, right? So what I believe should be the real equation to solve, an equation made by 3 elements, right? #1 element, for sure, environmental protection, decarbonization. The second element is job preservation and the third element is obviously market affordability and affordability for customers, right? So if we put those 3 elements in the equation, what would be the perfect recipe, actually not Stellants, but ACEA already provided to the European Commission, what we all collectively believe shared that is the good recipe for product in the new regulation. It is an easy one, at least the way it has been written. It's made by 4 elements. Element #1 is to recognize that light commercial vehicle industry and passenger cars industry, they share a lot in common, but they are very different from a customer perspective. So the light commercial vehicle, a typical customer, the small or midsize entrepreneur we decide to buy a new 1 or to keep the old 1 by controlling TCO, total cost of ownership, right? And it's no secret has been demonstrated that currently total cost of ownership of a battery electric vehicle vans is higher than other motor propulsion, unless you do a very long -- very high volume of mileages, right? So that is why the target set for light commercial vehicle industry on CO2 emission needs to be changed because they don't refer the reality. They are not attainable, right, number one. And then we have passenger cars, right? And on passenger cars, I believe that what ACEA called flexibility that has been proposed are very good to be adopted. So number 1 is technological neutrality, right? So there are many options. Biofuel, for instance, why not? I believe that there is a bright future for biofuel in the future. The second flexibility is, for sure, smartcard super credit which is ACEA recognizing that a small car, whatever motor propulsion always will pollute less in terms of fuel emission than a bigger car just because of the mass, the weight, right? Finally, car park renewal. So in Europe, we have a car park of 256 million units per year, 150 million of those vehicles are 10 years old or older. So obviously, if you create a mechanism to have the average consumer enjoying a benefit to trade in an old car in the new car that will be good for environment, will be good for job preservation. Obviously, will be more accessible, et cetera, et cetera. So the equation is this one, the 3 elements that I mentioned meaning the job preservation, the protection of the environment and the market affordability. And finally, this needs to be planned in the new regulation that will aim, in my opinion, ideally, to a milder energy transition than the 1 current. So let's see for December 10, what happens then.

Excellent. Thank you for the comprehensive answer. I'll ask 2 more questions.

Pretty long one.

No, it's good. It's really good. But I'll ask 2 more questions and then open it up to the audience. The U.S. tariffs, obviously, a topical point, especially with the Cherokee and the Dodge Charger. So when we think about 2026 and mitigation factors or even maybe that's an unfair question maybe a bit longer term as well. But just mitigation factors in general. Can you frame that for us a little bit in terms of measures you can take?

There are many short-, mid-, and long-term mitigation factors that we can deploy. Number one, we see month after month a much clearer scenario on U.S. tariffs, and they are getting milder. I believe now they are stable, right? So what we have as a mitigation factor, right? So obviously, we will work on cost a lot on the below material on the transformation cost. So we will make efficiencies around those 2 elements. And in mid and long term, we are reshoring production, right? So for instance, the Jeep Cherokee will go very soon to Illinois, right, in 2027, 2028, we will have 2 jeeps out of Illinois plant, Belvidere plant, thus they will not be tariffs, or very minimal tariffs, right? And this is the other thing, right? On the other side, while we see tariffs that are getting stable and even milder and for those, we can work on cost that we can work on reshoring production, we'll see regulations that is getting much more market friendly, much more. So yesterday I was at White House and President Trump announced the new CAFE standards that up to, I believe, 2031, they will stay and they will be realigned to real market demand, right? And it's a great opportunity for volumes and for mix because there is no secret that the highest mix you have on ICE motor propulsion, especially when ICE means V-8 in our case, or GME-T6 another strong engine that we have, the best mileage you have out of your car. So there is a big mix improvement and volume improvement opportunity there. So there are many things on mix, as we said, on volumes growing, as we said as well on cost and on reshoring that can blend together to mitigate maybe to offset those impacts.

Excellent. My last question. A little hypothetical. But if we were to have you at -- if you were to attend this conference in a year's time, what would have changed about Stellantis?

A year's time?

Yes.

Hopefully not the CEO.

Hopefully not, but what would the changes be?

If I would have the privilege to be with you in 1 year, hopefully, that will be the case. It's a nice question. So I believe 3 things now that I think a little bit about it. One is we already are doing good things. We need to stay good in that. So we have fixed the dealer inventory management issue that was so bad last year. And that has been fixed and we need to stay there. As you said, we increased rigor of product launches. So if we were able to fix for those product launches, we need to stay good for the ones to come. So what we are doing is already better. We need to go or even better, but stay there, right? Then we started a lot of stuff, right? We started this product expansion for Ram, for Jeep. Those are the most profitable brands that we have in our company. And we need to complete it, right? What we are doing on Ram, for instance, which is the most profitable brand that we have, it's just amazing, right? So we said about V-8 engine, we will launch a range of standard motor propulsion for a pickup truck that will put us as the most innovative pickup brand in North America because nobody else. They will come, but we will start before the rest. We are launching, as we announced it already out of a U.S. plant in Ohio, Toledo, a midsize pickup truck for Ram. This is a space where Ram does not participate, right? With all the brand equity that brand Ram carries, I believe we have a lot of reason to believe that we'll be successful also with the midsize pickup truck that we will launch in Toledo, Ohio, by the way, beautiful truck already. We will have a large SUV for Ram, which the market is expecting very badly, and we will have it. That will be built in Michigan as well. So what we are doing on Ram, really we are turning Ram as the most exciting pickup truck brand in the world, and you will see many things happening on Ram, but also on Jeep. So what we started there the second thing. I want to tell you that we are on track with this product expansion. And then by the middle of next year, the third thing is in H1, we will have Capital Market Day. So we will present into this community to all the other colleagues, our vision of future of Stellantis, that will be our strategic framework that we might discuss in 1 year. So those are the 3 things that I would be privileged to share with you next time that we meet.

Thank you very much for that answer. Let's open it up to the room a little bit, Jolyon maybe to kick it off and then right in front.

It's Jolyon Wellington from Centiva. Question, as you execute on your turnaround strategy, you are still in the process of consuming cash. I'm just wondering if you can give any comments around how you see the balance sheet? And then as a follow-up to that, you are -- your earnings will be negative this year because of the restructuring charges and your low margins. Would you rule out shareholder returns as per your dividend policy at this point?

There are parts of this question that I cannot answer now. Obviously, we -- not because I don't have the information, but because we will answer by when we close the year. But obviously, we need to get back to cash generation for sure. What we will do is we will improve all business KPI quarter-by-quarter gradually but progressively. So you will see that. And for the dividends, well, we will have a Board of Director to be scheduled on that where as every year, we will decide what to do.

Just a quick follow-up because we are investors, we care about numbers. For the free cash flow, we generate in North America is a very important part of the puzzle. If we think about it, the volumes in the second half have been very good, and we have seen a lot of progress on the market share, pricing, I think the comment was roughly 4%. And you can now optimize for mix as well. I think tariffs are also stabilizing or have gotten better. So is there a reason we shouldn't assume some profit in the second half? Or there is any other part that you think still needs time for fixing and how you think about what is the missing piece of the puzzle as the top line components look in entirety?

I believe that we are on a good start, right, in this half. Obviously, we need to consider that last year, we closed with a negative cash generation of, I believe, EUR 6.6 billion. First half, our negative cash flow generation was higher than EUR 3 billion. So we need to do, as I said, quarter by quarter, and we will get there, right? We need time, obviously and we need volumes coming from the right products, which is happening already as first step, we need to keep going on that ratio.

Antonio, thanks for coming here in person, especially given that you were with the President in the White House last night. So question is the opportunity in terms of mix in the U.S. for next year, given the meeting that you attended last night, I think most of the Detroit 3 CEOs are quite excited by this opportunity. So how much were you constrained by emission regulations over the last maybe couple of years? And how does that switch over in '26 and '27. And it's good to talk about V-8s, but there must be some capacity limitation in your engine manufacturing plants as well. So I guess the question is, help us maybe quantify or give us more context in terms of...

I will give you context.

Of how you can capture this opportunity. And as a follow-up to that is what happens to the investments you've made in plug-in hybrids or in hybrids? Are you still planning on selling them? Or is now sort of more of a demand pull situation on all that?

That's a good question. And I will give you a context, right, about those, right? So first of all, mix. So in U.S. and North America, mix opportunities given by the decision of yesterday are just huge, right? The good thing is that we have anticipated a little bit that, right? Because we launched it again, V-8 quarter 3. That is before the final decision on CAFE regulation, right? Because we are seeing that happening, and we got in time, right? That's good, right? And on capacity availability for V-8 out of Saltillo engine, which is an engine plant that we have in North America. Well, we were able to restart the engine, put the engine into the pickup one version in 10 months and restart capacity. So we have been demonstrated that we have been very fast by acting on that, that 10 months ago, we were seeing as a huge business opportunity, and it became real now in terms of mix. So yes, this is a leader that we intend to pull very hard next year and years to come because not only through V-8, in general, through ICE, we see huge mix opportunity in North America, just not because it's a profit calculation, but it's also a volume opportunity since it's what customers want there, right? Much more than anything else, right? This is number one. And then the second part of your question was about what?

Hybrids. The ICE opportunity, if you could give us a bit more color on.

So we have -- I will give you many details if you want, but starting from V-8, we have 3 possible V-8s to launch in our cars. And we have 3 brands that could offer nameplates for those V-8s because we can put V-8 in Jeep, we did already. We can put the V-8s in Ram. We did it already. We can put the V-8s in Dodge, right? For instance, the muscle cars, they love V-8 and we are thinking to do that, right? And we can put 3 V-8 because we can have a 5.7 engine, V-8, which Hemi that we did. And then we can do the 6.2 and the 6.4. So actually, volume opportunities are very big if you combine all those stuff, right? And the capacity at the plant, that plant was doing around 20,000 sometimes per year, V-8s. So we really have capacity to leverage once we develop each one of the nameplates. And that will come in a sequence, right? So the opportunity is very big on V-8, but not all. We have GME-T6, which is another ICE engine, right, that we have on the Grand Wagooneer of Jeep, we have on the Ram pickups and we have on the Dodge muscle car now as well. So really a lot of capacity, a lot of opportunity, we've enough capacity installed, obviously, the phasing of each nameplate requires time to be developed, but we have been fast already for the first part. So this is one. And then hybrids and plug-in hybrids, different story. The segment of the U.S. market that fastest growth in the latest year has been hybrid. So we are launching hybrd because we truly believe that hybrid is going to be one of the favorite powertrain in U.S. Jeep Cherokee is the first hybrid of jeep in North America, right? So we really believe in that technology, we want to expand this technology for other applications. Plug-in hybrid is a little bit different. We are leader in plug-in hybrid market, which is good, but we don't see the same growth than in hybrid. So we will focus more on hybrid than plug-in hybrid.

I just want to get your quick thoughts on Stellantis Europe. You've got the investment with Leapmotor. You've got some unique opportunity there. We know the Chinese are now at 7% market share in Europe. Can you just kind of give your quick kind of 2-, 3-year view of that market opportunity for you? What's reasonable? And then also, obviously, the margin competitive dynamics. I mean it's against the contrast of Volkswagen, you just made the comment this morning that their market share has actually been stable. They've been actually not losing share, the Chinese. So I just want to kind of get your quick thoughts on Europe.

No, that's an interesting question as well. So both in U.S. and Europe, we lost market share in the latest 5 years, right? Actually, in Europe, we lost even more percentage points than the U.S. U.S. was a story of market coverage. That's why product planning. And Europe was also a story of market coverage, but also on execution that we need to improve. So in Europe, what weapons will have to recover market share. You mentioned Leapmotor, this is the fourth, but I will tell you the other. So we are strong in 8 segments historically in Europe, we just launched Fiat Cinquecento mild hybrid, right? This is a huge launch for Italy because Fiat Cinquecento obviously is massive in Italy, but we are offering Fiat Cinquecento only as a battery electric vehicle. And the demand in Italy is not that big for battery electric vehicle yet. So mild hybrid, not a lot of pent-up demand that we will see volumes coming from there. The other segment that we are very strong in Europe is B segment, right? And we have a very competitive platform, Smart car, the most competitive platform that Stellantis has in the world. And on top of the Smart car, we are ramping up the volumes of Open Frontera, Fiat Grande Panda, Citroen C3 and e-C3. So we will see volume coming out of this platform. C segment. C segment, we have not been very strong in the past as Volkswagen. You mentioned Volkswagen before, Volkswagen is very strong in that segment. Well, we have STLA medium which is a platform that represents to us a very nice synergy with North America as well. And we are launching a very decent number of products on STLA medium, for instance, Jeep Compass that we will start production in the next months, right? So these are another one. And Leap model. So Leap model, we started as a commercial experience and partnership in Europe, but not only in South America as well in Middle East and Africa as well, is going very well. By partnering with Leapmotor, we understood how good is their competitiveness so we want to learn and partner more on that to bring part of this competitiveness also in our products. So we have a margin positive effect out of that. And we also want to do more with the Leap models starting from Europe. This is the fourth one. So those are the 4 things that internally we will move to make our market share going up. Then there is the industry and the volumes. In industry Europe has been shrinking a lot. Pre-COVID was 19 million units. Now it's 16 million units so lost 3 million units. And in our vision, but not only in our vision, the major root cause for the shrinking has been regulation, right? So that's why ACEA together is proposing this agenda of rebalancing the 3 elements of the equation to make sure that the industry goes up again. That's all.

Any other questions. I can continue. A couple more minutes we have. There's question over there.

Just curious about your thoughts on the number of brands that you have. So what's the framework that you have to assess whether you need to streamline or not?

It's a very interesting question. And again, Capital Market will be the perfect meeting altogether to talk about that. But it's a small anticipation on that. Every brand has a story and every brand has a specific super power in our already, right? Look at Ram, for instance, right? We talk a lot about Ram, but it's good to elaborate a little bit more. Well, Ram has many super power. One is brand equity. The other one is profitably, which is very high. The third superpower that Ram has is very large local, meaning North America and global, meaning outside of North America volume opportunity with high profit. Where we see this volume opportunities? Well, geographically, we already demonstrated that Ram is very strong in U.S., obviously, Canada, Mexico, Brazil. We have a plant that produce Ram there. Argentina, we launched a midsize pickup truck in Argentina plant as well recently. And we believe there are other geographies where Ram can grow in volume and profitability for the future. Then product line, we talk about the midsize pickup truck. This is the territory where Toyota Tacoma sells a lot of vehicles. And we want to be part of that story, right? A successful part. We talk about the implementation of our ranger standard. Why ranger standard is important for a pickup truck because it delivers to the customer everything that specific customer wants. This customer wants best-in-class horsepower, it is there. Best-in-class torque, is there. Best-in-class towing capability, is there. Best-in-class payload, is there. Huge fuel economy opportunity, ranger standard is there. [indiscernible] because this customer travels in, I don't know, the Midwest states in U.S. where charging infrastructure still is not at the level of California, for instance, right? So every brand has a super power. This brand specific has a lot of superpowers. And obviously, we want to explore all of them. Then you have Jeep, other super power. And then we know why we are so intense 1, 2 or 3 brands where we see a lot of potential, [indiscernible] as well, then we need to balance actually to understand how to fund that thoughtfully, right? And then this would be probably what we discuss in the Capital Market Day as well.

Perfect. We have time for 1 more question. .

About superpowers.

Maybe Abbas again.

I think in -- so the story in the U.S., very clear, mix driven product ramp coming, Europe again products and there's a degree of protection from Chinese competition. But in sort of LatAm and a lot of your very profitable Middle Eastern and African markets, how do you assess the Chinese competitive threat? And what's the plan to sort of deal with that threat? Because they're kind of blocked from the U.S. perhaps we learned from Europe that some more walls will go up in Europe as well. So what's the Stellantis plan to address it in sort of places like Turkey, North Africa, where I guess you're very profitable, LatAm, et cetera?

However, this is what we call not properly thrid engine, right, which what we call third engine is a strange way to talk about South America and Middle East and Africa. But they are very, very distinct, also for Stellantis right? So what we understand in South America, we have a very dominant position there that we built over the latest decade, I must say, and we need to consolidate that position. right? Obviously, Chinese are coming very strong. They are coming to Brazil. Now import duties will be raised to 35%. So it will be a little bit harder to come. They are coming in Argentina. They are coming in Chile since forever. So they are coming. We are learning more about that, but we have this dominant position, made out strong localization that we can explore. And by the way, in Brazil, but not only in Brazil, we will launch Leap model, right? So our Chinese offer that has been presented is the latest Sao Paulo Auto Show 2 weeks ago, it was just a big success, right? So this is 1 story. The other store is Middle East and Africa, here is even more interesting because I'm very familiar with South America, been living there for 18 years, right? I'm not familiar with Middle East and Africa, but I'm getting to know better and better that business and the people there, our team there. Number one, our team there is fantastic, very creative, full of ideas and approaches. And I believe that together, we can build our Middle East and Africa what we built out of South America, which is growing through localization. In South America, we've been localizing everything, engineering, design, specific products, suppliers, if we follow the same recipe in Middle East and Africa, specifically in some markets, right? And then I believe that we will enjoy a similar success also there, right? So I'm very thoughtful and focused on Chinese offensive in those jurisdiction. But in the Middle East and Africa still we have a lot of room of improving, right? You mentioned Turkey, for instance, [indiscernible] Algeria. It's a huge interesting market for us. And in South America, we can consolidate further our leadership there.

Right. With that, I think we're out of time. But thank you so much for attending.

Thank you very much.