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

Hello, and thank you all for joining us today. Before we get started, please note we will be hosting a live Q&A session at the end of the event, specifically for journalists, investors or analysts. [Operator Instructions] Thank you, and we will now get started with opening remarks by Stellantis' CEO, Carlos Tavares; and Foxconn Technology Group Chairman, Young Liu. Mr. Tavares, please go ahead.

Good morning, and good afternoon to all of you. I'm delighted with Chairman Liu to host this event. And thank you, thank you for your time, thank you for attending this event. It is our privilege to talk to you today. As you know well, when we created Stellantis in January 16, 2021, I made it clear that we would put software and customer experience at the core of Stellantis. It was very clear for us from day 1, from the day we created this new entity, that we had to transform ourselves and that we were going to move fast and strong in the direction of enhancing the customer experience and making sure that software would be at the core of this enhancement. This is exactly what we have been doing. This is exactly what we have been preparing with our friends from Foxconn. And I would like here to celebrate the fact that 100 days after the birthdate of Stellantis, here we are again to talk about this core strategic move from Stellantis, which is about putting software at the core of the company. For which purpose? For the purpose of enhancing the customer experience. And this is exactly what we have been discussing with Chairman Liu, is how can our 2 companies, Foxconn and Stellantis, work together to move forward at a much faster pace, with a much deeper understanding of customer experience expectations on this effort. Actually, what we have demonstrated these different weeks of common work is that our teams get along very well, that they understand exactly what we are looking for, they understand exactly that this customer experience needs a stronger interaction with the user, a strong connectivity and that we need to develop those features at a faster pace and be able to upgrade and update those features at a high frequency -- in a high-frequency model. So this is what we believe: We believe that this disruption is a must for Stellantis. This disruption is a must for our long-term strategic direction. By the way, today's announcement is one brick of what will be in the content of the long-term strategic plan of Stellantis that we will present to you by the end of this year. But we will keep on working, we'll keep on moving and creating the bricks that we need to move in this direction. I'm absolutely delighted to be here with Chairman Liu today. I'm absolutely delighted to have our 2 leaders to explain to you the content of this JV. This is a software-dedicated JV, dedicated to the customer experience in the cockpit in our products. This is something that we really feel good about. It's something that is going to change the way we engineer our cars. It is going to change the pace at which we engineer our cars. It will change the frequency at which we upgrade our cars. It will change the way we manage the life cycle of our products. This is core to the future of Stellantis. And absolutely -- I am absolutely privileged and I'm blessed with the possibility to work with Chairman Liu and his teams on this JV between Foxconn and Stellantis. And I would like just to thank him warmly and to hand over to him for this second part of the introduction. Chairman Liu, the floor is yours. Thank you very much.

My good friends, Carlos and Yves, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us today. This event is an opportunity to highlight the commitment of Foxconn and Stellantis to the creation of Mobile Drive. Together, we will work to develop breakthrough technologies to link the global vehicle design and engineering expertise of Stellantis with Foxconn's leadership in the development of smart technologies to improve the life of consumers around the world. Foxconn and Stellantis are companies that have a proven record of successful cooperation as we have jointly developed technologies and the products linked to the fast-growing global mobility industry. Today's announcement is an extension of that partnership and a signal to the industry that we will be moving fast to bring new technologies and new products to the development of smart automobile technologies. Foxconn and our subsidiary company, FIH, will initially work with Stellantis to develop and design infotainment solutions, both software and hardware for Stellantis brands. But I want to emphasize that Mobile Drive will not be exclusive to Stellantis. The technologies and the products that the new company develops will also be an important supplier for other companies. This truly reflects our company's 3 plus 3 vision, to foster the development of mobility technologies to create modern living experiences. The partnership of the 2 companies is a clear validation of the fact that the ICT and mobility industries are fast converging. The vehicles of the future will be increasingly software-driven and software-defined. Mobile Drive is bringing together teams of designers, software and hardware engineers, to meet and exceed the demand. These companies have both smart technologies and smart products. In closing, I would be remiss if I did not thank our founder, Terry Gou whose inspiration and support continues to be a catalyst for excellent through our Foxconn's global network. Our ability to partner with Stellantis and other leading technology-focused companies is due to the vision that Terry had many years ago. We will continue to drive this vision as we work to ensure that mobile drive achieves the goals that Carlos and I and our teams have set for this new venture. Thank you again for joining us to mark this important announcement, and I hope everyone and their families stay safe and well. Thank you. Yves?

So good morning. Good afternoon. A warm thank you to Chairman Liu and CEO, Carlos Tavares, for sharing their vision this morning and this afternoon with us. Together with my friend, Calvin Chih, we will give you a little bit more detail about the agreements and how we are going to move forward on this very exciting partnership. First of all, I would like to tell you that this partnership is there to accelerate and achieve a new kind of speed on our strategic software agenda. So what is the strategic software agenda of Stellantis? It has 3 main goals that are extremely fundamental to us and to the context of the industry. First of all, we want our software strategy to be customer-driven and not techno-push. This is extremely important. And we have taken a number of steps in order to bring back the customer to the very center, to the very heart of our development processes, involving agile methodologies and design thinking type of approach. Second, we want this strategy to create forever up-to-date vehicle and services for our customers. We believe that those regular OTA updates and upgrades of the vehicle to bring new features to our customers will be absolutely fundamental for the attractiveness of our vehicles, for the experience of the customers and for the residual values of our vehicle going forward. Of course, together with this forever up-to-date strategy comes a new business model, a new monetization approach to create value and share it with our customers in an effective way. Third objective, third goal of this strategy is to leverage smart data and, of course, artificial intelligence. Today, Stellantis has 12 million active connected vehicles on the road around the planet. We believe this is a tremendous asset, a tremendous asset to better understand how our customers are using our products, what are the features that they want more of, what are the features that maybe they don't use so often, and improve the way we design and think in a continuous manner about our product. Second, this is also, of course, an opportunity to bring new services, added value services, for our customers while driving their vehicle or around the vehicle. And third, this is a tremendous asset for AI-enabled features. AI is now coming into the automotive world. It's coming mainly at this stage through autonomous driving technology. We believe it will also very quickly come to the cockpit with AI-based assistance and contextualized HMI and cockpit. And this is a very important point. So I'd like to share with you on next slide our vision of the next-generation cockpit. We believe the next-generation cockpit will be open and future-proof in order to offer the best experience to our customers. It also has to be competitive. Think about the very breadth portfolio of Stellantis products. Stellantis is selling vehicles ranging from EUR 15,000, up to EUR 150,000. We want the competitiveness of our product to address this full range. Now what does this -- what will the cockpit bring to the customer? First of all, we wanted to be customer-focused, extremely intuitive and reactive to the customer behaviors and needs. We want this cockpit to be personalized, updatable and upgradable on a regular basis, to always bring more value to our users. Second, we want this cockpit to be really part of the digital life of our consumers, just like their living room, their smartphone and any digital services that they are getting used to use every day, to drive them through their day. This requires, of course, an open ecosystem and that encompasses all the apps and usage of our customers. Third element, we want this cockpit to have all the scalable tech bricks that will make them ahead of the competition. First of all, we want biometric recognition to make sure we can identify who's onboard the vehicle and deliver the personalized experience and services that our customers are expecting. We want artificial intelligence to be made available through personal assistance. And of course, we want distant command and augmented reality to become part of the experience. Again, those tech bricks needs to be scalable to cover the increment -- the unbelievable breadth of Stellantis' portfolio in terms of products and brands. And last but not least, we want this cockpit to be really up around the vehicle, for people to be able to share their vehicle, share the access, share the capability to drive the vehicle and make it accessible also for service and predictive maintenance. So we really think this about the cockpit as a hub to the vehicle for all the communities that have to use it or have to maintain the vehicle over its life cycle. Of course, this cockpit will be used by all of our brands in the portfolio, and we'll have to remain true to the brand DNA, with everything that makes our brand, be it a jeep, a Peugeot or Maserati, so specific and so special for our customers. So what are the specifics of the agreements? Next slide. This agreement has the purpose of creating a joint venture that will supply infotainment of installation for Stellantis brands, but also for other auto industry companies because we want the JV to be extremely competitive in its market. And to make sure it is competitive, it has to be open to other players. It also has to compete for Stellantis' business arms-length with other potential suppliers, so that we make sure we constantly stretch the capabilities of this JV to make it a number -- an outstanding infotainment excellence center. The JV will be a 50-50 voting rights company, and each partner is contributing its best IP to the JV. Stellantis is coming with 100 century of automotive experience, the know-how in terms of driver distraction, in terms of homologating cockpits and vehicles all around the world. Foxconn is coming with its mobile Internet expertise, and Calvin will explain that more than I can, to make sure that we create together this outstanding player in the field of smart connected cockpit. And the good news is this JV is building on a team that has already been working, has more than 250 software engineers preassembled, organized. And I think it is extremely important that this JV is hitting the ground already running and will start to provide value to both partners and to our customers immediately. With this, I hand over to Calvin, who will explain a little bit more how we will create value. Thank you.

Thank you, Yves, for sharing your vision and ambition, guiding the direction of how to make this collaboration a success. You may be curious about how Foxconn and the Stellantis come to this collaboration. It was November 2018 when Stellantis Chairman, John Elkann, visits Foxconn and met Founder, Terry Go. Chairman Elkann shared the seamless user experience concept with us. After that, both team worked closely, bringing ideas to this concept and realized those ideas in Air Flow demo car as well as [ autonomous ] vehicle, as you can see in the page earlier. Today, we believe it's time to put the concept and ideas into practice, that's why we decided to take a step further for this partnership. I would like to share the key factors of how to achieve the objective in this collaboration. Next slide, please. In order to be successful, as Yves said earlier, it requires a lot of activity based on our complementary strength in both ICT and automotive. For instance, Foxconn has the great capability in mobile platform integration and the mobile service ecosystem. Yves say Stellantis got more than 10 million vehicles connected, just like we have more than 30 million smartphones connected. Stellantis has powerful physical design integration ability and an excellent experience in automotive regulatory. Foxconn comes with solar ability in AI, big data, cloud service and et cetera. With the competitive advantage from both the companies, we have mobilized the multiple resource to realize the smart car ambition. So as Yves indicated earlier, we already have 250 engineers working on this collaboration. Now it's all about execution, execute with speed, quality and competitive cost. Next slide, please. Smart cockpit will be the center of automobile digitization evolution as well as user interaction and the network service interaction take place. With the ambition to build the best smart cockpit experience, we will be focused on personalized services and the regional service requirements, because personalized service and the regional service requirement are the keys of seamless user experience and the recurring revenue generation. With decades of practice in consumer communication devices, we are confident to build a solution that will satisfy individual consumer from different regions of the world in a timely manner, speed. Nowadays, everyone is Internet-connected. Drivers and the passengers have their favorite mobile apps. When they step into the car, the car should be able to interact with users mobile lifestyle. Next slide, please. In a cloud-based ecosystem, with use of the big data technology, we provide occupant with the favorite apps and the services via app store from where users will have seamless interaction experience in between vehicle and the smart kitchen. As automobile is all about safety, and now it's Internet-connected, Cybersecurity will also be our primary focus. Our smart cockpit solution will help occupants to seamlessly migrate between mobile phone-centric lifestyle and the auto lifestyle. This brings me to the end of my presentation. And please allow me to share with you the video of airflow demo car, which the team have built together in the past few months. [Presentation]

So thank you very much. I think we're ready for the Q&A.

This concludes the formal presentation portion of today's event. And we will now move to the question-and-answer session with Yves Bonnefont at Stellantis and Calvin Chih from FIH Mobile Limited. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Thomas Besson. Do you plan to use this component JV for the use of Stellantis only or to open it to other automakers?

So I can take these questions. Thank you very much, Thomas, for your question. We plan to have the JV open to other OEMs. We believe this is absolutely fundamental to secure the level of competitiveness of the JV as well as give it the opportunity to grow even beyond the scope of Stellantis.

Our next question comes from Peter Campbell from the Financial Times. Can you give us a sense of who does what within the JV? For instance, which side is providing the most software engineers? Secondly, are the companies exploring any contract manufacturing as a part of their cooperation. Thank you.

Calvin, you want to take this question?

Yes, I can do that. Thank you for asking. Initially, we will have most of the engineers, I mean, the execution, the engineer in Asia, particularly in Taipei. We will also set up a facility in Europe for the requirement management and also for the program management.

Thank you very much. The next question comes from José Asumendi. He says thank you very much for the presentation. Can you describe how you will share the revenues generated from software updates provided to its users over the lifetime of the product? Can you describe how does the Stellantis-Foxconn collaboration support the ADAS strategy of the Stellantis Group? And which brands within Stellantis will be the first beneficiary of this collaboration. Thank you.

Thank you very much for the question, very valid question. Three questions, in fact. So on the first one, on the question of the revenue share, we want to develop new business model over the full life cycle of the vehicle. And what we want the JV is to be a technology provider to enable those business model. So the way we will work on the revenue will also depend, of course, on the regions. The core of the JV is to provide technology to enable this new business model. To your second question, the JV is in the first stage extremely focused on cockpit and connected services. So this will become a core asset to support the development of our cockpit strategy, with all the specifics technology that were described in the presentation. And to your third question, in terms of brands, our intention is that the technology from the JV would serve the full portfolio of Stellantis and not specifically one brand or another. So we will be -- each brand will be communicating in due course based on their vehicle launch when they will start using the technology. But of course, we want to move fast on this because we believe that speed is extremely important. And working with our friends from Foxconn is a key element for us to accelerate this strategy.

Thank you very much. The next question comes from [ Lauly ], apologies, [ Lauly Lee ] from Nikkei Asia. And they say, I have a few questions for Foxconn Chairman, Young Liu. Firstly, what is the differences between MIH and Mobile Drive? It seems that Mobile Drive will also bid for supply software solutions and related for Stellantis and other interested automakers. Will it compete against MIH to some extent? Secondly, is Mobile Drive targeting not only EVs but also traditional cars? Does Mobile Drive have any market share goal and when? Those are the questions for now.

So Calvin, I guess you will take these questions.

Yes. Yes, regarding the role, I think it's very clear that the Mobile Drive will be very focused on the smart cockpit. And everybody are talking about software, but we are more focused in SQ and deliver to meet consumers' needs, which means that we do real products. Then that might help also the hardware to be able to differentiate from -- to be able to differentiate from the competition. So yes, we will be very focused on smart cockpit, but the software will be part of the hardware. I mean, which means, I mean, that will be one vehicle by one vehicle. It's not a platform concept. You mentioned MIH. I think I heard that, that is more platform concept. We will do the smart cockpit for also non-EV vehicle, it is great. Regarding the third one, does Mobile Drive has any market share? No, we don't have that yet. It just started today.

The next question comes from Hazel Southwell. How will the cockpit screens be customized across Stellantis' brands? It is a case of the screens are modular, presumably smaller for a performance than a family car?

Thank you very much for the question. I think you will have essentially 2 main directions of customization. One is the brand experience customization because the portfolio of brand of Stellantis is extremely strong, with very strong identities, which actually creates the passion of our customers for those brands. And of course, we want the cockpits to remain true to the DNA of our brands, because this is extremely important for the success of our business. So one aspect is the differentiation along the DNA of the brand. And the other dimension of differentiation can be -- is around the basic hardware cost because of the very vast portfolio of prices I was mentioning in the presentation. I think today of a Peugeot 208 versus a Maserati you [indiscernible] in the selling price of those vehicles. So you need a scalable hardware for the cockpit in order to accommodate content for the right level of segment and expectation from our customers. So that can affect the size of the screens, that can affect the number of the screens as well as potentially some other physical devices. But what is extremely important is that the core technology, the code base and the core technologies will be shared across the portfolio of brands to make sure that we leverage the full-scale effect of Stellantis and generate the synergies that we are expecting from the merger.

Thank you. Our next question comes from [ Dan Vardi from Autobahn ]. Why the multi screen is the future? Too many screens are not disturbing for the driver?

Thanks a lot for this question. I think the HMI of the vehicles are profoundly changing. Today, you have the voice comments that are becoming, I would say, common in the vehicles. Augmented reality, with projection on the windshields, is also starting to come. Stellantis is releasing the DS 4 this year with a first step towards augmented reality. And this is something that is going to be ever-increasing in terms of the quality of experience we offer to our customers. So the question is not really the number of screens in the vehicle. The question is, how do you make sure you offer the best experience, of course, to the driver with the multimodel HMI voice augmented reality screen. And also, how do you address the needs of the other people onboard the vehicle? Can the infotainment screen on the reseats, can the infotainment screens dedicated to the passenger, not visible to the driver, thanks to technology, for the front passengers. So we believe that going forward, the technology of the cockpit will become more sophisticated to address the need of the different passengers. And of course, as you move into autonomous driving level 3 and above, you will start to make available more functions even to the driver of the vehicle because his attention will not be needed anymore even while the car will be driving. So this is, I would say, a continuous move in the evolution of our cockpit multimodal HMI, addressing all passengers' needs and getting ready for Level 3 and Level 4 of autonomy.

Thank you. Our next question is from Thomas Besson. Why use a JV for Stellantis when other OEMs, for example, Tesla and Volkswagen, develop their own software? Thank you.

Thank you, Thomas, for asking this question. I think our vision is that we want to move fast, and we want to get the best knowledge of also tech companies incorporated in what we do. And that's why we wanted to work with our friends from Foxconn, bringing their mobile Internet expertise, and maybe Calvin will elaborate further on this, and also starting immediately with a team that is structured and that has been working already together for several months, so that we hit the ground running and we maximize the speed. So it's a question of speed and a question of bringing the best expertise to bear to the question as opposed to trying to build everything ourselves. But Calvin, maybe you want to add something on what Foxconn is bringing in terms of expertise to the JV.

Yes. Yes. I think it's all about the speed to deliver and the time to deliver. You mentioned that the competition are doing the software in-house, yes, that's good. That you have a single point of integration to bring all the different services, and you can define not only the service, but also the business model. But today, most of the cars selling today are using multiple suppliers. I mean, in the cockpit, you have a multiple supplier of hardware and software. And who is going to do the integration, it takes a lot of time. So I think I believe Stellantis takes a very smart approach to have advantage of the results that are similar to those companies who develop everything in-house, but still have the rich resource and rich feature like integrating Tier 2 and a Tier 1 to have a long list of feature. So I think in the near term, I think this is the best practice to [indiscernible].

Thank you. The next question comes from Briana Noble. When will Stellantis customer begin to benefit from this collaboration? Thank you.

Thank you very much for the question, Briana. We can't disclose the date for our first cockpit. What I can tell you is that we have already identified very precise projects. And we're, in fact, starting to work almost immediately, together with Foxconn, because we believe that the -- again, the speed of these VSMs. You have seen the movie that Calvin introduced. This was a joint -- already a joint creation, his team and Mobile Drive teams. So we are up and running. And we start -- we can start working very, very quickly on very concrete deliveries. The brands will be announcing when those technologies get available to the market on their vehicles in due time.

Thank you very much. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Henning Cosman. Thank you for the presentation. Is the JV software meant to run on the general operating system of the car? And who will supply that? How do you envisage cooperation with interfaces, such as Android auto and Apple CarPlay? Is the JV software a middle layer effectively?

Thank you very much for the question. Yes, the software strategy of Stellantis is to make our software development fully independent from the hardware cycle with the right software architecture involving middleware and application layers. So it is very clear that the software JV will develop the application layer as well as some of the cockpit middleware. And it will rest on the lower layers of our software stack. So this is exactly the vision we're having. It is a very important element, and that's the way we plan to move forward. To your question regarding Android Auto and Carplay, we have a number of consumers today who prefer to go with the projected mode of their smartphone, leveraging Android Auto and Carplay, and we have no intention to prevent them from doing it. But we believe we can offer even a better experience with native apps in the cockpit. And we will work very hard to make that happen, but we will not prevent people who prefer projected mode from using projected mode.

Thank you. Again, we have no questions in at the moment. [Operator Instructions] Okay, please hold. Yes, okay, that is all of the questions. So thank you very much for all of your questions. We are now at the end of this digital event.

So thank you very much to all of you for joining us. This was a very exciting moment for us to share this announcement and this exciting project. We're looking forward with Calvin to working together and deliver a next-generation of experience to our customers. Thank you very much to all of you. Thank you, Calvin.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

This concludes the formal presentation portion of today's event, and thank you again for joining us. Please stay well. Goodbye.