Well, thanks, Frank, for logging in. Maybe just to sort of introduce this, so we all know that the auto industry is a tough business. There's no doubt about that. But it doesn't mean that it is impossible to create value here. So over the years, as we all know, Tesla has made a lot of money for investors. Fiat Chrysler made a lot of money for investors. Stellantis has made a lot of money for investors under Carlos Tavares, Natalie Knight, Tim Kuniskis. They've generated very strong returns. So EBIT margins for this company, they just reported their second half last year. We know their full year was close to 13% EBIT margin, making them the most profitable OEM in the world today.
But I think what's more interesting for, for the, well, everybody here in the room today is the company's valuation implicitly tells you that the Street doesn't view that as sustainable. So this company is trading at 4x forward earnings, close to a 20% free cash flow yield. So, we recently launched on Stellantis. We have a $30 target and outperform rating, and our thesis was basically three things. We said there's a structural element here that drives much stronger profitability. Secondly, we think that investors underestimate the sustainability of these numbers.
And then thirdly, we argue that even if the multiple doesn't expand from this extremely low 4x earnings, it appeared to us that the upside/downside risk was skewed very positively because the company has a lot of excess cash, and they continue to generate a significant amount of cash flow, which provides them with a lot of optionality for value creation. So joining us today, you heard Natalie Knight on... And, oh, you've got I think you might have gotten your camera on, so you see Natalie.
We did! I'm excited to be with you now.
Okay, so we have Natalie Knight and Tim Kuniskis. So Natalie is the Chief Financial Officer of Stellantis. Tim is the head of the Ram and the Dodge brands, which are, as you know, huge profit engines for the company. Stellantis reported their fourth quarter this morning. Bruno was up at 1:00 A.M., going through the numbers. Now, they have to host all of their meetings from Amsterdam. I think that's a legal requirement as part of their where the company is domiciled, which is why the management is joining us remotely. But we appreciate you taking the time after all this long and busy day and being here virtually. I hope we can have you here live, hopefully for the next one.
So thanks again for being here. There are people in this room who know Stellantis, and there are people who are not as familiar, candidly, with your company. Everyone sees the profitability that you're achieving. Many attribute that to this pricing environment, which a lot of people conclude is aberrational. I wanted to ask you first, maybe, why do you think you've been able to achieve this profitability, and what are investors underestimating when they tell you, "Well, this is aberrational?
Well, it's funny that you mention it, because I think the first question that we get when we're in the U.S. a lot is: Who is Stellantis? What are you guys doing? They know parts of the business, maybe Chrysler, Jeep, Ram, but when it gets to Europe, they don't know them as well. And obviously, one of our big advantages is when we're looking at our big global position vis-à-vis our peers. When you ask about this piece of, "Hey, what is it that people don't get about us in the U.S. and the profitability, and why is it sustainable?" I think it's because it's this really nice match of, on the one hand, we are really strong and well-known for everything when it comes to efficiencies. We are, you know, rock hard on everything that has to do with cost discipline.
But on the other hand, I think we have shown a lot of success in being able to really drive sustainable pricing differentiation vis-à-vis our peers. And that's something, you know, if you look at it in the US, where we've got the highest prices, you know, in the different categories that we play, we're really showing something where I think we've been able to bring value that the consumer also recognizes. And when we match that up with everything on the synergies we've created, our focus on the cost discipline, it's something where we see lots of opportunity to continue to generate that as we go forward.
So, it's clear that you've applied a lot more scrutiny and, and discipline to everything that you do, and, I'm gonna get to a couple points on that. But maybe we can also talk, since we have Tim on the phone, talk a little bit about what your view is on the U.S. business. Half the company's earnings come from here in North America. And the U.S., people worry about companies like Tesla. They're increasingly worrying about the Japanese and Koreans because of the yen and the won advantages. There's some concern about price discipline broadly. To what extent do you actually worry about these things as well, especially as inventories have been moving back up?
And more broadly, can you maybe talk a little bit about your thoughts on pricing for the U.S. market?
Yeah, the pricing question comes up all the time because, you know, as soon as we went into COVID, pricing started going up. Not just in auto, it went up in everything. But it was very obvious in auto that you saw prices going up. And taking price up is easy, super easy to do. Holding that price and not giving it back in incentive structures and rapidly increasing incentives is really the key in holding that margin. And you see in our margins that Natalie went through earlier today, we've done a really good job at maintaining that balance between the two. But your question is, is it sustainable, really?
And I think that really comes down to really what the lifeblood of this industry is, and that's product, and product life cycles, and where you are in that product life cycle. And we are right on the cusp of a barrage of new products in North America, which is going to help us dramatically in that pricing game. We've launched a lot of new products in the last 18 months, and we have a lot of new, I would say, heavy-margin, heavy-metal products, coming just this year, specifically to Ram, which are gonna help us quite a bit. We're actually gonna refresh the entire Ram portfolio by the end of the year. So that will help us dramatically in holding onto that pricing power.
What are specifically a few of the really important products, the most important ones we should be thinking about in North America?
So if you, if you look at the Ram side, right now we are launching... One, one of the big pushes that we have right now is to grow our commercial business. We just launched our full battery electric ProMaster delivery van , so that helps us in a commercial space. We are now just starting production of a refreshed light-duty Ram truck, new exterior refresh, interior refresh, and probably even more importantly, a complete overhaul of the powertrains of that light duty. And the light-duty segment is, is huge. It's really the battleground in the North American industry, so having the freshest product there, you... If you look back, since the creation of the brand, every time you have a new product refresh, that's when you see the bump in share, you see the bump in profitability.
Following closely behind that, Q3, we're launching a refreshed Heavy Duty . Big-margin product, very important product for us on the retail side and on the commercial side. Refreshed exterior, refreshed interior, but more important for that customer is really the powertrains, and a completely revamped powertrain. Right after that, the full battery electric REV actually comes to market, and then that's the full battery electric version of the Ram. And then fast-following that is gonna be what we think is gonna be a game changer in that segment. We're gonna have the underlying strategy of the high-tech ICE, and then we're gonna have the battery electric. But I look at that really as we have an underlying plan, and then we've got a coast-to-coast plan, with the battery electric truck on the coast.
But for Middle America, we're, we don't really have the adoption rate yet, and probably won't have the infrastructure, in the same amount of time as our product life cycle. We're launching the Ramcharger . The Ramcharger is the only truck like it, where you have all the advantage of full battery electric truck technology, and all of the capability and performance that comes with that, but with an onboard high-speed charger. So no range anxiety, almost 700 miles of range, no reduction in towing capability. I think having those three key things in the Ram side, are big. And that's just Ram. We've got significant advancements coming in the product side on Dodge. Smaller volume, but I think significant to the transition in the industry, is we're launching the first full battery electric muscle car.
I don't bring it up because it's huge volume, I bring it up because we have so many things that we've patented on this car. It's a real glimpse into the future of what we're trying to do as a company in our transition to electrification, and how we wanna monetize the high cost of that technology. So that's a very significant one for us. New Wagoneer S coming to market in North America. And then at the end of the year, the new Jeep Recon full battery electric off-road vehicle. So big product offensive coming into our North American showrooms.
Yeah.
Nish-
Yeah, I wanna follow up specifically on that, because, look, we, we've been talking with management teams about the regulations and this EV, just the barrage of EVs that everyone's working on. We're obviously still in an uncertain environment from a policy perspective. We've got elections in the U.S., for example, that could affect the IRA. There's elections in Europe that could have an impact on regulatory requirements. But one of the things that I found interesting about Stellantis's strategy was that you actually didn't put all of your eggs in one in the EV basket. Most of the vehicles, I think, that you're launching now have, in addition to the BEVs, which have, maybe they've gotten a little bit of the more media attention, but there's ICE, and I think as well, plug-in hybrid variants.
So, maybe you can elaborate a little bit on that, but, I'd love to hear more about that. And then secondly, how difficult will it be to meet regulatory requirements in places like the U.S., when you still have these ZEV rules in California, for example, that'll require 30% zero emission vehicles by 2026, or these EPA... Do you think that even though you have these for now, ultimately, you do have to push more into the BEV market?
Yeah, I like to say about our strategy, and it’s easy to say it now looking back, you know, we didn't try to call the ball and guess where the industry was going, where the market was going, where the regulations were going. We didn't call the ball, we built the ball, and we built the ball out of Silly Putty so that we could, you know, squeeze it out to whatever the new regulations were, and whatever the new flavor of the day was, and make it look different, and comply with that. I'm not gonna try and make it sound like the regulatory environment is easy. It's not, it's incredibly hard. It's incredibly complicated. And you brought up quite a few of them.
You got CARB requirements, you got the greenhouse gas requirements, you've got the ZEV mandates, and then internally, we're driven even to a much higher standard with our carbon net zero goals that we have set out for 2038. So put those all together, and it's very difficult. But what I will tell you is, while it is extremely complicated, our CEO has made it very easy for us to focus on it. And he did that by not allowing us to ever buy a single credit. I mean, it's not even a hot topic of discussion. We don't buy credits. We're not buying credits. We're not gonna do that. And not having that mental safety blanket really forces you to self-regulate.
It forces you to make the tough calls, and we literally adjust our plans on a monthly basis based on where we see the trajectory of compliance. Ram's a really good example of that. You know, if we had that safety blanket of buying credits, we would still be building and selling the ancient iron block Hemi V8 that everybody loves. Knowing that we're going into this environment have forced us into a space where we had to develop a whole new powertrain strategy. You know, a very high-tech, twin-turbo, 3-liter Hurricane that's gonna actually give much better performance, and be much more efficient and more flexible in the future. We wouldn't have done that, if it wasn't for those regulations. So it's... I...
There's a long way to say, yes, it's super tough, but the CEO, you know, he burned our boats, and we're forced to make the tough calls to make sure that we're on a trajectory towards the long-term compliance. But I think probably the bigger enabler to all of that is no one knows what's gonna happen, you know, with the regulatory environment if there's a change in administration. So I made the joke about the Silly Putty. I think the Silly Putty is really in our product plan. If you look at what we did with our platforms, you know, we have the four major platforms, and if I look at the STLA Large platform as an example, it really is kind of a case study of how to be flexible.
That one platform underpins, in the short term, 8 different, completely radically different cars for radically different customer profiles, and in the longer term, it will do even more. So if you think about that one platform, it's gonna underpin a two-door muscle coupe for Dodge, a four-door performance sedan for Dodge, a premium midsize SUV for Jeep, as well as Alfa Romeo, the next generation midsize SUV for Jeep, mainstream, as well as Chrysler, a performance UV for Dodge. It's got a 4-cylinder ICE powertrain, it's got a 4-cylinder HEV powertrain, it's got a twin-turbo 6 ICE powertrain, it's got a 400-volt BEV, and it's got an 800-volt BEV. It's flexible for front-wheel drive, rear-wheel drive, all-wheel drive, and four-wheel drive. That one platform, with essentially one set of EDMs and two ICE engines, has the ability to cover over 30% of the industry.
With all those different combinations, all those different brands, all those different customer profiles that allow you to expand the adoption of that one platform, and the ability to flex between those technologies, not across multiple cars or platforms, but flex between those technologies within one platform, one manufacturing footprint, one supplier base. Depending on whichever way the regulations go, we can flex it in that direction. So I think that is a big, big enabler for us.
That's a very-
And maybe I'll chime in on that one, because I think what you... You've used one great example, Tim, but if we look at the business, you know, we're going from having 100 nameplates on, I'll call it 50 platforms, to now having 75 on 4 by the time we hit 2030. So people ask us a lot of the time: "What happens with your synergies? How are you gonna keep maintaining it?" This is a perfect example for me of something where it's a huge, huge enabler for us going forward.
You know, there are... It really is very differentiated, certainly versus the other companies that I follow. There are, of course, gonna be headwinds. I mean, it's clear that you're more optimistic on pricing, given the barrage of new products that you have. We'd calculated 50%-60% of your portfolio may get renewed in North America, for example, over the next year. But there are headwinds. We were expecting UAW labor costs to be up by $1 billion, and there are other things, of course, that are coming into the business as well. Could you talk about how you're managing that?
Do you believe that Stellantis will be able to completely mitigate some of these inflationary pressures just based on the initiatives you're taking? Obviously, we've been in the conference all day today, so we don't have the benefit of things that you said on your call. I did see that you expect to sustain double-digit margins, but you did 13% last year. So we're trying to get a sense of these pressures and how optimistic you are on your ability to offset that.
So I'll start, and then, Tim, feel free to chime in on any US specifics. But I think on an overall level, if you look at what's happening, we definitely talked about there's headwinds and there's tailwinds. And just the way we guide as a business is, we always look the headwinds in the face, and we count on the tailwinds when we feel like we've got an optimization plan to get past them. So when I talk about what the headwinds are, you're right, labor's one. I think the billion-dollar mark is way too high for what it'll be for us in terms of the 2024 number, but it is something, you know, significantly above where it was a year ago prior to everything happening in the fall.
We also will see, you know, challenges there in terms of what's happening because we've got things, the LEV vehicles coming, or our BEVs. Those are ones where we're a lot more profitable than anybody else out there, we think, in terms of, you know, the traditional OEMs. But it is one that is going to be dilutive for us until we've really got that convergence, which we're working on very hard. If you look at those pieces, there's, you know, we can add all the macro things that can be moving up and down, but we're working on what are the tailwinds that we can control. What we know is that we've got big improvements coming on the logistics side in over the next two years.
We'd had a big issue there the last couple of years, where we just didn't have the logistics we needed to be able to get everything to market. Now, we have fixed the problem, but we have an expensive way to do it, so we're working on that for the next two years. We have raw materials, which were a EUR 1 billion headwind for us in the or tailwind for us in the second half, and we think we'll do that again in 2024. And there also continues to be on the synergy side, even from the merger, we'll have a EUR 1 billion more that's gonna come into our P&L versus where we were in the last year.
There really are a lot of pieces coming in 2024, but it's also something where, you know, as we talk about, we're looking at what are the things we can develop, not just for 2024, but that are gonna give us really legs for the next couple years. Tim, do you want to add anything from the U.S. side?
... I would say, you know, it kind of goes back to what I was talking about with the flexibility of the platforms and the flexibility that we have within those platforms to move around. But I think it goes a little bit even further beyond that. If I go to the retail side of the business, if I go to the customer-facing side of the business, when they walk into our showroom, you know, our head of design, Ralph Gilles, and I share a philosophy on this. And we always say that we, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram, the North American brands, we win when we don't follow, when we do something different than everybody else.
I think that's one of the things that sometimes people forget, is one of the inherent advantages that we have in the marketplace is our 14-brand strategy, and specifically in North America, the multi-brand strategy within one showroom. That allows you to take on headwinds with much different go-to-market strategies than you could if you had one brand trying to be everything to everybody. We can have completely divergent strategies for Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Ram, and I think that gives us a real advantage against potential headwinds.
Yep, it sounds that way. You, Natalie, you just mentioned that there's another billion dollars of synergies, and we suspected that there would be... I mean, you've exceeded expectations. You've initially targeted EUR 5 billion of synergies. You'd already achieved, I think, EUR 8 billion through the end of last year. Now I'm hearing there's another billion. What, how far, how much more is there? I mean, it sounds like a lot could be, could come in from here, because the merger's only three years old. It takes at least three or four years to develop their first combined products, and that's assuming that you started from scratch on day one, and assuming that everyone's portfolios were synced up, which they obviously were not. So how do we...
Is there a way to frame what's sort of in the pipeline in terms of merger synergies?
I guess I don't like calling them merger synergies anymore. You know, we do a lot of work in the finance team of trying to do these theoretical calculations of what can we limit just to the merger, and that's why we've said, "Hey, the €8.4 that we achieved last year, where we're two years ahead and, you know, 70% above what we'd originally thought, that's great. Let's take that as a point in time. You know, been there, done that, and let's focus really on what are the opportunities we can do going forward?" And I think there is... You know, if we look at over a, you know, a 3- to 5-year period, there's at least as much in purchasing as what we found already. There are, I think, really interesting ideas in terms of everything on the platform side, which you heard Tim talk about.
That one is, I think, the most underestimated in terms of where people see, and I think there's just lots and lots of money in there to be had. And then if you start looking at things on logistics, I'll call it fixing some of the problems in the background in terms of things we could do better, our marketing, you know, those are things where we didn't have the same rules across the business in terms of what's the devotion of media versus non-media spend in our demand creation. You know, one of the things we do at our company is we are relentless benchmarkers, and we go through and we are constantly looking at what works in the portfolio, who does it best, and then how do we roll that out and apply it to the business?
I think that's the place where I'm most excited, is I get to see all those benchmarks every day, and I see where the big differentials are, and those are the things where as an organization, we're really committed and with big discipline to run after them.
It's clear that that's a big opportunity. We've got just a few minutes left, so I wanted to ask about M&A and a couple other things on cash use. So obviously, M&A has been a great strategy for Stellantis. You've accomplished a lot with Fiat Chrysler, you've accomplished a lot even before that with Opel. So it's clear that the industrial logic is there. Do you think that the industry is starting to recognize the merits of consolidation more broadly? I guess it's another way to ask that is, is it likely that we're going to see more deals over the next two or three years?
I think with a broader time horizon, the answer is probably yes, because it definitely is something where this new, you know, bumpier and lumpier landscape than, you know, what it historically had been, means there are going to be winners and losers. And we definitely intend to be one of the consolidators in terms of an environment like that. We think we do it better than anybody else. But let me make really clear, our focus every day is: How do we deliver Dare 2030? This is the spot where we're driving. What do we do to make organic things happen? How do we deliver the best things for the industry? And when we do that, some of these opportunities come up. You talked about the big deals.
We're also, I'll call it an M&A machine of the small deals today, in terms of how do we get the raw materials we need? How do we secure, you know, the different opportunities as we're moving into software or new technologies? I think this is something where we need to look at, one, a broader definition, and to your question in terms of, are there bigger opportunities out there? What I'd say is, it's, there definitely will be, because people are going to be stronger or less strong in that, in that area, and we will have our eyes open. And if opportunities, you know, present themselves, I think we're pretty good at the track record of showing on big ones. This is something we can probably do better than anybody else in the industry.
Yeah. Well, let me ask you about just that kind of thing is unpredictable. I did see this morning that you boosted the dividend, you boosted your buyback. Essentially, as of this morning, it looked like an 11% yield between the two of them on your market cap. Let's assume that there isn't any M&A in the next year. You're sitting on EUR 50 billion of cash, EUR 61 billion of liquidity. You've said that you want to keep 30% of revenue as total liquidity. I don't know if there was any update to that, but it even with that number, which is awfully high for a company with such a low break-even point and, like, almost no negative working capital, you've got a lot of extra liquidity now over the next year.
If you generated another $12 billion of cash and paid out $5 billion in the dividend, it would be obviously $7 billion higher. How should we be thinking about a year from now? I mean, is it, is it, in your mind, plausible that we could be sitting on almost $60 billion of cash, or do you, at some point say, "This is the cash level we- you, you should be thinking is, is sort of enough for us, and the rest gets returned?
So I guess I look at it a little differently, which is I look at where we come from. And obviously, you know, a year, a year and a half ago, we hadn't done any kind of share buybacks, and, you know, we were really still struggling to become, you know, one of the big players in this industry. So last year, we started with buybacks. We took advantage of everything with Dongfeng when that opportunity came to buy another 1.5% of our shares back. This year, what we've done is we decided at the end of the year, we really have gotten to a level where we don't need to keep building, where we can maintain where we are, and we can be looking at what is the, you know, the path that we want to keep going forward.
So are we at the end of the game? Absolutely not. Are we at a spot where when we look where we are, we've taken big steps, we've doubled our share buyback, we have, you know, brought our dividends up by 16%? This is a spot where we feel like we've made a very nice step in the route, and I would say, you know, for everybody out there, stay tuned. This is where we believe we've gotten to a good spot we want to maintain, and we'll look at what happens as we move forward.
We've got one or two minutes, if there's anything in the room here. I see one, one hand raised, so we're gonna get a microphone over. Just stand by.
Hi, thank you so much. Tim, I just had a question. You know, earlier when you were talking about, being able to maintain margins, one of, one of the key attributes you highlighted is, you know, having such a large portfolio refresh coming. We actually heard very similar, things from Ford today. So, can you talk about how just, you know, refresh across your competitors, maybe matters or doesn't matter towards, those goals that you laid out?
Well, yeah, it obviously matters if everybody's refreshing at the same time. Ford actually refreshed before us. They're actually in the market for months now. We're probably six months behind their cycle, which is good. If you look at where their share is now and where our share is now, you know, we're on the upside of that, and they're enjoying that, which, you know, good for them. Because it always takes a few months to get the full product range in the marketplace. But that's obviously, you know, there's three big competitors. There's GM, there's us, and there's Ford. So when the product is fresh, the segment's gonna go up, and every boat's gonna rise with that tide.
Based on where we are today and the refresh that we have across every single one of our products, I'm feeling real bullish about our upside once we have everything in place and out there.
Well, unfortunately, we're out of time. I really want to thank you, Natalie and Tim, for taking the time. I know it's a super busy day for you, but it's been great for us to have the exposure to your company. It's been great for us, all the help you've given us through our launch. So we'll be in touch, and thanks again.
Thanks very much. Appreciate it.