Waiting for a signal from you, or should I go ahead?
No, you go.
Yeah. Okay, go ahead. All right. Okay. Well, thank you very much all of you for joining us here. Very pleased to have Antonio Filosa with us.
Thank you.
CEO of Stellantis, after a long career at Stellantis.
Yes.
Critical time to turn around the business and in what is arguably very difficult market conditions for everyone in the auto industry. My first question, if you don't mind, is basically, we've seen, be blunt, market has been disappointed by the pace of improvement. I'm just trying to, first question to you is, are we misunderstanding what you're trying to do? Is it just a question of time?
Or if you think compared to when you presented your plan a few months ago, things have changed so much. Are you on track, or do you feel like the environment has changed too much and therefore you need to adjust?
Oh, perfect. Thank you, Philippe, first of all, for hosting us and for having me and my team here today. We follow you. I believe it is very important and very exciting for me, so thank you for that. If you don't mind, I will start with some opening remarks.
Just to set up a little bit what I think is happening. I will answer to your question. As opening remark, let's start from the fact that we are a few months away from May.
In May this year, we announced that we share with investors our plan for the future, FaSTLAne 2030. This is a plan that will restore immediately profitability into Stellantis, and will drive Stellantis five years from now to be a business that will generate around from 8%-10% of AOI margin. This plan relies on investment of EUR 60 billion that we launch for our brands and our regions, up to 60 new products. It will increase market coverage in each one of the important regions. Starting from North America into Europe, South America, Middle East, and Africa, and APAC as well. This is the five-year plan, right? Obviously we understand that investors are very keen into short and the mid-term results, which is very important. Let's talk about the first three years.
The first three years, 2026, 2027, 2028, to add a very clear three first steps into the journey. 2026 is the year of recovery, right? The recovery already started. I will be able to share some numbers. As you see, in each one result. It is also the year where we start organizing our cost recovery plan, which is VCP, Value Creation Program. Value Creation Program today engages 3,000 people in Stellantis, already was able to map 9,000 initiatives. Those initiatives will be launched in 2026. So 2026 is recovery and start of VCP. 2027 is the year where we will benefit of 40% of maturity of those initiatives. So 2027 is the year where we will receive from VCP minimum EUR 2.4 billion cost saving. We will build results on top of that.
2028 is the year when we will have full maturity of VCP, which is EUR 6 billion cost saving run rate for 2028 and onward. Plus, we will have the first meaningful wave on new products that is coming from the EUR 60 billion investment that I mentioned before. Those are the first three steps of our five years journey. We are highly confident that today we are on track with those first three steps. So we are on track to deliver guidances that include, for instance, 2027, free cash flow positive, that include a commitment of EUR 3 billion free cash flow positive in 2028. Obviously we understand that the recovery that we start in H1, in the eyes of analyst, but also in our willingness, is not fast enough. I want to maybe now answer to your question, which is, why is that?
What we are doing around it? Globally, we have three major gaps when we compare to our competitors, to our main competitors. We have a lack of products. In North America, for instance, our product line-up has a coverage of 55% of the market. FaSTLAne 2030 will address that, mainly starting from 2028 by going from 55% to 90%. The history is very similar to the other region. Then we have a gap of cost. What we have been able to understand from many benchmarks and many tear downs that we did in our company with competitor's vehicle, is that we have a high single-digit cost gap with them. In some cases, this is average. In some cases, some product is also low double -digit. We will address cost as we are doing already today with VCP, Value Creation Program.
Then we have a quality gap. This quality gap is driving many things. Obviously, problem with customer that we want to highly protect, and then total warranty cost and campaign cost. We are addressing that through our quality turnaround plant that is already producing result. One of the result that we have in our hands is that quality in North America improved 38% year over year. Stellantis is the fastest improving OEM in quality in North America, and improved also in Europe of 24%. Results that we are producing now, they're already showing the recovery. They will accelerate it through VCP fast with cost saving, through quality turnaround plan fast, with quality improvement that's already happening, and through new products that will start populating our line-up from 2028 onward.
Great.
Okay?
All right.
Thank you.
I get the message, you are on track.
Completed.
It is time. I am impatient.
It takes quarter four to see the first ramping up of result of VCP. It takes day-by-day work to see day-by-day quality improving, and that will eventually reflect in a lower warranty cost and lower campaign cost. It takes the average product development timing, which is 24 months, to have the meaningful new waves of new products. 2028 is when we will have a lot of new ramps, a lot of refreshed products of Jeep, a lot of new Peugeot, just to mention the highest volume brands that we have in our roster.
Right, okay. Very clear.
Thank you.
Now, you are navigating a different environment. You have your global business, and then Europe and now North America are diverging. Can you share views about what you think is happening in terms of USMCA renegotiation, how does it affect your business today?
That is a very relevant question now this year. Obviously, it is a little bit early to talk on USMCA since the three parties are now in the negotiation phase.
We will be able to understand that fully in few months. Obviously, we are constantly in a productive dialogue with the three administrations, so the three teams of policymaker. Those are giving us a sense of where we are going. Most importantly, we need to stay focused on our plan, FaSTLAne 2030, because in that plan, we also have the remediation for that. Because in that plan for the USMCA, three countries, so from North Canada, United States, and Mexico, we have highly localization plans. We will put products for those market in the plants that we are there, starting from U.S. We already have announced the restart of Belvidere plant in Illinois. In Illinois, we will localize the Jeep Cherokee that today is built in Mexico, plus another vehicle.
That will automatically reduce our tariffs exposure today and will address any USMCA new regulation framework that we might have for the future. For Mexico, we are elaborating a Mexico to Mexico plan, which is embedded in investment that we have announced, to produce in the Mexican plants also products tailor-made for Mexican customers. One case is happening already next year. For Canada, also we have Canada to Canada plans, again, to leverage the industrial footprint that we have there to release products for the Canadian market. So everywhere or anywhere the USMCA framework will go, we already have in FaSTLAne 2030 highly localized plans for U.S. first, but then also for Canada and Mexico.
Right. If we think about one other big market for you, Europe,
Do you think at this stage, are you getting heard by the regulators in Europe about the need to some protection? What is the latest? We keep hearing there might be some announcements in October. Is that what you hear as well?
Well, about being heard, my tone of voice is very intense, so it is easy to hear me. What I can say is that, yes, in recent months, we see a lot of interest of policymaker to listen to us, to listen to Stellantis, to listen to Volkswagen, to listen to Renault, and also to listen ACEA, which is our association. So we are in constructive dialogues with them as company and as ACEA member. What we understand is that there are too many regulation in Europe that are very critical for the industry. One is the CO2 emission, and the other one is what we can call Made in Europe regulation. Both are progressing now with higher speed than before.
There is a true interest in making sure that those two set of regulation can represent the demand of the market, number one, but also can establish a level playing field for everybody compete in Europe. Yes, I expect meaningful changes maybe by the end of this year or maybe early next year. What I see. The first one is CO2 emission regulation. Here we are talking on two major segment, passenger cars and light commercial vehicle. If we look at passenger cars, already demand is going fast into electrification. If you look at light commercial vehicle, which is very important to us, we are big in light commercial vehicle, 28% of market share in Europe, very highly profitable segment. You see they have a problem of industry, and the root cause of industry shrinking is regulation. I give you a clear example.
Europe is moved by small and midsize entrepreneurs. Let's put ourself in the shoes of one of those. A gentleman or a lady that owns five flower shops, and to run his or her business use five vans. Let's imagine that now this person is close to the moment he would traditionally change his fleet of vans, buying new ones. What he makes? He makes calculation. For that specific business, mid-mileage business, total cost of ownership is highly in favor of traditional powertrain vans. That's why demand of electric vans is very restricted yet, because it's just for the very high mileage business. What is happening in concrete terms? This person calculates total cost of ownership, and he finds out that total cost of ownership is much better with his current vans or her current vans. He will decide not to change his vans.
This is bad for everybody. This is bad for this person that will anyhow incur in higher maintenance cost for an aged fleet. It's bad for the industry, they just missed the opportunity to sell five new vans.
It's bad for the environment that theoretically CO2 emission should protect, just because old vans, they pollute more than new ones, whatever is the powertrain that you put into it. Light commercial vehicle CO2 regulation is a major focus. The other is Made in Europe, which basically should be a mechanism, will be a mechanism to establish a level playing field of all competitors in Europe. Also on that, I understand, and on both we are being heard very much recently.
Right. Okay. I will jump into different topics, and one of them, for me, there has been a lot of discussion recently about the Ram brand.
It used to be that everybody thought it is all about Jeep, and now all of a sudden it is all about Ram. Can you maybe expand a little bit about what you are trying to do with the Ram brand?
You are talking North America?
North America-
Right
but also potentially Jeep was a segue into the world.
Yeah.
Is Ram the same way, or is it-
Yeah
just North America?
It is all about North America, Jeep, Ram, Dodge, and Chrysler. It is all about toward those four, plus Peugeot, Citroën, and the other brands. But talking on Ram, that is a very key and important question. Ram is for sure one of the most profitable asset, one of the most profitable brand, that we have in North America and in the world. At the point that, yes, we start in North America, but we already have localized two Ram truck outside North America, in South America specifically. And we believe that Ram can have, and in FaSTLAne 2030 we have embedded it, a plan for globalization. We are very pleased of what Ram did so far. Talking North America only has been the fastest growing brand in the region. Compared to last year, it gain 3.1%, 3.2% of segment shares in the segment where it competes.
Much more than any other truck brand. Ram is doing well, and we want to power it up. We just launched the TRX with unbelievable 777 horsepower, and a big promise of high profitability. We will launch by next year the first trim of the sport truck that basically is inventing a new segment. Then the second trim and the third trim will be launched by H1 of next year. Ram is a big focus. It is a big focus of growth and of profitability. This is happening in North America. It started already in South America, and we believe there are other opportunity outside as well. Jeep also is a big focus in FaSTLAne 2030. In 2027, we will completely refresh Grand Cherokee. We will completely refresh Jeep Wrangler. We will completely refresh Jeep Gladiator.
Then we will have, starting from 2028, an all new off-road offensive. When you look at Jeep segment by segment, the off-road segment are the ones that are high volume and very high profitability compared to Ram, right? Those two obviously are key in our plan. As well the relaunch of Chrysler. End of 2027, beginning of 2028, we will have at least two new product of Chrysler and Dodge. We will add the new products. Outside North America, we are putting a lot of money into Peugeot. Peugeot will have a completely new lineup in 2028, and also in other European brands.
Right. Okay.
It is not all about Ram.
No.
But it's a lot about Ram, yeah.
But we should expect a full size SUV from Ram at some point.
Sure, 2028.
Right, okay.
2028.
When?
2028.
2028, okay. Good.
I can tell you the name as well.
Right.
I break a secret.
Right. We'll wait for this one.
Okay.
Right. Back to Europe maybe. I think Stellantis was early. I think had a vision that you had to work with the Chinese in some ways, and the Leapmotor was a very important agreement. First in mind, where do you stand on working with Leapmotor in Europe, and maybe so globally? How do you respond to, I think, accusation we've seen in Europe that you're acting as Trojan horse for the Chinese to come into Europe, including the Dongfeng brand that you're going to be manufacturing in France.
Yes.
How does working-
Go
with the Chinese fit your strategy and help your global footprint?
Oh, perfect. That is a meaningful question I would be pleased to answer. Maybe to start the answer, in our global business as Stellantis, we see clearly the world divided into two things, right? One is U.S. The U.S. will 100% rely on American engineering, developing American cars, for our American brands in our American plants for our American customers. So it's going to be a full 100% American story. Then we have the rest of the world, right? In the rest of the world, we see benefit, as we started already seeing, by partnering with partners, right? Chinese, but not only Chinese. Starting from Leapmotor, which has been a part of your question. We are very happy with Leapmotor International story. Leapmotor International is a joint venture where Stellantis has 51%, the partner has 49%.
We together decide as good partner, Stellantis being 51% of the decision, the products that we will jointly distribute in the markets that we decide to distribute, and where Stellantis has exclusivity of distribution. Also the product that we want to build in the plants that we decide to share. You mentioned Dongfeng. This is Rennes, but I can mention also Madrid for Leapmotor. Also will help us, and is helping us in volumes, profitability and compliance obligation. This is the Leapmotor story. The same story, which is 51/49, we want to duplicate with Dongfeng. With Dongfeng, we are defining an agreement to share capacity in Rennes, where we produce Citroën. We will keep producing Citroën C5 Aircross, but we will produce there a brand that we are commonly choosing to be complementary. Then we will try to find other area of collaboration.
It is not Trojan horse, right? We are 51%, the partner is 49%. As good partner, we decide what distribute, what asset should be used to produce car, and what car should be produced.
Right. Okay. Which takes me to another topic, which is capacity.
Right now, you have a large competitor, Volkswagen, which seems to be stepping up efforts to address capacity in Europe. Not a secret, you have excess capacity-
Yeah
in Europe as well.
Not only.
Yeah. In North America as well. I am just curious about what is your strategy to use that excess capacity. If you have, I know car makers or auto suppliers have been talking about defense about data centers. Is that something that we should think about as Stellantis to utilize that capacity or what else do you do with it?
No, perfect. Starting from Europe, we have a capacity not fully utilized today. We will address that with two things. We will launch new products. Our product offensive will be strong, will be mainly on the major volumes brands. This is Peugeot, this is Fiat, it is also Citroën, Opel, and the others. That will obviously give us the benefit to use for our interest, a large part of the capacity that we have in excess. The second step is we are sharing capacity where we see capacity left with partners that we decide to work with. This is the story, as I mentioned before, of Rennes with Dongfeng. This is the story in Madrid, with Leapmotor. Then we will think other stories as well. In North America also, we are launching a lot of new products.
40% of the overall investment goes into North America, so goes into Ram, Jeep, Dodge, and Chrysler. The new products will really be key in volumes to profitably use the capacity that we have. Plus, we are working on a potential partnership with JLR, for instance, in one specific plan. Our way to solve the capacity underutilization topic that we have today is through volumes coming from new products, which is key in FaSTLAne 2030, and is from capacity sharing where we see capacity left, which is the partnership pillar that we are in FaSTLAne. Any other potential diversification of business is not in FaSTLAne 2030, is not core there, but obviously we are open to discuss potential work together with a player not on the automotive industry.
Right. Okay. Next topic for me is capital allocation and discipline, not capital allocation and dividend that everybody talks about. This will come later on. I think you've earmarked about EUR 60 billion of investment over five years.
Yeah
Which is a lot of money.
Sure.
But Stellantis is a big company with lots of complexity as well. I guess I would love to hear your thoughts about how much you can really fund yourself. We have seen some of your peers, including Volkswagen, bigger peers, try to develop technology, not really succeed and get help elsewhere.
I think a lot of what you have done so far has been really to develop your own technology and the software defined. At the same time, you have done partnerships with Wayve, for example, on autonomous cars. Just curious about how you look at where you should allocate capital that is core to the value of Stellantis long -term, and where you see opportunities to outsource or buy technology from others, the way Volkswagen has done with Rivian or the way you work with Wayve.
I got you. That is a great question. So EUR 60 billion is a lot of money, as you said. I never saw EUR 60 billion in my life. Hopefully, you did it in your private lives. But it is the money that we need, as you said, to grow with the core asset that will deliver to us high profitability. So what is core to us? Ram, Jeep, Fiat, and Peugeot as global brand, and then the other brands as regional focused brand. So this is the way we will put money into our brands by making a priority of those four global brands that for their global presence and their big scale, will be the first launcher of the new technology that we are developing. And then the other will transversally adopt then for free into brackets. So this is the first thing.
The second thing is that we will put money where we see very profitable growth. To put money into Ram, for instance, as we said before, or to put investment into Jeep off-road space, we are sure that there is a high chance to be highly profitable. So this is the second driver. The third driver is the way we will work on investments. So of the EUR 60 billion, we will put 40% of it into transversal assets. Those are global platforms, those are global technologies, for instance, software, as you said, and those are global powertrain. And we will converge most of the volumes that we have and we will have in the future into those global asset everywhere. So for instance, platform. We are developing today, STLA One.
STLA One will be our first new global platform that will go into Europe first, North America and South America second, and then maybe the other region as well. What STLA One is, STLA One will converge three current platform at a level of competitiveness that we know is the highest into the market, because we have done a lot of tear-downs, we have done a lot of benchmarks, and we know that we can build STLA One with the highest market competitiveness. So another driver of making investment is into global asset that can share by all the brands, highly competitive. The way we look, what is our recipes, all in-house or maybe a mix? I would say that we have a lot of things that we are doing in-house. STLA One is an example. STLA Brain is another example. The powertrains are example.
For capital efficiency, we will go with partners to share investments everywhere but in U.S., to make sure that we can be efficient in the capital use and also having benefits out of that. It's going to be both ways.
Right. Understood. Sorry to take you back to the short -term.
Yeah.
Clearly, the market didn't like the operating leverage in the second quarter.
Any explanation of why we had such poor operating leverage in North America in Q2?
Was it a quality issue or is it a pricing issue, something that is going to go away? If you have any kind of preliminary message on Q3 that nobody have very high expectation for Q3, to be honest. We know seasonally.
Yeah.
We know it is early in the process, but any highlights for Q3 to look forward to?
Okay. Oh, yeah. For sure, we understand that the markets want higher drop-through f rom the revenue into the profit. This is for sure. This is exactly what we want to have. If we look at North America, we grew around 27% in revenue. We grew around 10% in profit generation. There is something into the two lines, right? What there is into the two lines? We are talking for, at the beginning of this conversation, globally, is the same story in North America. What we have against our competitors is a cost gap that, again, for the products that we produce there, is high single digit, up to double digit for some products. We are addressing that through VCP.
North America will be a large generator of the EUR 2.4 billion minimum saving in 2027, and will be a large generator of the EUR 6 billion cost-saving run rate starting from 2028. Cost is one of the gaps from revenue to profit that we are addressing a lot. The second is quality, as you said, right? Quality triggers total warranty cost, trigger recall campaign cost. The way we are working around that is through our quality turnaround plan that is already generating big improvement. 38% is the improvement that we had in North America in our product quality. Talking of Europe, 24%. We are doing that with many task force room, where we put tons of engineers, of purchasing colleagues, of manufacturing colleagues and suppliers, working on components to improve quality. I can give you tons of example-
on the way we are improving quality. Maybe I give you just one that I shared yesterday in a town hall with our North American team. When we started working on quality, that is creating total warranty cost and recall campaign cost, one of the highest contributor in quality deviation was, and still is, the battery 12-volt system. We put people together, we started a lot of projects to improve that, and now in two months from now, will be first quartile.
We started not good. We understood that it was very urgent to correct it. In two months, we will drive the quality of that system, which is transversal to all cars, to the first quartile. We are repeating that again and again to all the major contributor of that deviation. If battery 12-volt did it in, basically, 16 months, we know that we can do for all the other system. To drive quality in the first quartile, which is our commitment by 2028, in all the segment, in all the countries where we, markets where we compete, will deliver to us the efficiency that we need in total warranty cost and recall campaign cost. This is the second gap.
The throughput will improve, starting from quarter four, prevalently through cost reduction and VCP, and will improve day by day, I would say, with our focus on quality. If we go to H2 instead of quarter three, what we said in the earning call is that H2 result will be majorly weighted into quarter four, because in quarter three, we have the typical seasonality of the summer shutdowns. Those have been planned for North America and Europe, and obviously we will have lower volumes. In quarter three, we will have the starting of inflation that we see coming on raw material. We have, already in our plan, EUR 600 million of additional raw material inflation from H1 to H2, and we will ramp up VCP, but not yet giving high results, right?
In quarter four, we will see the overall VCP increasing results, up to the EUR 2.4 billion that is the saving that will help us in 2027. Obviously, we see higher volumes driven by seasonality. What we expect for H2 is most of the result weighted into quarter four, the EUR 2.4 billion starting being relevant in the result. A quarter four, that will be improved by the cost efficiency that we are producing.
Right. Thank you very much for that. I guess the last few minutes we have, maybe stepping back to long term is, Stellantis has been around about five years now.
Yeah.
I think the way it was created was probably a time of global convergence of regulation and still a very global industry. The world has changed, divergence of regulation, more tariffs. Do you think the Stellantis proposition of being a multi-brand conglomerate, developing synergies globally, is that still a valid business model, or does it need to be adjusted?
Obviously, Stellantis needs to adapt to the reality that it's changing, but the model is still there, is still very valid. Just to give you an example. This year, we put 300 people together, all our senior vice president, to work on some soft thing, but those are very important, which is the cultural framework of Stellantis, what really Stellantis is. We have three major company pillars. One is global scale, local pride. What does it mean? It means that we are everywhere. We are big in many, many regions. We really benefit of the global scale of around 6 million units produced and sold every year to develop those transversal assets that we need for our future. The transversal global platform, the transversal global powertrain, including electric version, and the transversal global software assets.
This is key, and that comes because we have a huge scale, and this scale is global, basically in every region. Then local pride, what does it mean? Our organization has been changed into being much more regionalized. That means that we gave to our six regions power and accountability on decision on go-to-market. While we have thousands of engineers working on global asset, we have other thousand of people working on how to serve better the customer in U.S., California, Michigan, Florida, the customer in Argentina, Patagonia, Buenos Aires, in Europe, Italian, French, German, and English. Global scale means exactly that. As Stellantis, we enjoy that global scale. We enjoy multi-regional strong presence. We can be more efficient in the money that we put to develop global asset. Local pride means that then the owners of the success into their markets is the regional teams.
This is the way we believe we adapted better with the change of ecosystem that we see happening.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
For giving your time. Thank you very much for reframing Stellantis for a longer period of time. I think the market has been very focused on the quarterly.
Sure.
Especially this year, since you started giving us quarterly numbers, which you didn't give before. So thank you very much for.
Thank you.
being here.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
My pleasure. Thank you.