Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you to be with us attending our 2024 results presentation. The setup today is a little bit specific. We have, as usual, our CFO, Olivier Durand, with us, but.
Good morning.
We also have Martin Fischer. Today is my last day, and tomorrow is your first day as the new CEO of the company. So, a very warm welcome and start in this new assignment. Maybe, Martin, you want to say a few words?
No, thanks, Patrick. Good morning, everyone. It's my pleasure to join my first investors call with you, and I'm happy to share today my view on the company and obviously also the outlook. But, Patrick, let's first stay to the agenda and start with fiscal year 2024.
So, the agenda, we will start, if it would work. Perfect. We will start with the 2024 highlights. Olivier will take over for a more detailed financial performance presentation. Martin will take over for the 2025 outlook. We will have a takeaway and then the Q&A. The 2024 highlights. In 2024, we continued the transformation of our group and transformation initiated a few years ago. Three main pillars. The first one is technology and innovations. We have consolidated completely Appning, which is our app store. And we also have launched a new group initiative, ENGAGE, in order to secure an engineering and R&D activity at Chinese benchmark level. On the geography, two things: EU- FORWARD and West to East. West to East, we want to benefit as much as possible from the remaining growing region, which is Asia and more specifically China.
But we want to do that in a better balance between the regions. And this is why we have launched last year EU-FORWARD in order to improve our margin after having adjusted our capacities to the new reality of the European market. Very important for us, sustainability. We have launched design for Scope 3. Now, all our new applications, all our innovations have very clear design for Scope 3 targets. And we also have launched MATERI'ACT, which is a company in charge of formulating new low CO2 materials through recycled materials, but not only, also using bio-sourced material. We did all of that in a persistently challenging environment, as you know. Our 2024 performances, in a nutshell, we outperformed the market with sales at EUR 27 billion for a guidance of EUR 26.8 billion- EUR 27.2 billion. So, we are in the middle of this guidance.
It represented an outperformance of 150 basis points and even 350 basis points if you take into account our unfavorable geographical mix of 200 basis points. Our operating margin at 5.2%, the guidance was between 5% and 5.3%. We have significantly improved the Seating business group, the Clean Mobility business group, and to a lesser extent, Clarion Electronics. Our net cash flow achieved EUR 655 million, which is above the guidance of EUR 550 million. It's even above 2023, which was our initial guidance for 2024. This is mainly achieved through recurring net cash flow improvements related to the inventories reduction. And Olivier will be back to this, but also to the reduction of CapEx. And here, we still have room for further improvements. Our net debt to adjusted EBITDA is below two times, 1.97, which again is in the guidance. And our net debt was reduced by EUR 400 million.
This brings us to the continuous deleveraging of the group. This since the acquisition of HELLA. In June 2022, you see it here, our leverage was at 3.1 times and a net debt of EUR 8.4 billion. We reduced it until the end of 2024 by EUR 1.8 billion, and we reduced also the leverage to two times. We enjoyed in 2024 a robust order intake of EUR 31 billion in Asia at a level of EUR 11 billion. Important to underline that this was achieved with more than 60% with the Chinese OEMs. Electronics above EUR 7 billion, with first awards with new customers for us in this year, especially Chery. High-content vehicles, which are both the new energy vehicles, but also the premium vehicles with EUR 16 billion. Important also to underline that our upfront costs were further reduced versus 2023.
This is something we relentlessly drive, and especially also at the HELLA perimeter. Continued cost reductions achieved and developed through our two major initiatives. The first one are the synergies with FORVIA HELLA. Since the acquisition, we have been able to upgrade these synergies to a target of EUR 400 million by 2025. At the end of 2024, cumulative synergies have reached EUR 334 million, strengthening our confidence to reach, at the end of 2025, our target. The second one, launched early 2024, is the EU-FORWARD Initiative. The program has the objective to reinforce competitiveness and consequently our profitability in Europe. In 2024, we announced close to 2,900 headcount reductions. In reality, 2,500 people have left the company, but at a late stage of the year.
This is why the P&L impact in 2024 is only in brackets EUR 15 million, but the global saving is corresponding for a full year at EUR 140 million. The global reduction of our headcount in Europe in 2024 was 4,377 people. I'm speaking about indirect employees. By the end of 2025, and this was also the commitment we've made, we will have announced around 5,700, so more than 50% of our plan, and the P&L cumulated savings are expected to be at the level of EUR 300 million annualized basis. The combined cost efficiency of these two initiatives represents EUR 160 million of savings in 2024. Building sales momentum in Asia. One of the main competitive advantages of our group is the momentum we succeeded in building to develop our business in the fastest-growing market in the world and the most profitable for us, which is Asia.
Asia is not only the growing market, but it's becoming more and more the leading market from a technology point of view. As regards China, a country in which our sales are multiplied by four since 2015, we continue to develop our business with leading Chinese OEMs. You know them: BYD, Li Auto, Chery, Geely are the main players with which we are acting. With BYD, our current largest customer in China, with sales exceeding EUR 1.1 billion in 2024, we have agreed to further develop our partnership in Europe. After having awarded FORVIA BYD Joint Venture for the launch of its first location in Europe in Hungary, BYD has chosen us as a supplier for the next two open plants in Turkey. With Chery, our fastest-growing customer in China in 2024, we created a Cockpit of the Future Joint Venture in Wuhu, in their headquarters, in their domestic base.
This joint venture is targeting the full cockpit, so all the elements inside the vehicle, including the Electronics. And this with low CO2 materials. And the ambition of this joint venture is to reach more than EUR 1 billion in 2029. Very important is also Japanese OEMs in Asia and India. So we have created a new business group we have called JIKA, JIKA for Japan, India, Korea, and ASEAN. And we believe that the development, the potential in India is very significant and now ready to grow, ready to take off. In Japan, the Japanese OEMs are representing a very significant production level of about 25 million vehicles per year. 70% out of this number is staying in Asia and especially in India, but also in the ASEAN part. It's very important to increase our intimacy with them. We did it.
So we have grown significantly our business with Suzuki, with Honda. And more recently, we achieved a significant award on our Interior business group with Toyota, Lexus in China. Sustainability. Sustainability is for us one of our key convictions. And we have progressed, and we have progressed on very tangible figures. We have achieved a reduction of our Scope 1 and 2 in 2024 of 67% versus our reference year of 2019, so including the growth we benefited from since then. We have reduced our Scope 3 by 15% in 2024. And you see we did it with energy savings, so energy which was not consumed, which is the best element of this CO2 reduction by - 30% versus 2019. And we also have invested in renewable energy, solar and wind. And we achieve now 57% of our supplies.
To give you an idea of the progress made in 2019, we were at 19% in 2023. So our efforts are concrete, material, and recognized, and you see it here. We have improved our ESG rating everywhere, or pretty much everywhere. We increased our scores with Moody's, with Sustainalytics, and we maintain our A rating with MSCI. With CDP, we achieved an A rating on climate for the second consecutive year and an upgrade from B to A- on water compared to 2023. So I think that these are demonstrating again our will and our efforts in this area. Takeaways for 2024. First of all, a resilient performance in a difficult environment. Sales outperformance and resilient operating margin. Continued debt reduction and strong commitment to sustainability. Preparing the future. Solid order intake fueled by innovation. Increasing exposure to fast-growing customers and in the fast-growing geographies.
Accelerated ramp-up of self-help initiatives. I think that this is really what we believe we did in 2024, and Olivier will now guide us through the more detailed financial performance.
Thank you, Patrick, and good morning to all of you. I would like to share with you some detailed comments about FORVIA's financial results in 2024 that have shown, as mentioned, the group's resilience in a difficult environment and new further progress made on our top priority, which is the reduction of the debt. Let me start with sales and operating margin at group level. We posted sales of EUR 26 billion and EUR 974 million, which were down 1% versus the year before.
However, from an organic standpoint, excluding scope and forex, sales were up 0.4%, which is representing 150 basis points in outperformance and even 350 basis points of outperformance when we exclude the negative geographical mix that we had last year. In this context, the sales of tooling were a clear tailwind, especially in H1, owing to the high number of startup productions that we had, especially in Interiors. The currency impact was a -1.1%, mainly coming from the fluctuation of the renminbi and also minor currencies, including the Brazilian real. Let me highlight that this negative currency impact has turned positive in Q4, and we should expect to be positive in 2025 on the current parity of the different currencies. How did that translate into operating margin? As Patrick previously mentioned, our operating income stood at EUR 1.4 billion, or 5.2% of sales.
This is actually in percentage of sales, stable versus 2023, excluding the one-offs recorded in North America. The combined impact of currencies and scope is a small negative EUR 15 million, and on the organic performance, the positive impact of the additional synergies between FORVIA and HELLA and the initial benefits of the EU-FORWARD activities have allowed to almost offset the one-off of extra costs that we faced in H1 related to Interiors in Mexico, which was EUR 47 million, but also the impact of lower volume in H2, in particular in the HELLA activities, and the negative geographical mix as we temporarily underperformed in China, where, as you know, we enjoy above-average margin. Now, let me now move to the performance by business group. Starting on page 15, we see Seating. Seating is our largest activity.
This business group had a very satisfactory year with clear outperformance and significant structural margin improvement. Growth in Europe was driven by Renault and German OEMs, and we were able to secure additional growth for the future with meaningful awards. Let me name a few. We had, of course, the ones with BYD in Hungary and Turkey that Patrick mentioned, but we also secured a long-term contract by which we will start in a few months production of a seat structure using low-carbon emission steel. In China, growth with new customers, including Chery, was offset by the temporary sales reduction with BYD. Overall, the profitability has expanded by 130 basis points to 5%, coming from operational efficiency, structural improvement, and repricing execution. Seating is on a good track. Let me now move to Interiors.
The year has been contrasted for this business group with strong sales outperformance not flowing into the margin. The sales were boosted by the record number of launches that we had in North America, driving important activity also in tooling. Interiors also outperformed the market evolution in Europe. Organic sales were, however, down in China, but we recorded our first sales with BYD, which represents an enlargement and diversification of the scope of activity we have with the leading Chinese car maker and the number one EV player. Regarding profitability, the margin was, however, down by two points year- on- year. This represents a year-on-year decrease in absolute value of EUR 92 million in operating income, of which the vast majority, EUR 70 million, was in North America.
As you probably remember from our H1 publication, there was a specific situation in that region as we had to manage three times more start-of-production than the year before. As we were preparing for those, we faced a very specific difficult situation with a key supplier, which eventually translated into significant extra costs for an amount of EUR 47 million that we called out in our H1 publication. This situation is now fixed, and as committed, the operation is back to profit in H2, even though the margin is, of course, still below the normal level in North America. You can expect further improvement in 2025. Let's move to Clean Mobility, which is one of our cash cows. The activity included a significant scope effect related to the sale in 2023 of our CVI activities in both Europe and the United States as part of our initial disposal activities.
Organic performance was a decrease of 5%. We had recorded growth in H1, but the activity in H2 was temporarily penalized by the reduction of dealership inventories, in particular in Stellantis, notably in the United States. The business nevertheless succeeded to increase its margin by 40 basis points to 8.3% of the revenues on the back of further cost reduction and reduction of the capital employed across the board. Let me highlight that the ultra-low emission business of this business group, which corresponds to Clean Mobility excluding hydrogen storage solution, posted a margin around double-digit. Let me turn now to Electronics. The activity grew organically in all our main regions in 2024, with a particularly robust growth in Asia and achieved, as a consequence, a global outperformance of 370 basis points in this period.
The operating margin was up 20 points to 5.5% of the revenues, benefiting from further improvements of the Clarion Electronics operations now clearly profitable, even if not yet at the group level. The Electronics part of HELLA showed good resilience in the face of software sales on its end. An interesting element of the year, as mentioned by Patrick, has been the acquisition of the remaining 50% of Aptoide that is now renamed Appning, and this asset gives us a leading position in the fast-growing application business of the automotive industry. I now move to Lighting. As we indicated in our H1 publication, we have now the full consolidation by FORVIA HELLA of its HBBL Joint Venture in China, which was previously consolidated under equity method. This is representing an addition of 7% in the revenues.
It's also a sign of the strong development of business with Chinese OEMs that we are looking for with L ighting. Organic sales, however, dropped last year by 2.7%, coming from North America and also a bit in China, penalized by unfavorable product and customer mix in that period. The activity rose in the mid-single digit, however, in Europe. The overall lack of volume and the non-full completion of the utilization of the assets in Lighting translated into slightly reduced operating margin at 4.8% of the revenues. Finally, Lifec ycle Solutions. Organic sales were down 3.8%, being at the low side of the cycle in the commercial vehicle segment. On the positive side, we have extended the activity in the aftermarket spare part segment with the acquisition of the remaining 50% of Hella Pagid.
Due to these lower vehicles and some increased R&D costs ahead of new programs, profitability was reduced to 9.3% of sales in 2024. I'm happy to say that Life cycle is off to a better start in 2025 already. Let me now turn to the performance by region, where we saw significant outperformance in EMEA and in the Americas. In EMEA, the operating margin was stable. The benefits of the EU-FORWARD project will start to be visible in 2025, as mentioned earlier in the presentation of Patrick. In the Americas, even with the impact of excess inventories at some dealership of customers in H2, and despite the one-off at Interior, profitability was up 40 basis points, driven by the progress in Seating and the quality of the margin in South America. In China, sales were penalized by three factors.
First, sales were down with BYD in the context of a trade-off that we made between market share and profitability in China and the balance between activity in that country and the development outside China, notably Thailand and coming Europe. Second, HELLA activity with German OEM dropped in H2, given the evolution of penetration of those customers. And third, we had delayed start-of-production in some cases with some Chinese OEMs. Despite those headwinds, the margin was kept at double- digit, and we expect to resume organic growth and outperformance in the country in 2025 with this type of margin. The profitability in Asia was also supported by the margin expansion outside China, where we enjoyed solid organic growth of 6% and continued outperformance and good margin. Let me now move to the full P&L, where we recorded a net loss of EUR 185 million last year.
It related to three main elements. First, a strong increase in restructuring costs from EUR 191 million in 2023 to EUR 362 million in 2024. This is reflecting the acceleration of the ramp-up of EU-FORWARD . Second, we incurred a large amount of non-recurring items for a total of EUR 74 million in 2024. It notably includes the litigation we had with the supplier in Mexico in H1 for EUR 34 million. Let me also highlight that we had, in fact, a prudent approach related to deferred tax assets, and we did not activate EUR 120 million. Finally, I would like to highlight that we have several non-cash items inside those results. We have EUR 108 million of asset write-off in the context of the restructuring line, and the deferred tax asset non-activation is non-cash as well. Now, moving on to the net cash flow.
We generated a net cash flow of EUR 655 million in 2024, same level as the year before, 2.4% of the revenues. This was driven by the result of two main actions that we are driving. First, the realization of a noticeable reduction in our CapEx, EUR 171 million. This is representing the first significant step in the optimization action of both tangible CapEx and R&D capitalization. Second, a large contribution from inventory reduction. Let me be clear, this is the dominant part of what you see in working capital, and it means that we have been able to convert our tooling activity and cash it in, and we are starting to reduce our production inventories. Given the remaining amounts in both CapEx and inventories, which are respectively EUR 2 billion on one side and EUR 2.5 billion on the other side, you can expect further reductions in the coming years.
Let me also highlight that the 2024 net cash flow was also achieved with no contribution from factoring, which was actually down by EUR 33 million and was penalized by a large amount of negative one-off operational item, which should not be in the future to this type of value and helping the improvement of the net cash flow. As mentioned at the bottom of the slide, you can expect further improvement in the structural net cash flow in 2025, not only from CapEx, not only from inventory, but also from growth of the EBITDA. On top of the net cash flow, the proceeds from the disposal of the HELLA stake in BHTC and the sale of Hug Engineering contributed by EUR 227 million in the debt reduction.
Even considering the outflows of dividends to minorities, the IFRS 16 debt impact, and the dividend paid to FORVIA shareholders, we reduced the net debt by close to EUR 400 million last year. This contributed to lower the financial leverage to just below two times a new step in our deleveraging trajectory. And finally, to conclude my 2024 presentation of the results, let's have a look at our debt profile. As you have seen in 2024, we have been active on various debt markets and raised a total of EUR 2.3 billion of new debt instruments at an average cost a bit above 5%. We continued to diversify our funding sources, notably returning to the Schuldschein market in a significant fashion. We used these proceeds to proactively buy back 24-26 maturities while extending our overall debt maturity to 3.2 years at the end of last year.
With those actions, we have cleared almost all 25 maturities to the extent that we have no significant one to face before June 2026. On the cash side, you can see that we have EUR 4.5 billion in cash plus EUR 2 billion in non-drawn senior credit line. This concludes the 2024 detailed financial review. Thank you.
Thank you, Olivier. Martin, your turn.
Thanks, both of you. Ladies and gentlemen, it has been an interesting 100 days inside FORVIA for me, and I have had the fantastic opportunity to meet our business groups, the regions, and also the functions across the world. So let me tell you, it's truly energizing when talking to so many engaged colleagues, and it helped me to really understand the current status of our business and to prepare my priorities and strategies for 2025 and beyond. So what do I see when I look at FORVIA's business?
I see three exciting features. I see a solid business. I see customer intimacy and organizational strength. By solid business, I mean that FORVIA can work from a robust portfolio of product groups, in particular after the HELLA acquisition. So our product groups can deliver very stable revenues, and because most of them are must-haves in all vehicles. Think about Lighting, Seating, Interiors. And what's more, in most of these verticals, we are true market leaders. So then we have also other businesses that capture the growth trends. Both Electronics and software are stable grants for future growth of the company. And lastly, from what I observed, we are truly best in class in our sustainability practices. They are entrenched into the organization today and are benchmarking the industry. The second strength I want to refer to is our customer intimacy.
I was asking myself, how are customers seeing us, in fact? Well, the company has noticeably increased both the global footprint and the customer portfolio. That is important to capture the growth momentum, in particular in China and with our Chinese customers going global. Both from the conversations with our customers, as well as from the documented order intake that Patrick referred to, I believe that I have a really good spot and have really good enjoyment of customer trust. This is a solid basis for future growth. Last but not least, I want to comment on the organizational strengths of FORVIA. On this topic, Patrick, I would like to really compliment you. Not only have you built a strong basis business-wise, but also an utmost strong organization.
From the first day that I entered here into Nanterre, I have met people that are engaged, that have a can-do attitude, and that take full accountability for their actions in the company. That's true strength, Patrick. Really, once more, I want to show hats off to you. I'm very proud and humbled to take over from you tomorrow. In summary, I can build from a strong base, and we have a performing team in place to have that great momentum that I need to take FORVIA to the next level. Next, I would like to draw your attention to what's coming. The next slide is really key in this presentation. What are my priorities as the next CEO? It's going to be about achieving best-in-class performance. It's a continued transformation of our business, and it's invigorating the culture of FORVIA's.
First of all, let me tell you, performance is one of my personal main motives that gets me through life, and I do see very good areas of performance and operational excellence within FORVIA. For example, the FORVIA Excellence System that drive our operations. If we capitalize on this system and really level up each single one of our 260 plants, there is more potential. There is more opportunity that we are going to harvest, and furthermore, such excellence systems are also being brought now to other functions in the company, again, to level up performance and results, so to such a systematic approach, we will make FORVIA a well-oiled machine, and that is a prerequisite also for our financial performance, so on top of all that, I will keep and increase the focus on cash. That's what all teams realize is our driving factor.
In the end, that operational performance and the additional cash generation will allow us to further deleverage the company. We have to lower the debt burden. That is and remains priority number one for FORVIA. Let's move on to the business transformation. To again further accelerate the deleveraging, I plan to dispose of non-strategic assets in a very timely manner. We make some strong choices about the businesses that keep part of the core and those ones we sell. Why is that important? Because we have to focus all our energy on what is part of the core portfolio in the future. Looking at the high competition in our industry, it's core that we are really leading the activities that we keep in place with FORVIA. Lastly, to further transform the company, we also have to focus on innovation.
At this point in time, that's both internal innovation, but also it's innovation through partnerships that we can run external to FORVIA. We must make and continue to make best use of digitization and AI, both in the processes and in the products. Of course, we will keep leveraging our best-in-class sustainability approaches. Let's move on to the third pillar, and that's about invigorating our group culture. Motivated individuals are the main ingredient to FORVIA's success. Motivated individuals and teams. As I mentioned, accountability is already one of our core values, and it's really firmly entrenched in the organization. However, I believe we can still become more agile and really a higher-performing organization by better empowerment of our teams and leaders. Why is that? I mean, the world is complex, and it's not the same when we go from China over Europe to North America.
It is quite obvious that we can unlock even more potential if our teams on the ground are locally empowered and can streamline their decision-making. I want to roll out these principles simultaneously across the whole FORVIA group, including HELLA. This way, we will further foster our collaboration and deliver one FORVIA. Now coming to our 2025 guidance, let's get grounded in our market assumptions first. We are aligned with S&P's latest forecast, and we integrate a flat global light vehicle market at about 89.5 million units for 2025. China should see a slight increase, and we will be outperforming this regional growth due to new product launches with our customers there. In contrast, North America and particularly Europe, those markets are set to decline.
So when we now look at our regional mix, where we are exposed to Europe and North America, we see a relative vehicle market decline for our perimeter of about 200 basis points for the full year. And that compares, again, to a flat market on a neutral level. The majority of this deviation we expect to happen in the first semester. So we are expecting a stronger second semester in turn. Also market-related, I would like to briefly comment on the U.S. tariffs here. The present guidance numbers consider that FORVIA is going to cope with the already implemented tariffs. And both for the already implemented ones as well as the potentially to come tariffs, we have a very strong plan in place. We are preparing to protect FORVIA from financial damage. And for that, we will take internal measures and also work with our customers and our suppliers.
Based on these market assumptions, we arrive at the following guidance. We expect the 2025 sales to be between EUR 26.3 billion and EUR 27.5 billion. The lower end of this range corresponds pretty much to that - 2%, minus 200 basis points decline in our regional mix. Then we see the upside to that. However, we are remaining very well-positioned in China. And as I said before, we will see market outperformance with the new program launches over there. Next, getting to the operating margin, we are increasing our margin to a range expected 5.2%-6.0%. As you can see, in a steady market and against a decline in our regional mix, we will strive to reverse our margin trajectory and grow margin. More specifically, we are going to benefit from our focus on operational excellence. I talked about that one and initiatives such as EU-FORWARD .
Then going to the net cash flow, we expect to reach at least the 2024 level, which is EUR 655 million. This will be achieved through the margin expansion for once and then through continuous focus on CapEx reductions and inventory management. These figures then lead to a leverage ratio of 1.8 times, and this is in fact before any disposals. To support the continued leveraging of the company, the board of directors has decided to propose to the shareholders' meeting not to pay any dividend in 2025. It's also to be stated very clearly that myself and the group, we stay fully committed to restructuring and restoring a solid balance sheet. And the objective is to further reduce the leverage ratio to one and a half times. We will reach that in 2026, supported by additional asset disposals. So let me sum up.
2024, FORVIA has proven resilient performance in a difficult environment, and I have to say for 2025, I am perfectly confident that we have been putting the right focus, the right focus, and the right initiatives in place to deliver on our plan, and on a personal note, to finish up this part, Patrick, I'm again very excited about taking over, and I'm super motivated to lead FORVIA to new heights, and that is going to happen together with our very strong global teams. Thank you very much. That brings us to the Q&A session.
Thank you. Hi, Michael Foundoukidis from ODDO BHF. A couple of questions, so maybe one by one, it's easier for you. First, on disposals and on the core portfolio that you mentioned, could you be a bit more specific about what you mean by core?
Is any of the six, let's say, business unit disposal out of the equation, or maybe it could come? Thanks. First question.
So first question concerning the disposals. We have quite a few disposal processes in the making, and they are ongoing as we speak. And what I am doing and preparing with the team in parallel is also a mid- and long-term strategy. So when I say core, that refers to who are we going to be in 5- 10 years. So with the first and best in priority to deleverage, those already ongoing disposal processes stay on track. And I will be very happy within my first year at the helm of FORVIA, then also come to a Capital Market Day and explain a bit better what is that mid- to long-term strategy and what is that new core going to be about.
I think, Martin, that are also considered sizable disposals.
Thank you. Maybe second question on the free cash flow, Olivier. On 2025, I mean, could you be a bit more specific on working cap and maybe factoring tailwinds that you would expect? Could quantify a bit.
So in 2024, so you see the contribution of the working capital as a whole was EUR 600 million, and three quarters of it was inventories. The payables actually were negative in 2024 given the evolution of the sales and the activity in monoliths. So we had a negative of EUR 200 million. So what it means is that really working capital, inventories, and solid customer collection on the receivables. What can you expect in 2025 is still a contribution from working capital between EUR 200 million and EUR 300 million, and it will be from product inventories.
As other companies, we have a context in which we can continue to reduce and streamline the operations and further reduce inventories, which is good twice. It's good first time in terms of cash flow, but it's also reducing the cost of operation, logistics, and the like. So that will be for 2025.
Factoring.
And on the factoring, so the factoring was down EUR 33 million last year, just below EUR 1.3 billion, and EUR 1.3 billion is our cap, and we remain so in 2025.
Okay, thanks. Maybe last questions on margin development in 2025. So it seems that the year should be relatively back and loaded. Could you confirm that even in the first half, we would be within the guidance range, especially given the margin in Europe in H2 last year, which was down significantly? Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you.
Let me give it some color.
So coming into FORVIA and looking at the year with all its uncertainty, what we started, what I started in December already is to say, let's collect enough targets and actions to counter any of the effects. Exactly to your point, how can we make sure we already get through the first semester strongly.
Hello, Thomas Besson, Kepler Cheuvreux. A few questions as well, please. I start with Olivier. Can we have a few more details on your assumptions for free cash flow in 2025? Your financing and restructuring outflows increased by EUR 70 million to, I think, a big figure in 2024. Do you expect this figure to go up again? I think the restructuring outflows are probably going up, but do you think you can take down the financing outflows or not? That's the first question. The second also on free cash flow.
Can you share with us your plan for CapEx that you managed to take down EUR 170 million in 2024? Do you think you can manage to maintain that here or take it down further? That was the first topic. I'll come back for the other questions.
So the two are connected. So let me start with the CapEx. So you see that we still have EUR 2 billion of CapEx between the tangible CapEx and the R&D capitalization. You will see a further reduction of the tangible CapEx in 2025, and you will see the beginning of reduction of R&D capitalization with the actions we are doing in the context of EU-FORWARD . You have a reduction of gross spending, so you should have a reduction of the R&D capitalization. I'm anticipating an improvement in the order of EUR 100 million on the combination.
The second driver on the net cash flow will be the increase of the EBITDA on the back of what we mentioned in terms of the operating margin. The magnitude will depend within the guidance, but this is a contributor. You remember that in 2024, we had, in fact, no increase of EBITDA. The third item, of course, restructuring will be a bit higher, taking the conversion in cash of the actions that have been launched. Let me highlight maybe once again that part of the restructuring charges that we got in 2024 were non-cash, EUR 108 million out of EUR 362 million, just that for the modeling, we are not translating all in full in cash. On the financing side, we expect to have a slight reduction.
This is a combination of what we are doing in the context of the debt evolution, but also actions on reduction of the gross debt in order to have a better effectiveness of our cash, and finally, besides the working capital inventory, you have seen that we have a line of other operational, EUR 157 million. This is an abnormal level. This is a bit connected to what you saw in the P&L in other non-recurring items. We should be returning to a more normal level of the past years, which is a 100 million good guy.
Maybe if I can add, basically for the CapEx reduction, that's a highly operational topic for us. So we have quite a few areas where we can further improve, and it starts really in the design where we are going much more into platform design, which makes CapEx reusable.
We are seeing that we have to contract our capacities in Europe, and we can repurpose existing equipment, and last but not least, we will also look into a very effective procurement of equipment at places where it's the most cost-efficient, so it's a good financial answer, Olivier, and it means we activate our tools as well.
Thank you. Another topic for you, Olivier. Can you share with us how much you benefited from lower electronic component costs in 2024 and in H2 in particular, and what you are assuming in terms of net benefit for FORVIA in 2025?
We add some reduction, which are slowly flowing to the P&L given inventory aspect, so you should see more benefits of this in 2025 than in 2024.
We had an increase of between 15% and 20% during the last years, and we saw an improvement of about 5% in 2024.
Thank you. Last question, maybe more for Martin and Patrick. Do you see any easy wins in terms of disposal? I mean, I think you keep on mentioning for a few years now that your profitability ex-hydrogen is double-digit in the exhaust business. For instance, is there any way for you to potentially exit this business to remove a few tens of million euro of annual outflows? Do you see potentially an easy disposal from all or part of the L life cycle business, or do you think of potentially, I think that was already Michael's question, so I'm not sure I understood the answer, the possibility of selling all or part of one of your divisions? Thank you.
Yeah, Patrick alluded to it, that at this point in time, we look at sizable business for disposal, and I think that's important for us to get an advancement in it.
You mentioned a couple of areas that are always up for review. I want to comment specifically on the hydrogen one because I have received that question a couple of times. We have built a very strong position in our hydrogen offerings, and during my 100 days, I had the chance to visit the facilities, both on the R&D side and the manufacturing side, and we are ready for the market. It's also no secret the market is fairly slow due to missing infrastructure. There's no real regulation today that enforces it. So it is taking longer than anticipated originally for that market to occur, which means for us that we are adjusting our efforts, our spend, also our CapEx in that area to be ready for the market, but not overly investing anymore.
Thank you.
Maybe one compliment to make.
You know that historically, when we mentioned about this second wave of disposal, we said small shareholding, small verticalized business, and capital opening. We are going beyond that, especially on the aspect of capital opening, which I think is partly answering your question.
Good morning, Stephen Benhamou from BNP Paribas Exane. I got two questions. The first one is on the outperformance. So previously, sorry, you've mentioned that you were anticipating above 300 basis points of outperformance in China thanks to the rebalancing of your client's portfolio. Do you confirm this objective now? And the second question is about coming back to the restructuring and the savings. Can you please help us to understand the phasing of the savings in 2025, 2026, and 2027, please? Thanks.
Yeah, for the outperformance in China, you had seen us be not fully there in 2024, and we communicated that this had to do with the customers and in particular their new product launches. So they are taking place now in 2025 with a good push into H2, half two in particular. So yes, we are going to see outperformance in China in 2025 as per the current expectation.
Maybe for 2024, and especially for China, the few parameters which are explaining the underperformance. First, we had a trade-off negotiation with BYD, where we negotiated market share versus margin, China versus international development. We achieved a good negotiation, we believe, and we will see the benefit of it in 2025. In 2024, we were penalized with Li Auto and with Chery with late SOPs. We will in 2025 benefit from the ramp-up of these SOPs.
Finally, in 2024, the volumes of the international OEM penalized us, and more specifically HELLA, and we will see how this will evolve. We are confident about our outperformance in China.
Olivier, before going into the numbers, I would also like to comment on our EU- FORWARD program. I consider that most important that we adjust both capacities and cost position in Europe to the realities of the marketplace. What Patrick started is going to be continued and boosted, and I want to front-load the efforts. That is what you then also see in terms of profitability early on and cash impact. Olivier, maybe you want to comment a bit more specifically.
Yeah, thank you, Martin.
We had 2.9 thousand headcount reduction announced at the end of last year, and this is representing P&L savings of EUR 140 million on an annualized basis. You can expect most of it to flow to the P&L in 2025. In 2026, we expect on the back of the cumulated reduction of headcount of 5.7 thousand, cumulated savings of EUR 300 million on an annualized basis. You can expect also, let's say, the majority of it flowing to the P&L in 2026 versus the starting point.
In 2024, the year where we launched the initiative, the people left the company late in the year. It's clearly, it will not be the case in 2025. We will have something which will be much more progressive, much more balanced, sorry, during the year.
I said it, we have announced 2,900 job reductions, and effective 2,500 people have left the company until the end of the year 2024.
Thank you. Maybe one follow-up question on the disposal program. So you were initially anticipating EUR 750 million cash in H2. I guess that given the new guidance, this objective is now outdated. The second point is the fact that you were anticipating 1.5 times net debt to EBITDA end of 2025 instead of end of 2026. How should we understand this update? Does it mean that negotiations are tougher, potentially in terms of price? How should we understand this postponed objective? Thanks.
I will let my colleagues answer. You have noticed that it's below 1.5 times in the presentation.
Yeah, we are moving full speed on those projects and those asset disposals.
And at the same time, I want to give a cautious, realistic timing to it. And I believe that serves us very well. Also, when you think about a sales process, that a bit of leeway in a negotiation is helpful. But no change from the direction, full speed. And with what we said about the sizable disposals, Patrick's comment is very relevant. The big ones would lead us beyond or below the 1.5 times.
And the size implies also some additional timing or planning for carve-outs.
Do we have questions on the chat?
Yes, sir. The first question comes from José Asumendi JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. José from JP Morgan. Patrick, all my very best wishes. I had just one question for you and then a couple to Martin, but also related.
When we look at the business and the margins by region, in Europe, it looks like that at the end of the day, where margins need to go higher, right? But production still is obviously below the 2018, 2019 peak levels. From your perspective, do you think production at some point in Europe will recover to higher levels from a macro overall market perspective? And what do you think will take to move production in Europe to higher levels? And do you think there's an opportunity that maybe Chinese OEMs coming to Europe and start producing and that maybe that may help to see that increase in production in the European market? And then second, Martin, welcome. A couple of questions, please.
Just related to Europe, and if production in Europe does not rebound, what kind of restructuring measures do you think the business needs in Europe to leave margins above 5%? Because with the current margins, it's difficult to see the business is generating cash in Europe, and I'm sure there are plans to enhance this profitability. Thank you.
Thank you, so I'm not sure I've perfectly understood the question. I'm sorry, but I will try to make an answer and hope it will hit your demand, so the first thing is that Europe is a mature market and we do not expect in Europe more than 16 million vehicles being produced, and yes, we expect the Chinese to come to Europe and to settle in Europe. This is an advantage for us, or at least it's an opportunity for us. We are their partners in China.
We are number five in China, and for them, it's complex to settle in Europe for many different reasons, and they don't want to add to the existing complexity the renewal of their supplier panel, and especially with people who might not speak Chinese. So they are considering us as Chinese in China. They are considering us as their established partner, understanding them, speaking the language, acting at the speed they are used to and they need to. So I think that this is the reason why with BYD, but also with Chery, we got awarded recently businesses in Europe. Now, what I would like also to say is we have another advantage. We know how it works in China. We know the speed. We know how to deal with a market which is more fragmented because of the number of OEMs in the domestic market.
We know how to manage the upfronts. I spoke about reduced upfronts. This is absolutely critical. We need to be able to develop in a much shorter period of time, less than 20 months. We need platforms inside the Tier 1s in order to be able to respond to this request of speed, and we are ready for that, and we will be able to do this also in Europe. Have I answered your question? I don't know.
I was spot on. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
All right, then let me comment also on the EU dynamics and what that means for FORVIA. I mean, we have with EU- FORWARD really structured a good framework for the restructuring it takes, and I want us to utilize and exploit that framework.
So the way it works is that our business groups have fully accepted the challenge that we are up against. And it goes in two directions. It is about capacity and an existing surplus of capacity since the market has contracted. But it's also about cost competition and efficiency in what we do. So the way we handle that is that our business groups in an empowered and agile way decide on how we have to adjust the capacities. And there's clearly one direction, right? It's reducing capacity. But there's also anecdotally situations where we change directions. For instance, now with our Chinese customers coming over to Europe, they go into places and buy plants of formerly Western customers of ours. And we figure out in just in sequence, just in time situations that some of our established plants in Western Europe now have a new purpose.
So you can see we need again that empowerment of our business groups to react what's needed for them to be competitive in business.
Thank you. As a quick follow-up, Martin, do you think the definition of core and non-core assets within the business may change in the future?
That's definitely part of the strategic review. And yes, there's a couple of criteria that we apply. Where is the growth and revenue pools for our future core? Where are our competencies? Where are our synergies? We want to build that. And at the same time, we have that urgency to really deleverage and go through the disposals. So both those strategic elements and the disposal elements will get together to define the future core.
I'm very happy to exchange on that one with our investors within my first year through the Capital Markets Day that we are setting up.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Michael Niedzielski from ROCE Capital . Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi . Can you all hear me?
Yeah. Yeah, we can.
I have a couple of questions. The first one is on the margin guidance. You weren't 5.2% this year, and you're guiding for 5.2%-6%, so mid-range 5.6%, which is a 40 basis points margin expansion at mid-range. If I do the math, you have between the synergies at HELLA that you should extract this year, like another EUR 70 million, and the cost savings in Europe, which is an extra EUR 125 million, between those two, that's 70 basis points.
Then if I include the currency positive impact that you mentioned earlier, that's another 10 basis points. So in total, that's 80 basis points. So technically, if I just do the math from those mechanical factors, we should go from 5.2%- 6% at the very top end of your range. So the mid-range implies a margin contraction, which I would love for you to comment on.
Yeah, let me start a little technically how we build that guidance. You could see already on the sales guidance that this year we use a larger range to prepare and anticipate uncertainties in the market. We started with the low point, the 5.2%, attaching that to the low point of sales as well, shows you that even though we would be EUR 700 million lower in revenue than in 2024, we would be able to hold the same margin.
You can do a walk to this as well. And some of the elements you mentioned are going to play into that. From there, the work starts, right? From here, the initiatives kick in and synergies, as you referred to, kick in. And I have all the aspiration in the world to challenge the organization to go to the higher end of the range. But you will also understand, being new in the role, getting into the company, I'm cautiously guiding the market to what I think is possible. And one last word to your question on currencies. You mentioned there should be also some tailwind. We are guiding at constant currency when you go from 2024 to 2025, constant exchange rates. That's why you don't see that being mapped into the guidance.
Okay.
I think we need to say.
Sorry, it's you who is considering the midpoint of the guidance.
Okay. No, I mean, that's what it doesn't mean that it's undertaken when you give a range. People usually go for the mid-range. But hopefully, you can get towards the top of the range, if not higher. My second question on the free cash flow. So you've got it for an increase free cash flow in 2024, and you were at 650 or 664, I can't remember exactly, in 2024, including working capital, but excluding the payment of leases. I understand that the working capital benefits, because in 2024, pretty much all the free cash flow was generated from working capital. If we didn't have the working capital benefits, we would have been in a cash burn situation.
I understand we're going to have further working capital benefits this year, but I think you mentioned something like around EUR 300 million, which leaves a gap of an extra EUR 300 million, at least, maybe actually even like EUR 350 million. At the mid-range, if we take, again, of your guidance, if we take your 40 basis points of margin expansion, that's EUR 100 million. Even at the top of the range, if we take 0.8 at 6%, that's EUR 200 million, which implies still like a EUR 100 million shortfall in order to have a free cash flow that's going to be higher in 2025 than in 2024. So can you help me understand, reconcile this guidance on the free cash flow, please?
Let me take this one. I will start with the EBITDA. We expect some evolution of the EBITDA, more or less important, depending on the margin. That's one.
The second is, as mentioned, CapEx plus capitalized R&D, at least EUR 100 million reduction. Third, indeed, working capital, not the same type of contribution, and let me highlight that I'm making a bit of a difference between receivable, payable evolution, and inventory reduction, given the benefits that it represents in terms of effectiveness and profitability of the company. And last item is this other operational item. You see that it was a negative EUR 157 million. This is EUR 100 million more than the previous year. It's EUR 100 million more than any recent period. We will return to normal, which is also a good guide. After, we are seeing EUR 100 million on the CapEx. If we can do better, we will do better, so you have this item of other operational that is to be taken into account.
Okay, and just a couple of questions or thoughts for Martin.
First of all, welcome, Martin. I'm a shareholder. We truly hope that you can bring some new momentum to the FORVIA story, which has been suffering hard since the HELLA acquisition. We obviously have a share price that is deeply depressed, down 80% since the acquisition was made. Today, FORVIA is a EUR 1.7 billion market cap for a company that is generating almost EUR 3 billion of revenues, obviously because of the balance sheet and the amount of debt, which in the market's eyes is too high. The company has been disappointing on free cash flow generation for the past two or three years. We are where we are. Obviously, a rights issue with the current market cap and the debt load would be massively dilutive and, in my opinion, hugely shareholder value destructive.
Can you just confirm to us that a rights issue is not an option you are considering to deliver the balance sheet faster?
Did you say an acquisition is not an option?
Capital increase.
And capital increase.
No, no, rights issue.
Rights issue.
Yeah.
No, that I can exclude. Short answer, that I can exclude.
100%.
Yes.
Okay. And talking about the disposals, because we have had, in the wording of the deleveraging, basically a pushback on the disposals by a year. I understand there needs to be some preparation before carve-out and all that, but you've been arguably working on those disposals for some time now. And I understand you're now considering potentially some bigger disposals. Can you just give us a bit more color on what could be the potential sizes of those bigger disposals?
Are we talking about something above EUR 1 billion potentially that could meaningfully help the balance sheet situation?
Yeah. No, I think that's how we characterize it as sizable. So that's definitely going beyond the scope of what you have seen from us in the last couple of years. And one comment you said, it takes preparation before you start carve-out. That's not our approach. Carve-outs are happening as we speak. So we are not waiting. We are not strategizing. We are moving.
Maybe since we have made this acquisition of HELLA, we have disposed for EUR 1.25 billion. And I feel good with what we did because we did it in good conditions from a deal point of view, but also from a strategy point of view. And if we speak about sizable disposals, yes, we speak about above EUR 1 billion.
Okay. And final question for me, for Martin.
You have a balance sheet today that, in my opinion, is quite inefficient with a lot of cash and a lot of debt. EUR 4.5 billion of cash is probably too much cash. If I compare those metrics versus your peers, I understand you need to have cash for the working capital cycles, but this seems too much. So can we expect you to repay some of the upcoming maturities with your cash balance, which would help reduce the financial expenses line, which is a huge drag on the free cash flow today, and which, frankly, has to come down at some point? So what are your thoughts on optimizing the balance sheet between the cash flow and the debt?
Yeah. Both are fully in focus. And I think we talked a lot about deleveraging and how both operational performance and disposals are going to feed that.
Then in terms of cash management, Olivier, I want you to talk a little bit about the activities we have launched a while ago.
So you are right. We will work more actively on using better this EUR 4.5 billion. You will see some significant evolution starting in 2025 to be, let's say, more balanced on this aspect. Yes, indeed, it will contribute to the reduction of the gross debt.
So is EUR 1 billion; can we expect the next EUR 1 billion of maturities, of debt maturities, to be paid with your existing cash, or that's too much?
You can expect a significant contribution of this, and you can expect us to be active in the market.
What does it mean to be active in the market? What I would want you to do is to reissue some more bonds or more debt instruments.
So staying on the gross cash, you can expect a meaningful reduction. And when you are talking about EUR 1 billion, I cannot commit on EUR 1 billion in 2025, but that's a good number to think about.
Okay. Okay. Thank you.
The last question for today comes from Christoph Laskawi from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Really not a lot left. One is a follow-up to the carve-out that you are currently undergoing. Are there any more significant costs already associated to that that you're incurring in 2025, or is it not yet really a headwind on the cost side? Because we know from peers it can actually be quite costly. A comment on that would be appreciated.
Then just because a competitor of yours or peer of yours commented on order cancellations last night, did you experience the same, or have you seen basically no or close to zero cancellations in the order book? Thank you.
Commenting on the carve-out costs first, there are two types, right? There is really the administrational, the process of preparing for the carve-out, and then at one point in time, there is a time to switch and say, "Now, it is really carved out." As you know, at that point in time, we will have implications from tax and so on. That is only going to be done when we have a clear deal in reach. We have considered all the running costs for these carve-outs into our guidance, so there is no downside from that.
About the cancellation, what I can tell you, in 2024, we haven't had any cancellation of awarded programs.
Thank you.
Yes. Hi, Michael. Sorry. Just one follow-up, still on the disposal. Sorry to insist. But regarding your HELLA stake, any consideration to reduce it a bit? And maybe more broadly, what do you consider as the minimum stake you need to hold in HELLA, given your organization today?
Yeah. We have reached at a very stable way of integrating, collaborating with HELLA. So at this point in time, we do not plan to change it in either way. We will keep the current setup and work our business.
Thank you.
Maybe we can take the one that is on the chat. Olivier, you can answer this.
Let me read the questions. Actually, there are several.
First question, can you please give us some color on your refinancing plans given the upcoming EUR 1 billion of maturities in 2026? The second one is, have you seen any change in patterns behavior from OEMs? The third one, you mentioned tariffs known as of today that are included in your guidance. Does that mean that Mexico, Canada tariffs only, or the risk of the 25% tariffs on other car imports as from April? Thank you.
What we can say is that we are domestic in the different regions. So we do not have significant exchanges between the regions. So the tariffs for us are concentrated or limited to what is happening in the Mexico-U.S. border. What it would mean for the car makers, it's a different story. And this is something we don't know today, as we don't know what the situation finally will be.
Important is our understanding of what are the potential risks. We have worked that down really to a part number level, and that's where the actions kick in, as we discussed earlier, with the customers, suppliers, and at the inside of FORVIA.
On the first part of the question, which was related to the refinancing, you have seen how we behaved last year. You can expect that we continue to do so. Let me highlight also that we don't have maturities until significant ones before June 2026. But we are focusing on this, and we are working also on the reduction of the gross debt, combination of the net cash flow, the disposal when they materialize and cashed in, and also what we mentioned briefly on gross cash management.
Do we have another question on the internet? Okay.
From Peter Rothenaicher, how should we think about one, the phasing conversion to P&L of the order intake of EUR 31 billion, two, order intake in 2025? The way we are dealing with this, I think the easiest way might be to tell you that we have about 1,000 programs running and that we have about 300-350 launches per year. In other words, our dashboard gets renewed between three to four years. This depends on the region. It's, of course, shorter in China, as described, and a little bit longer in Europe or in the U.S. For 2025, order intake?
It can't fall back. Keep growing. The aspiration is to have the same magnitude of new orders coming in in 2025.
Martin said it. I just would like to underline it. We have no red dot with one given customer.
We are today in a very clean situation and working with very positive relationships with our customers. The order intake is a proof of that, and especially the capacity we have to simultaneously improve the margin and to reduce the upfront.
We have another question here. What are our main competitors in China? Are you seeing a growth of Chinese auto parts companies? Being in China means being fully exposed to the market with all its opportunities, but also being exposed to local competitors. You know both the OEMs do in-house supply, and we have local Chinese companies doing that. This is, for us at FORVIA, a really healthy situation because it challenges us. I like that challenge in order to develop and further develop our competitiveness.
And some of the order intake that you have seen, some of the launches we go through, prove that we are competitive. And I love seeing us carrying that competitiveness, also the innovation we get in the China market back to other parts in the world. And that's a new thing. That's a new thing also for FORVIA organization to say, "Hey, we are not sending only from, let's say, Europe into the world, but now we are receiving. We are receiving the way to work. We are receiving good technology. And we follow customers coming from China to Europe and elsewhere in the world." So I'm really glad we have that strong base in China. And yes, we pick the challenge. We take the challenge, and we'll be conquering there.
Again, we are number seven globally, number five in China, and growing fast, profitable in China.
So it means that we face competition. I also would like to tell you that we have moved the Clarion headquarters to Shanghai. That since the beginning of this year, we have in our executive team four members from Asia, out of which three are from China. So I think that for us, Asia is a reality and a good, positive, opportunistic reality. We don't have questions anymore? Good. So this will allow me to close this meeting. I would like; it's my last one, at least with FORVIA. So I would like to thank you for your support during all these years. And I would like also to tell you that, and it's important when you pass the relay to your successor, that you feel comfortable, confident that we will further progress in the years to come. And I'm sure that with Martin, we have the right leader.
Thank you, Martin.
Oh, thank you, Patrick. So, ladies and gentlemen, brings me to the end of the first call. And I look forward to our continuous and continued exchange. So I also look forward to hearing you. You are guiding us too. The way we guide you, you guide us through your questions and comments. And that's very valuable. So thank you for that. And last, not least, a big thank you to the team here in the room for organizing and running that whole event so smoothly. Thank you.