Good morning. This is the conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Forvia 2026 Q1 Sales conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Martin Fischer, Chief Executive Officer of Forvia. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah. Thank you very much, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today for our Q1 2026 sales call, which I am presenting as usual, together with our CFO, Olivier Durand. I'll start by sharing our first quarter highlights, and then Olivier will walk you through the details of Q1 sales. In the end, I'll wrap up with the outlook for the full year 2026. Let's get started looking at our three strategic priorities. We started executing on our IGNITE program that we presented at CMD, and I am pleased to report progress in all three priorities that support the plan. Let's start off with performance. In the current situation, our business portfolio proves to be really resilient because we are in a context of declining market volumes across all regions, and we experience unfavorable customer mix.
You'll be seeing from Olivier's presentations how our sales hold up. Also, we continue to manage our business with discipline in terms of fixed cost reduction and offsetting our cost inflation. Second pillar, transformation. We make further progress when it comes to the Interiors divestitures, which we expect to materialize in the near future. Also we expect the metrics of the deal to be in line with what we presented at CMD. You heard about the net debt reduction of EUR 1 billion and the effect of that expected to be EUR 1.4 billion. The second one that has been very important over the last months is the attention of the HELLA leadership team to the Lighting turnaround, both in terms of top and bottom line. I will explain more details in just a moment. Last but not least, invigorating our culture. Also here, good progress.
Our project SIMPLIFY is on track. The processes are being streamlined and waste is being taken out. Here our finance team around Olivier set a strong example by simplifying our reporting week over week, month over month, and by taking unnecessary loops out of our approval processes. Along the same lines, we have also eliminated layers out of our organization, and we optimized the span of control of our leaders. Last but not least, we also push our new leadership model, Guide & Empower, Recognize. The new management principles and the behaviors that go with it are now being rolled out by leaders that are getting into trainers' roles, so that turns out to be very effective in terms of driving that culture throughout the entire organization. As announced at CMD, we target geographic and customer mix expansion to drive the scale of our strong businesses.
Here are some important wins that I want to report out from the first quarter. Looking at India, our objective remains to double the sales by 2030 from the EUR 0.45 billion that we had in 2025. Our first very good award to mention is Seating. Remember, we have already been present in seating and building mechanisms in India, and now we have secured the first major complete seat program with an international OEM in the Chennai region. Also, in the Clean Mobility business group, we can report two exhaust system wins. One is for a Korean OEM and the second one is for Mahindra in India. The latter one is particularly positive because it's in the commercial vehicle segment, so we have basically a double diversification. One is into India and again into the commercial vehicle segment as well.
Looking into China, we keep diversifying our customer base with significant orders from six major Chinese OEMs. I want to give you a couple of examples. We secured Lighting business with Geely, Seating business with Changan, and various businesses in Chery. Chery is gonna take us both for their Chinese operations and their new operations in Spain. In fact, we just signed another strategic cooperation agreement with Chery that is now expanding the scope of our collaboration also to the HELLA businesses of Electronics and Lifecycle Solutions. Third column here, let's focus on the product side. We scored with Interior Monitoring Systems, which we explained to be an important element of our in-cabin electronics and therefore belongs to our key growth drivers in Electronics. Here we secured two contracts, both for a major OEM in Europe and another one in the United States.
I can state IGNITE is on the move, and the growth drivers that we presented at the CMD started to materialize in the quarter one order intake. Let's have a look at the transformation program in lighting. FORVIA HELLA is and remains the undisputed tech leader with a complete product range. However, the organic sales declined by around 7% in Q1 2026. Extending the trend that was observed since H2 2024. This development has obvious implications on profitability as well. The transformation program that we started is now under implementation with the new management. You got to know Peter Laier, the new FORVIA HELLA CEO, during CMD, and Joan Mola joined as the new management board member in charge of lighting since March 1st. He comes in with a broad experience in automotive lighting and puts that to work right away.
The program that he is pursuing is built on two pillars. We want to drive top-line growth, and that is enabled by streamlining our cost base. First of all, we can leverage our premium tech position, and then we reposition the business to address the volume segment and to further diversify the client base. All this is, as I said, strongly enabled through a performance plan that optimizes both the R&D cost and the plant performance. We had in Q1 already, again, we reported out also for Q4 last year, we had again key awards for headlamp packages. These are reflective of mass market models, both in the United States and in Europe, as well as for Geely. We can confirm the effectiveness of the approach already through these order intakes.
We will be seeing a progressive recovery across the business and, beginning with H2 2026, we'll also see that in the bottom line. Today is, in fact, the first time that we structure our actual numbers into growth and value clusters. I just want to briefly remind you what we have done. We structured the portfolio into growth and value divisions. On the growth side, we have Electronics and Seating. Remember, those are well-growing market segments, and we have strong positions. We have a good right to win. For Electronics and Seating, the priorities are to lead through technology, intensify the growth through diversifying the customer base, and work with partners to also push growth forward. On that side, we are ready to invest in a disciplined manner.
Then on the other hand, there's a good complement in the value cluster, where we collect Clean Mobility, Lifecycle Solutions, Lighting, and Clarion. The focus clearly goes towards performance, cash, and value generation. Clean Mobility, Lifecycle Solutions remain to stand for an outstanding cash quality. With Lighting and Clarion, we are in turnarounds with subsequent growth opportunities. Again, this segmentation gives us clarity and focus for our future capital allocation and therefore also for an optimized value creation. With this structure in mind, I would like to hand over to Olivier for the Q1 sales presentation.
Thank you, Martin, and good morning to everyone. In the next few minutes, I will show you the main Q1 performance takeaways. Let me start by a reminder that all the numbers that we are showing are under the application of the IFRS 5 accounting standards, which is requiring, in fact, the reclassification of Interiors as discontinued activity, given the plan divestiture that we are into. Consequently, the Q1 sales that we are showing, whether it is for 2025 retrospectively or 2026, are presented without Interiors. Moving to the numbers themselves, we report first quarter sales of EUR 5.135 billion. This is fully in line with our full year guidance of EUR 20 billion-EUR 21 billion at constant exchange rates and is confirming a solid start of the year.
The Q1 numbers includes a significant Forex exchange headwind of 4.3%, which is primarily driven by the depreciation of the US dollar, the renminbi, and the yen compared to Q1 2025. Now, we expect, given the evolution of exchange rates, that those currency effects will ease significantly in the second quarter. Let me remind you that, in fact, our business operates basically locally. We buy and sell basically the same currencies, so therefore, changes in currencies have very limited impact on margin. Now, on an organic basis, sales have been lower by 2.2%, which compare favorably to the underlying automotive market volume, which has been estimated to be down by 3.4% with the major regions, in fact, in contraction. In short, we have achieved an outperformance of 120 basis points in the first quarter.
Now looking at the performance by region, Forvia delivered growth and outperformance across all geographies, with the exception of China. In Europe, our growth was primarily driven by Electronics, Clarion, and Clean Mobility, reflecting both solid commercial momentum and a favorable product mix. In North America, we also recorded strong dynamics, particularly in Electronics and Clean Mobility, given the evolution in terms of electrification. Asia presents a more contrasted picture. On the one hand, in China, we recorded an underperformance of 14 points versus market volume, primarily driven by our customer mix, with the 30% decline of BYD production. BYD volumes are expected to stabilize from the second quarter, and we have already taken the necessary measures to adapt our cost base and protect our performance in the country, and we continue the diversification of our presence in China.
On the other hand, we continue to expand in the rest of this big region with an increase of 11% year-on-year, supported by a very solid quarter in Electronics and Clarion, and to a lesser extent, in Seating. As you know, we have big ambition in the region, in particular with the development of India. Now, I will move in fact to the performance by businesses, starting with the Growth cluster. As Martin mentioned earlier, the group strategy is now built around two clusters with a different capital allocation accordingly, Value and Growth. We have updated, as a consequence, our presentation of sales, and you will see in the final slides, in the semi-annual and annual results, also the totality of the presentation adjusted for this.
HELLA Electronics and Clarion are no longer reported as a single segment, given the different approach taken for the different parts of the business. The HELLA Electronics business has been allocated to the growth cluster and named Electronics. Clarion has been allocated to the value cluster and will be shown in the next page. Now on the growth cluster. As throughout 2025, Electronics remained a key growth driver for the group in Q1, delivering 8.2% organic growth, i.e., more than 10% outperformance versus the market, well-balanced across Europe, North America, and Asia. Performance was driven by radar sensors, energy management components, and low-voltage management systems. Looking at Seating, the organic sales decline of 11%, which was expected, was essentially driven by the unfavorable customer mix in China that I mentioned earlier. We expect a gradual improvement over the year.
In all, the organic evolution of this cluster, which stood at -5.8% in Q1, will also improve in the next quarter given the evolution in Seating and the continuation of the growth in Electronics. Moving on to the value cluster. Sales increased by 2.1% in the quarter on an organic basis, which is a good performance, clearly, compared to market volume, which I remind you were lower in Q1. Our two strong cash contributors, Clean Mobility and Lifecycle Solutions, both delivered a solid start of the year. Clean Mobility continued to benefit from renewed opportunities in the ICE segment in North America, as well as the ongoing ramp-up of a business takeover that we did last year in Europe, which annualize in the second quarter. Lifecycle Solutions delivered strong growth driven by solid performance in specialty original equipment markets, notably in trucks, buses, and agriculture.
Activity was also supported by the expansion of its spare parts offering to the thermal management business. Looking at the two other activities, we have a mixed picture. Lighting recorded a sales decline of 7.3% organically in Q1 as the business continues to reposition its product offering and strengthen its competitiveness to return to growth, as highlighted by Martin earlier on. Conversely, Clarion recorded a major double-digit growth across all regions, primarily driven by Japanese OEMs. Now let me go a bit further on the progress of our Interiors divestiture. As Martin alluded to, discussion with several buyers for the sale of our Interiors business have kept progressing, with terms fully in line with what we shared and committed at the CMD. We confirm an expected net debt reduction of at least EUR 1 billion.
Given the cash position of certain subsidiary within this business group, and the simplification from a cash management that this operation will entail, we expect the gross debt reduction actually to exceed EUR 1.4 billion. This is the relevant metric when we consider the reduction in financial cost, because it will allow to eliminate, in fact, gross debt at this level. On a run-rate basis, we expect the transaction to allow a reduction of EUR 50 million-EUR 70 million in financial expenses on an annual basis, i.e., starting from next year. Combined with the expected organic cash flow generation in 2026, we expect the net debt reduction to get to a situation of EUR 4.5 billion at year-end, i.e., a reduction year-on-year of EUR 1.5 billion.
This will support the restoration of the Forvia financial structure with a leverage ratio at 1.5 x at the end of the year, i.e., a division of the leverage by two compared to the time of the acquisition, and the same in terms of net debt evolution. On these notes, I turn back to Martin.
Thank you, Olivier. Let's look forward into 2026. In the context of Middle East crisis, it is clear that we face uncertainties on volumes as well. It is difficult to fully assess the impact for the full year. At this point in time, it is positive that the customer call-offs are stable. We saw the recent downgrade from S&P, where they have taken global automotive production down to 91.4 million. That's a delta of 750,000 vehicles in the year. The declines are expected across all key production regions, Europe, North America, and China. It is important. In spite of this expected softening, we confirm our 2026 sales guidance. We continue to carefully monitor the development and are fully prepared with mitigation strategies for various scenarios. What really matters to me is that we have all measures in place to also offset cost inflation.
First of all, we have limited direct exposure to inflationary pressures. For example, our energy costs are at 1% of sales. That's primarily on power, on electricity, and we are hedged at more than 70% for the year 2026. Raw material price increases are contained with contractual indexation mechanisms. As in all the other crises and inflationary situations of the past years, we have the objective to fully mitigate cost increases through, on the one hand, supply chain optimizations, and then on the other hand, through pass-through of any remaining cost effects to our customers. In any case, we proactively strengthen our cost position. When you look at the key programs, EU-FORWARD and SIMPLIFY, both of them are on track, and we expect incremental savings of EUR 110 million in 2026. Also, we cut additional indirect costs and maximize our cost flexing measures.
That's important to be prepared for possible volume decline. Last but not least, once more, I would like to also refer to our Lighting turnaround plan. When we take these developments into account, I'm very confident in confirming our 2026 guidance. Q1 has been in line with our expectations, and we have strongly mobilized our organization to mitigate the effects in the current environment. Therefore, we remain to look at sales of EUR 20 billion-EUR 21 billion at constant exchange rates. Our operating margin is going to be between 6%-6.5% for the full year. We expect net cash flow of at least 3.0%, and as Olivier explained, the leverage ratio will land at 1.5 times before and after a possible divestiture of Interiors. Thank you very much, and now we are happy to take your questions.
Thank you, sir. Excuse me, this is the conference operator. We will now begin the question- and- answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. To remove your question, please press star and two. Please pick up the receiver when asking questions. The first question comes from Christoph Laskawi of Deutsche Bank.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one, it's just a clarification question on your comments on Interiors. So I assume you don't want to be more precise what the near future means, assuming it's the next couple of months. You are expecting the cash in for the transaction also to happen in 2026, right? If you just could confirm that. The second question would be, just on Seating. Obviously, that led to the growth cluster not growing in Q1, and you already indicated that the next quarters will improve. Could you be more precise, in the sense that when do you expect that to turn back or return to organic growth?
Obviously, the comp base gets far easier in the quarters ahead, but are there any milestones, SOPs or so that would drive it up to organic growth and potentially also stronger outperformance that you can flag already today? Thank you.
Yeah. Good morning, Christoph. Thanks for the two questions. Let me start with Interiors. You see, we obviously take the time needed to conclude those discussions in our best interest. Yes, near term, we are not going to qualify any further. I dare to say it's not months and months anymore. When it comes to the cash intake, yes, we still expect that to go into the numbers of 2026. The debt reductions that Olivier showed are expected to happen within this fiscal year framework, 2026. When it comes to the Seating growth, yes, the current weakness is due to predominantly the customer mix in China. BYD sales are down by about 30%, and this being our biggest customer in China has an impact, and that's why we don't see growth right now in Seating.
Your question targets in the right direction. How is that going to change going forward? We have secured, in the meantime, quite a few new orders for Seating, and a number of them is going to launch already in H2 this year. A number of them is also with BYD, because with BYD, through our strong partnership, we always have agreed on a share of their book of business and seats. We are compensating for what is missing. Here's really interesting launches coming, because you know that BYD is bringing up new battery technology, and we are going to be on models in H2, like the Denza D9, the Song Plus, that comes with the new battery technology for ultra-long range and ultra-fast charging. This will help us to bring Seating back to growth.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your touch-tone telephone. Gentlemen, at this time, there are no questions on the conference call.
Good. If no other questions, then I would like to thank you. Sorry, we have a question on the chat, too. We go for that one.
Let me read. It's coming from Ross McDonald, and there are three questions. The first question, the organic decline in the growth cluster of -5.8% in Q1 2026 was well flagged on BYD headwinds in seating. How should we think about the organic growth for this cluster for the full year? Is there a reported revenue number we should think about as a target for 2026 baked into the 2026 guidance? Question two, given the economic uncertainty and given your guidance assume no further deterioration in the macroeconomic environment, are you able to give some sensitivity to the full year guidance if we see further LVP reduction? What will it take on the volume side to take us to the low ends of the 2026 guidance corridor, and at what level of volumes will take us below the current guidance corridor on sales and margin?
The third question, can you comment on the recent business wins with Chery and Geely? Are these skewed to your growth segment in Electronics and Seating? How should we think about the overall magnitude of these business wins from a euro value point, order book perspective?
Good. Ross, I'm not sure you're listening. Going in any case, I would start then from the business side and the order intakes in China. You heard me talk about new Chery businesses. Yes, that is part of the new collaboration agreement we have with Chery, that we are now picking up Electronics sales there. We talked about new businesses also in the Seating area. Again, they are not only with BYD, but particularly important to mention that we have business coming up here with Changan as well. Yes, we are kicking businesses into our growth cluster. How to quantify them? Every single deal in these businesses you can consider are in a couple of EUR 100 million in lifetime sales. Then this has to be accumulated, obviously. Maybe, Olivier, you take the question on the sales guidance.
Yeah.
the sensitivity around that.
Happy to. First off, I would like to say that we are currently, in fact, in a favorable side of our guidance from a revenue standpoint as we speak for the year. Let's say that it gives a certain margin of maneuver on the revenue side in the guidance. The calculation is then fairly easy to do in terms of sensitivity from a revenue standpoint versus evolution of the market. Let me complement that by the fact that in Q1, we have not seen particularly any impacts, headwinds on the revenue standpoint. Actually, the month of March was, in fact, even a bit better than what we anticipated before. That's the data so far in Q2 are not showing any major evolution.
Having said that, we are applying to this volatility and uncertainty, in fact, what we did in previous crises, and I would like in particular to highlight what we did, in the case of the tariffs. Two topics were existing, and they are the same here. One is inflation effect, because tariffs is inflation. The second was the risk of volume decline. On the inflation, we did that last time. We are doing the same. We are doing the maximum on our side in terms of what we can do to mitigate, in fact, those elements. We have done hedging on electricity. We are looking at the options in terms of the raw material. We complement that with pass-through, in fact, of this inflation to customers. They are, in fact, formulas for a lot of it, and it will be completed with the necessary negotiation.
You remember that we recover in tariffs more than 90%. I think it's basically the type of goal that we have for this one, this evolution as well. Related to volume uncertainty and risk of a volume drop, we have put in place what is necessary in terms of discretionary spending, cost base, and flexing the cost to face that, if and when it materializes. Now, we confirm the guidance, and we confirm also that given where we are in terms of revenues, we have a certain flexibility in case actually the volume of production is getting lower.
Good. Thank you, Olivier. Last question was on how are we going to return to growth in the growth cluster. Indeed, we are very confident to show growth in the growth cluster over time. That's where we already did 8% growth in that quarter in Electronics in a declining market. In Seating, which is penalized by the specific situation in China, is expected to restore growth gradually as well in the first step with these new launches I quoted.
Excuse me, Mr. Fischer, would you like to take a question from the conference call?
Yeah, absolutely.
We do have Stephen Reitman of Bernstein.
Yes. Good morning, everybody. Thank you. Two questions, please, about China and also the Chinese manufacturers' progress in Europe. First of all, in China, could you comment again on what you're seeing in terms of payment terms from some of the key customers, in particular BYD, and if the pressure on them to make more reasonable payment terms are actually. There's some visibility on that. Secondly, on your exposure to the Chinese, with their plans in Europe as well. Obviously, you've talked in the past about BYD. Obviously, we've seen in March the Chinese getting to about a 9.4% share of the overall market, about almost 150,000 sales, apparently, according to the data from Dataforce. I just really want to see how you think about your exposure to the Chinese as they expand in Europe as well, and to their local operations. Thank you.
Yeah. Morning, Stephen. Very good questions around China here. We don't see any change on the payment terms with our Chinese customers on average. We remain in the same position that we mirror those terms also with our supply base. Now, no change in any of our working capital effects therefore. When it comes to the second question around exposure to the Chinese customers selling in Europe, first of all, we see that a good part of these volumes still arrive from China in the form of vehicles. Yeah, we are positioned with, as you know, more than 20% of our global sales in China, and a good portion of that goes with the Chinese OEM. When they export vehicles, we benefit from that. Then the second trend has certainly started with the Chinese OEM starting shops in Europe.
Here we are clearly partnering with BYD in Hungary, with Leapmotor and Chery in Spain. We will be localizing our production then to also give them local content here in Europe.
From a cost perspective, how easy is it to approach the levels that they require? Obviously more they're used to in China, and obviously how they can be supplied from a European cost base, even in a low-cost location like Hungary or in other Central and Eastern European parts.
Yeah. No, good follow-up. Both OEMs and suppliers face different cost bases in China and in Europe. When we are deeply localized in China, that is on a level that we cannot attain, not for the vehicle, not for components in Europe. In the whole local content discussion that we also have politically, you could see numbers that were also published through our trade associations. Depending on the product, on the commodity, there can be cost differences between 15%-30% when you go deeply localized China versus deeply localized Europe.
That's very helpful. Thank you very much.
In fact, Martin, there are quite a few questions on the chat. There is one question from Tom Gibney. With respect to raw material costs, what proportion of your raw material cost is represented by plastics and aluminum, respectively? Second part of the question, what proportion of plastics and aluminum costs are covered by contractual pass-through, and what is the average delay of these pass-through closes? Okay. I take the question, I will take the answer. We are not buying aluminum. Of course, we are buying some plastics, I think to the tune of EUR 1.4 billion. They are largely covered by contractual pass-through.
Those pass-through clauses, in fact, they are based on smoothing averages, so there is a bit of a delay in the recovery when you have an increase of the cost and vice versa in the opposite direction. The goal is clearly to ensure that we have the pass-through in full and happening during the year. It adds to the type of seasonality between H1 and H2 a bit that you see traditionally within the company.
Yeah. Olivier, I want to reiterate that this is a well-oiled machine in the meantime, after the various waves of inflation on semiconductors, general inflation. We have our systems in place to determine how are we being influenced, impacted by these increases. We have dual sourcing here and there, so we can mitigate as much as possible between suppliers. We have the automatic price escalators with the customers. The last step is if this is not all protecting us, individual negotiations on the remaining effects with our customers. I trust that mechanism. We showed it very well last year also in the context of tariffs, and that's why we can reconfirm our guidance also in light of these negative factors.
Two questions from José Asumendi. First question, can you talk about growth opportunities with Chinese OEMs in Europe? Sorry. The second question, in the light of the headwinds we are seeing in H1, are you planning to increase the cost-saving speed in Europe? Can you comment on the restructuring work done in the Lighting business specifically?
Those are good questions. Good morning. Let's talk about growth opportunities in Europe of the Chinese OEMs. I mentioned a couple of them already, and I want to even extend the answer. It's not only growth opportunities with the Chinese OEMs in Europe, but also in South Africa and South America. You saw quite a few of the announcements where the Chinese OEMs are going to tap into markets by taking over existing production facilities from more traditional OEMs in these regions. You can fairly assume that we are on all these business opportunities around the globe with the Chinese OEMs, because we see the strong expansion. We have that strong foothold in China, so it's natural to benefit from their expansion globally. On the cost saving speeds, yes, we are accelerating.
We have started a new resilience program in light of the Middle East conflict, where all businesses, all functions, first of all, generated additional savings ideas. We put them in action before we even see the actual volume decline to really drive our results cautiously, carefully on the safe side for what might occur in H2. For the Lighting program, yes, it's a very comprehensive restructuring plan that we run, and it has to do both with taking cost out of operations. Lighting is a strong contributor to the EU-FORWARD program in that sense. It has also to do with taking costs out of product.
We work into the design of the products, and I mentioned that we are successfully now for three quarters of a year, taking volume orders in, because we can project that future product cost and also the future cost base and operations into these offers and into these new orders.
Another question on the chat from Stephen Benhamou. One question, please. Debt maturity, can you please give us an update on your refinancing plan for 2027, as you have $1.9 billion of debt maturing next year? How do you manage the refinancing risk given higher interest rates? On this question, you have two parts. You have a bond, HELLA, which is maturing January 2027. We expect to refinance a part of it, and we will do that in due time. No particular rush on this one, especially given the current interest rates. In relation, let's say more to the Forvia, the debt. Clearly speaking, the proceeds from the divestiture of Interiors will be about reimbursing quite a bit of this one. We will work on, depending on the evolution of interest rate and so on, which part will be on 2027 and which part will be on 2028.
On the remaining part, we will look at refinancing option. Let's not forget that on top of the divestiture we have cash flow generation in the company, plus our actions in terms of cash repatriation and optimization, which allow to, in fact, have capacity to reimburse gross debts beyond the pure cash flow generation. Limited refinancing activity I would say this year. There is another question from Floris Dykstra. Good morning. Are you able to comment on the latest Made in Europe rules, and how they may impact your business? There was news that European OEMs may be partnering with Chinese EV producers in European plants. Would this improve volume positively? Regards, Floris Dykstra, BNP.
Good. Let's comment first, Floris, on your question with regard to local content rules. The proposal of the European Commission is out, and yes, it directs a significant share of local content into vehicles here. Europe is our home turf, so that's obviously strengthening us and also backing us up because it will secure production of components for European vehicles in Europe, so we can trust that volumes do not collapse because the world decided to benefit from other countries' cost structures like China. We discussed the cost difference. It's a positive element of our future because it secures employment of all our associates here in Europe much better than without that regulation. The second part of the question, Olivier, went in the direction?
The question is about European OEMs partnering with Chinese EV producer in European plants. I think the question is, would this improve volume for us?
Yeah. No. It's a trend that we obviously can benefit from, both through the good relationship with our established customers here in Europe, and one example being Stellantis and Leapmotor, where, yes, we do traditionally a lot of business with Stellantis, and we have also grown nicely in China with Leapmotor, and we grow with Leapmotor coming to Europe as well. That is a trend that can be seen as an opportunity since the market mix changes from more the traditional OEMs to Chinese OEMs as well. We will make benefits and use from them entering facilities or partnerships with our European customers.
I don't see any outstanding question on the chat, so I don't know if there are outstanding questions on the call.
No, sir. I confirm that we have no questions registered at this time.
Good. I want to thank all participants this morning with a very quick summary. You saw we took a solid start into Q1. In spite of the customer mix issues in China, we were outperforming the market, which is a good start again. We are well prepared to counter any effects that might come from the Middle East crisis. We have a full focus, as you see, on the execution of all elements of our IGNITE plan. Forvia is on track, we are running. I look forward to the next months. I want to thank the global Forvia teams of what has already happened in Q1. We're going to perform as per the guidance that we just reconfirmed. Thanks, everyone. Bye-bye.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over, and you may disconnect your devices.