Thanks, everyone. We're gonna get started with the next session. Once again, Joe Spack, Autos here at UBS. Super pleased to have Magna with us, Pat McCann, CFO, and Louis Tonelli from Investor Relations. I guess, you know, just to start, since it's, you know, the end of the year and we're past Thanksgiving and feeling past Canadian Thanksgiving too.
Well past. Well past.
Yeah. From a Canadian perspective, for sure. Excuse me. You know, feeling just a little bit reflective. I mean, it's obviously been a very challenging year in the automotive industry. Magna's also sort of had some ups and downs, but I think more, you know, definitely some positives here in terms of executing in a very difficult year. Looking back, you know, I guess what would you say are some of the things that, you know, you think Magna has excelled at and maybe even exceeded your own sort of expectations? And where are there still, you know, areas of improvement that, you know, again, away from the industry, you think, you know, you can better the business?
Yeah, I think, I'll start.
Yeah.
If it's okay with Louis . So if we go back to February, we would've guided a 5.4 to 6 margin. Our latest guidance is we're gonna come in at the low end of it. With all the turmoil we talked about this year with the changes and, you know, our volume projections were pretty close. But when you put that all together, I think that's, to your point, a good success story.
I think we executed well on, I would say, across the board, whether it was on our operational excellence. We're tracking where we expect it to be. On the commercial side, I think we're tracking ahead of where we expect it to be, whether it's with inflation recoveries, new program awards in that space. So I think we really are controlling what we can control. So that makes me feel I can't control how many cars are gonna sell. In the U.S. or anywhere on the globe.
So we get into a situation where we're able to pivot. I would say the biggest struggle from our point of view this year was probably the fiscal situation. And to be able to come out of that, you know, we pivoted very, very well, very, very quickly. And I think we're, if you think about that margin guidance with a $100 million-plus headwind, we're still able to offset that. I think that's a point of pride from my sense of, as far as the execution, you know, not at the corporate level, but all the way through the organization.
I would add just, like, the way we flex the operations, whether it be taking down our engineering, taking down our capital, restructuring, incremental restructuring activities that we've put in place to offset, you know, the lower volumes, and I think that's also a real accomplishment for us. Sorry, I think that's the Magna model, right? It's not like Louis and I are sitting up in the ivory tower pulling strings. We see a directive, we go out to the operations and say, "Hey, listen, we have seven product groups," and they force that reaction to cascade it down through 300-plus locations. It's reflected in that culture. Everybody calls it entrepreneurial, but it's really accountability and ownership.
Yeah. You know, Magna is obviously a very diversified supplier, one of the largest in the world and maybe one of the most diverse as well. That being said, you have obviously some large exposures to certain automakers that have had some troubles this year, well documented. Despite that, you have been able to sort of show that growth over market. So and I know it might be difficult, or I think it is difficult from the outside to sort of maybe pinpoint it to one or two things.
But can you sort of highlight what has really been driving that outperformance to overcome even the customer mix headwind? Because we've definitely seen other suppliers that, you know, maybe don't even have as high exposure to some of these customers as you do, sort of, you know, falter in that light.
Yeah. I think it's we take a step back. If you think about how we wanna run our business, or I said we have seven product groups.
Yeah.
Below it, there's probably 60 product areas we're in. So we always take a sense of where's that market? Is it gonna be growing? So we see growth over, industry's growing basically flattish. That's what we're expecting. But within that components, there's parts of the car that are growing faster than the others. So that's number one. Do we wanna be on a market that's growing. Number two is, is there money to be made in that market? So a lot of parts are growing, but if it's just a race to the bottom, we don't wanna be there.
Three is, do we have a position of power, whether it's regionally or globally, that we can command some type of strength back into the customer? So that's basically the way we approach where we wanna play. So that's number one. Once you do that, then it's about operational excellence. And how do you make sure you go to the customer that we, you know, through COVID, through everything, we've never shut a customer down? Chip shortages, that's a valuable selling point from Magna. So we have the balance sheet to support it and our operational excellence so we can launch flawlessly.
Yeah.
Yeah. We've a pretty diversified business. Even though we do have significant business with, you know, certain customers, we are pretty diversified. And you look at China, for instance, that's a market that we've been, this year, being able to grow much faster than the market. And that helps to offset, you know, other markets where maybe there's a little more challenging.
Yeah. I mean, I guess just bigger picture, strategically, like, it seems like it, you know, the ethos of Magna in the past was to be large, right? To have more sway or influence with these customers. As we sort of look forward in the industry, there's certainly an argument to be made that, maybe some of those customers are structural share losers over time. Does that rethink at all, how you think about being aligned with some of those customers, either from a footprint perspective or an increased desire to diversify your revenue base?
Yeah. I think it's yes and yes. So when you think about our customer base, I've been at Magna 25 years, Louis a little bit longer. We've seen it where the Japanese have been taking share from the D3 originally and the G3 as well. So we've traditionally, that's been our base. It's still 75% of our sales. So we do have 25%. So we have been growing with the Japanese and with some of the new entrants. So it, you know, the flip side of that is you gotta pick the winners too.
Right.
Right? And it's winners by OEM, but it's also winners on the platform, right? So it's picking the right platform and the right customer. But I, you know, and it's about having the right product that they wanna come to you, that they wanna to work in that space. As far as the footprint, you know, we've been restructuring for a long time. We're not looking. We're not gonna put a press release out saying we're letting 10,000 people go in Europe. We don't have those monster engineering centers or corporate offices. So we've been restructuring for a decade, and it's 90% plus has been in Europe. It's moving that footprint, whether it's from east to west.
Or, sometimes it's just closing because it's not a product area. It comes back to originally, is there money to be made in that market? If there's not, we exit. So we've sold businesses, whether it was in high-cost regions or if it was in a product we couldn't excel. So we've, in the last five years, we've exited six large facilities by.
Yeah.
Via sale.
So how much, and I don't know if it's possible to sort of break down this way, but it seems like there's a couple of means to sort of restructure. Part of it is from a cost perspective, like you said, the rotation to lower-cost countries. Part of it is exiting portfolio. I guess the other, sort of elephant in the room, though, is, right, is, it doesn't seem like Europe structurally is going to return to prior volumes, right? There's this overcapacity. They've moved from a, you know, a net export market to a net import market. And, obviously, a number of the customers in there have challenges. There's overcapacity as it is. So, are you think your footprint in Europe is right-sized for a new lower-cost sustainable level of production?
We're always gonna improve.
Yeah.
Like, that's the reality. Part of it's lost programs, how you do it, how you exit. And it's so there's a transition of ICE to EV. That's part of the transition. There's just mega trends you're talking about from EV activity. We deal with the G3. We're not really big with the French. So there's a transition there, but if you look over the past, we've exited Russia. That was about $400 million of sales. That's done. It's down to zero. We're not gonna grow again. We would've peaked at about 21 million units in Europe. This year, we were projecting just over 17. We're seeing flattish volumes.
Right.
So we didn't come out with a big bang, but we've taken those steps to be where we are. Are we gonna have more restructuring at a facility here or there?
Yes, and we're gonna continue to do that as we go through, but it's not we're flexing. I think we're competitive, Louis. I would say.
Yeah.
We're in the right spots.
Yeah.
It's just an evolving process.
Yeah. But I agree that our volumes that we're assuming is basically a flattish environment in Europe, and our operations and our plans reflect that. Yeah. Let's sort of, you know, dive in a little bit, and we sort of danced around some of these topics. I guess just, as it relates to, you know, your guidance for this year, and I know we only have sort of a couple weeks left. We've obviously, as we do every quarter, we see some different, you know, ebbs and flows on sort of production. It seemed like you sort of maybe baked in or put in sort of some cushion for some uncertainty. I guess is the best way to sort of frame it.
I mean, is there anything that has sort of, like, an understanding there might be variation from customer or programs or even sort of region, but is there anything that has sort of majorly surprised you in the quarter?
I haven't seen a major surprise.
Yeah.
Knock on wood, right? There's still three weeks.
Yeah.
But, you know, if you take a step back, this is probably the most accurate we're gonna get on volumes.
Right.
And if you don't have a crystal ball, but we look at inventory. We went right back into our divisions, looked at releases. Took an experience factor because it's a little bit different than it was five years ago. We used to get a release that was pretty set. Now we're seeing.
Yeah.
Swings from it still. It's more predictable, but it they're pulling at 80% instead of 100%. So we're reflecting that. We're looking at inventory days. So it's a little bit more of a more solid. Projection, I would say. I wouldn't say it's conservative. But it's probably a best-case estimate. So we were trying to predict in some of the downtime that was announced in September. October before we released. There's been some small changes since, but nothing material.
I know it's been, you know, limited thus far, maybe in some cases only in hours, those strikes at Volkswagen. But was there some sort of contingency, either explicit or implicit, for some uncertainty there?
On VW?
No.
Yeah.
No. No. I think it's. Is that something you're monitoring into 2025, some of the labor issues there?
Definitely. I think it's almost start-stop, though. It's not macro.
Right.
You know, we were asked this morning. It almost turns into a situation of, are they closing the facility? If they close the facility, are they canceling the program, or are they moving the program into another facility to become more efficient? If it's the latter, that's a good news situation for Magna and the rest of the supply base because you're more efficient. You know, at the end of the day, you were alluding to it earlier. We want our customers to succeed. Right.
When they succeed, we succeed. If they're able to be more efficient by combining facilities to run a three-shift pattern instead of a half a shift or a shift and a half, that's good for the whole industry.
I understand we're gonna have to wait till, you know, early next year to sort of get the 2025 guidance. But Louis, you already alluded a couple times, you know, sort of planning for a flat direction. Is as you begin the budget planning process, is that the world you're sort of, you know, envisioning and sort of trying to plan things around? Sort of. Pretty flattish outlook?
At this point, I mean, I think we're gonna we'll look at it again before we get to an outlook, a formal outlook. But yeah, it's a pretty flat environment. Now, that doesn't mean that there's.
Across the three major regions?
Pretty much. Yeah. And that doesn't mean that there isn't upside at some point. You think about maybe affordability or rates are coming down. I mean, there's some, you know, just the replacement cycle that could be positives. But from our perspective, we're better off being cautious on the volume. So it is a pretty flat environment.
Fair enough. And then, you know, as we sort of think about your guidance for this year, you know, you alluded to the margins coming in at the lower end and some of the factors that sort of have led to that. There is sort of a big step up in the fourth quarter. And even in the third quarter, you're, I think you got some recoveries. And it sounds like there's some more maybe anticipated in the fourth quarter.
You know, in talking to Swamy in the past, he sort of made the allusion to, there's a lot of, you know, to put brackets around it, you know, this might not have been the term he used, but it's a term I'll use, sort of self-help that's sort of helping to drive the margins in the tougher top-line industry outlook. Can we just double-click on that a little bit? Like, what, like, BES recoveries, we understand, that's money that's rightfully yours, and it's difficult to understand when it's gonna come in or sort of order of magnitude.
But what else is there besides sort of the restructuring? I know, Louis, you mentioned some of the pullback on engineering and stuff. But what are some of the changes that have happened at Magna that, you know, could hopefully lead margins higher even in a pretty flattish environment?
I think you hit on a couple of big ones. We talk about engineering. So we had guided in the $1.2 gross spend. We're gonna pull out $100, right? So that goes to margin. That's 20 to 25 basis points. So that's number one.
That's for this year.
For this year.
But we go prospectively. What else can be done, I guess?
We gave our guidance in August. We talked about 500 of pulling engineering out over the three-year period. We reached just under 100 this year. Leaves about 400. Okay. It implies another 100 per year. Step up, right? So that's another 25 basis points. You go to, you think about some of the restructuring we did this year, the full benefit it annualizes comes into 2025. That's another piece of it. And we do have a little bit more restructuring in the fourth quarter that's gonna benefit on the go-forward basis. I think just within the facilities themselves, when we talk about operational excellence, it's more broad than it used to be. The industry worked in a situation where LTAs were 2%. We had to have 2% CIs to just be margin-dollar neutral.
With inflation headwinds of 600 in our numbers, the push on our CI space is incredible. So it's your business cases tend to be a little bit better because of the higher labor cost, higher utilities, and whatnot. So your business cases come a little bit better. That drives margin improvements. Some of the automation we're seeing, whether it's in digitalization space by sharing data across 350 facilities. That's a powerful tool.
I worked in the metal space. It could be how do you know if one press has a failure in Mexico and you notice these data points, how do you take that information and share it to the same press in Germany or Austria or China? So it's all those little pieces of automation. I'm not an engineer, so I can't speak to the but, you know, like, it the machinery and the camera systems are so much smarter . AMRs, pick and place, all those types are starting to drive the margin improvement.
Yeah.
Back to the operational excellence, we would've guided 75 basis points between 2024 and 2025, split evenly, roughly. We're on track for 2024. We're expecting the other half in 2025.
Like, how far along in the process of automation, you know, operational efficiency, all you know, because it still seems like, and not to say you haven't done a lot, but it still seems, in the grand scheme of things, you know, the industry's maybe still in the earlier innings of this. Is that still sort of an area of investment and focus for the company?
100%. Absolutely 100%, and it's evolving, and I think it's good. Given our size, what we're able to do is do pilot projects. You scale them. So you succeed, and then you can scale it. If you fail, it's not catastrophic.
Right.
Sorry, go ahead. Oh, so it's already getting set. I 100% agree with that. It's like leveraging what we learned in the pilot plants to scale across the 300 plants. That's the trick, really.
Sorry. I mean, you mentioned, you know, another. I think you said 25-ish or whatever, sort of in, you know, here in X year, but there's no real reason it should sort of end at 25. There's just further initiatives that sort of continue.
Right. And then the last two other pieces just on improvements is we're pulling back capital, right? So we started the year at, well, we're down about 300. You know, so you're getting a D&A benefit off that, and then we're gonna pull more out in 2025 and 2026 relative to previous expectations.
So you have that benefit. And then lastly, all the quotes that we would've been putting in post all the inflation, say, June 2022, when it was probably at its worst, now we're starting to see the benefit of those programs beginning to launch.
I see.
So I think it's not one thing. It's just a combination of people executing on eight to 12.
The only thing I would add to that is we still see growth of our market. So we still have, even in a flat environment, we have sales growth.
And the pull-through on the higher sales coming in. With those reprice sort of those contracts quoted during that time of sort of peak inflation, I guess, inflation has slowed. And it could, it might depend a little bit on some of the sort of the commodities in which sort of product you're talking about. But if there is a case where, you know, commodities are lower than when you're quoting at the point, are customers coming back to you and saying, "Hey, we need to rethink this one"? Or are you actually, or do you get to the benefit of that?
We never felt as much pain on the commodities on the. Our pain was more in the utilities and labor.
Yeah.
In Magna's world, our biggest buy is steel. And aluminum. And 80% of that is hedged. So we didn't feel the pain on the way up. Next one would be resin. We're about 25% to 30% hedged. So we're getting it a little bit the other way. But it's really a labor and energy costs are still really elevated. They're way off.
Right.
But they're still.
So basically, you're able to price for labor, and. And energy at some point. To some extent. Maybe we can sort of, you know, dive into some of the changes as we've seen in, I guess, just sort of three major theaters in the world. And there's a lot going on, obviously, in the world. There's sort of always is. But, you know, how you're sort of thinking about that as, you know, you begin to sort of think about planning the business, not just for 2025, but sort of obviously, you know, for, you know, into perpetuity here, or at least for, you know, you know, multi-year planning. So let's start in the U.S. We even before the election, right, we saw the clear sort of slowdown in electrification penetration. Again, nothing official, right?
But it does seem like there's indication that consumer credits might get pulled in the U.S., that you know, just emissions regulations could get pushed out. So does that and you already talked about pulling back capital. Is there an opportunity to pull back even more? Or I mean, I know you need to be guided by your customers, but I guess the question is really recognizing it's early days, what is the tone and tenor of those conversations with your customers?
I think if you like, in our large increase in capital is primarily related to large architecture-type products like battery trays and whatnot. So we've gone through a cycle of higher spend, and that's getting behind us. So when the EV and EVs are coming, like, you know, we're still seeing growth year over year. It's not doom and gloom, right? It's coming. There's a dip, and it's more of a North American dip than it is the rest of the world, but we're seeing a slowing, but it's still growth. So our capital's behind us. When that growth comes, we're not really gonna have to reinvest the way we have already.
But when we make those decisions on, are we gonna invest in a program, we're not gonna recover that investment over one program lifecycle. These are two programs minimum. Like, it's no different than a frame on a truck. And they're long-term investments. And that's how we price them. We don't look at what margin's a factor, but we look at what's the program returns. We're gonna put X amount of money in.
How much are we gonna pull out? And our assumption is on these highly engineered or highly capitalized, we're gonna have generation after generation, which is what we've seen on frames or cradles or transmissions. So that's what we think's gonna continue. But if you step back to where we were, I think Magna, we came out in August and took a pretty sizable cut of EVs from where we expected them to be out in 2026. And continued out in 2030. So for perspective, we reduced our sales.
It was $5 to 2.2 billion was related to our Steyr business, Fisker being a large portion of it. We took $600 million out on ADAS, some Chinese insourcing and other factors, then EV, we were down $3 billion, right? So it's a sizable number. But the flip side was we're seeing a billion of recovery in ICE.
Yeah.
So we've, you know, Louis is talking about the macro level of volumes. Our planning's a lot more detailed. And we took a cut of EVs already to bring it into that space. Has there been changes since then? There's been some. You know, we talked about Blue Oval City running one shift instead of two. GE2 was canceled. effectively, well, publicly. And whatnot. So there's tweaks here and there.
But I think we're, you know, it's turning into picking the right platforms. You talked earlier about picking the right customers. It's picking the right platforms. The majority of that decrease was actually in all of our regular products: seats, mirrors. Latches. I think our eDrive impact was minimal.
Minimal. Yeah.
If any, right? So it's, you know, these longer lead times were stuck with it. It's being a player, being a partner to your customers. But, you know, I don't know, investors don't like it that much. But we're looking five years.
Right.
10 years.
Right.
Like, we, you know, it gets circular if I don't quote on that work. Now my restructuring goes up. I'm not gonna quote a low margin just to.
Right.
Avoid a restructuring.
Right.
That's the worst thing you could ever do.
Right.
But it's about we have a skill set, whether it's engineering or launches or tribal knowledge on stamping that we know, and we can go to the customer, and they value us for it.
I was gonna say to Pat's point about the sales you talked about, the sales adjustment. Along with that came about $600 million of capital reduction. So you're asking about.
Right.
If you scale back capital. Part of that August outlook was actually taking capital down pretty significantly. So there. I guess the change really would be, you know, in the US if there was a further push out. There might be a little bit more revision there. Or you think you sort of mostly have captured that at this point?
Yeah. I think so. I just for perspective, we're quoting something in.
Yeah.
June 2022. It's probably launching in 2025.
Right.
You know, so that's, that's the lead time you're looking. But then it becomes it falls in on itself to a certain extent, if volumes are off 50%. We talked earlier about commercial being in the back end of the year. That's what's driving those commercial discussions.
Right.
Because you're capacitating a line, and the line's a line.
Right.
So if it's gonna make 100 parts or 50, so we literally have customers saying, "Yeah, you're gonna build to 150, buy all the stuff," and then it's, "Hold on. It's 50. So we go back in with claims. Our preference would be if they're selling the 150. But, you know, we have to be commercially responsible at the same time.
Maybe if you think about your sort of, you know, bookings for sort of EV, my guess is it would be sort of more geared towards Europe and Asia versus North America. Is that or how would you sort of split that up?
I mean, all markets, really.
Okay.
Fairly in line.
Fairly in line.
Like, by region, right?
Yeah. Yeah. By region.
By constant rates, our sales are relatively in line.
Yeah. Okay.
With the EV space.
Okay. Turning to, you know, another investor sort of hot topic coming out of the election is tariffs. And I remember very distinctly having these conversations with Magna in 2017 with Border Adjustment Tax and I can't get that year out of my mind. I don't remember the exact number of times, but I think you gave me an example of one part that might cross the three borders seven or eight times. So it's time to sort of refresh, I guess, all that. But, like, just, you know, again, if we could sort of, you know, go over your sort of North American footprint, you know, how much is done in Mexico for Mexico, in Canada for Canada? How much is sort of crossing the border?
I would say, you know, our North American sales, about half of last year, about $5 billion of our sales were in Mexico and about $5 billion were in Canada. The remainder, which is 10-plus, is.
Yeah.
Gonna be in the US. I would say in Canada, there's a higher proportion that goes from Canada to the US. In Mexico, I would say it's relatively balanced between what stays in Mexico and what actually gets shipped to the U.S.
Okay. And, understanding that this has many things in it.
Sorry. I should say that that is historically what we, I mean, that's what we talked about the last go around. From 1.0.
Right.
I don't think it would've changed significantly.
Okay. Fair enough, and understanding, like, that this, you know, we'll need to see whether this is real or sort of a negotiating tactic, 'cause obviously, it would be quite damaging, not necessarily for Magna or specifically, but really the entire industry. But.
And the consumer.
And then, for sure, the consumer. And you know, just to you know, and also, if it were put in place, understanding that this would be just another area of negotiation or conversation with your customer. But if we were just to, for argument's sake, say tomorrow there is a tariff on something in Mexico that you're shipping across the border for assembly in the U.S., the way the contracts are written, where does that responsibility lie? Is it for you? Is it for your customer? Does it depend? I, is it not sort of uniform?
It depends.
Yeah.
Right? So if it's FOB our dock, presumably it's the importer of record. At the end of the day, it's the importer of record is what we learned last time. If it's FOB our dock, they're importing it across the border, it'd be their charge.
Yeah.
If we're shipping across FOB, their dock would be our responsibility. Then it turns into a commercial discussion. Right? And recoveries. Then, if you look at all the inputs.
Right.
Every if.
That was the other question.
If Mexico puts a.
Right.
25.
Right.
Or Canada.
Right.
'Cause there's gonna be reciprocals. If it goes over the border, you keep charging 25%. And then you get it's so.
Well, that's, I guess, was the next question. And maybe again, like, not, I don't know if you sort of remember from last time, but let's say, for argument's sake, say there's something being made in Mexico, but there's first some components from the US that shipped into Mexico. Is then what goes back into the US only tariffed on the value-added portion or the entire?
Yes. Exactly. So the last time we went through, I was in the metals group. What was happening was we were the importer of record on a coil of steel, for example. We would pay a tariff 'cause Canada put a tariff back into the US. We manufactured the part in Canada, shipped it to an OEM in Canada. They took those vehicles, shipped them, and sold them into the US. It goes through a duty drawback program so that you're able to get your duties for what went back into the. Into the system. Now, crystal ball, how are they gonna impose them this time?
Right. Right.
At the end of the day, it's gonna drive inflation. The consumers and then at the OEM, they're gonna sit and say, "I have these inventory days. I have production. Now, what, what is it gonna be passed to the consumer? It's gonna be margin declines at the dealer. OEM level and at the supplier level. But I think it's just so early.
Yeah.
You know, from where we started in 2016 to where it ended up being.
I was only at. Yeah.
At the metals piece, but at Cosma itself, it wasn't. The duties weren't a big impact at all.
Okay. You know, there wasn't a lot of change there. A lot of rhetoric, but not a lot of change, so I'm all down.
Just, just new letters.
Yeah. And, for I guess just sort of for, completion's sake, is there a lot of, you know, are there transmissions or sort of other products that sort of come from that are manufactured in Europe that come into the U.S. or China or not a lot?
Not a lot.
Okay.
Not a lot.
Yeah.
We're generally so-called in region.
In region four. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. I guess, you know, the other area of focus is in China. And you've actually sort of, as you mentioned, sort of shown some good growth there. It seems like you're actually fairly well-positioned with some of the domestic players that are growing. How is it possible to sort of dimension, you know, in which product areas or sort of segments, I guess, or product areas that you're sort of, you know, been performing better that have been really helped driving that?
Like, where has the Magna product resonated? And what, and I guess if we think about China more broadly, right, there does seem to be a push for Chinese manufacturers to use a Chinese supply base. So, when Magna wins, how do they win? You know, why do they win? What, what is the competitive dynamic?
Maybe I'll start.
Yeah.
Just, like, in terms of our China business, about $5 billion last year, another couple billion dollars of unconsolidated sales have preceded substantial. Really, across many of our product areas, we have pretty strong market positions. Metal forming is quite strong. Our mirrors and our mechatronics businesses are strong. Seating is pretty strong there. Powertrain is very strong there. Exteriors is less strong there. You know, let's say in our BES segment, it's more metal forming than it is exteriors. But our Power and Vision segment, powertrain, mirrors, latches, ADAS, you know, that's pretty strong. Seating's very strong. So and all of those have contributed to our growth. And, you know, our footprint there and the product and customers that we have there used to be very much internationally dominated.
And now we're more than 50% with the locals there. So it's really changed over time. And how do we, I mean, you can get into how we compete there, but really, it comes down to, you know, doing things that are tough to do. It's not trying to compete on a me-too product. It's really doing things that are really challenging to do.
And with the shift from or to domestics from foreign, again, going back to, you know, we talked a little bit about the footprint in Europe, the footprint in China. Is there flexibility within the plant as well? Or, because China is still growing, are you still sort of net increasing capacity in China?
Yeah. We're adding some square footage, but not that much, I would say. In China tends to be much more scattered than you would see, like, in production in Michigan, for example. It's more province-based. We're growing, so it's probably a little bit more shipping parts around China by default. But I think Louis is bang on. It's about doing the hard parts. Don't be, you know, like, and it's also doing. You mentioned Chinese OEMs wanna use Chinese suppliers. They want a good price.
But they also want technology. So sometimes we're pivoting to meet that. So what's the China for China solution? So we would have China for China solutions in the driveline space. Like, how, what are they looking for from an eDrive compared to just imposing. This is what we do in Germany. This is what we should do in China. So what does the consumer want? You go to the customer. And that's part of growing in China.
In the metal forming, how do you show them lightweighting and, you know, safer products? You know, I think in the ferrous, it was different. So I think, you know, we've been in China for 25 years, so it's not. Like we're new to the area.
Mm-hmm. And this is mostly run by locals?
Correct.
Yeah.
I don't think we have any ex-pats, right?
What about, you know, one of the things that we're starting to hear some rumblings about, and we get that we're starting to get a lot more investor calls on is, Chinese suppliers looking more towards Western markets, probably Europe first, maybe eventually? Sort of North America. Are you seeing any of that in areas where you compete, sort of the expansion of Chinese suppliers?
No, Yanfeng's been around for a while, right?
Yeah.
On the seating side.
Yeah.
On the seating side. They're a good company. They've been around forever. I think on the supplier side, we haven't seen much of it in the other regions. That being said, you know, BYD's just finishing up their facilities. They're gonna be launching 26.
Yeah.
So I think we'll see what happens in the future, but it's a funny conversation. We just started with Europe being over capacity.
Right.
We're gonna add capacity.
Right, and sort of exacerbates the global overcapacity issue.
Correct.
Yeah.
Right? And then as a supplier, why would you wanna chase that?
Right.
That work.
Right.
Then it ends up being a race to the bottom.
Yeah. Or does it make more sense for them to look at where there's already capacity in the ground in these new regions? You utilize that capacity. Yeah. So those are conversations you're having is.
Correct.
Why don't we just pause and see if there's anything in the audience? Let's talk a little bit about, you know, the cash flow, the balance sheet, and, you know, the restart of the NCIB or, you know, the share repurchase, so, you know, we talked a little bit about, you know, the market, who knows what's gonna do. You're gonna try to sort of perform better. Sounds like there's some drivers to get the margin, the free cash flow really higher even in a pretty tepid environment. The capital requirements seem to be coming down. You're past this sort of period of higher investment, and there might even be some potential for push out higher where it's not yours.
Yeah.
So, and I think my guess is when you sort of put that all together, that's what sort of saw it got you the confidence to sort of start the NCIB again. But I want one like. I just wanted to hear, I guess, how you think about cash flow going forward because even though it is getting better, it is still well below where it was, let's say.
Currently.
Currently.
Yeah.
Where it was five years ago, even though you're a much larger company now.
Probably about the same. I don't think we're that much larger. No. I don't think we're that big. No. It seems like.
Okay.
Okay. But yeah, if I look at our so from five years.
Yeah.
Big, big picture, you have $600 million of inflationary hedge wins. Take it after tax, that's $450. is up about this year, even at 2022, 2023. It's up about $450, $900, $900 plus, say, midpoint of $7, you're at $1.6 to $1.7, kind of in the range where we were on free cash flow.
Okay.
Five years ago. So if you fast forward to 2026 and where we guided was we have EBITDA growing. By, I think, roughly 600, capital coming down roughly four or 500. So that's the confidence we see, right? Subject to, like, let's say it's volumes, right?
Right.
We have volumes and customers and all those great things and tariffs and. All the bad things you like to talk about. But, you know.
I don't like to talk about them. They're just a reality.
But, you know, I think that's the controllables, what you can control.
Yeah.
So subject to volumes, you know, that's our expectations. Grow EBIT, it's within our control. And then we cut back on the engineering, cut back on the CapEx. That's where the growth comes from.
Okay. And then, so you know, you started, you know, restarted the NCIB, and correct me if I'm wrong, but that you're sort of in the market now, even now, right?
Correct.
Okay. And I guess, you know, beyond that, I mean, is sort of the plan to sort of, well, like, how do you sort of think about spending that free cash flow in terms of returning cash, dividend, buybacks, or, you know, leaving some opportunities for some tucking up and out?
Yeah. I think, like, our strategy hasn't changed. I think it's been paused, I would prefer. To say with everything that's going on and whether it was COVID and then the acquisition and mechatronics, but big picture, we wanna have a high investment grade rating, which is one to one and a half. We finished the quarter at 1.9. Our expectation is to get back into that in 2025, so I would say we accelerated our. ASPP and NCIB, but share repurchase.
Yeah.
Program. And so it's gonna be a combination next year of deleveraging back into that one to one and a half. And part of that deleveraging isn't use of cash. It's growing EBITDA.
Yeah.
Right? So you grow the EBITDA, that automatically gives you more leverage. And then we have an ability to purchase up to 10% of our shares, which would be, you know, at current share price. You know, $1 to 2 billion.
Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, I think we're out of time with that. So, gentlemen.
Okay.
Thanks, thanks so much for joining us today.
Thank you.
Really appreciate it.
Thank you.