Great. Well, thanks, everybody, for joining us again. Next up, we have Magna, which is, depending on the year, the number 3 largest supplier in the world, plus or minus, depending on the year. Magna's always been a tech leader in developing and manufacturing numerous parts of the vehicle. In fact, they actually assemble full vehicles and help design and engineer them for a number of manufacturers. One of the highlines there is the Fisker, right now, Fisker Ocean, which is actually an unbelievable vehicle if you get a chance to drive it. It's not just because it's a Fisker, but a lot of that has to do with design engineering assembly by the folks here at Magna.
Today, we're happy to have Pat McCann, CFO, and Louis Tonelli, head of Investor Relations, both of which are always incredibly helpful to us, you know, all the time. Thank you so much for joining us, guys. Maybe just to kick off and get through some of the mundane sort of macro stuff here to start with. I mean, as far as the 2023 kickoff of the year, maybe even finishing 2022, sort of some of the actuals that you might be able to talk about more clearly, you know, how are you seeing schedules, you know, develop? I mean, are we seeing better fulfillment, less volatility, or is it still sort of more of the same of the volatility we've seen for the last two years?
Go ahead.
Yeah, I can jump in. We're seeing- w e were hoping we'd be further along with the stability, John, it seems to be persisting. What we're seeing is still some ups and downs, not as we would have expected. It's much better than would have been this time last year, it's just gonna be a steady improvement. You know, our forecast, we're expecting to get through it by the end of this year.
There are no major surprises, don't think, on the volume side.
No.
At this point. Okay. You know, and then one of the other things is, you know, you guys have gotten pretty good recoveries last year. The industry seems to be a little bit more collaborative, or at least your customers seem to be a little bit more collaborative with you than they have been in the past. I mean, how is that, has that anything that changed, or do you see sort of pretty good recoveries this year, more collaborative environment? Are we back to some of the brass tacks of a back and forth on negotiating inflation and recoveries and like?
Yeah. The discussions are always hard. Jump in, Louis. The discussions are always hard. They're not an easy discussion. They're binary, right? That being said, I agree with you. I think the discussions were collaborative last year. They're difficult, but we look at the whole commercial piece. With our net leakage last year, net of inflation and recoveries was about $530 million. You know, we're expecting about $100 to leak in this year on a net basis. I think the discussions are collaborative. They're hard. What we tend to do, John, is we wanna go in with data and show, you know, your earlier question, what's the volatility look like? We can go in with data and say, You told us you're gonna produce this, you produced that.
How many hours were lost? Now we're having more factual discussions, whether it's on energy, labor rates, stop starts. They're much more focused. Obviously, they're trying to delay them. We've been in since before the year started as we went into it. You know, at the end of the day, I think we're gonna get there. It really varies based on type of commodity and type of, n ot commodity, but inflationary piece of it.
Yeah.
I think the toughest one right now is the labor piece.
I mean, what we've heard is that automakers have pretty good models, part by part for a lot of suppliers and understanding sort of all the input costs, whether it be raws, labor overhead, you know, R&D costing. They have a good handle on that, probably better than you might like as a supplier, right, in a lot of cases. I think with Cosma, they might not have all that in a good way for you guys as far as profitability.
As they see these things changing, are their models more refined? Are you helping them understand sort of the different steps of what's going on in your cost structure, and they have now become better understanding of that? Or some of it's just that they're able to pass through pricing in a way that they haven't in a long time, for that reason, they're being more collaborative. I mean, what's kinda the driving force in the change here?
I think it's probably a combination of the two. you're talking, like, the 1804s.
Yep
that the customers be using for quoting. We've actually taken the 1804s and you turn them and say, this is what. You know what our fixed costs are. Now if we've lost these hours, you know what we're absorbing because of your production volatility. You can use that. When we talk about data, that's an example of data we can use. They, they have such a breakdown of how you quote a part, and then it carries for the life of the program. You can take that data, go back to the customers and have a discussion with their data and how it's impacting us. The other piece of it, I think on the pricing, I think they have been come up. You know, the profits are strong.
At the end of the day, I think fundamentally, Louis, jump in, is I think they really need a strong supply base. To have inflation costs in Europe at, you know, 7%-10%, depending on type of commodity, it's just not sustainable because it goes below us. You just keep going down the change on.
I mean, has this sort of model and this fact-based, you know, discussion changed versus where it was maybe pre-COVID or even pre-GFC, or is this sort of just a more, I mean, just generally more collaborative? Something functionally changed in the way that these discussions occur?
Personally, I think it's because we've been in a 2% environment for 20 years.
Okay.
It's just been a part of business and used to doing it. Now when I say 2%, we've had these hard discussions before, if you look at some of the higher inflation areas, Brazil, Argentina, Turkey. You, it's not a new process, but it's just a more broad across the globe discussion.
Okay. There's some things that you can get out of these, the automakers or work with to get. There's certain things you're not gonna be able to get. There's pressures that you know, you're not gonna be able to pass through. What are you doing on the cost side to deal with this on a micro basis?
I think your target for by 2025 is 7% adjusted EBIT, I think is the number. I mean, to get there, you know, how are we gonna get there? What kind of cost actions do you need to take? What are you assuming to ultimately get to that 7% margin?
A couple of questions there. What are we doing? I agree with you 100%. The first obligation to Magna and every supplier is how do you reduce the cost? How do you take the cost out? A few things, if you look at what we've done on our cost base, we, you know, just in December, we closed a deal to sell a manual transmissions facility. That's a place where you're reducing cost. If you look at it a program by program basis is how much more automation is. You tackle it, John, by, if you look at the labor or our business cases for automation have improved because labor rates are up. How do you automate, take labor out of the system? You have labor availability issues, you have labor pricing issues.
Your first solution has to be how can you automate it. Some of the automation we've come up with is much more sophisticated than the pick and place you would've had over the last 20 years. That's number 1. Number 2, we talked about some of the restructuring, and our outlook reflects restructuring actions outside of the EBIT margin. And some of it would have incurred in 2022, and there's some continuing. I think when we go out to the 7% margin, number 1 driver is gonna be revenues. We have significant revenue growth. We're growing $8 billion in sales. About $3.5 billion of that is in megatrend areas, which is gonna come back into where our capital spend's coming from.
Two is we have part of the automation, but we also have just more broadly, we have some underperformance that we've struggled with in 2022 in particular.
Yeah.
We're seeing improvements in those facilities. They're stabilizing, they're improving. What we're also seeing is growth in equity income. Outside that $8 billion of revenue growth, we have growth, particularly in our LG joint venture and HASCO joint venture for eDrive, I would say. The last piece is, we've been investing in megatrends to support that $3.5 billion of sales, and we're holding that megatrend piece. We're getting leverage on the revenue. You're getting contribution margin dropping down to the bottom.
Okay. We think about that contribution margin, what sort of a rough rule of thumb we should be using? I know it's probably different depending on what revenue is flowing, what's the business segment is flowing in. Obviously, let's leave complete vehicle assembly out. For a second. Incremental margin on the core business outside of-
Yeah.
-complete vehicle assembly is core, but like outside of complete vehicle assembly.
If you think about the systems groups or the component groups, I would say BS and P&V. You would see, you know, pure volume change incremental to decrementals 20+ % in BS and P&V. The seating group, it would vary, again, depend on how much vertical integration or region, but 15%-20% is rule of thumb, what we would look at, John.
Got it. That's incredibly helpful. Then also just on the IRA, I mean, there's been some changes here. You have customers around the world, right? It sounds like, you know, there's an opportunity to ship more vehicles or EVs into the United States, particularly some of your customers in Europe are gonna be benefited from this, in a very significant way. Is there anything that you guys have read, or how do you think about the changes with the IRA, the implementation, the rules that have just been, you know, set or interpreted at this point? They may change, they may change over time. What does that mean for your business, particularly the battery enclosure side?
I think on the battery enclosures, our gonna have about one and a half billion of battery enclosure sales in 2025 from about $100 last year. You see significant growth, and the majority of that growth is coming out of North America, John.
Okay.
I think by default, I don't wanna focus just on battery enclosures. If you think about the IRA, it's gonna drive production into North America. We're the biggest supplier in North America, and 85% of our product is agnostic, so just higher volumes in North America. We're really operating at a very low level, really for the last, what, three years, right? In particular. Actually, since Q3, Q4 of 2019, we've been operating below subprime levels. As those volumes come up, I think, you know, just by default, we're gonna be able to sell more seats, more fascias, more whatnot. I think it's beneficial.
Got it. If you think about the outgrowth that you kind of talked about, I think it's 6% outside of through 2025.
4%-6%.
4%-6%.
Ex- complete vehicles.
Okay. What do you think are gonna be the key product areas that drive that growth above market?
If you look at the megatrend, when we talk about kind of growth in megatrend areas, so when we talk about megatrend areas, we're mainly talking about ADAS, powertrain electrification and battery enclosures. That group of product areas, capabilities, our sales last year would have been less than $1 billion, and we're expecting by 2025, those to be over $4 billion of sales. I mean, volumes are growing. All of Magna is growing across all of our product areas, but those areas in particular are really growing very rapidly.
I mean, and the total growth, through 2025, I think it was $7 billion-$8 billion.
Yeah.
Is the issue. What's the other half coming in? Is this really kind of across the board?
It's just the impact of higher volumes generally, 'cause we've been running at recessionary levels, so volumes overall being higher. Then, you know, seating is growing, latches are growing, mirrors are growing. The non-megatrend areas where we are aligned with the car of the future, those are also continuing to grow.
The profitability on the megatrend areas versus your core, right? If we split that, how should we think about margins on the sort of these new megatrend areas? Are they corporate average, give or take, or lower for now as they're starting to grow or higher potentially? How should we think about those?
I think when we look at it, John, we're always based on returns.
Okay.
If you think about, if you compare or contrast our Steyr business and our Cosma business, our metal forming business, they would have very different margins just given the nature of you're buying a tire for a G-Wagon. Whereas in the other case, but the return on your invested capital is similar. It's how many dollars we're dropping out. That is a backdrop. I would say margin's important to us 'cause it's a great program management tool. If I quote something with a contribution margin of X, how am I managing after it's been awarded? That's how we think of it. As far as margins on these newer programs, I would say in the battery trays, it's very consistent business. It's body in white type business that's just gonna continue on.
I think when you look at some of the other ones, there's a little bit more of a purchase components, type business. If you on an eDrive, for example, you're gonna have to buy an e-motor of some sort or an inverter. That's why we got into the LG acquisition, that it's almost a vertical play. Our margins, some of that margin benefit is gonna come through equity income, for example. It, it's a little bit of. It's really gonna depend on which product you go by.
To Pat's earlier point about the investments in megatrend areas, we have a high level of investment per dollar of sale, so it's gonna have an impact. In other areas where we already have scale, you know, we don't have that burden of the engineering costs in the overall project.
Can you talk about the LG JV? you know, and how that, you know, what that product actually really is and what it means for Magna?
I guess there's LG produces that joint venture produces motors, inverters, onboard chargers. If you think about what it means to Magna, I think, first of all, it further strengthens our capabilities in the eDrive area, I mean, with those components. And we're winning business on eDrives, and we're gonna be launching business in that area. Not every OEM is gonna necessarily outsource that. Some of them are doing it in-house. Even if they're doing it in-house, they're buying components. We get the benefit from that growth in overall electrification where our customers are gonna do the drives, but they're still buying components. LG has a tremendous growth rate as a result of that.
When you think about eBeam axles, I mean, how big a play, part of that product set do they play with you? I mean, of the components in that-
That-
Yeah
-they could play? If they could-
Yeah
-it would be.
Motors and inverters.
-motors, inverters.
Okay. I mean, are they in your eBeam axle or are you doing your own?
Yeah. Yeah.
They're the motor and inverter portion of that eBeam axle?
Yeah.
Got it.
A motor for sure. I'm not- doing the inverter, but motor for sure.
T nverter might be sourced by the customer, might be directed.
Got it. That's something that you are packaging in the EV, eBeam axles-
Correct
-part as opposed to-
Correct
-as opposed to manufacturing. Okay.
I just had a question on EV. You know, we had the luxury of hearing a lot from the OEMs about their, you know, $30 billion, $50 billion, $80 billion CapEx programs. As a supply base, you know, player so large as yourself looks at the next 5, 10 years out, how you think about the investment in EV, relative to a lot of the fixed income investors look at your single A rating and they consider, would the balance sheet, like, support some of that, your capital investment, or can you do it through the, you know, the $1 billion-plus free cash flow you may be looking at, you know, by 2025?
Yeah. I think, Doug, when we start thinking about when we're doing a program investment, it's gonna be, how do you de-risk it right out of the gate?
Right.
The number one piece is gonna be, are we on the right platform and the right volume set?
Right. You don't wanna make an investment if it's gonna be the wrong spot.
You're smart. You're not always gonna be right. Right? That's the reality. How do you de-risk it? First thing you could do is, there's pricing, there's commercial ways of doing it. How do you use existing capacity or existing assets so that you're not reinvesting true dollars? What we've been trying to do strategically is how do we fill open capacity. If you think about a battery tray, John was mentioning earlier, how do you not put a new press in? You don't wanna put a tandem line in, so you fill your existing tandem lines. You just build an assembly facility, and you have flexibility in that manufacturing facility. You get into discussions with your customers on recoveries because it is a new area. That being said, we think it's an exciting area.
It's opportunity.
It's opportunity 'cause when you look at a lot of these battery trays, it's effectively a structural component of the vehicle, the more complicated ones. We don't wanna be doing me-too products. That's not where you're gonna be successful. You wanna build more complicated structural pieces of the vehicle. When you think about the Silverado or the Hummer, the battery tray we're building is actually the floor of the vehicle.
Right.
it's.
The whole floor, yeah.
The whole floor. That's where you wanna play and. You still wanna have that flexibility to work commercially. Go ahead.
I was gonna say, keep in mind that the vast majority of our product portfolio, you know, whether it's an EV or hybrid or internal combustion engine, we're gonna build seats and latches and mirrors and all that. It doesn't require a massive amount of incremental investment just from that.
Right. You already have.
We're talking about battery enclosures here and powertrain components and that, but a lot of it is gonna apply.
Right.
We're doing that right now.
Agnostic to the EV.
Agnostic.
Exactly.
Correct.
To your second part of your question of how do we wanna fund that, I think it comes back in our whole funding strategy that we've been talking about for-
A long time.
-at least a decade.
Yeah.
which is, you know, we wanna self-fund. If we get into a situation where we're seeing right now with an opportunity to grow above market. Even if it wasn't EV, but we have an ability to grow in an area, whether it's traditional business, could be seats, could be whatever, or we wanna do an acquisition in the Veoneer case, we're not afraid to go into the market, borrow money, which we've literally just finished that borrowing.
Right.
Maintain that solid investment grade rating.
An A rating, yeah.
Use the cash flows over the next 18 months, 2 years to pay down to maintain that rating. You can either do it up front or you can do it after the fact. You know, we're at a bit of a lull, but we're using the big base of Magna cash flows to fund that growth. You know, we're growing in ADAS, for example, a lot of that growth is being funded by facias.
Right.
It's being funded by seating, Steyr. Right? That's the way we put it together. Magna is a bank, and then it's just spread out.
Spread across t o the growth areas.
I wanna get to-
Thank you.
-the portfolio stuff in just or management in a second. Back to just the- 'cause we keep talking about battery enclosures. You know, there's a big step up in CapEx, in, that you guys just announced, and that's, you know, denting free cash flow for the next few years-
Quite a, you know, quite a bit. you know, battery enclosures are part of that, but other investment is in there. I mean, as you think about this, you know, one, how big an opportunity is there in battery enclosures? How big is there an opportunity on ADAS and then, you know, other parts of, you know, and then electrification for you? That really is where it seems like a lot of this CapEx is going. Do we get to a point in 2025+ where there's kind of this payoff pitch that comes from this period? I mean, I know you kind of analogize this with what was going on with hydroforming in the late 1990's.
You know, into the, you know, the GMT800 launch and, you know, the C/K in 1998, 1999. you know, I mean, can you just kind of give us? This is, you know, some of the things that people are really concerned about here in the short run is, all of a sudden this massive spending on future payoff pitches, but the payoff pitches is 2025+. Battery enclosures, ADAS, you know, and then electrification.
Well, things make me feel old to start with.
Well, hey, I was there for it. I-
Yeah. We're in it together.
Yeah.
Yeah, if you think about the battery tray one, in 2023, we're gonna spend about $500 million on, of capital on battery trays specifically. Traditionally, we're running, you know, $1.7 billion of capital, let's say, per year, and we're gonna step up into the $2.4 range. We're spending $500 million, just for perspective, on battery trays. There's growth. As Louis said, a lot of the growth we're talking about, where we're growing markets beyond just ADAS or battery trays in that number. We're investing in seating, we're investing in powertrain. Powertrain not as much 'cause a lot of it's engineering, but facias for example. That's where we're-
-when you think about that, and when we do compare it to the T800, and the reason being is it's not necessarily what does it do in the first year, but it's, we're still building that frame. The statement is, we invested. Once you have these big architecturally sophisticated programs, customers don't necessarily wanna resource them. It's not a simple me-too product. It's too risky to take it and move it. Our view is, you have to get on these platforms on Gen 1, and then once you get Gen 1, our experience has been if you do a good job, right? If you do a good job, you're gonna continue to have them. I
f you think about that T800, we're on the third generation. The fourth is gonna be coming up, and the probability of it being resourced is probably not very high just because it's just such a big capital.
The product. Yeah.
If somebody's gonna wanna move it, they're gonna be spending hundreds of millions of dollars to do that.
At least.
At least.
Yeah.
taking the risk of launching it.
Taking the risk. I think that's kind of our process when we go through it. You know, subject to volumes. Those returns, everything's subject to volumes, John. Once those programs launch, they should be returning the appropriate capital on our business.
Volumes in EVs are just gonna grow, and it's an area that we expect to grow. We're gonna be $1.5 billion in 2025. That's the, not the top end. There's substantial growth potential beyond that.
Just to be clear, I mean, on the battery tray side, just to keep coming back to this 'cause this is something that you guys are asked in a way. ask me. That is for programs on large trucks at the moment? Does that go into crossovers and maybe passenger cars if they still, you know, if there's still volume there, or is this more of a structural truck battery enclosure?
Yeah.
-span a lot of the D3 trucks?
The answer is gonna be it depends. Every EV is gonna need a battery enclosure of some sorts.
Yep.
Generally what we're seeing is there's two paths it could go. The OEMs can do just a simple. If you contrast the Lightning, the Lightning is a non-structural component that sits inside the frame.
On Gen 1?
On Gen 1.
Okay.
Gen 2 is gonna be a different type of frame, but it's gonna be a specific frame, and it's all gonna be combined. It's still gonna be. If you contrast that with the Silverado slash Hummer, that is actual a structural piece, so it's gonna take side impacts, all the crash cans and whatnot. It's a different. It's almost like a unibody versus on-frame type discussion The last one is where you just have a unibody and the, on the smaller cars you'll have a floor with a battery tray attached to the floor itself.
Also a structural component, though?
Not necessarily. The floor, you'd still have rails, and it would sit inside the rails.
Okay.
Right? Every customer, depending on the class of the vehicle and, their own design strategies, we're seeing all pieces of it.
If I think about, not to beat this, is like the $2.4 billion, I think, in CapEx is what we've stepped up to.
1.8.
$1.7, $1.8, you know, typical run rate, $500 million going to battery enclosures. That's a big chunk of this, the step-up, right? There's some other stuff in there which is not, you know, not important, but this is the big change. The payoff pitch on this is coming in 25. plus, and it's not just on truck programs. It's potentially a technology that's available to all vehicles, all segments and all structures.
In fact, we've talked about the HUMMER and the Silverado and the Lightning, but we have additional programs ordered, we're not yet
Just yet. Okay. Those are the core and what's going on right now. Okay. Got it. Okay. If we think about sort of the portfolio, just more broadly, you mentioned you got rid of or sold manual transmission plants. Are there other actions that you think you need to take, or programs, or plants that you might get rid of over time? Are there other things in addition to what you're doing organically that you might need to add to the portfolio over time, à la Veoneer, right? Maybe we could talk about what you're selling, what you've just bought and what you might buy, you know, or sell going forward.
Yeah. I can start and Louis can jump in.
Yeah.
When you think about our portfolio, Louis was saying 85% of it's agnostic. We do have a sliver at the bottom that are- It's a shrinking market, let's say. You're talking about manual transmissions, so that's the one you- w e sold one of those facilities.
Yeah.
in December. They're just shrinking, they're just not Regardless of EVs, nobody wants a manual anymore.
I do.
I do, yeah. Me and my son want one. Impossible to find. You have fuel tanks. If you think about a business, fuel tank, you're not gonna need a fuel tank on an EV, but that's a small business. It's maybe $300 million. We have all-wheel drive, four-wheel drive systems that are mechanically driven, that are gonna be transitioning into an eDrive. This is where Louis was talking earlier about our LG, HASCO-type strategies, systems, components. You have 85%. I would say that's the piece of it. The other question is, would we consider paring more of our portfolio? The answer is yes. I think we have a history of showing. We sold our interiors business just because we weren't competitive. It was commoditized, and we sold it.
There was a consolidation play, it worked. Our fuel fluid pressure and controls, we sold that business again type thing. That was a little bit more of a different situation where you're looking forward of where the architecture of the vehicle was gonna go. We made a decision to exit that product. If we look at the other ones, would we consider selling? It's always gonna come down. I'm a finance guy, right? It's gonna be what does it come down to? What's the price? You don't wanna carve too much apart because we honestly believe when you put all the various pieces together, you get synergies. Even if you think about our financial strategy and our high investment-grade rating...
Yeah.
-part of that's because seating and Steyr and all the various pieces are contributing to it. Because of that flexibility, I don't have to go borrow money because I can generate free cash flow from various pieces of the business to grow ADAS, or if I want to grow battery trays. That's kind of the way we think of it. you know, we have sophisticated management teams at each of the groups. We have seven groups that come up into the segment. I think that's the way we break it down.
I would just add on the front-wheel drive, all-wheel drive side, I mean, a lot of the same capabilities and processes that we're using in those businesses are transferable to eDrive. The capabilities of people that we have there, we have eDrive businesses, or programs awarded. We're gonna launch them in four-wheel drive facilities, for instance. We're just gonna transition those plants over time.
Yeah. The know-how and torque management transfers to electronic side.
Right. Exactly.
Okay. One other thing on that. I mean, what we've seen, and I think Tesla showed this, but we're hearing this, from other folks, the sort of the full systems of potentially a battery tray and seating and the structures coming into the vehicle as sort of one very, you know, large system.
Correct.
Is something that actually may become a reality as we see more and more EVs launched. I mean, you know, historically, that's the kind of thing I think the Buick LaCrosse near a long time ago was gonna get a fully integrated interior, and it was gonna get dropped into a vehicle. GM stopped that at that point, 'cause then they started breaking up the parts and trying to get stuff cheaper. This whole idea of actually delivering, sort of the middle structure of the vehicle that comes to an assembly facility in a way that is, you know, sort of like our make vs. buy, car in the box analysis.
Like, it would come in and just be put into the vehicle. You know, are you seeing anybody bidding anything in that way, because you guys would be sort of a natural in all the stuff that you do for that kind of structure or system, if you will.
Like, on the system sourcing, by far, Tesla's the leader in that space. I would say there's still the traditional customers that wanna break it down and give you a peel for a nut and a bolt. We're starting to see more customers move towards the Tesla space. I think we have one successful example of in a DMS or a Driver Monitoring System, where we sell a mirror, and the customer's looking for a DMS solution. We had a solution where we could put it into the mirrors. We actually went to the customer, three purchasing groups at that customer.
These, the ECU purchasing group, the mirrors group, and the ADAS group, and got all three of them together, and we effectively system sourced a solution on a Driver Monitoring System as opposed to breaking-
In a mirror.
-in a mirror. It's a one-box solution instead of a two. You drop a chip, you had come up with a mirror, has ECU in it, and in behind is the camera with the ECU that does the mirror, the rear view camera and the driver monitoring.
Okay. We're gonna open up for questions in just a second here. Can you just talk about the Veoneer acquisition, and what you've, what you've bought, at this point, and sort of, you know, where you sit on ADAS, potential level four or five capability and sort of the competitive position of Magna versus some other players, you know, out there?
Yeah. On the level four and five, we're not playing in that space. I would say our We're up into the level 2+ , maybe 3. We have LIDAR capabilities, so it depends if that's a 2.5 or a 3. I think when we, when we looked at the Veoneer acquisition, we looked at it in 2021. There was three pieces to it. There was the Arriver piece, the actual perception software. There was our strength controls business, then there was the active safety business. We purchased. It's still waiting to close, right? We purchased the active safety business.
Yes.
That business, when we looked at it was I think immediately it brought a scale. If you look, it's roughly gonna double our size, whether it's in 2022 or 2024. What it also has that was really beneficial to us is it had product overlap. When we have a strong camera business. They have a strong radar business. We have digital, they have analogs. They produce millions of radars. They have a thermal camera business, and they have more ECU business or experience, I would say. Second is, there's a significant amount of customer and geographic overlap, so very different customers. We think that's another opportunity. The last piece is, the engineering talent is fantastic.
If you go back to that DMS example we had earlier, we have our one box solution with for DMS. Veoneer, for example, would have a different DMS solution. Now we can go to the customer and if they wanna source it in the A-pillar or the mirror, we can do both. That's really the way when we were thinking about it. It's scale and then customer geography and product overlap.
Do you have any questions in the audience?
Thanks for the commentary. Your light vehicle production assumption, you know, looking through the potential recession risk in the next year 2025, what do you think is realistic based on what you're bidding on? Given the breadth of what you do with your OEM customers, you know what they're kinda planning on building three years out. What we're hearing from every OEM is price discipline, keep high ATPs. I don't quite see how the math works in terms of affordability and getting back to, like, a 90 million+ global light vehicle production without pricing or mix-
Mix.
-coming down. Can you kind of share with us your visibility or confidence that we will be at a 90 million unit global number 3 years out? Or do you think actually you better be rightsizing for 85 'cause the OEMs are not gonna provide affordable vehicles, you know, for the mass market, $30,000, $25,000 dollar price points?
Yeah.
If you have any thoughts on that, it'd be helpful given the sensitivity to volume for you.
I can start. We can tag team this. My opinion, when you look at our volume sets. A couple of thoughts in there. I think there's gonna be a mix change for sure. If you wanted a vehicle over the last two years, you wanted to buy a, whatever, A, B, or C vehicle, guess what? You're walking away with a truck fully loaded with every feature you had. That was a big driver of the average selling price. When you look at our volume sets that we have in our system, as Louis said earlier, we've been running out of recessionary levels. Inventory levels have started to tick up. When you look out at our 2025 guidance numbers, Europe is not even back to 2019 levels. We're not even seeing recoveries in Europe.
They're significantly depressed even out into 2025. I'm not gonna talk just 'cause our main markets are Europe, North America, and China, and even China, it's fragmented. China's gonna continue to grow. Europe's gonna be 3 million-4 million units below expectations if you look year-over-year. Big driver of that is Russia, one, we're just seeing significant- everything you spoke about in Europe, we're seeing that come to fruition. I think it's more of a demand side. In North America, we're at, we're just getting up over 16-
16.5.
16.5. Right. We're not up into that 17.5 number you would have seen at peaks. It's a combination of inventory rebuilds, but we're not seeing this really big uptick. It's a very different recession than we would have seen in, you know, the last 3 or 4, where you have this big push into the system of vehicles, and then there's a glut of demand. We're just seeing we've been operating at such a recessionary level. Inventories are down. Our expectations, we're not seeing this big uptick. That's what we're reflecting in our outlook. I think long story short, I think I agree with a lot of your comments.
Yeah. I mean, 2019 was GM strike, 2020 was COVID, a couple of years of supply constraints. We've been running at recessionary levels in North America. I mean, we can debate whether 16.5 is reasonable or not reasonable, certainly isn't anywhere near peak. You know, I think we think that's a pretty reasonable level, like, to expect.
Maybe if I can. Is there any other analysis? One last one. I mean, as you just kind of mentioned, the 2019 strike at GM. This is kind of a off script question.
We don't hate those.
If we think about what might happen later this year, with the UAW negotiations, how do you guys game plan for potential, you know, extreme disruption, a key customer here, in North America? I mean, it's not something you know, you wanna set up for, be exactly ready for, but it may happen. I mean, how do you handle that?
I don't know if you can game plan. It's so binary, right, John? It's I think our game planning for a situation where you just shut down. Effectively, if you get into a situation, all three will go. If you dial it back to where we were as far as game planning, we almost have a game plan in our COVID book. When you think about we went dark in April and May, we were completely dark in North America. Realistically, we would come back to that exact same situation. How to bring the plants down, what do you keep running, who do you send home? That eventually, when it does restart, like, we were so efficient. We turned the lights off, left maintenance. All the maintenance was pulled ahead.
As soon as when production started, we flipped the lights on and it was ready to go. I think we've done a lot of the game planning, but effectively it came out of COVID.
Yeah. The only complicated factor is you may have a plant that has multi customers and gets a little more tough to manage.
Right.
Yeah. Okay. Great. Well, guys, thank you so much, Pat and Louis. I really appreciate the time. Good luck with the rest of the day. Thank you so much for coming.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Great.