Good day, and welcome to the Aptiv Wind River update call. Today's conference is being recorded and will include a brief presentation, followed by a Q&A session. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Vicky Apostolakos, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Cecilia. Good morning, and thank you for joining today's conference call. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release announcing that Aptiv has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Wind River. The press release and related slide presentation can be found on the investor relations portion of our website at ir.aptiv.com. Today's call and discussion will focus on Aptiv's announced agreement to acquire Wind River. We will not be discussing year-end or fourth-quarter 2021 results and look forward to discussing those topics during our earnings call on Thursday, February 3rd. During today's call, we will be providing certain forward-looking information which reflects Aptiv's current view of financial performance and may be materially different from our actual performance for reasons that we cite in our Form 10-K and other SEC filings.
Joining us today will be Kevin Clark, Aptiv's President and CEO, and Joe Massaro, CFO and Senior Vice President of Business Operations. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Kevin Clark.
Thank you, Vicky. Thanks everyone for joining us this morning. Beginning on slide three, I'm very excited to announce that Aptiv has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Wind River. Wind River is a global leader in delivering software for the intelligent edge. Its cloud-native solutions enable the secure development, deployment, operations, and servicing of mission-critical systems. Its edge-to-cloud portfolio spans the aerospace and defense, telecommunications, industrial, medical, and automotive markets, and its products are used on more than 2 billion devices and across more than 1,700 customers globally. Not only does Wind River have robust, scalable technology solutions, but it also has a world-class management and technical team, as well as an established business platform.
In addition, Wind River brings a demonstrated history of strong financial performance with approximately $400 million of revenues from high-growth industries, gross margins of over 80%, and EBITDA margins of over 20%. Turning to slide four. Intelligent systems are enabling smarter devices that generate more data, perform more processing at the edge, and require greater levels of compute performance. As the compute and processing moves closer to the edge and these connected devices, including vehicles, grow in complexity and capabilities, multiple new end-use innovations and applications will be enabled across mission-critical industries. Over the last couple of years, we've seen numerous examples of these innovations, including the expansion of over-the-air update technologies and the use of virtualization to speed product development or improve manufacturing processes. Enabling these systems requires cloud-native intelligent edge software that delivers the highest levels of security, safety, reliability, and performance.
Wind River is an established worldwide leader in these systems, and we're confident that when combined with Aptiv's global scale and complementary technologies, we can accelerate the digital transformation of mission-critical industries and edge devices. As I'll explain in a moment, we're more confident than ever that the software-defined vehicle will become one of the most important devices on the intelligent edge, requiring greater levels of in-vehicle compute and connectivity. Moving to slide five. We believe the ability to provide customers with a complete open solution is critical to accelerating advancement and adoption of intelligent edge technology. As I mentioned, Wind River has strong product offerings across multiple high-growth mission-critical industries and has strong relationships with some of the most innovative and technology-forward companies in their respective sectors.
Leveraging Wind River Studio, the first cloud-native development and operations platform, Wind River is able to provide customers with a complete suite of software development tools and solutions, including a real-time operating system, virtualization and digital twin technology, as well as development and lifecycle management services. Although one might initially think the compute needs of the aerospace industry differ significantly from that of the telecom industry, the requirements of operating a cost-effective network of intelligent edge devices results in a consistent set of challenges across these industries. Wind River excels at addressing these challenges. Over the past five years, Wind River has proven this with the rollout of Wind River Studio cloud platform designed to manage globally distributed 5G networks. This platform, which provides unifying infrastructure, software orchestration, and analytics capabilities, allows 5G networks to virtually manage thousands of edge devices.
The network virtualization not only allows for a faster deployment of 5G technologies, but also affords the network operator significant cost savings. This solution is currently deployed by some of the largest mobile operators around the world. As you see on the right-hand side of the chart, we estimate the market for intelligent edge software solution is significant today and will experience meaningful growth over the coming years and reach $80 billion in 2026. Turning to slide six. Over the next several years, the software-defined vehicle will become an important device on the intelligent edge, enabling greater levels of autonomy and connectivity. These connected vehicles will also create new sources of recurring revenues for our customers as well as for Aptiv while offering end consumers the ability to regularly update features and functionality.
The combined expertise and complementary technologies of Aptiv and Wind River are uniquely positioned to assist our customers in accelerating the development and deployment of the software-defined vehicle in a cost-effective manner. Aptiv's Smart Vehicle Architecture serves as the foundation of the vehicle, optimizing the infrastructure by removing complexity and mass while providing network redundancy and resiliency. Wind River Studio cloud-native platform will allow for the development, deployment, operation, and servicing of the vehicle software stack, shortening the development cycles and speeding time to market for new upgrades and enhancements. Our open development environment will allow for feature adoption and development from multiple parties, including the integration of Aptiv's active safety and user experience software, as well as OEM-developed software.
Given the strength of our combined capabilities and the commitments that both the Aptiv and Wind River organizations have to helping customers solve their toughest challenges, we are highly confident in our ability to capitalize on the high-growth automotive software opportunity that is forecasted to reach $90 billion in 2030. Now I'd like to hand the call over to Joe to take us through some of the financial highlights in more detail.
Thanks, Kevin. Good morning, everyone. Turning to the financial highlights on slide seven. Wind River's 2021 revenues were almost $400 million, and we expect the business to grow to approximately $1 billion of revenue by 2026. The acquisition is expected to be neutral to adjusted earnings per share in 2022, becoming accretive in 2023 and beyond. Our adjusted earnings per share calculation now removes the impact of acquisition-related amortization and incentive compensation. On the right side of the slide, we have outlined the key financial benefits of the transaction, including savings on third-party software development spend and increased engineering efficiencies within Aptiv and accelerated AS&UX revenue growth within existing product lines, which is incremental to the previously mentioned software growth.
The combination of the cost savings and the AS&UX revenue will yield $125 million of incremental earnings by year four. The $4.3 billion all-cash transaction is expected to close mid-year, subject to regulatory approval. The acquisition of Wind River meaningfully enhances our software capabilities, including the addition of the Wind River team and technical resources, and broadens our exposure to high-growth industrial end markets. Going forward, we will continue to effectively deploy capital with a focus on value-enhancing M&A and investments to add scale and leverage to key product lines. With that, I'd hand the call back to Kevin for his closing remarks.
Thanks, Joe. Turning to slide eight. We've transformed Aptiv over the last decade by building an industry-leading portfolio of advanced solutions that make mobility safe, green, and more connected. In the next decade, smart, distributed, cloud-native networks will power people and devices to operate in new and innovative ways as the world undergoes a digital transformation. Wind River is a leader in the industrial applications of mission-critical software, and their solutions address industry needs and use cases. By deploying and scaling our software solutions together, Aptiv and Wind River will be able to leverage key learnings and data to introduce and scale new products faster and more cost-effectively. Our complementary portfolios and decades of combined experience in delivering safety-critical systems will unlock incremental value for all of our stakeholders as we continue the intelligent transformation of Aptiv. With that, let's open up the line for Q&A.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question at this time, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Ensure the mute function on your telephone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. In order to answer as many questions as possible, please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Again, please press star one to ask a question. We will now take our first question from Joe Spak from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone.
Good morning, Joe.
Congrats on the deal. I guess just to start, you know, in the slides, 10% of the current business automotive, so you're getting that good end market diversification you talked about. Is that lower auto percentage though because this is an industry that's sort of still on the cusp of adopting some of these technologies and, you know, what does the share of auto look like, you know, when you get closer to that $1 billion in sales figure?
Yeah, Joe, it's Kevin. Today, roughly 10% of Wind River's revenues are in the automotive space. I think over the last decade, they have technology that sits on roughly 35 or 40 million vehicles, principally related to RTOS or operating systems. With respect to the future opportunity, it's huge. I think you hit the nail on the head. The reality when you look at technology advancement in the intelligent edge as it relates to telecom, aerospace and defense in those other markets, they've gone through some of the challenges that the automotive industry has gone through earlier.
Those solutions have been developed by Wind River to address those challenges for those customers. As we look at the challenges currently going on in the OEM in the automotive market and the challenges that several of our OEM customers are having with developing and integrating cost-effective software, we believe the combination of Wind River and Aptiv perfectly positions us to get a significant portion of that $90 billion automotive software market that's forecasted for 2023.
Okay. The second question is, you know, you mentioned the real-time operating system. You know, the slides say that Wind River sort of provides that. What's your sense on your automotive customers willing to take, you know, a commercial third-party solution versus developing their own custom solution? And if they choose the latter, are there still opportunities for Wind River if the customer chooses their own OS?
It's an open system. It's an open solution. Obviously, we think an open solution developed across multiple industries, across multiple customers addressing the same use case and needs is a more cost-effective alternative, and a better solution for our OEM customers. However, if OEM customers wanna develop a portion of that overall operating system or middleware solution, that's something that they'll be positioned to do and they'll be able to do.
Thank you very much.
We will now take our next question from Rod Lache from Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everybody.
Good morning.
Can you maybe just first of all talk a little bit about the competitive landscape? Today there are $400 million out of a $50 billion market. Just more broadly and then more specifically with respect to auto, what does that landscape look like in edge computing?
Yeah. I'm sorry, Rod, did you?
In edge software.
Yeah. Is there an echo?
No, it's all set.
Sorry, Rod. I just heard an echo. It's Kevin. Today, edge computing for the automotive market, there are some traditional players serving that market as it relates to middleware. Players like, for example, Vector, QNX, others, they tend to develop closed systems that are tied to AUTOSAR. So much less open, much less flexibility, not advanced from an edge connectivity standpoint. You know, to the prior question, Wind River's focus has really been, to date on, spaces like the industrial market, the telecom market, medical market, as well as aerospace and defense that have gone through some of the, you know, the challenges that we're going through in the automotive industry today.
Our plan is to combine our joint capabilities and bring a more contemporary approach to the automotive market, and we think the opportunity is significant.
I think, Rod, it's Joe. I would just add, you know, if you look at some of those competitors Kevin mentioned, you know, Wind River, and part of this has been driven by the multi-industry approach, is well ahead on sort of the cloud-native aspect of that system. You know, the ability to manage that system set centrally, develop, deploy, operate, and service via a single tool set and over the cloud, over effectively OTA. We really view that technology as ahead of any of the what I'll call the existing sort of RTOS or middleware solutions within automotive.
I think that, you know, that sort of concept of just not the edge, but the intelligent edge and cloud-native is very important when you're benchmarking Wind River to some of the other folks out there.
Okay. Just clarifying that. You would be agnostic or Wind River would be agnostic to whether the OS is Linux or QNX or whatnot. My second question is, maybe you can just elaborate a little bit on how these types of contracts are typically structured? You mentioned that there's a recurring revenue part of this.
Sure.
If you could just give us a bit of description of what that typically looks like?
Yeah. Wind River, I mean, you know, they own IP around their own RTOS, VxWorks. They have their own Linux deployed. As Kevin mentioned in his prepared comments, I mean, they're deployed on 2 billion edge devices. Now it's 35 million vehicles, so there's a lot of other devices they're deployed on in other industries. But this is their own system. If someone wants to use Linux, we have a Linux solution for them to use in such things as infotainment. Obviously, the RTOS gets put down into other functions, but it is their own system. It's a system that's been around for 35 years, has been developed and maintained very successfully.
Again, it's now really tied into their cloud-native platform and the ability to, again, develop, deploy, operate, service over the cloud. The business today, very little in what I'll call sort of annual licenses, less than 10%. Most of their contracts are multi-year development agreements and license agreements. There's a service element to it, obviously. As you get into the sort of cloud-native part of the business, which you know call it a little, you know, 2022 should be right around 20%.
You're starting to get into a more traditional SaaS, software-as-a-service revenue model.
Great. Thank you.
Yep.
We will now take our next question from Brian Johnson from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Kevin and Joe. Little did I know when I talked to the Bloomberg reporter about the importance of software, we wind up here. I just have a couple questions. First, when you think of the 10% in automotive and growing that, you know, one of the concerns of investors and, you know, had been a real CS, you would have heard it firsthand, is where Aptiv's software provider fits into the stack when you've got, on the one hand, OEMs dramatically increasing software hiring, and on the other hand, former tier twos moving into tier one with, in particular, an ADAS sensor fusion software companies like, Luminar, Mobileye, and so forth?
Can you kinda talk about the edge computing in automotive and how the Wind River solution set fits in with that, and maybe it's something that neither the OEM or the tier twos would be doing the software for?
Yeah, Brian, it's Kevin. I'll start and Joe can chime in. Obviously, we have a long legacy in and around a portion of the middleware and areas in and around perception system, feature development, and ADAS infotainment user experience. We bring that history. It's something we've done for a very long period of time. When you think about Wind River and edge compute or intelligent edge compute, cloud-native solution, again, it's a more contemporary approach. It's a more efficient and effective approach to developing some of the challenges in and around middleware operability and performance management.
When you look at where we are relative to customers, our strategy is effectively to provide customers with the flexibility to do as much or as little as they would like to do. We will continue down the path of developing the full stack solution. We think having the middleware provides us in a more competitive position to do that. We also, as I mentioned, wanna be in a situation where we enable our customers to do what they'd like to do and what we can do. As it relates to customers doing more, I can tell you, we have ADAS programs now and user experience programs on dozens of OEM platforms. We don't have a single OEM customer who isn't asking us to do more software.
When you talk about the size of the market growing from roughly $30 billion - $90 billion by 2030, the reality is the pie is getting much bigger. The reality is, the integration of the software solution is getting more complex. More and more of our OEM customers are having challenges related to addressing or delivering on those solutions. Therefore, you know, we're confident it remains as big and quite frankly, a much bigger opportunity for companies like ourselves who are appropriately positioned.
Okay. The second on the industrial side, given the deployment of edge computing across aerospace and those other sectors, to what extent can the relationships bring along connectors and cable management? I just, you know, on the one hand, I could argue you're selling electronics to aerospace and other customers, so therefore it's an in. On the other hand, those perhaps are quite different parts of the organization speccing as an automotive, the hardware versus the software. Could you maybe comment on that cross-sell?
Yeah. Listen, I think ultimately this all gets down to enabling a software-defined vehicle, which requires, you know, our SVA solution, which you know, an element of that is changing vehicle hardware, which leads to a more efficient, more productive vehicle architecture, which includes more connectors, more sophisticated cable management solutions, more efficient and effective wire harnesses like zone controllers, and at the same time, more software. The hardware enables the software and quite frankly, the more efficient effective software, including the middleware, enables redesign of the vehicle architecture. It's not a single sale. Obviously, Wind River will be focused on selling their cloud-native intelligent edge solution.
There's aspects of the Aptiv organization that will continue to sell features, feature development, sensor fusion, in the integration of software. We have a different part of the organization that will continue to focus on selling vehicle architecture and hardware.
My question was, how is that going to work outside of automotive where you have Hellermann Tyton in another non-automotive?
Yeah.
Cable management connector solution?
So there's certainly an opportunity to take some of our software capabilities as it relates to perception systems and feature development in some markets outside of automotive, like the industrial market. As you know, we've talked about for the last couple of years, we've certainly been focused on taking some of our vehicle architecture capabilities, especially in areas like engineered components and expanding outside of automotive. I would say, you know, Wind River makes that validate our capabilities outside of the automotive market and should present more opportunities. That would not be done through Wind River. That would be done through Aptiv.
Okay. Thank you.
We will now take our next question from David Kelley from Jefferies. Please go ahead, sir.
Hi. Good morning, Kevin and Joe. Thanks for-
Mm-hmm
Thank you for taking my questions. Just maybe a follow-up on kind of the software margin opportunity. Obviously, Wind River's 20% EBITDA margin accretive versus your core. We would think maybe there's potential for upside longer term, kind of what we see from software peers, and particularly as we think about some of the leverageability of that, the cloud capabilities as we see autos moves forward with transformation. Just curious if you could comment on how you think your longer term opportunity for software margins play out?
Yeah. David, it's Joe. I mean, we're obviously we won't go into specifics on sort of your margin, but we completely agree with the premise. I mean, this, the Wind River business as well as some of the software product lines within Aptiv, you know, as they ramp, as they get larger, as they grow, as we move more to that SaaS revenue model, would fully expect, you know, margins to fall in line with more, with the more traditional software ranges. Wind River's been investing over the last couple of years. They deployed a couple of new solutions, particularly in telecom and A&D, and they're working on their automotive solution. We actually have a collaboration agreement with them, which is how we sort of started to get to know them.
There's some investment there, but from a product line perspective, I completely agree with you. There will be software margins in this business as well as other parts of Aptiv over the coming, you know, call it 3-4 years.
Okay. Got it. Thank you. That's helpful. Maybe one follow-up, Kevin. You talked about the telecom cloud platform that they have in place, and clearly the auto industry wants to move in the direction of 5G. I guess, how difficult do you see it as being to be able to build out a cloud portfolio or platform from scratch from the auto side? You know, I was just hoping you could give us a sense of how these enhanced cloud capabilities with Wind River differentiate you versus tier one competitors or maybe auto OEMs that like to talk up moving more directly into software themselves.
Yeah. Listen, I think you know a couple of things. You know, Wind River, we got to start with 40 years of experience developing and working on mission-critical systems across multiple industries. As a part of that, building out an edge-to-cloud software portfolio for those industries, including aerospace and defense in telecom. When you think about automotive and you take a step back, you know all the trends going on in automotive as it relates to more data being produced, more vehicles being connected, more compute being required, that you know edge-to-cloud solution is very consistent with what you've seen in other industries. On a relative basis, we would say Wind River is much better positioned from a competitive standpoint than any other player out there.
Their cloud-native solution, given the fact that they have some historical exposure to the automotive industry, they've been through the challenges in industries that are maybe a little bit further down the path as it relates to resolving some of the edge to cloud challenges. You combine that with our capabilities in automotive, our scale in automotive. We feel like that's an opportunity that's right in front of us, and it's an opportunity that we're really well-positioned to pursue and execute on.
All right. Got it. Thank you both. Appreciate it.
Thanks, David.
We will now take our next question from John Murphy from Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go-
Good morning, guys. Happy New Year.
Morning.
Yeah, you too.
The, you know, on any metric, even when you look at the out year, you know, projections you're kind of highlighting here, it still seems like, you know, relative to your multiple, you know, and in reality, this is a little bit of a pricey deal. You guys are very disciplined and don't tend to overpay for anything. It just seems like there's a little bit more opportunity, maybe cross-selling as Brian was highlighting or, you know, the growth in year five, six or seven might be more explosive.
I mean, is there anything else you can point to, you know, and certainly, like I said, you guys are very disciplined, so I'd expect there'd be something a little bit more than maybe what's highlighted here that would backfill for what seems to be kind of high valuation? I mean, is it cross-selling? Is it that the software explodes, you know, more in year six and seven because of cycle times? I mean, there seems like there must be something a little bit more even.
Yeah
Beyond what you're highlighting here.
Yeah. Yeah. John, it's Joe. Let me start and then sort of Kevin can jump in. Listen, I think this from a value perspective, I mean, this thing, you know, software is expensive, right? It's expensive to buy. It's arguably even more expensive to develop on your own and create IP.
When you look at this transaction, where we are, we're very much in line with the most recent precedent transactions in industrial software. We're very comfortable with the valuation. You know, one of the unique things here, and I think it's important, are that cost savings to that synergy number, right? As you start to get into the next couple years, whether you're a tier one trying to do your own software or whether you're an OE trying to do your own software, you're gonna have to pay for this IP. You're gonna have to pay somebody licenses for your middleware, for your operating system. You're gonna have to pay for development tools and, you know, now whether we've brought these in-house and we will own this will be our IP. You know, we save a significant amount of money.
We're estimating at least $100 million of cost savings, kicking in over the next couple of years as we no longer have to pay other third parties for use of their technology because we have our own. As you start to factor that in, the incremental revenue opportunities just not coming from software and Wind River, but we think from AS&UX, we think this gives AS&UX a leg up.
Mm-hmm.
You know, we really are very comfortable with the valuation. Again, it matches up very well with the precedent transactions. On top of that, we have synergies. On top of that, we have a lot of incremental revenue within both AS&UX and Wind River. As you get out, you know, we've committed to $1 billion of Wind River by 2026, but you know, obviously it's not gonna stop growing there.
Yeah.
I think it's a combination of out-year revenue, but more importantly, it's expensive to develop software. It's expensive, very expensive to develop your own IP, and the fact that we now have that and can leverage that internally, we think is gonna be a huge advantage for us.
Yeah. If John, if I can just chime in, and part of it may be repetitive what Joe said. I mean, listen, this is a business with a world-class management team that operates in end markets that are growing at plus 10% compounded on an annual basis. Operating in strong markets, strong management team, it strengthens our full stack offering with, you know, unique cloud-native products and services, better positions us for the transition to you know, to the software-defined vehicle and automotive. Accelerates our transition to more software revenues within automotive. Unique technologies and approaches to automotive that we think are very relevant with the issues that our customers are wrestling with as it relates to software in the vehicle.
You know, given our size, given our scale, we can provide support, commitment, that can help, you know, benefit or help strengthen Wind River's position within the markets where, you know, they currently operate. We're excited. We think this is a fantastic opportunity. We're more confident than ever that we're gonna see an acceleration of the software-defined vehicle, more pull for SVA. You know, although CES was quiet from a physical standpoint, it certainly wasn't from a virtual customer meeting standpoint. The acquisition or the combination of Wind River and Aptiv really perfectly positions us to pursue these opportunities.
Okay. Just one follow-up that's helpful. You know, if we think about cycle times, I mean, it's a difficult thing to understand on business wins here. I mean, are we at the early days where this is choppy and new, you know what I mean, new business wins could be large, and they're not on traditional cycles? I mean, how do the automakers look at this? If they're saying, "Hey, listen, we're all in with you guys," you know, how fast is that business win yet realized in revenue? Is it, you know, one, two, three, five years out? I mean, how fast or slow is this, you know, win to implementation in this business? It's, I would imagine, very different than most stuff we're looking at.
Yeah. Well, I think with respect to the traditional markets that Wind River operates in, they've had tremendous success in the aerospace and defense and telecom market. You can obviously go to their website and see who some of their customers are, so a tremendous amount of success. Like what we're seeing in automotive with you know the software-defined everything seeing acceleration of demand. In automotive as it relates to SVA and pull for you know separating software from hardware you know as we talked about on our last earnings call, we're seeing an increase in requests for advanced development programs from customers. We're seeing an increased number of RFQs. From our perspective, the pace is just picking up and it's accelerating.
Again, Wind River gives us a competitive position within automotive that is unequaled by any other. The solution, the cloud-native solution, intelligent edge solution that Joe talked about, the Wind River Studio DevOps platform, allows the tier ones as well as the OEMs to more cost effectively and more quickly develop and deploy software in the vehicle. It's a very robust solution and we feel it puts us at the very top as it relates to competitive capabilities.
I'm sorry, but how fast would a revenue if you won, you know, a contract today with a major automaker, I mean, how fast could that revenue start rolling in in a year as opposed to, you know, 3 - 5 years?
Yeah. I think if it relates to overall middleware and SCA, it's just kind of awarded today, two years out.
Got it. Thank you very much.
We will now take our next question from Dan Levy from Credit Suisse. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking the question, and Happy New Year. I wanna dig in on the rationale of the deal, and I think you've answered this in some of the prior questions. You know, in the past, you've talked about approaching deals from the perspective of boosting your industrial end market exposure. You've also talked about approaching deals for software exposure. In general, those have been two separate initiatives. First, I just wanna understand, you know, going into today, what was your software exposure on the industrial end market side? Just more broadly, and I think you've been touching on this, is this deal more about really boosting your industrial end market exposure?
Is this really about giving you an automotive software solution, that you didn't have in the past? Just trying to understand deal rationale in that regard. I know you've touched on it a bit already.
Yeah. Dan, it's Joe. Why don't I start, and then Kevin can jump in. Listen, I know we talked about them as separate parts of the transaction strategy. They were never sort of separate by design, right? They were just generally areas we were looking at, broadening the industrial end markets, looking at software. I think the uniqueness here, and we spent a lot of time on this, and as Kevin said, we spent a lot of time with our customers understanding where they're going and how they're thinking about software. I understand there are some of them that are talking about doing it all themselves, but there are a lot of them that will not be able to afford to do it themselves or are investing in other areas and are gonna need support.
You know, as we looked at this and thought about how to get a operating system in the vehicle that is deployable and serviceable over the air, there is a lot of precedent in other industries for that. That question has been answered by other industries or has been solved for by other industries. In a lot of cases, Wind River was the one that's helped meet those challenges, right? They've figured out how to deploy software that manages a complex devices on the far edge, how to make it updatable, how to make it serviceable. I think the way to think about this is yes, we did have end market diversification in mind, we did have software.
You know, this was unique because quite honestly, we think the answers to some of the big questions that are being faced by automotive and how to deploy software effectively across the fleets is actually gonna come from other industries. Wind River has a lot of that know-how, has a lot of that understanding. This is, yes, this is about diversifying our end markets. We're very excited about the spaces they're in, but it's also about having a full automotive software solution that we think is gonna be incredibly cost-effective, that's gonna be deployable more quickly, just given where Wind River is in some of these other industries.
I would say it's, you know, it's sort of in the middle of your two endpoints there, but a really unique set of facts around this company's ability to solve complex use cases for intelligent edge devices. Kevin, is there anything else?
No. Nope. You covered it. Given the nature of the industry that Wind River serves, when you think about, you know, certifiable solutions that are secure, you know, given their position in aerospace and telecom, you know, there's direct corollaries in the automotive industry. Again, a more cost-effective, more flexible approach to developing, you know, intelligent edge solutions, middleware solutions, but meeting the needs of the automotive industry from a security and safety standpoint. Very differentiated from that standpoint.
Great. Just to follow up on that, you know, your software exposure in automotive today is primarily middleware-type solutions. Maybe you can. Again, I think you've already sort of made reference to this, but maybe you could give us a sense of how complementary or how different sort of an edge software solution is versus the middleware. Are these just two completely different solutions, or are there already some architectural similarities, and so there's you know, it's an easy transition for you?
Yeah. Dan, it's Joe. Again, let me just start, and then Kevin can jump in. We would think of our current software, excluding Motional, our current software capabilities as more when you think of an automotive software stack. We're more in the-