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Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference 2024

Sep 10, 2024

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

Okay, great. Thank you, everybody, for joining. My name is Mark Delaney, and I cover Aptiv for Goldman Sachs. I'm very pleased to have Kevin Clark, the Chairman and CEO, as well as Joe Massaro, the Vice Chairman and CFO. Thank you both for joining us.

Kevin Clark
Chair and CEO, Aptiv

Thanks for having us.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

Kevin, first question for you. The company is targeting $35 billion of bookings in 2024, modestly higher than the $34 billion the company achieved in 2023. Maybe talk about some of the key areas of strength supporting that level of bookings.

Kevin Clark
Chair and CEO, Aptiv

Yeah. So we continue to see strength in and around Vehicle Architecture, and we break that down into kind of a couple different areas. One, on the wire harness side, both low voltage as well as some element of high voltage electrification, certainly on the engineered component side. So from a connector standpoint, cable management solution, strong demand there across our portfolio in automotive, but also there's a big piece of that business that's non-automotive, that's military, A&D, military and industrial, strong growth there. Seeing some strong demand for Wind River in the telco space. So doing well there. Back half of this year, expecting some big announcements as it relates to awards, especially in and around Telco and A&D.

So as of the end of the second quarter, well on our way to equaling or exceeding what we did last year. On the AS&UX side, solid awards in and around active safety. Some big awards with some of the Japanese OEMs, specifically on radar. So nice rotation of our customer mix there, so excited about those opportunities. And then, as we've talked about with China local OEMs, we're seeing across all of our businesses, a significant growth within that customer base on the SPS side as well as the AS&UX side.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

Yeah, that's a great overview. A lot for us to dig into. Maybe we can continue on the topic of China, and can you elaborate more on the progress you're seeing with bookings with the domestic Chinese OEMs?

Kevin Clark
Chair and CEO, Aptiv

Yeah. So today, roughly, 55% of our revenues are with the China locals. This year, roughly 65%-70% of our bookings will be with the China locals. Most of those programs, relative to what we see in Europe or North America, tend to receive an award and launch a program. Far end is 12 months, shorter tends to be six to nine months. So you're gonna continue to see significant rotation of customer mix, from the multinational JVs to the China locals. I would expect next year, roughly 70% of our revenues are, for example, with the China locals. So a pretty big pickup on a year-over-year basis.

Now, we're very focused on, we'd say, the category of the top 15 local OEMs, those that have strong market positions in China, but also are focused on export out of China. That's where we can bring incremental value when you think about regulatory quality system solutions. Today, we're working with five local OEMs on their plans to bring production or move production out of China into Europe and into the Americas. So, we feel as though we're very, very well positioned to take advantage of that, and that's both for the SPS segment as well as the AS&UX.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

Some of the bigger Western auto OEMs, companies like VW and Stellantis, have announced sourcing partnerships with the China domestic car companies. Can you talk about any implications for Aptiv from that?

Kevin Clark
Chair and CEO, Aptiv

Yeah, we haven't seen, quite frankly, any impact on our business to date, whether it's, you know, it's VW with XPeng, or it's Stellantis with Leapmotor. In fact, with Leapmotor, they're one of the OEMs in China that actually we're looking at more strategic opportunities across the globe. So we view it based on a relationship at the local level, based on a relationship with the multinationals, the large OEMs. Just given our knowledge of vehicles, how both operate the markets, it actually provides us with incremental opportunities.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

In June, Aptiv said a customer had canceled a Smart Vehicle Architecture program, which was supposed to SOP in the 2027-2028 timeframe. That brought the backlog in SVA at the time to $7 billion. But at the same time, on the last earnings call, you spoke about an engagement and pipeline with over 20 auto OEMs for SVA. So maybe talk a little bit more around what you're seeing in SVA and what it might take to expand that backlog.

Kevin Clark
Chair and CEO, Aptiv

Yeah, listen, our customers are going through a lot of transition, right? Whether it's software-defined, whether it's electrification, or it's re-architecting the car. So to the point, Mark, you made, if you went back roughly a year and a half ago, there were five OEMs that we had visibility to and we were working with from a Smart Vehicle Architecture standpoint, mostly in and around the area of zone controllers. That's where most of the activity is today. On our Q2 earnings call, we talked about more than 20. Today, it's over 25. The dollar value is significantly in excess. So the industry continues to progress. It continues to evolve. The end state's clear, whether it's electrification, battery electric, or plug-in hybrid. We continue to see, you know, investments and new program opportunities in those areas.

And as OEMs look for vehicles that, you know, are more appropriately designed or architected so they can be more software-defined, all of them are investing in those opportunities. So there are a number of them that, in terms of commercial opportunities, that we'll see play out during early 2025 . So it's an area where, you know, we'll continue to see business awards.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

... In AS& UX, in the first quarter, Aptiv announced a Gen 6 ADAS award with an emerging EV player. Can you talk more about the interest you're seeing in the Gen 6 ADAS Platform?

Kevin Clark
Chair and CEO, Aptiv

So, a lot. Our Gen 6 ADAS Platform is really, it's the amalgamation of everything that we do in ADAS. You know, the historical experience within radar, sensor fusion, driving policy, ADAS controller. We've rearchitected that solution, so it's an open platform. We've refactored all the software, so it's all modularized, all containerized. It operates off of the Wind River VxWorks RTOS and Helix Linux platform. It provides customers with full flexibility. You know, our standard vision solution comes from StradVision, which is a partner out of Korea, but we offer opportunities for our customers to choose other vision suppliers. It's open to where we do all the features, or customers can do a portion of the features. So we're giving them flexibility.

From a radar standpoint, obviously, the standard one system includes our radar solution. But again, OEMs have flexibility. If they desire to use a different supplier, that's something they can do. When we look at on-cost for customers, it's about a 20% reduction in on-cost relative to any of the competitors out there. So the cost effectiveness of it, the scalability from L0 all the way up to L2++, which covers a broader line of vehicles, gives them flexibility. So we see a tremendous amount of demand. There's a number of OEMs that we're working with today on opportunities for the full Gen 6 ADAS solution.

But you know, as you stated, I mean, there are a number of OEMs out there that, you know, we're very focused on penetrating with a portion of our Gen 6 ADAS Platform, like radar to the Japanese OEMs that we mentioned, that we think will ultimately lead to more share of wallet within those OEMs in places like Japan.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

Yeah, I mean, it's been interesting, in my opinion, how important radar has become with some of these next-generation systems and the newer capabilities that radar has been bringing to market.

Kevin Clark
Chair and CEO, Aptiv

Yeah

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

... you know, complementing vision, and I know you've got a really strong history in radar.

Kevin Clark
Chair and CEO, Aptiv

Yeah. Yeah, we've been in the radar business. I think our first radar solution was in 1999 on a Jaguar vehicle. So now we apply AI/ML to our radar sensing solution, so we can significantly advance the performance. So there are certain situations where, even a few years ago, if you're looking at L3 solutions, it would really require a LiDAR solution. We've obviated the need for a higher-cost solution like that. And we marry that with vision and develop a perception solution that you know is very high performing but lower cost. So it's less compute going into the car. That's an opportunity to take out costs from a technology standpoint. So there's a lot of interest in that from our customers.

As you know, they're under a lot of cost pressure. They're trying to introduce advanced technologies into vehicles or continue to work to make them more safely, both from, you know, due to regulatory demands as well as customer preference. So we feel like we're sitting in the sweet spot from an overall solution standpoint.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

Joe, I wanted to go to you for this question. The Active Safety business in total, maybe remind investors how big that business is, but also, what's the growth rate and-

Joe Massaro
Vice Chair and CFO, Aptiv

Sure.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

- any deviation by region?

Joe Massaro
Vice Chair and CFO, Aptiv

Yeah, the Active Safety business has gotten to this year be over $3 billion in revenue, so it's become a pretty significant, obviously, product line. Still growing right around that 20%. So you've got a, you know, a little bit of a growth rate coming down over the last couple of years, of larger numbers as that, as that top line's grown, but still a very significant growth rate. You know, it's a product line that's that we sell all over the world, so growth rates vary a little bit region by region, depending on launch cycle and cadence, but it's a global product line.

So we've got a very strong position in North America with a couple of the larger OEMs there, strong position in Europe, and then it's a lot of opportunity for growth in China, particularly with the local OEMs, including the local OEMs that are looking to export or eventually build in Europe because it is viewed as a global system, a global standard, from that perspective.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

In the L1 and L2 era, Aptiv had won seven out of eleven opportunities.

Joe Massaro
Vice Chair and CFO, Aptiv

Sure

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

... for ADAS systems integration. Can you help us better understand what the win rate looks like for L2+ and L3?

Kevin Clark
Chair and CEO, Aptiv

L2+ is, that's really where our Gen 6 solution is targeted. Again, it scales from L0 to L2++, and then we'll get to L3. We talked about that award that we received with a European electric vehicle manufacturer. There are a number of programs that are in front of us that'll play out over the next kinda 6 to 12 months. You know, we're well-positioned. We'll see how those play out. Again, it's important when you decide a Gen 6 ADAS, but we're selling a solution that gives our customers choice. And that choice includes, at some point in time, all of it. So we've launched an L2+ system.

It's not our Gen 6, it's the previous generation with a European OEM that's a part of a that's launching, started launching earlier in the year, continues to launch for the balance of the year. We'll see other awards where it's a part, where it, it'll be, you know, all the features, some of the features, driving policy, you know, maybe separate radar solutions. So I'm not sure it's a complete apples to apples comparison. But again, given performance and cost, we're seeing tremendous, you know, we're seeing tremendous pull for it.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

I want to switch gears slightly, talk about the high voltage part of the business. I think that was $1.7 billion of revenue in 2023. Historically, it was growing over 20%, Joe, but last quarter it was down. Maybe help us better understand how to think on high voltage growth rates from here.

Joe Massaro
Vice Chair and CFO, Aptiv

Yeah, that product line is our sort of what I'll call our EV-only product line. So it's products that would only go on electrical architecture, or electrified vehicles. There's obviously other products we sell that can go on both internal combustion and, EV. Have seen it slow down. I think there's, you know, clearly, if you look, it's really a regional discussion. If you look at Europe and North America, there has been a slowdown in, EV retail sales, and as a result, EV production. China continues to be very strong from an EV perspective. We really believe they, as a region, have sort of rounded the corner on electrification. So that's, you know, we're seeing that impact from a European and a North American customer perspective.

But again, that product line, very robust. It is a product line that will serve well for hybrid vehicle platforms. As you start to see, I think, some of these European and North American OEMs, who originally thought about sort of a midterm phase of having hybridized powertrains, both internal combustion and electric powertrains in the same vehicle, and sort of, if you go back four or five years, opted to sort of push more quickly into EV. We do see those customers starting to come back to, particularly North America, with a view that they'll need a hybrid solution for a period of time, whether that's for customer adoption, affordability reasons. And that product line will fit very well into the hybridized need as well.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

Maybe you can talk about your traction in terms of getting designed into some of these future plug-in hybrid vehicles, especially as you're seeing more of the production plan shift in that direction?

Joe Massaro
Vice Chair and CFO, Aptiv

Yeah, we're, you know, clearly in for a few of the OEMs, we have existing hybrid technology. I would say where the customers are, the large European customers, North American customers, at this point, they're really still scoping out their hybridization plans. So what platforms get hybridized and why? You can see a lot of interesting use cases, right? One of the things hybridization will give you the ability to do is, particularly on some of the larger vehicles that are obviously very popular in the U.S., the trucks and SUVs, you get the ability to maybe downsize an engine from a V8 to a V6, introduce hybrid technology to sort of offset the loss of power, the loss of electrical capability. So you're basically putting a vehicle that you know your consumers want, right?

Gives the OEMs the ability to take a popular high-volume vehicle, but ensure that it's compliant for the next 5+ years with whether emission standards or fuel economy standards. So that's what we're seeing. It's still early days from an award perspective, but that's really what we're seeing our customers working through, and that's what we're helping them through at this point.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

Okay. On the outlook for electrical architectures and vehicles more broadly, OEMs are trying to take out wiring from vehicles. What are the implications to Aptiv from this?

Kevin Clark
Chair and CEO, Aptiv

Yeah, we would say, OEMs are more focused on taking copper out of vehicles. So they're trying to reduce weight, right? They're trying to reduce mass. And in doing that, it's quite frankly, and it's something that we work with OEMs to actually do. So when you think about copper content, that's index. So that's not an input at the end of the day that we're really generating much profitability on. But that's being replaced by more advanced connections, high-speed cable assemblies, Ethernet solutions, areas like that, that are much higher value add, that are much more engineered in, so much stickier, and tend to bring with them more connector, engineered component content. So that's a trend, quite frankly, we really encourage, we're trying to drive, so...

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

Within the $4 billion per year connection systems business, Aptiv has been seeing some strength in other end markets, industrial, A&D, as well as automotive. Maybe talk a bit more on the components business that you have and what the prospects are for connection systems.

Joe Massaro
Vice Chair and CFO, Aptiv

Yeah, I know. Our, what we refer to internally as engineered components, is close to a $7 billion a year business. To Mark's point, it includes about $4.5 billion round numbers of interconnect. So from a public comp perspective, think something like a TE Connectivity, an Amphenol, a Molex. Really a business that's geared around ruggedized, harsh environment, electrical connection systems. And over the last couple of years, we've been expanding beyond automotive. We acquired Winchester Interconnect, which is a high-end interconnect business serving particularly aerospace and defense, industrial applications, really rounding out that portfolio.

On top of the interconnect business, we have a business called HellermannTyton, which was an acquisition we did in 2015 , of a cable management and fastening business, which, although not truly interconnect, is, very much an engineered components business. When you're taking ruggedized or harsh environment electrical systems and putting them into whether it's a vehicle, an aircraft, a commercial vehicle, how that system is fastened, how that system is attached to the vehicle itself, becomes actually a key part of its safety and its longevity, right? Yeah.

Just the ability to, to fasten that system. So we've got, like I said, about $7 billion, what we call engineered components revenue. Very typical interconnect margin in that business, so north of 20%. And it's a business that is sort of one of our underlying growth engines. That business will grow somewhere between 4%-7% pretty regularly from an annual perspective. Really driven by, as Kevin said, a lot of the content increases. And again, going into automotive, going into aerospace and defense, a lot of the content increase, a lot of the additional electrification that goes into these edge devices, right? These vehicles, a lot of the additional electrification requires connection and requires robust connection, whether it be on the signal or on the power side.

So for us, it's a very important part of the business. It's a business we've invested in heavily over the past eight to ten years, both organically and inorganically. I don't know if I left anything out.

Kevin Clark
Chair and CEO, Aptiv

No, you've got it.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

Maybe speak a bit on the Wind River software piece of your portfolio. It's been growing at a mid-teen revenue CAGR.

Kevin Clark
Chair and CEO, Aptiv

Mm-hmm.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

Maybe to start on Wind River, remind us in terms of the end market exposure, how much is telecom, aerospace, defense, auto?

Kevin Clark
Chair and CEO, Aptiv

Yeah. So aerospace and defense is roughly 40% of the revenues. Telecom is roughly 30%. There's, I don't know, 15 or 20% that's medical, industrial, other, and then roughly 10% automotive. The major product areas are Wind River VxWorks, which is a real-time operating system, mission-critical, safety certified, significant military applications, as you can imagine. Significant automotive applications as well, when you think about the nature of the vehicle and performance requirement of the vehicle. Helix Hypervisor, which is a big piece of the overall product portfolio. Wind River just launched a new Debian-based Linux solution actually about a month ago. Which, you know, so far we're seeing a lot of traction.

It's for enterprise solutions, which is different than embedded edge-based solutions, but they feel like they're very well positioned, given their experience in Linux across you know the multiple industries where they operate in from an embedded standpoint. So we're seeing strong demand there. They've also launched a couple of years ago a product called Wind River Studio Developer, which is an engineering tool chain solution that allows you know software developers to actually take existing tool chains bring it or integrate it pretty easily frictionless into the Wind River Studio Developer solution, and drive significant increases in quality and improvements in productivity.

So for example, for us, over the last year, we've been launching all the new programs using the Wind River Studio Developer tool chain, and we've seen 20%-30% productivity of our software engineers. There are significant quality improvements, significant savings. They're making a lot of progress in terms of commercial adoption. For example, large award with Hyundai. Hyundai is actually utilizing the solution and then, you know, a number of other customers across the other markets that they serve.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

Aptiv, of course, has very strong relationships throughout the automotive ecosystem. What do you think it might take to get more auto OEMs using Wind River products?

Kevin Clark
Chair and CEO, Aptiv

Yeah. So everything that we quote within our AS&UX business that is dependent upon software includes the Wind River either the Linux solution, Helix solution, or the RTOS solution, VxWorks. I think the bigger opportunity for us is as we roll that out, and they have relationships with Continental, with Bosch, with the other tier ones as well as they push through their programs. But we're really excited about the Wind River Studio Developer, driving productivity with the engineering base, with the OEM. So all of you have, you know, if you follow the automotive industry, you read about the challenges from a software development standpoint, whether it's General Motors, I'm not picking on anyone, but General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen, you know, you go through the litany, the list.

To the extent you can bring a more structured, disciplined approach to software development, improve quality, and reduce the level of friction to implement, it's a huge benefit. So we've seen a lot of interest there.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

Joe, maybe for you, Wind River generated $400 million of revenue in 2021. Do you still expect Wind River to become a $1 billion business? If so, what kind of timeframe should we expect for that?

Joe Massaro
Vice Chair and CFO, Aptiv

Yeah. As we move towards the end of the decade, we clearly see the revenue trajectory. That business will finish right around $500 million of revenue this year, and as Kevin mentioned, that's really based on its existing end markets. We really haven't seen the automotive revenue kick in yet, so I guess you get out to 2027, 2028, just the strength of the A&D, the industrial, the telecom business. Within the added revenues from automotive, we think that it's very well positioned to be $1 billion+ of revenue as you get out there.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

Maybe we could talk a little bit more on business conditions this year and financials. Can you talk more on the auto production environment overall and also by region for 2024?

Joe Massaro
Vice Chair and CFO, Aptiv

Sure. Yeah, I think this is gonna shape up to be certainly a down year for global vehicle production, and you've seen it weaken over the course of the last couple of quarters. We think global vehicle production will be down about 3% this year, so put it right around 92 million units. Europe, with the biggest downdraft, are down about 5%. We expect North America to be right around 1% down, and China to be flat. So you're down, that adds up to about down 3% globally. We'll grow four points above the market, so we continue to see good mid-single digit growth above market, driven by some of the things we've talked about here, right? The active safety revenue contribution, very strong. Engineered components continues to grow.

High voltage, obviously a headwind to that, but we view that as a more of a temporary headwind over the next year or two here, as the European and North American OEMs sort out their electrification portfolio. By no means do we think electrification is going away, so vehicle production will be down. I think as we talked about in the second quarter, you know, some of the revenue headwind we're seeing, though, is more customer specific. I would say it's less of a broad industry impact to us. We have a couple of customers that are going through some what I'll call sort of model updates or new model launches as you get to the back half of the year and into early next year, particularly a large global OEM, U.S.-based, EV OEM.

So we've seen some of those schedules come down mid-year here with an expectation they ramp towards the back half of the year and into next year. And we've also got one of our larger customers, and we're slightly over-indexed to this customer relative to their share of global vehicle production. A large European OEM with a big truck and SUV platform here in the U.S. That is, and I think it's public knowledge, is struggling from sort of a retail perspective at this point. Dealer inventories are high. They're obviously gonna have to work through that before they take production back up, which we think is something that gets sorted over the next couple quarters.

They've got expectations for new model launches as you get into 2025, and they're gonna wanna clear that, clear that inventory, so some near-term headwind from a very customer-specific perspective, but overall, I do think global vehicle production will be down this year.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

I think some of those changes that led to those level of declines that you were just talking about occurred later in 2Q. I think specifically in June, there were some schedule changes in particular. Have schedules been stable since then?

Joe Massaro
Vice Chair and CFO, Aptiv

So, yeah, we saw a lot of schedules come in June, July timeframe. As I think the reality of some of these inventory positions at dealers' lots, particularly in North America, and I think some of the order flow on some of the electrified platforms waiting started to slow as people waited for some of the new model launches. So we really saw that get reflected. I'd say it's been stable at those levels, certainly more stable than it was mid-year. We're still very mindful. I mean, like I said, you can... You know, it's publicly available, right? You can look at dealer inventory, you can look at order flows for some of these OEMs.

When we updated our full-year guidance in June, we did take sort of an added level, which we talked about at the time, sort of an added level of conservatism against customer schedules. We have a lot of our customers, maybe a little bit optimistic with what they tell the supply base in terms of production, when it comes back and how quickly it starts up. Part of that, I think, is to manage the supply base and make sure everybody's ready to participate at higher volumes. But we've been a little bit cautious from a revenue forecast perspective. We're obviously ready to do what the customer needs us to do, but from a revenue forecast perspective, I think we're a little bit conservative there.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

Okay, that's helpful. Despite the lower revenue outlook for 2024, Aptiv raised its operating margin outlook, now expecting 11.8%-12.1% EBIT margins. Help us better understand some of the things that are supporting the margins for this year?

Joe Massaro
Vice Chair and CFO, Aptiv

Yeah. I'll-

Kevin Clark
Chair and CEO, Aptiv

Yeah, go ahead.

Joe Massaro
Vice Chair and CFO, Aptiv

Yeah, listen, I think last year and fully appreciate there's been a lot of discussion, particularly with EV around top line. But I think even if you went back to 2023, you know, we delivered on our original OI guidance despite absorbing, you know, $200 million of UAW strike impact and some unexpected FX changes. So we've been performing well now for two years. If you go back to the Investor Day discussion from February of 2023, we laid out what in total, about $1.7 billion of operating performance initiatives that we thought would take place over the course of 2023, 2024 and 2025.

That would significantly improve margin rates across both segments and basically get the business back to where we thought we were pre-COVID and pre-supply chain disruptions, and those programs are tracking very well, so the largest single piece of that $1.7 billion was $315 million of supply chain disruption costs that we had called out the prior couple of years. 2022 was exactly $315 million. Plant shutdowns, temporary layoffs, just really the disruption in the industry, I don't think you could overstate it, that our customers were going through, particularly around semiconductors, right? And so we were heavily impacted with those types of disruptions. We expected those costs to come out of the P&L.

In 2023, they were $160 million versus $315 million, and they're effectively zero this year. So that's been a big help, as we've gotten those costs out. We always felt at the time that those were not structural changes in our cost structure, that they really were transitory and a result of disruption costs. I think there was an expectation. People wanted to see them, which is understandable. People wanted to see them come out of the numbers before we sort of got credit for that, but they are out. The remaining is really performance initiatives around improved manufacturing, logistics, supply chain performance, some of those annual improvements, some of those, you know, making the business better every year, that we had a very good track record pre-COVID of doing.

We're seeing that muscle come back and work very well. And then as you know, Kevin talked a little bit about our Gen 6 radar, our Gen 6 active safety systems. You know, one of the areas we've really focused on over the past five or six years is productizing. Bless you. Productizing our systems, right? Trying to get away from systems that had a heavy degree of bespoke design, bespoke build for a particular customer. That used to result in a lot more engineering. We'd need more people. If you're launching three very bespoke systems over the course of two years, you need three large teams to launch bespoke systems for three different OEMs. The more we can productize, the more we'd standardize, we've been able to bring in our engineering spend.

You know, we talked in February of 2023 that we thought engineering spend would get to the sort of, let's call it, high single digits. That's 7% of sales. It had been running double digits. And we've really seen those initiatives play out, right? And I think the Gen 6 active safety system is a very good commercial example of that, but you've also seen the benefits in the engineering spend.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

You mentioned this year, the company expects 4% growth over market. I think for 2025, you said roughly mid-single digits is an initial way to think about what growth could look like for 2025. Any visibility or updates you can share on how to think about growth over market for next year?

Kevin Clark
Chair and CEO, Aptiv

Yeah, I would stick to what our prior comment, quite frankly. You look at our product portfolio. You know, setting aside the near-term headwind as it relates to the four customers Joe talked about. The reality is, all the areas we operate, our customers are investing significantly in advancing those technologies, and we enable it. On the growth over market, there's an element of you know, we ask investors to recognize, we control the numerator. We don't control the full denominator. So we talk about China as an example. There are more than a hundred OEMs in China. Very relevant in China, we've been there for thirty years. Strong positions with multinationals, strengthening positions with the local OEMs there, so taking share. But we're focused on 15 Chinese local OEMs.

We're not focused on the other eighty-five. And that's for profit reasons, and it's for risk reasons, right? Just overall risk. So there are, at certain points in time, things we don't control from a mix standpoint that can affect that. And so we feel like we're very well positioned for growth next year. We're going through our planning process, and we'll obviously give guidance and update on our outlook for vehicle production and our revenue outlook, and how that translates into growth over market. And we're in areas where content in the vehicle is growing.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

Do you want to talk on capital allocation? On your last earnings report, the company announced a five billion share repurchase authorization. That was over 25% of the market cap at the time. Out of that, three billion was an ASR. Help us better understand what led Aptiv to make that type of capital allocation decision?

Kevin Clark
Chair and CEO, Aptiv

Yeah, I'll start, and then Joe should add to it. Listen, our strong view is set aside growth, the company's never been better positioned. And in reality, all the trends, electrification, ADAS, user experience, software going into the vehicle, our position in China, those are all tailwinds. Now, we're running into choppy periods at this point in time, and that's reflected in our stock price. And we view our stock as, you know, a great investment at this point in time, based on the visibility that we have today and how strong the business is operating. You look at the margin profile of our business during a period where revenue is, you know, actually down, it shows the strength of the business model we've created.

The four customers that we talked about, you know, our view is those will fix themselves. They'll fix themselves over the fairly near future. And again, you know, our stock is a great investment opportunity, and Joe, I'll turn it over to you in terms of outside of stock, M&A, and other opportunities.

Joe Massaro
Vice Chair and CFO, Aptiv

No, listen. I think if you go back, just to give some perspective, between 2011, when we went public, and the end of 2023, we deployed over $25 billion worth of capital. About 30+% of that was returned to shareholders. The remainder was invested in the business, both organically and inorganically, almost even. So we have a track record of returning cash to shareholders. We have a very strong track record of deploying capital in the business. To Kevin's point, we really, and over time, I think it'll continue to balance out, right? So we're obviously, at the moment, returning a fair amount of capital to shareholders, but it was the right time, and I think the ASR allowed us for a very effective mechanism to do that, quickly and with a lot of certainty.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

Great. Well, unfortunately, we are out of time. Kevin, Joe, thank you both for joining us.

Kevin Clark
Chair and CEO, Aptiv

Oh, Mark, thanks a lot. Thanks for having me.

Joe Massaro
Vice Chair and CFO, Aptiv

Great. Thanks, Mark.

Mark Delaney
Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst, Goldman Sachs Group

Thanks, everybody, for your time.

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