Everyone, I'd like to welcome the Chairman and CEO of Cooper Standard, Mr. Jeff Edwards. Thank you so much, Jeff, for taking the time to be with us today.
Thanks, Tom. I'm looking forward to our conversation.
Yeah. A little quick background for the listeners here. Obviously, we are large shareholders of Cooper Standard, so full disclosure there. We got involved with the company in May of 2022. We thought we were geniuses buying the stock in the fives, and then it immediately went into the threes, and we bought more because we had done our work, and the stock was down because they needed to refinance the debt. They did. That largely gives them runway well to 2027 and beyond, and we're going to talk a little bit about that. We think well beyond. The idea for getting involved in Cooper Standard was actually a person that I look up to tremendously, who recently passed, is Charlie Munger. Charlie Munger did a very similar investment in the 2001 recession, a cyclical trough in the industry.
This is a pretty regular occurrence, as Jeff will tell you, in the auto business. It is very cyclical. Charlie read an article in Barron's, and he invested $10 million in Tenneco when it was down some 95%. They refinanced the debt. He turned the $10 million into $80 million in a reasonable amount of time, and then he gave that $80 million to Li Lu, who invested in China, which was out of favor, and turned it into $500,000,000. Two chess moves, $500,000,000. That's the good news. I think we're going to do a lot better with Cooper Standard than Charlie did in Tenneco, and that's why we have our very special guest, again, Chairman and CEO of Cooper Standard, Mr. Jeff Edwards. Thank you again.
I think I'll get right down to it here, and I want to ask you some questions. I'm usually on the other side of the questions, so bear with me as an interviewer. First question is, in your most recent conference call, you provided guidance that suggests Cooper Standard will continue to expand margins in 2025 despite an expected decline in North American light vehicle production and essentially flat revenue. You also mentioned launching new business at higher variable contribution margins than in the past. A few questions here, Jeff. First, is that how you drive the margin expansion? What's driving the higher margin expansion, the VCM, and how much higher can this get?
That's a good question, Tom. I mean, I'll start by talking about the things that we can control, right? I mean, ultimately, I think the industry, we talk a lot about price. To be fair, within Cooper Standard about four or five years ago, as we were facing what felt like an insurmountable headwind, be it pandemics or be it industry downturn, whatever you want to call it, we really turned our attention internal and started focusing on our fixed costs and really driving fixed costs to an all-time low level, as we sit here today. Our teams everywhere in every region went to work on this because basically what we said is we're either going to make money in every region with each of our two products or we're going to do something else.
It really put a laser-like focus on those fixed costs, which we've taken out consistently over the last five years. That certainly driven a lot of this margin expansion. The other thing that we did related to variable contribution margin is we reestablished what we felt were our fair hurdle rates when we went into the customer and started bidding on programs really in each region with each customer. We established these hurdle rates, and we found very quickly that with our technology and with our ability to execute as well as we do, those price points were holding. In combination with taking the cost down, controlling what we can control, and at the same time establishing a very clear process internally so that every salesperson and every leader, every plant manager in the world understood what those hurdle rates were.
They were doing their part to take the cost down, and those people that go to the customer to win new business had to make sure that we did it at a price point that was fair, fair for the customer and fair for us. Those were the two reasons that you see the margin expansion that you see. We are really proud of that. I think probably most importantly, it is a sustainable business model. We will continue to do our fair share of taking costs out as we improve efficiencies in our plants.
There are still a few things that we would like to do around the world, but most of it is where we want it. The last piece related to what we can control is our material cost as a percent of sale. This year, we're really working with our supply base, working with our engineering teams to provide us different options as it relates to the decisions that we're taking related to material costs for both our fluid and our sealing business. We're not done yet, but at least certainly the trend is in the right direction.
Fantastic. Fantastic. Let's assume you can drive a variable contribution margin of improvement of around 500 basis points over the next two to three years as those new contracts kick in and roll over. Assuming an apocalyptic scenario, which is what I like to do as an investor, if you can underwrite the downside, the upside will take care of itself, that U.S. production volumes do not even grow. First cycle—and by the way, this would be the first cycle peak since the 1970s—that did not peak over 18 million+ units since 1970. By the way, back then, the population was 40% less than it is today. We will talk a little bit about that. This still implies—this is, again, apocalyptic scenarios. We stay in the 15s. We are looking at an additional $135 million of EBITDA or total $330 million of EBITDA.
If my math is correct, assuming these apocalyptic volumes in the mid-15s, this business can earn $5-$6 a share two to three years out on margin expansion alone. This is a testament to how you've managed the business through this extended cycle trough, which basically was a one in a hundred-year event. I mean, the pandemic and the industry cycle all at the same time. Number one, is this a reasonable way to think about the business? This is kind of my operating model. And if so, say a little more how you did that because it's just mind-boggling to me that your execution has been so quick and so precise to put us in a position that this is a reality.
Thank you. It's very kind. I can't confirm the numbers that you just rattled off there, but I can tell you that directionally, you're correct. How we accomplish that, I guess, is probably the most important thing. I mentioned it in the first question, but in addition to focusing on taking the cost down and being more consistent about the pricing side as well, we reorganized here last year. We're about a year and a quarter into this new organization structure where we have three businesses now. We have our sealing business, we have our fluid business, and then we have our Industrial and Specialty Product Group, which is a much smaller non-automotive business that we have some good growth plans for.
Sticking primarily with sealing and fluid for today's discussion, Tom, it allowed us to put two presidents in charge, one for each of those businesses. We gave them their own dedicated teams from manufacturing to engineering to purchasing, everything they need within their team to drive the day-to-day performance of those businesses. It did not matter what 20 countries were doing business. It did not matter that 21,000 employees come to work every day, half of them in each business. What are we going to do? How are we going to get those teams focused, give them the resources, give them the investment dollars that they need to grow the business profitably, but at the same time, hold them accountable for driving VCM margin expansion and ultimately returning this business to double-digit EBITDA and double-digit return on invested capital?
That is exactly what we saw happen in 2024 and why our guidance for 2025 suggests we are going to return to those double-digit EBITDA numbers for both of those businesses at the end of 2025. As we start 2026, we clearly will be a double-digit EBITDA and a double-digit return on invested capital company. Okay, that is great. Are you going to slide back down the mountain? No.
Why? It is because of the way we have structured these two businesses, the leaders that we have in charge, and we are not asking people to do three and four jobs, right? They can stay focused within the lanes. Our plants pretty much are divided up by sealing and fluid, so there is not a lot of cross-pollinization that ever really occurred in that business. I am very, very proud of our plant managers. You have probably heard me say that many times.
We have great people in those plants and are doing a fantastic job. Just keep in mind, within Cooper Standard, about 85% of the 21,000 employees that work here every day go to work for our plant managers. Now you know why I wanted the focus to be within those two products, driving the day-to-day execution and all that's happening. I did not even get a chance to talk about innovation, but I'm sure you'll ask me a couple of questions as we go forward here, and I'll get into that as well.
Yeah. It's funny, as I've followed the conference calls along the way and had the chance to meet with you at some of the investor days, I think that people are surprised by two things. Number one, you delivered or are delivering on the double-digit margins in such a short period of time. I think people probably said, "I don't know, a couple of years ago, a year and a half ago when you were talking about that." The fact you could get that done so quickly has been positive. I think the bigger surprise is I think more people would have guessed that, number one, you couldn't do the double digits, and number two, volumes would have been over 16 million. On lower volumes to be able to get there this year is testament to those employees and those plant managers and yourself as referenced.
As it relates to volumes, though, I mean, I just continue to look at this, and I know you guys like to be conservative. I hear you sometimes on that call. I can tell you're super optimistic, and I know you have a little experience in golf, but I like golf. There's something we call sandbagging when guys come in and they say that their handicaps are higher than they are, and then they win all the money at the end of the day. I think that we may have something to be said for that, and that's a good thing, not a bad thing. As it relates to just the industry trends, though, you're going off the industry estimates. I think S&P 15.1 million production.
If you just step back, when these cycles peaked, whether it was in 2005, 2017, 1987, all between 2018 and 2020 for short periods of the spikes, in the 1980s, our population, the census was 226 million people. Now we're at 331 million people. We're just looking for that 2016 to 2018 or 2017 to 2018. On the basis of population and the age of our population, with so many people being 34, 35 when they buy new cars, I think we could wind up getting surprised dramatically to the upside. That's just the whipped cream. We're dealing with base case scenarios. Now that we've gone through an apocalyptic scenario, Jeff, let's go through what it looks like for every cycle for the past 40 years when we peak between 17 million-18 million in production.
Let's call it 17.5 million round numbers. By my calculation, Cooper Standard had approximately $99 in revenue for every vehicle produced in North America in 2024 on a simple average basis. Round numbers, let's call it $190 a car-ish for servicing half of the total cars. Let's just do it simply, $99 a car. At a more historically normalized 17.5 million peak production or 2 million more vehicles than last year, you would expect to gain nearly $200 million of additional revenue considering this is an operating leverage play and your break-even is, call it 15 million-15.5 million production free cash flow positive with most fixed costs in place. We expect most of the incremental production to go to the bottom line at a higher VCM of approximately 35%.
This would be approximately $70 million in incremental profit or nearly $4-$5 of additional EPS over our $5-$6 EPS base case. I mean, round numbers at peak cycle production, if it's 17.5, $9-$10 a share in EPS base case from our side. I know the position you're in. Is this a reasonable, not guaranteed in any way or any guidance way to think about it? In other words, if you were to say, "Tom, look, I can't guarantee that, but your argument is flawed here, here, and here." Can you legitimately say, "My argument is flawed in that way of thinking about it if volumes normalize the way they have going back every single cycle for the last 40 years and also not even accounting for the fact that the population was 32% lower in the 1980s?
Yeah. First, I agree with your premise. Let's say it that way in terms of the demand. We believe that there is upside for many of the reasons that you talked about. I usually don't permit that discussion in this room because obviously, we don't control it. We tend to focus our attention on what we can control and not get too excited about what the volumes could be based on the type of data that you just recited. Clearly, Tom, we believe that there's pent-up demand. We also believe in many of the reasons that you just described that this is just around the corner. Most folks that get paid to forecast automotive volume don't usually do that in advance. At least that's my experience over 40 years, I guess, is that we tend to see them forecasting increases after the increases have started.
It does not work that way when it is going the other side, so I am not sure why. Anyway, that is kind of how it goes. Your estimate for VCM is also in the right range. We certainly are planning for an increase in volume. We just do not know when that is going to come. You mentioned guidance. When I talked about the guidance here in the last earnings call for 2025, I mean, we were certainly conservative in terms of this conversation, right? We used the numbers. Typically, all suppliers use S&P to help gauge what the next 12 months is going to be and even what the next two or three years is going to be. While there are some increases out there forecasted, they are certainly not the level that you and I are hoping for or discussing with this particular question.
I'm sure that increases are going to be coming. I just don't know when. I also will say that the numbers that we talked about on that last earnings call in terms of what you're going to expect to see from our increasing EBITDA each year, even on these suppressed volumes and our return on invested capital with these suppressed volumes, it's very exciting because we're able to make money and we'll be generating more and more cash each year without the increase in volumes. When they do come, we're pretty excited about what that means for our company and how much stronger it will be for the next couple of decades as a result. It's very exciting to think about. I just don't really allow it to distract us because there's not much I can do about it.
Yeah. In my business, you say you take care of the down, you protect the downside. The upside will take care of itself. That is what you have done through the execution and right-sizing the ship to be ready for good things coming forward. We appreciate that. Three key reasons I invested with you in May of 2022, and I remember we had a talk in August when we had a chance to meet that time. I have continued to add a significant amount of shares across accounts and personally. Number one, I want to acknowledge your respect for equity. There are actually fewer shares outstanding today than in 2017, about 17.56 million versus 17.69 million on December 31, 2017. Second reason was part of your compensation is tied to return on invested capital. That is a very important metric for me. And three, you own a lot of stock.
You're a partner. We're investing right alongside with you, and you have skin in the game, which is very important to us. Can you speak to your and the board's—you are the Chairman, but the board's as well—philosophy on all three of these concepts and why this culture is critical to owners as the cycle returns?
Thanks. Yeah. I think, first of all, the board, the management team, we have a responsibility to behave in the best interests of all of our stakeholders, of course, but none more important than the shareholders. I am very proud. You probably have seen the recent insider buying activity that's gone on. I'll just say our lead director and our Chief Financial Officer here in the past month have added to their shares. I own 2% of the company sitting here as the Chairman and CEO of Cooper Standard. I can assure you that it's in our own self-interest, but it's also our responsibility, and we take it very serious. I agree with you that most investors talk to me about that. They want to understand the ownership and the requirements and how we're paid and what the long-term incentive plans are versus the annual incentive plans.
I think we've always prided ourselves all the way back to 2012 to today that those metrics and the way we're measured and the compensation for the management team aligns with shareholder expectations and values. Obviously, the last five or six years have been extremely challenging for a lot of reasons. At the end of the day, I'm proud of the company. I'm proud to be a significant owner in the company, and I will continue to make sure that we uphold that standard.
Yeah. Thank you for that. For those of you, just round numbers to put it in English, 2% of the company is, give or take, 350,000 shares. That is a serious partner right there. We have more than that, and we're excited to be a partner right alongside you. Please, that's material. Next is we've typically pointed to new vehicle incentives as a leading indicator for SAAR. After incentives as a percentage of the average transaction price bottomed out in September 2022 at 2.1%, we've seen a strong recovery back to 7.2%, although that's still below the 9.8% average of the past two decades. In English, for those of you who are listening, if it's, call it, 10% of a $50,000 car, they would be giving $5,000 incentives to get you down to the dealership to buy one.
With new vehicle prices seeing a significant jump over the past few years and an all-time record gap now between new and used average total prices, could you comment on the role of incentives as a potential catalyst for new vehicle sales and improving profitability? Could you also share your thoughts on the relationship between incentives and overall production volumes?
Sure. I'd be happy to. It's something that we track, so it's easy for me to tell you what we think there. First of all, the constraints on production that really resulted from the pandemic and the supply chain disruptions that followed. I mean, I sure hope it's a once-in-a-lifetime event. I can assure you it's the first time I've seen anything like this in the 40 years that I've been part of this industry. I think that as we move through it, that's exactly what it'll be. It'll be history, and I don't think it's going to repeat itself anytime soon. I do believe that as inventories get reestablished and as supply chains smooth out and become normalized again, there's just so many great vehicles.
You think about the three powertrains today, whether it's the ICE engine, whether it's the battery electric vehicle, or whether you like something in between with plug-in hybrids, there's great, great vehicles out there. I think the competition has never been better. For consumers, I think that pent-up demand that you and I discussed earlier, it's a reality. What I've also seen over the course of a few decades in the business is when that competition heats up, incentives do start to build. In fact, we track that as part of a leading indicator within our company so that we maintain you get the releases from the customers, which is what we go to the bank with, so to speak. Incentives, as you see them increasing across the board, you typically see volume increase as well because dealers are moving the product.
The product is outstanding. It's world-class. About anything you want, you can go get. I do believe that we've seen incentives increase last year. We'll see them increase this year. As a result, you'll see vehicles moving off of dealers' lots at a faster pace. As a result, you'll see production volumes increase to support that. That's what I believe.
Thank you. God forbid we actually get Donald Trump, President Trump was talking about tax deductibility of interest on auto loans. That would be an additional kicker, which is pretty wild. This past quarter, you announced that the Fluid Handling segment sales are expected to increase by more than 50% over the next five years, with the segment's weighted average CPV, cost per vehicle, expected to go up by more than 30%. I know the Sealing Systems business is pretty similar in terms of CPV across different powertrains, but could you share your thoughts on the outlook for the sealing business and what kind of opportunities you see over the same timeframe? Is that 30% CPV increase on the Fluid Handling baked into the margin expansion we discussed?
Yeah. For sealing, it's an interesting dynamic there, no pun intended, because part of the sealing business is called dynamic seals, and the other part is called static seals. I won't bore you with which is which. In many cases, the automakers don't source all of the static and all of the dynamic for the same sealing company. In certain vehicles, there's more than one sealing company providing those products. To answer your question, yes, there's an opportunity for us to considerably increase, whether it's dynamic seal or whether it's static seal, depending on which one we happen to have on a vehicle. What would cause that?
Our innovation would cause that because we have now just announced recently that we have innovation for our new static sealing system, sorry, our dynamic sealing system that would provide customers with the opportunity to source us for a product that would reduce their weight by 40%. It is also more recyclable than anything that they have in the marketplace. A 40% weight reduction for a particular sealing system, I think, will help differentiate that business. Let's see. We have already been sourced on one major EV program. It is just out this year. I mentioned it in the last earnings call, so I am very excited about that. How do we get more sealing business, innovate, provide our customers solutions that they can only get from us, helps drive their cost down, helps them meet their metrics as well as it relates to lightweighting?
I believe our sealing team will benefit from that all over the world. I know the Chinese OEMs are looking at it right now in a big way. Related to our fluid business, I mentioned that there are two things going on there. If I just use ICE vehicles as a baseline for our fluid business, if we have an all-electric vehicle because of the complexity and the content, that content per vehicle actually goes up about 20%. If you look at an ICE vehicle versus a hybrid electric vehicle, the content of our fluid business goes up 80%. Yes, we are rooting for more hybrids to hit the market. Fortunately, that is going to be the case, especially here in the North American market. I know many people talk about the electric vehicle in China and how the perception is that it is just all electric.
I will tell you that about half of the vehicles that are being produced over there today, and it's a very, very important fact for Cooper Standard, it's plug-in hybrid. In addition to battery electric vehicles, they also have plug-in hybrids. Our fluid business in a market where 30 million units are being produced as we speak, the opportunity to grow our China business is huge. They love our products, and we're doing quite well. We've returned to a 10% EBITDA already with our China business, despite the fact that the Western OEMs are losing share, and that was a big part of our company in China. In fact, probably 90% of our revenue was Western OEMs just four years ago. Obviously, their volumes have come way down.
If I fast forward to 2026, we will have replaced all of that revenue that we've lost with Chinese domestics, and we'll have increased it by over $100 million. Our Chinese business is doing extremely well. Fluid is a big part of that, but also our sealing business. We are doing quite well in that region with our sealing business too. A small fact related to plug-in hybrids in the Chinese market that not many people talk about, but it is a fact. It is interesting because the North American market, as you well know, was predicted or at least forecasted to go much faster related to EVs.
There were the numbers out there, 30% by 2030, which would have still been good for Cooper Standard. I think that has slowed down a little bit. I think it is still a fast-growing market. Hybrid, very quickly, with every customer here in the North American market, they're launching plans for hybrid vehicles. Again, our content goes up by 80% if a hybrid rolls off the end of the line. It's a pretty cool fact.
Yeah. That's absolutely amazing, Jeff. I think when I originally underwrote the investment in 2022, I had China at $0, and I think I had hybrids and EVs not even factored into our internal models here. All of this is.
The question, I guess I did not answer the portion of the question that you said. Is that factored in what I just said for 2025, 2026, and 2027? It is not.
Wow.
That would be upside to that because the customers had not announced all these hybrids yet. They are just talking about hybrids are coming, hybrids are coming, and we really did not have enough detail by customer as to what that meant and when they were going to be launching. These are the facts that we will have that type of an increase in content per vehicle, but it was too early to model it in any of these financial numbers. As we book this business, then we will update our forecast accordingly. I think last year, about 40% of the business that we booked was on hybrid vehicles. It is coming fast.
Wow. That is super exciting. Just for those of you who have not been following for some time since 2022, Cooper Standard in 2017 at the peak traded at $146 a share and earned about $7.19 a share. It traded at about a 20 times multiple. We have talked about our internal estimates with Jeff here of what we think the company can do on normalized volumes. Whether the market assigns us a 20 times multiple again on that bigger number we discussed earlier or a 10 times multiple, the key is we think at Great Hill Capital and Tom Hayes' opinion, not advice, consult with your financial advisor, the upside is phenomenal. We just keep getting more information, and things look more and more positive. All the things that we had underwritten to zero are now showing huge upside growth potential, and we are pretty excited.
Over the past two years, Jeff, it looks like CapEx as a percentage of sales has been much lower, maybe 2%-3% range compared to historically 5%-6%. Given all the new business wins, do you see CapEx staying in this lower range moving forward or renormalizing?
Yeah. We've done a nice job of managing CapEx through this period of time. While I think it's probably unrealistic to, I think we finished at 1.8% in 2024, that was a lot to do with the timing of the launches of new programs and things like that. I would say consider 3%-3.5%. I think that's probably where we'll end up being "in a normal range." Keep in mind, a lot of that has been driven by just terrific work from our manufacturing, manufacturing engineering, and product engineering folks. I mean, probably five, six years ago, they started on this track to make sure that we are able to reuse the capital much more than we have in the past.
They came up with standardized designs, so we did not need as much capital variation as we did in the past, worked with our customers to get the specifications that we needed to really help on the capital side of the business. From all of our engineers to our customers' engineers, this has really been a success story. In the days of us having to spend 5% or 6% on capital expenditures are gone. 3% to 3.5%, I think, is probably the more normal number going forward.
That's amazing, amazing execution, all I can say. A couple more here. After the announcement of the one-month reprieve from the 25% tariffs for U.S. automakers, there's been talk that many automakers might start racing to build out inventories as quickly as possible. Is the industry expecting to see this trend play out, and what's your take on it?
Yeah. I think it's interesting. Certainly, the volumes here in the first quarter, I think the strong volumes in the first quarter probably are reflecting some of that sentiment, I guess. I really don't know. I tend to not get out ahead of my blockers and have these conversations. The blockers here are the customers, and the OEMs are dealing with this directly. As it relates to the supply base and the industry in general, I guess if you've been part of it for 40 years, it's okay to talk about it in its fullest context. I really believe that there's good intention, I think, being discussed in Washington related to tariffs in the industry.
I do think that given the way the supply chain and given the way the OEMs have established the infrastructure and the overall business model, it would be very, very destructive in the short, medium, and probably everything but the longest term you could think of to go this way. I tend to think that if that's the case, and nobody's looking for it to be that destructive, that it probably isn't going to be as long or drawn out as maybe it would need to be in order for it to be productive. Given that situation, I'm hopeful that cooler heads will prevail and we'll manage through this in a way that doesn't disrupt the momentum really that the industry has built here. We're talking about pent-up demand. We're talking about great vehicles ready for market.
We're talking about consumers that for the first time, hopefully, are going to be in a geopolitical environment that gives them hope. Secondly, in an overall economic environment that talks about lower interest rates and talks about GDP and talks about inflation in positive terms. This, again, will create the desire for consumers to go out and take advantage of the great vehicles that are available.
I would just really hesitate to think that there would be a policy coming out of our government that would destroy that value and destroy that particular situation for the auto industry. It just takes too long to make the moves that some folks think can be made by applying these tariffs. This is just my opinion. I'm just a small supplier here in Northville, Michigan, so I probably don't catch the drift of the whole thing. That is my personal opinion on it, Tom.
Yeah. The question is whether people are going to spend tens of billions of dollars to stand up factories in Mississippi for three and a half years when the factories will only have been built by the time the rules change again. That is another story we could talk about. Looking at the current industry outlook, North American light vehicle production is expected to come in at 15.1 million, with SAAR projected between 16.0-16.3. I got to say, when that press release came out for Q1, I was like, "Wait a second." I had the SAAR and production numbers overlaid for 20-something years, and it is basically the same line. I am like, "How did they get this million gap sandbag in me on this call?" Anyway, there have been instances. They are not very common, Jeff, I just want to say.
If these forecasts hold, it would be one of the largest production deficits we've seen in quite some time, with the only other times being coming out of the pandemic and before that, the 2008 financial crisis. Every time we've had a deficit of over 1 million units, again, very rare, Jeff, production has usually had a hockey stick-style recovery in the following years. What are your thoughts on this kind of production catch-up, and what sort of implications do you expect if current forecasts hold true?
Yeah. As I said a couple of times, I believe we'll see a ramp-up in production volume. I just wish I could predict when, but I think it's sooner than later. I agree with your statement. We've certainly changed our strategy, right? I talked about how we changed the entire organization structure of the company. We've certainly gone all in as it relates to our capital strategy and to driving innovation, investing in innovation, and providing customers with solutions that otherwise they wouldn't have had. We believe that it's here. We believe that we'll see it. We believe that our products will be in greater demand.
Certainly, any incremental production volume over the period of the next few years is just going to make things that much better for us and for all suppliers because we all know that as volumes go up, suppliers do a whole lot better. I think all of us have done a very good job of weathering the storm. We've all managed. Nobody's sitting over in the corner whining about what's happened the last six years. We've focused on what we can control. We've managed our business, and I think the supply base is strong as a result of it. We are not going to be able to absorb tariffs. We are not going to be able to absorb material economics. We are not going to be able to do those things.
Clearly, we're going to be able to run our factories very efficiently, and we'll be able to provide great products and great services to our customers. I think that's proven for us to be the winner, right? We launch great. We execute well, and our customers continue to give us more business. They all vote with purchase orders, Tom. That's just how it works. Over the last two or three years, I mean, we're almost at record highs in terms of booking new business. We're really proud of that.
Yeah. No, it's phenomenal. Last couple here, and then we'll do a couple of fun ones and wrap it up. As you return to double-digit margins and return on invested capital and continue to generate strong cash flows, you mentioned not only the expectation of having various options to manage upcoming debt and improve the cost of capital, but also the goal of reaching two-times leverage by the end of 2027 without even contemplating a refi. Since there are no major refinancings needed till 2027 and a de minimis $43 million in November 2026, do you need to address the capital structure this year? Assuming a bump in production from the front-loading production in March or first quarter and a modest continued moderation in rates, is there a view to possibly wait for a credit upgrade or some other event before taking that action?
That's a great question. Certainly, you're right. We don't have an urgent requirement to deal with it right now. I think if I would put a time frame on it and I had my magic wand, sometime between this summer and next year's first quarter would be ideal. Why do I say that? Because that gives us an opportunity quarter by quarter to continue to put points on the scoreboard, continue to show the improvement is sustainable within the business, continue to improve the EBITDA, continue to improve the return on invested capital, continue to generate better cash flow. At the same time, I truly believe that the geopolitical environment and turning down the temperature of the world is going to occur during this same period of time.
I also believe that we'll continue to see strong economic metrics that will allow the interest rates to continue to come down. At the same time, you mentioned the two-times leverage. That is a journey from where we are today to two times, but there are a couple of other pretty important points along that journey, right? If we got to four times, that is better than where we are today. That would result in a significant improvement, probably in the rates that we would be able to talk to the institutions about. Certainly, they will have visibility into that two-times or better journey that we have been very openly discussing. As we have discussed, if that is built on top of volume improvements, then it is just going to make it that much better.
I think we've done a really good job of getting ourselves in a position to be able to be patient over the course of the next year or so and hopefully find ourselves in a better overall economic environment. The company will have probably, to your point, received an upgrade along that journey, and that might be the better time to pull it. I think that's probably how we're thinking about it. At the same time, we don't want to let the existing long-term debt become current debt either. There's an incentive on both sides of this. The relationships we have with the banks and the ability to do what we've said we were going to do for all these many quarters and many years, I think will also help in the conversation.
Yeah. I think what's implicit, what I was getting to in English for our viewers and investors, is implicit in that two times over time is effectively the operating leverage in the business. This thing, as volumes normalize, can print more money than the U.S. Treasury. You don't have to comment on that one.
The last thing is on everyone's mind. If a good portion of your production is in Mexico due to the fact that that's where the OEM factories are and that's where they wanted you to be, are you mostly shipping your products to the OEM plants in Mexico and not across the border? I.e., as it stands, you wouldn't really be impacted by tariffs if that is the case. How much impact do you expect from proposed tariffs if, in fact, they go through as advertised? If there is any material exposure, how do you expect to manage it?
Yeah. We certainly do ship a lot of our product back across the border from Mexico. A lot of it is used in Mexico as well. Let's just say it's probably a little bit over half, though, that comes back at the request of our customers here in the U.S. It is significant to us. I think that's probably the good news, that it's significant to us and it's significant to the entire industry. It isn't a sustainable situation. We obviously anticipate, and we have been providing our customers all along with this information. It is not a surprise. Every single OEM that we're dealing with here in the United States is very aware of what the impact would be to each and every supplier and their vehicles as well. They are having conversations with us about how you deal with it.
There is not any way that a supplier can deal with a 25% tariff on half the product that is coming from Mexico to the U.S. In our case, like most, there would have to be a conversation and a way that the OEMs are going to absorb it in order for it to be sustainable for the industry. It is so large and ultimately would all be passed on to the consumer at the end of the day. That gets into that conversation you and I had about, "Wow, then you would be really destroying value. This is not sustainable. It does not work even for a minute, let alone a month." I am hoping that between now and April 2, this gets figured out and we do not have this distraction as an industry to deal with because it would not be fun.
Yeah. Makes perfect sense. A couple of fun ones here. Since I know Cooper Standard is doing a lot with AI these days, the final two bonus questions are AI-generated complements of Grok, which is Elon Musk's AI. It's funny, people, when NVIDIA was trading at $152, everyone said, "What are you doing for AI?" I said, "Oh, I'm doing this company called Comstock Resources. They're in natural gas play." And it was $8 and change. Now it's up close to $20. And then people were like, "No, really, what are you doing about AI?" I was like, "Well, I'm doing this thing called Alibaba. It was well under $100. Now it's $145 going to $200." It may be that Cooper Standard is going to be the AI play of 2025 with everything going on.
Leaving that aside, here's the first question from Grok, suggested that I ask you. Again, all of this is opinion, not advice. This is not recommendations. Talk to your financial advisor. This is not guidance. This is a conversation. Here's what Grok says. "Jeff, if you were an investor or if you were an investor with $1 million to deploy, why would you put it all into Cooper Standard stock right now?" Now, we would never recommend anyone puts 100% of anything into one stock, but that's the question. Give us some guidelines here, Jeff.
Yeah. As I mentioned in the conversation, Tom, I mean, because we've taken care of our own business, right? Over the last five years, we've established a cost base that allows the company to flourish. We've already put enough points on the scoreboard to tell you that by the end of 2025, we're going to be at double-digit EBITDA, and we're going to be at double-digit return on invested capital. When we forecast and just look out a few years from that point, we've said that our net leverage is going to be two times or less. All of those statements are on the volumes that exist today and a very slight increase in forecast over the course of the next three years. If I would look at that and I would be an investor, I would say, "Wow, there's a company that's delivering results.
There's a company that has told us that they're going to return to the type of prosperity that existed back in the 2017 period of time that you mentioned earlier was $140 stock price. I'm not predicting that. I'm just telling you that I know what that feels like, and I know what it feels like today, and I know what the industry pent-up demand is for the next three or four years. With that, it's pretty tough to find, I think, a company in an industry that's better positioned than what we are.
Love it. This one is also from Grok, and it's interesting that they mentioned Warren Buffett because I look up to him a lot. A lot of our framework is similar. If you had to pitch Cooper Standard to Warren Buffett, what's the number one metric you'd want to prove this is a cash machine worth owning?
I think we talked about this. I own over 350,000 shares of Cooper Standard stock. It's about 2% of the company. That's, I think, putting my money where my mouth is. It also, for me, is probably the most important metric. I could talk to you about all the other company metrics, but I'll just stick to that personal one.
I love it. I love it. Final question, Jeff, is there anything else we did not cover that you'd like to share with our audience of investors today?
I think we've covered it all. I'm excited about the future. I'm excited about Cooper Standard. I mean, we have great employees. We've talked a lot about our product. We haven't talked much about our culture today. It isn't just the what we make. It's how we do it. I'm so proud of the 21,000 employees that call this home. We don't have a lot of turnover. We have great people. It's not the sign on the building that makes us, Tom. It's the people within the buildings. I'm really proud of that fact. That's how I would end it. Thank you very much for the conversation.
Thank you so much for joining us. Very grateful for you taking the time. That is Chairman and CEO of Cooper Standard, Jeff Edwards.