I don't, I don't have too much. I just did earnings, so. Okay, great. Looks like the webcast has started. So, once again, I'm Ryan Brinkman, the US Automotive Equity Research Analyst at J.P. Morgan. I'm very happy to have here with us, Timothy Kraus, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Dana Incorporated. Tim, thanks for, for making it to the conference.
No, no problem, Ryan. Glad to be here.
Great. You know, I'm gonna... I've been asking the suppliers to the conference start with a few standard questions, like to sort of collate their responses, and they'd be interesting the different responses we get. The first one is about, you know, these changing expectations for battery electric vehicles that we've seen really since the start of last year. But you know, it seemed like for a long time that the pace of EV adoption could only surprise the upside. More recently, though, there's been a reversal of this trend. You know, S&P Global Mobility started the year expecting global BEV production to rise 32%. Their mid-July forecast calls for just 10%.
So what in your view, do you think accounts for this significant reset of expectations, and has the slower near-term growth caused you to think any differently about the medium or long-term trajectory? And what are the implications, you think, for Dana?
No, good question. I, you know, I think, you know, like most things that are new or disruptive, you know, a lot of times forecasts and expectations can get ahead of some of the practicalities, and I think that's what we're seeing here. I think the view of adoption versus sort of, you know, where infrastructure and the price point is for a lot of these vehicles is sort of starting to sort of find a middle ground, and you're gonna see the growth a bit more tempered. I think that doesn't really change our view from a long-term perspective.
I think long-term, electric vehicles or hybrid vehicles, as the case may be, are going to eventually become a significant portion of both the light vehicle as well as the commercial vehicle space. And so that really hasn't changed our view. Now, in the short term, most of what the pullback's been, at least from an auto perspective, has been in passenger cars. We don't produce an enormous amount of parts from a powertrain perspective for passenger car. Most of the driveline business that we have in light vehicle is light truck. So you just think of the Super Duty, the Ranger, Bronco, and Wrangler. Those are big programs.
You know, those were going to be slower to adopt, and at the end, it was always how we thought about adoption. So in that respect, from an automotive perspective, it's been less impactful in the short term. We think still from a long-term perspective, those programs will electrify. I think, for us on the passenger car side, where we've seen it is, we have a significant thermal management business. And so we do battery cooling, and battery management from a thermal perspective. So we have seen that those expectations tempered. But you know, the way we've designed and been able to put capital in the ground and design these is very modular.
So, as it slows down, we'll just spend less now and spread out that capital and make sure we're exercising that needed restraint and making sure that we utilize that capital as it comes on. So long term, mid to long term, I think, you know, we're still very much bullish, and we've always said we're energy source agnostic. So if the automaker or the truck maker wants to build an ICE, we have a product for them. If they want to build a hybrid or a BEV, we have products for them as well for that that can meet all of their needs.
Great, thanks. And, you know, another question I've been asking all the suppliers coming on, another big theme in the industry is the strong rise of the domestic Chinese automakers. I understand you 4% of your revenue, I think, from China, probably less even on the light side. But, you know, they were quick to embrace electrification, the quality and design have improved significantly. You know, BYD has come out of nowhere, you know, thirteenth to largest in just 4 years. These automakers have gone from, you know, around a third to, you know, closing in on 60%, really, of the market over there. And with big ambitions to expand outside of China, too.
Maybe some relevance, you know, rumors of a BYD Shark, you know, pickup truck being made in Mexico, for example. I'm curious if you see any opportunity to partner with these companies. I just got back from a trip to China in June. American Axle mentioned, you know, they didn't do any business with Chery a few years ago. Now it's their largest customer. 80% of the, you know, Jetour, is all-wheel drive. I've been surprised with some SUV growth in China. I'm just curious if you're, you know, looking at increasing your exposure in any way to these companies.
Sure. I mean, I think, you know, we look at the opportunities to sell to all the customer, you know, any customer really, you know, anywhere on the planet as an opportunity. We have a business in China. It's relatively modest from a light vehicle, mostly because our bread and butter is in light trucks, and that's just not a particularly large market. But, you know, and you mentioned Chery. You know, Chery is obviously a customer. We have those products over there, and we do see it on the all-wheel drive and the small SUV market, where we do have quite a few products, and so we'll continue to seek out those opportunities and supply them as need be.
I think that a lot of our product offerings are scalable from either, you know, a relatively, you know, mid-size or smaller SUV, all the way up to the largest trucks. And I think, you know, we have that ability inside of China to be able to scale across not just the light vehicle space, but into light commercial vehicle, last mile delivery, and then all the way up and into the large over-the-road commercial trucks as that market continues to develop. So whether that's in China or US or Europe or elsewhere, we think of the markets as being the same.
... Great, thanks. You know, third question relates to the outlook to suppliers from the expected interplay of new vehicle prices and the quantity of, you know, volume of sales or production. We saw during the pandemic that, you know, automakers can do just fine. They can do great in a low volume, high price environment because while automakers are hurt by lower volume, they're helped by the higher price, whereas suppliers are hurt by the lower volume, not levered to the higher price. You know, with vehicle sales in the U.S. still 8% lower than where they were before the pandemic, production is still lower. I think it's been hurt by the prices of vehicles, which have risen more than for other consumer categories.
You know, automakers say they're gonna remain disciplined, they're gonna hold on to those relative pricing gains. But, you know, others say that maybe we'll see a return to historical discounting, inventory replenishment, et cetera. You know, with inventories back to pre-chip shortage levels, but not pre-pandemic levels, and, and prices barely having come off the record, you know, what do you think is next for, you know, sales or production in your North America market impacting light vehicle driveline? And, do you think maybe we're looking at a structurally lower level of sales or production versus prior?
It's a good question. I think, you know, if you look where end market vehicle pricing is today, it's high relative to, especially to what it's been historically, and, you know, based on, you know, what the consumer earns or might be able to afford. So I do think that, you know, at some point, there's gotta be some level of adjustment in that pricing. You know, in terms of production, I think, you know, I'll guess we'll see what the automakers will do, if they'll remain restrained in terms of building production and building inventories.
I do think the pricing dynamic that they've had over the last few years, where the consumer couldn't get the vehicles that they wanted, probably leads to a bit lower pricing ultimately. From our perspective, obviously, you know, ours is based on our ability to sell is based on production, not on end market sales, although obviously they're connected. So, you know, we'd like to see the customer run consistently at a level that if they ran consistently at a level that they're at today, that wouldn't be the worst thing.
The really hard part for us through the pandemic was their inability to produce what they said they wanted to produce, when they wanted to produce it, and the constant changeover and inefficiencies in the plant. We're starting to get through a lot of that. There's still a bit more to go, and you can see that in Q2 and year-to-date earnings. We're starting to really start to find and get those efficiencies back into the plant. So, our view is, you know, if they can run at this level or even higher and get some stability around what they're building, that would be great for us.
I thought you had a, you know, pretty solid, you know, two-quarter earnings reports, the other day. You know, fit into a minority of, of suppliers, you know, BorgWarner kind of, you know, fit the pattern, where you see, you know, softer sales, for the full year, but, you know, similar level of earnings and, and implied higher margins, same time, a little bit lower capital spending. And can you talk about the trends that might have contributed to that? You know, the ability for, for softer EV sales, to, to maybe, you know, not really flow through to the, to the EBIT line. I don't know if you're able to find some efficiencies there relative to, do you not need to spend as much on product development or,
And then your free cash flow actually went up, right? Because you were able to lower the capital spending. So maybe talk about the impact that these softer EV sales have been having on your guidance for the year. Not wholly negative impact, right?
Yeah, no, I mean, obviously, you know, we're experiencing much of what the industry is seeing in terms of the pullback in the growth. It's certainly not a falling EV story, but it's certainly a slower growth. So along with that and sort of lower for longer, I think, you know, as the growth curves flatten out, our ability to flex both the investment on the capital side, as well as, you know, the development and other infrastructure costs that we have to put in, we're able to do that.
I think, you know, as we saw, in the guidance, we took, you know, quite a bit of sales out from the EV line, but we're also making the appropriate adjustments to the investments we need to make. And then I think the other thing is, you know, you know, we ramped up pretty quickly, like many did in order to meet the growing demand on the EV side. We are getting more and more efficient at how we both employ the capital, but also the human capital and the other operating and development costs, so we get better every day on that.
So, you know, you're seeing some of that certainly flow through as we're able to take down the top line and not see all the contribution margin flowing directly through the EBIT or EBITDA line.
While you're taking down the outlook for, you know, EV sales for the year, I mean, they're still growing year-over-year, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
Like in the Q2 . And yet the EBITDA contribution from EV sales was negative as the sales were higher. And I think you took some, you know, time to explain that, you know, you are generating a positive contribution on, like, the existing product, but then there's the development expense for the future product. So maybe, I don't know if you can delineate those two items. And then, if you could, what I'm trying to get at is: Is there a different contribution margin on the EV-related product versus the ICE product that would help from a modeling perspective when we do take that EV revenue out?
Yeah, you know, I think we would expect over the longer term, you know, the contribution margins to be relatively the same. I mean, I don't think they're, you know, we're gonna see significantly higher contribution margins in either of the businesses. I think in the short term, it certainly depends on the product, the customer, and what we're selling. But, you know, contribution margins are similar, in some cases, a little bit lower in the near term than where we're at on the ICE business. But again, it really depends on a lot of mix in there, depending on, you know, how long the product's been in production, whether it's, you know, which end market it's serving.
So, but it's a mixed bag. But I think the key here is we've done a really nice job of being able to flex the cost we were intending to take on to build out and continue to develop the products. And as those products have either been, you know, pushed out or that development time lengthened...
'Cause if you go back 24 months, you know, most of our customers were like: "I need it tomorrow, you know, go, go, go, go, go." And now it's like, hey, it's a little bit, you know, more, I think, you know, thoughtful and a progression through that development cycle, which has helped us, you know, be able to reduce the additional costs we were planning to bring on, and that has helped us offset the loss of the contribution margin on those expected higher sales.
That's helpful. Thanks. You mentioned earlier that most of the reset in expectations was on the passenger car EV side. Can you talk a little bit about what's been happening with the trend in current production, and also the expectations for production for the electric light commercial vehicles, or, you know, the buses or the last-mile delivery, et cetera?
Sure. I mean, I think the phenomena you're seeing on the light vehicle side, you're also seeing to an extent on the light commercial, last-mile delivery, even on a school bus. I mean, those are... When we started down this path on electrification, you know, eight or nine years ago, you know, last-mile delivery, buses, municipal buses, school buses, those were the use cases that we felt were the most applicable to electrification. You know, just think about last-mile delivery, right? You know, so starts and end at the same point, you know, has a known duty cycle, like, the range anxiety's not there 'cause you know where the vehicle's gonna go. You know how much mass is on the vehicle every day.
So it makes planning, you know, relatively, I wouldn't say easy, but certainly more predictable in terms of being able to use that vehicle. I think what we're also seeing, though, is that, you know, infrastructure, while you know a lot of talk about public charging infrastructure, that infrastructure still has to go into a municipal bus depot or to a school district or a distribution center. And I think what you're seeing is a little bit slower adoption and the ability to ramp that infrastructure, which has slowed down some of the growth or the expectation of the penetration on those. But I don't think in any...
It means in any way that that growth isn't going to be there and that those vehicles aren't gonna convert. If you just think about a school bus, at this point, I mean, it runs a known duty cycle. It drives around neighborhoods. You know, kids stand out in front of it. You know, going to a zero-emission vehicle makes the most sense from a health perspective and from an environmental perspective, but also from a total cost of ownership perspective. Over the long term, the electric bus just should be a lower cost of ownership for the municipality or the school district.
You mentioned earlier that, you know, most of the expectations reset was on the passenger car side. I don't know if by passenger car, you meant, you know, commercial vehicle. Maybe you might think of as light vehicles overall as being passenger cars, I'm not sure, as opposed to, you know, cargo or something. But, yeah, I think within light vehicle, you have seen passenger cars, but also, you know, some of these battery electric pickup trucks, we've seen some reset there. I think one of the interesting parts of your portfolio was these battery cooling trays. And, you know, I like it didn't matter if it was Rivian or Lightning or Silverado that won the EV pickup truck race-
Yep.
'cause you were on them all, right?
Yep.
But now, it kind of seems like, you know, Lightning capacity is coming back down. GM's delayed twice the capacity expansion of Orion for the Silverado. I'm just curious what you're seeing on the pickup truck side, if this is a bit of an air pocket. I mean, Ford's still going forward with that plant in, you know, Blue Oval City to, you know, significantly ramp capacity for these types of vehicles. What kind of, you know, appetite there might be or conversation with your customers around these electric pickups, and remind us the battery cooling technology that you do do there?
Yeah. So if you think about it for... And I'll pick GM, right? So we do the battery cooling for all the Ultium platforms. So all of GM's electrified vehicles have our battery management from a thermal perspective on the vehicle. You know, that has been a much lower and slower launch, or ramp, I should say, launch, but ramp than what we had originally planned for. Now, and I mentioned this earlier, like the helpful part there is that's a very modular production.
So, you know, we're putting lines in and ordering CapEx as we see and get that volume to come through, and when it doesn't, we either delay the capital or we're talking about, you know, stranded costs with the customer. I think the key here is that, you know, we didn't go out and build plants for the volume that the customer, whether it's GM or Ford or anyone else, told us they were going to have. We treat it like we do most things. You know, if we don't have to build out capacity all at once, we don't. We never have. That's true in our mechanical business, and it's true in the EV business.
So we've been very thoughtful and methodical about how much capital we needed to spend and when, and, you know, as we, as it's ramped slower, we've just slowed down the process to add that capacity. When it comes on, we'll add it, and, we'll be able to continue to push through. But the design's the same. I mean, if, you know, if you've seen GM's vehicles, it can be a Hummer to a, you know, to a small vehicle.
The really interesting and unique part of the structure of the battery cooling is that the plates and the trays that we produce, you know, are modular, so you know, they can put many of them together to put in a larger vehicle or use less of them in a smaller. So it allows for the lines to be pretty much the same line, just used over and over again.
Can you remind us the percentage of your sales or your backlog that relates to electrification-related products? Have you broken out before, or can you break out for us, how much of that is attributable to, say, these battery cooling trends? We're talking about versus electronic drive units, you know, versus maybe EV Axles or e- Axles.
So, you know, our backlog is, you know, about 75% EV. We don't break out battery cooling versus the other electrical products per se. You know, if you look at the growth that's in, and you can see the Q2 , if you look at the growth in Power Tech- Power Tech group, which is where battery cooling sits, we actually had, you know, negative quarter-to-quarter growth in ICE, but a large growth in EV. You know, that is for the most part, battery cooling and electronics cooling. So we also do power electronics cooling for EVs as well in that. So that's principally...
If you just look at that, you can see that that growth continues to be there for us, albeit off of a relatively low base, but.
And while maybe you don't break it out exactly, if we could drill down into, you know, one of those categories, which is the electronic drive unit, integrated drive module, e-machine, various different names for it. You know, most people call them three-in-one systems. You've got the electric motor, the power electronics, such as the inverter and the gearbox. Now, if Craig was here, and his flight was canceled, but he was—he invented the term four-in-one, right?
Yeah, he did.
He threw one more on top of that. You know, I cover four companies who are doing this right now. I mean, you got American Axle, partners with Inovance. You've got Magna, that partners with LG Electronics. You guys partner with TM4. And then you got BorgWarner, which does it all in-house. And you know, you and Axle and Magna, you know, you all say you're not harmed in any way by partnering. And yet, BorgWarner says that they benefit from having an entirely vertically integrated approach. So on the one hand, it's three against one. On the other hand, they do have the most awards. So just wanted to check in with you on the sort of go-to-market strategy and the relationship with TM4.
I think you've increased your stake there, you know, a couple times and, you know, how you're thinking about, you know, operating with them going forward.
Yeah, so I mean, I make one comment: so we would argue we're vertically integrated. So TM4, we own 55% of the joint venture with Hydro-Québec. We've publicly disclosed that they had a put option, so they've exercised their put, so it'll be eventually 100% owned by Dana. But it's not a partnership. We run the JV, we manage it, we decide, you know, obviously with their input, but how we're going to integrate it. And it's not run as a separate joint venture. I mean, it is a separate joint venture, but it's actually rolled up inside of our BUs.
So make no mistakes, we are completely vertically integrated on our drive systems, whether it's an e-Axle or an EDU, an electric drive unit. So that goes without saying. So I think we benefit greatly from having all those in-house capabilities. When you're designing a system, and this goes actually for our four-in-one, you know, we think that the ability to design from the ground up how the integrated drive unit or the e-Axle operates and how efficiently it operates, it's critical that the engineering teams, both the mechanical, the electrical, and the thermodynamics, are all sitting in the same room, so to speak, but working together, and that there aren't these handoffs.
So I do think it drives a much, much better end product and a much more efficient end product. At the end of the day, right, the efficiency of that drive unit determines, in large part, what the range of that vehicle will be. Given range anxiety and the cost per kilowatt to put on the vehicle, the more efficient those drive systems can be, the better it is and the better the economics are for both the automaker or the OEM and the end consumer.
Last question on the light vehicle OE side of the business is, you know, I think that your expertise in commercial truck, you know, these powerful, heavy, you know, high torque applications found some applicability to where there are very high torque needs in like Ferrari. Didn't you do something there?
And yet, I think there was a slide deck, maybe it was at Investor Day, where you showed a vehicle with, like, a tarp, you know, draped over it, so we couldn't see what it was, but it had the shape of a passenger car or shape of a clearly light vehicle, you know, more of the sort that we would associate with maybe BorgWarner, on this, you know, e-powertrain side. I just wanted to gauge your appetite for competing in that more mass market category, which obviously has, you know, a lot of large addressable market.
Yeah, I think to the extent the... You know, we're one of our multi-end market strategy really is one that is driven off of the leverage and the scale we get. And it's probably no more important than in the EV, especially now that the total volumes are likely to be lower than people have expected. Our ability to design and develop motors and inverters that can be used from a large passenger car or fit into an electric drive unit on a passenger car or a small SUV, and slide those and scale those up all the way through to light commercial vehicle into commercial vehicles, is exactly what we want to be able to do. Now, there are limits, right?
I mean, very small motors versus the larger motors in terms of their power output makes it very difficult to package the exact same motor. So we really try to think about it in terms of sort of that light commercial vehicle and the heavy light vehicle market. Those motors tend to be able to be scaled, you know, relatively easily. But the key is being able to package all of this and really make it work efficiently. So if our customers are looking at the systems and understand the benefits that a ground-up designed, highly efficient system brings, and they can use that technology, we're gonna try to sell it to them.
We think we have some of the best products on the planet, and we're gonna continue to penetrate the markets that will continue to give us scale and can do it profitably.
I may be moving on to the other half of the business, really, in commercial truck and off-highway. Your takedown for full year revenue is, you know, very modest and really attributed to the, you know, the EV side. It seems like some of the other companies at the conference, like maybe PHINIA and Garrett, have made some cautious comments about the commercial truck and off-highway markets. Just curious what you're seeing in those end markets.
Yeah. So, you know, commercial truck remains, you know, relatively buoyant. I mean, again, you know, we play in different parts of each of those end markets. Vocational—North American vocational continues to be a real bright spot. I think when you look at, you know, medium duty and even heavy duty, from our side, while we're starting to see some reduction in volumes, on the flip side, we're continuing to pick up market share in those markets. So, much of what's being offset or what's being lost from a total volume perspective in the market, we're actually picking up that volume in market share.
The other piece is, we have a sizable commercial vehicle business in South America that's been relatively weak for quite some time. We're seeing that market start to get some legs under it and have decent year-over-year gains, and so that's also that rolls up in the commercial vehicle, showing some of the gains that we continue to see. So-
Yeah.
It's a bit of a mixed bag, but, but yeah, it's a little bit, a little bit lighter, but, between market share gains and just some of the regions we work in, we're, we're still seeing positive year-over-year performance.
That explains it. Thanks. And, sorta might answer my next question, which was, you know, have you seen any change in your business stemming from Cummins' acquisition of Meritor? I mean, if you're seeing higher market share, I don't know if that was specific for commercial on a highway or whatnot, but what, what have you seen, what impact from their change to go-to-market strategy and the synergies that they feel that they have?
I mean, we haven't seen much. I mean, we've competed with Meritor for a long, long time. You know, I mean, I think we've said in the past it's a new name on the door, but obviously still a very good company. Obviously, part of Cummins, which is obviously an extremely well-run company. But look, we'll continue to do what we do best, which is make sure we serve the needs of the customer, and we believe that whether it's the OEM or the end market customer for the truck, if they're satisfied and they want the demand for our product, you know, we think we can deliver.
We spend a lot less time worrying about, you know, what our competitors are doing, and really staying focused on what the customer really wants and making sure we can deliver it at a price point that he can make money on his own business.
I wanted to ask about the trend in, you know, commercial settlements and, you know, I think the message from you and from others has been that, you know, the automaker's not really in the mood to, you know, review the list of, you know, premium costs from years past. And, you know, whatever hole there is in the margin as a result of that is gonna have to be made up, you know, by other means. But the degree to which you are still receiving commercial settlements for premium costs, and the degree, even if you're not, that there may still be margin uplift from the fact that even if they're not opening up contracts, and amending them, that these contracts are gonna be rolling off the books, right?
So, I mean, contracts that you entered into in, you know, the first part of 2020 or 2019, before inflation was seen as, you know, transient, you know, those are gonna get repriced at the new market reality in the next year or two. And could there be a margin benefit from that also?
I mean, let's be honest, right? Our customers never wanna hand out money. So commercial recoveries are always difficult, but, yeah, I think that, you know, we continue to work, you know, where we can to recover the costs we incur. But I think, yeah, to make up for, you know, kinda where we're at, you know, many of the contracts will continue to go through, you know, kinda call it roll and roll off. As they continue to roll off and reprice, we'll get economics at current rates and investments at current rates. I can tell you, we're really focused on is...
While margin's certainly important, we're really focused on the returns for the invested capital that we have, and making sure that we continue to work the business, whether it's from lowering the investment level, or increasing margin to make sure that the returns we're earning on the capital that our shareholders entrust to us is above what that cost of capital is. So that's what we're laser-focused on that. And we know over time, that we'll continue to work the margins to where we need them to be, and I think if you've seen through the first half of this year, you know, we're seeing that start to happen, and we'll continue to work to get it back to where it needs to be.
Okay, and we've discussed before that, you know, it might not be a totally fair comparison to talk about when you can get back to pre-COVID margin because, you know, pre-COVID margin was before you had... I mean, even if you had you know, 100% recoveries on the higher raw materials and whatnot, you had, you have $10 billion, you had a billion of of revenue and, and a billion in cost, you've got the same EBIT-
Right
... but, but your margin is lower. So, I don't know if, if maybe, you think that we need to reset the expectations a little bit. But in terms of getting where you want to be or, or where at that equivalent level, you know, what has to happen from a, a macro or industry or, or company-specific execution? And, and how do you see the, the margin progressing, and, and what do you think, maybe at the new normal of prices, the, the new normal of margin for Dana might be?
You know, I think, you know, we certainly... I mean, we think the businesses should be able to get back to a double-digit margin, as we continue to work through both the repricing of new programs and then obviously the continued drive for efficiency. You know, we're not gonna be satisfied until we can drive those margins and therefore the returns in the business to where we think is sustainable and necessary for from a returns perspective. You know, I think, you know, when does that happen? Obviously, you know, we have to continue to get the customers to run well. That is definitely moving in the right direction.
And then we just need to continue to work the playbook that we've been executing on here over the last 18 months or so, and really you know get that to flow through to the bottom line, so.
Great. Thanks, Tim. I've got, you know, one or two more, but let's see if there's one in the audience right here, please. Over here.
So when you look across the portfolio of all the business cases that show up in front of you every year for investments, there's usually somebody who's making an implied return forecast down the road. How many of those do you actually hit in the end, or is it fairly a mixed bag? I guess, if you have some sense of that.
You know, I think if you, you know, it's, it's obviously different across each of the end markets. But generally speaking, you know, you know, take the last few years out 'cause it's, it's sort of unprecedented, but if you, if you just looked at the, the business historically, I would tell you that most of our business cases end up, on a return, a relative return basis, about where we thought it would be. We tend not to get there the same way we thought we were gonna...
It's a mixed bag of efficiency, you know, capital differences and the whatnot, but I think that's why we want the team really focused on the actual returns that we're gaining from the business we're taking, and less on sort of thinking about it in terms of a specific amount of margin, right? 'Cause you may end up with the same margin, but you invested three times more, and the returns won't be there, so.
If I could just add on, 'cause I wanna be clear on this, issue of efficiency. There's two parts of inefficiency. Either the demand's not there, so we're just low on, lower on production than we thought we would be, or we just can't process enough through at the demand that we forecasted. So do you have a sense of which, which one it is more?
For us right now?
Yep.
It's really... Even when the plants were running, with, through, say, post-COVID, but with a lot of the shortages, the issue was partly throughput, so they were just making less parts, right? Less vehicles. But the biggest problem for us is the variability in the mix from the from the automaker. So I'll deal with the light vehicle part of the business. It's probably the most acute. I mean, we don't-- we tend to be on programs that have... So I'll pick on Super Duty. Not pick on, I love the Super Duty. It's a great program. Love Ford. But, you know, we don't, we don't make a Super Duty axle. We do the 250, 350, 450, right?
And inside of there, there is, you know, multiple versions. You know, there's a dually, there's four-wheel drive, there's two-wheel. And so, you know, when they mix and match that, quite abruptly, the changeover in the plant, it eats you alive in terms of the efficiency in the plant, right? Whereas historically, they would run in batch. I used to make the comment that the automakers, you know, of the last few years, they didn't, they were just trying to, you know. It was either they make what they could, not what they wanted to make. And that's really what we're seeing that's giving us the ability to really get the plants back to where they need to be.
With that stability, a lot of the additional improvements with that, we wanna make inside the four walls of the plants, we can do, right? So we can then become even more efficient because we're not just running around doing changeovers.
... Thank you.
A question up here in the front, please. Thanks. Right, right here.
Thank you. Just to follow up on that, productivity in a volume-flat environment, and I know that that's not true for every one of your different business lines, light vehicle, off-highway commercial, but generally speaking, on a three-year view, kind of a midterm view, are you looking at volume across your business lines as relatively stable? Which is good, you can drive efficiencies through maybe headcount reduction.
So-
some right sizing?
So-
Am I too conservative? "No, we do have 2% volume growth on a three-year view," and I don't know if you can make that claim, given your different business lines.
Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's very different for all the end markets.
Mm.
But if you, if we just sit there and say, "Hey, let's think about a relatively volume flat, so a flat environment or fluctuating," we have the ability and the processes to drive year-over-year improvements in the plant for under that environment, no question about it.
And that translates into 1%-2% productivity improvement?
Well, I wouldn't put a number on it, but it's the reduction in the conversion cost in the product.
and then the follow-up on that would be then, with respect to your, your customers, in terms of carry-over product, pricing is flat, and the days of giving them price downs are gone? Or in fact, no, you know, half your business still does kind of build in productivity sharing and price downs.
Yeah, it depends on the end market and the customer and where it is, but generally speaking, many of our customers still, we still expect yearly productivity that has to be offset, so-
So, just kind of putting it all together then, you do expect to have some opportunity on the margin from efficiency improving a little bit?
Yes.
Or, or-
Yeah. No, we should. Absolutely. That's what you... That, you, like, if you looked at the Q2 , right, like, the, you mean-
Yeah, I, I'm trying to kind of think big term, three years from now.
Yeah, but three years from now, yeah, we should continue-
50 basis points.
You know, if we have a stable production environment, that, that's our best, that's the best case we have for increasing productivity in terms of reduction in conversion cost to plan. Obviously, the metal cost what the metal costs, but-
And then I know it depends by region, and you export a lot out of Europe, but when I think about off-highway and commercial vehicle, that end market sensitivity, how are you thinking about 2025 in terms of the macro? Because-
So we haven't given-
There's quite a big forecast.
... we haven't given 2025 guidance yet, but I, you know, I think we are, you know, and we mentioned this last week on the call, we're starting to see, especially in the off-highway markets, we're starting to see some softness come through. So ag's probably the one that's most prevalent right now. You read, you know, John Deere or AGCO, right? Those are two big customers of ours, seeing decreases in volume on ag. Now, even within ag, you know, we don't make parts for large combines, and so it depends on even the products within there. But yeah, those, the...
We're likely to continue to see that, especially if farm payrolls remain or farm product costs, commodities remain low. If we get help from an interest rate environment and crop prices increase, then, you know, that could turn around pretty quickly, given the way the farm industry and the farmer kind of runs.
Got it.
But-
Thank you.
I'll take the last question on capital allocation. Obviously, not a ton of free cash flow this year. You have raised it, you know, a couple of times, though, and, you know, normalized is, is higher. How are you thinking about, you know, the opportunities there? I mean, the portfolio seems pretty complete from an electrification perspective. You've rounded out the, the commercial vehicle portfolio. And, you know, previously, you used to talk about, you know, driving toward investment-grade metrics. I don't know, like, all the way there, but, but now with the shares at $11, not $22, I don't know if you feel, differently, about that and, and how we should think about, you know, potential return of, of capital and, and what the right leverage, might be in the context of, of the current equity valuation.
Yeah, I think, you know, I remain convinced that. My view is that, you know, we need to bring leverage down. And we're driving to sort of 1-1.5 times. I'd love to see us, on a net basis, down around, you know, 1-1.5 times. So any free cash flow we're generating in the short term, despite the weakness, I mean, I think the stocks are screaming buy, so...
But, I do think, you know, it's important, given, the end markets we operate in and what we need to do, that, you know, getting, continuing to use free cash flow, at least in the short term, to pay to get leverage, the leverage down, is the best use of that. I think that will translate into better metrics for the equity side. And then, if we end up having some extra free cash flow, then I think, you know, buying back stock at that time, once we get the leverage ratio down, would be something we would consider.
Very clear. Thank you. Please join me in thanking Tim for the great color and insight today.