Next up, thanks everybody for joining us again. Next up, we have American Axle. We're very happy to have Chris May, Executive Vice President and CFO, and Matthew Girlando here as well, VP Strategy and Biz Development. Both these guys are very knowledgeable on the industry, have a lot of insights, but also we're going to talk a lot about American Axle. American Axle is one of the largest driveline suppliers in the planet, the biggest, I think, to GM and certainly on GM's trucks and SUVs, which have been a great positive here in the short run and probably will continue to be given the transition that's going on in the industry. Those trucks probably have a much longer life and much more strength than people are expecting in the short run and the long run.
We agree, John.
Yeah. Yeah. No, yeah. Absolutely.
I don't know if that was your first question.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get into that. Driving great free cash flow, delevering, still opportunity on that front, but even in "tough times," still delivering pretty good free cash flow to help deliver. There's a lot of opportunity on that side, and there's a lot of opportunity to diversify, which you're working on. So we're going to get into all that today. So Chris and Matt, thanks for joining us. I guess maybe to kind of open up, right, and talk about those trucks and the market broadly, you guys have given guidance. I think probably in some ways, like a lot of folks, is a little bit conservative from a macro standpoint, at least in our opinion.
I'm just curious, as you've started this year, as far as the actual production we've seen, as well as the schedules and releases that you're seeing for 13 weeks plus out, whatever you're seeing, how is the market shaping up relative to your expectations? And then maybe if you could specifically talk about the GM truck platform as well, that would be great.
Sure. Happy to take that. Well, good morning, everyone. Of course, thank you to BofA for hosting this event. Thank you, John. Thank you, Doug.
You're welcome.
It's always a good dialogue to have here today and talk about our business. We enjoy talking about it. Also, we'll be talking about some forward-looking information. General Counsel would like me to advise you to look at our www.aam.com for all our forward-looking statement disclosures. But that said, let's talk about a little bit what we saw. We stepped into this year, at least from a production cadence standpoint, midpoint of our guidance was 15.8 million units of production in North America, also around 1.4 million units of the GM full-size truck platform in totality. As we now are starting to approach the end of the first quarter, I would tell you one of the challenges we faced last year was a significant amount of volatility from our customers.
Part of our thought process stepping into 2024 is that volatility would start to come down some. I would say, at least so far in the first quarter, volatility has been much lower than we experienced in the prior year. I think that's a nice way to at least start into 2024. That is still our operating assumption going forward. Schedules continue to look decent from our perspective in line with our guidance where we started the beginning of the year. That's still in a good spot here at the end of the first quarter. As you know, we continue to be bullish on that full-size truck for General Motors across all three elements, meaning the light-duty, the heavy-duty, and the full-size SUV platforms.
When you think about what's going on on the EV front, in sort of product delays, pushdowns on volume and pushouts to the right, and we'll see what all that ultimately transpires to, but it's definitely a pushdown and pushout to the right on EV volumes. How does that impact your business maybe short-term, mid-term, and long-term? Maybe in the short run, I mean, you're kind of on a few small programs. Do you see sort of a step up in some of the ICE volumes that you're seeing that kind of balances out some of that downward pressure, which may actually benefit vehicles that are not directly being electrified?
Yeah. No. As it relates to, I think you called it, a reduction and maybe a pushout of some of the electrification projections in the near term, certainly plays very favorable to our business. As you know, our core business is associated with full-size trucks, but we also have a large franchise associated with crossover vehicles, and we supply a lot of components into many different vehicles in North America, in Europe predominantly, a little bit in Asia. And our view would be that creates a continued, very strong, robust environment for our core product set for the near term and even deep into the mid-term. So we view that as very favorable. It's a profitable business for us. It's cash flow-generating business for us. And again, we view that as a favorable dynamic. But in addition, we're launching some electrification programs.
We've launched some, though we still see the schedules for the ones that we've launched as decent in terms of some of the dynamic with our backlog we've introduced into our backlog. About half of our new business coming on over the next couple of years is electrification-related, whether it's drive units or components. And at the time we released that, that was our best estimate of the current marketplace we're in today. And we still see that as we sit here today for those products launching inside of the new environment. So we still see a little bit of growth on the electrification side for us, but we see because it'll be new products, new platforms for us, but our core business will continue to remain very strong in the near term.
I mean, this is a little bit hypothetical getting into the next few years, so I mean, this is just your thoughts. I mean, if those programs are delayed or the volumes are lower than you'd expect, do you think that you have the product, and do you think the industry maybe at large will have sort of this upside in ICE vehicles or potentially even hybrids sort of as a backfill?
Absolutely. I mean, there's no question in our mind that that would be the case. The capacity and the products are already here today. They would extend them. If they're introducing some of the hybrid applications, that also plays very well into our existing book of business. Many of our products are identical if it's just a pure ICE vehicle or a hybrid vehicle. We also have some product set inside of our driveline business unit that supports smaller, downsized engines, which is more heavily focused on hybrid applications. So you could see some additional growth inside of that as it relates to hybrids for us. So that would play very well over the next couple of years.
One of the other big things in the past couple of years is commercial settlements and recoveries have been maybe certainly not easier, but they seem a little bit more robust than they maybe have been historically given that kind of volatility and some of the inflation we've seen on costs, particularly around raws and labor. As you look at this year, what is your expectation for that? Does that ease? Does that get less easy, if you will? And I'm not saying it was easy, but on a relative basis. And then also, as you think about that in the context of price downs and the netting of those two, if price downs come back in in sort of the 1%-3% normal range, has that intensified maybe a little bit as well?
Yeah. Okay. Well, why don't we break this into segments? Because I think, in our view, those are two very separate and distinct elements of our arrangements with our customers. We'll go in reverse, starting with the price downs. It was very common in this industry when you were awarded business, you would have a series of prearranged price downs through the life of these programs. And many of our product set and it can range anywhere from 1%-3% of an average in the industry. If you look at the data we've provided in many of our guidance through the past years, you'll notice we're much less than that. But our programs are typically awarded five to seven to eight years in duration. And when you are awarded that business, you agree to these price downs.
So many of the price downs that we're incurring today were negotiated many years past. And if you look at our year-over-year walk stepping into 2024, we have another $20 million of price downs associated contractually with the business we want. But if you do the math on that, it's about 0.3%. So we've been able, in our opinion, to maintain these price down arrangements in a reasonable fashion and also with the ability and size of them to offset those through productivity, typically. As it relates to the other piece of that question in terms of economic recoveries, this is, I would say, a dynamic that really started to emerge in 2022. Think of the rapid inflation, especially associated with utilities around the globe. I mean, that's really hit a lot of the supply base. Well, it hit every industry, to be frank.
We were successful in 2022 getting some offset for those recoveries, articulated those all in our public commentary. Last year in 2023, that was a key objective to not only offset any utility inflation, but labor inflation became steep and sticky. Inflation from our supply base to us, they're encountering the same elements of cost increases that we were. And by the end of the year, I think I would say we were quite satisfied with our ultimate resolution with our OEM customers to bring pricing and compensation for that. As we step into 2024, we have this as highlighted as one of our still largest elements in terms of things we want to accomplish and achieve in terms of commercial recoveries for any either residual inflation that wasn't offset yet or in cases in the past, sometimes you receive a lump sum. That inflation hasn't gone away. You have to sort of renegotiate some of those lump sums into the next year.
I would say the majority of that has now been complete. We still have some work to do with a couple of large customers, but I'd say we're making good progress into 2024 and tracking with some of the commentary we made on our earnings call.
Okay. In the past couple of years, there's been a little bit of micro plant disruption, particularly around the metal-forming business. I think last we checked, as you put it on that red, yellow, and green light, it ranged, but that was the end of last year. As we think about that going through the course of this year, I think there's an expectation that at some point it's going to turn green. As we think about that, when are we going to when are we going to hit green? When is that headwind going to maybe these operations be worked out? And what is the opportunity for upside there?
Yeah. Okay. In terms of that, look, we've articulated that and your red, yellow, green comment. We've published a chart. Really, starting in the third quarter, we took a lot of pressure as it relates to operational performance, especially in the third quarter of last year. And we felt it was very important for us to be very transparent in some of these issues that we had and also give a roadmap to those that follow us when we will resolve these issues. And back in the third quarter, a lot of these issues were stemming from labor availability, in particular in our metal-forming operations that you mentioned, John.
And that labor availability was turnover in our facilities, which caused then us to have to seek additional associates to work in our facilities. We had to increase base wages because of inflation. You're bringing in new people that caused inefficiencies, which caused excessive scrap. Customers were pulling demand, and it sort of snowballs down. Those were some of the challenges we talked about in the third quarter. The good news is we stepped into the fourth quarter. We are starting to, I would say, bed down in terms of some of the labor availability issues, getting stability in our workforce in some of these key manufacturing locations. We were able, in some cases, to reload some of the product amongst some of our facilities to provide some relief from some of our more challenged operations.
We saw improvement inside the fourth quarter. We're seeing continued improvement here in the fourth quarter or in the first quarter of this year with these issues. We are tracking to where our objective was really by the second quarter of this year to kind of put the most of these significant issues in the rearview mirror, and we are tracking towards that.
Gotcha. That's good to hear. On that note, the automation question comes up a tremendous amount when it comes to the industry and then particularly around the suppliers. We're talking about labor shortages and your potential to automate those actions and what those folks are doing, how technically possible that is, and that might kick in on the technical side. But then also financially, as far as a return, cost of return and capital deployment standpoint, is that actually really viable?
Yes. Well, first of all, we'll answer those in reverse. Absolutely, it can be viable. I mean, each automation, I'll call it project, has its own standalone business case. Generally, you'll find that it is very viable, especially if you're thinking mid to longer term because you really eliminate certain cost elements out of your business permanently when you can automate. For those of you who've been in any of our factories, you'll find we have highly automated factories, but we still have continued opportunity to automate more. And with some of the labor challenges that we just spoke about, we see some opportunities to take continued automation to provide some additional relief from labor availability because, in our view, labor is going to be one of our top challenges as an industry for probably the near term.
Investing into this area, we think, is critical, and we see some upside to it. Now, is it an abundance of opportunities all over the place in our factories? No, because, as I mentioned, we have highly automated factories, but there absolutely are opportunities to help improve our performance, provide some relief from that labor availability, and drive margin improvement over time. No question.
Got it. Mid-teen, even top margins was kind of doing this for a while. It's kind of where we kind of thought of you guys. You're a little bit short of that at the moment. Is that something that, as the business develops and makes changes over time, is not achievable, or do you foresee that ultimately, maybe not this year, but over time as kind of a target where you guys can get back to?
Yeah. Look, that's a key beacon for us. We're obviously driving for margin improvement. That's a key operational performance metric. And if I think back a couple of years when we were performing in that range, what is different now? We're closer sort of to 11%-12% versus where we were performing in that mid-teens. It's a couple of macro factors, and it's also some factors that are upon us. So what do you mean or what do I mean when I say macro factors? Inside of our business, we have contractual arrangements to pass on metal market to our customers. This is where commodity costs, when they rise, we have contractual relationships with our customers where we pass that price increase from our supply base to us and from us into our customer. That's been very sizable in terms of absolute dollars. You see the commodities we trade.
It's aluminum. It's scrap. It's nickel. It's moly. Those are the primary inputs into our product. It's approaching hundreds of millions that we're passing through. That alone has deteriorated our margins just on the optics, almost 1%-2% of margin, which is important.
That same dynamic is also true on the inflation recoveries. That's almost another 1% plus of margin just as you're passing these costs up at cost, right, with zero margin. But to be frank, there's another 1%-2% of margin improvement delivered over the next couple of years.
So we see improvement there from our operation performance. If some of the macro sort of recedes back to, call it, pre-COVID levels on these indices, you can see some movement there. And also, volume provides us enough a nice lift from a margin perspective as well. We're still not to pre-COVID levels of margin, and that's very margin accretive to us when it happens. Absolutely have a roadmap and line of sight to those mid-teen margins. We need a few things to do to take care of inside our own business, which we're working on, and a couple of macro factors.
Obviously, with your name, everybody thinks about Axles, and then they immediately go to GM trucks. But there's a lot more to the business, and there's probably going to be a lot more to it over time. As you think about sort of the strategy of where the company is going to go, it definitely seems like there's a big push, despite what people are thinking, towards electrification and potential solutions for your customers on that front. And I think some of the stuff you showed us at CES this last year and the year before, particularly around electric motors and some of the innovation there, are the kind of things that people don't really sort of ascribe or associate with American Axle, but you're doing it, and you're doing some really kind of amazing things.
Yeah. I think it's an underappreciated.
Maybe you could talk about some of that stuff and sort of the strategy of diversification over time, customer geography, and then technology.
Yeah. And just take a look at our announcement from our new business backlog that we announced at our earnings call. If you look at that mix of product, right, half is electrification. It's much more diverse globally. If you think about the customers that we announced over the past year that we're launching some of our new business, whether it's ICE business, whether it's hybrid business, or it's electrification business, it's with nameplates that you really don't associate with us. Mahindra, for example, would be one. VinFast, I mean, we were really starting to get some traction with some customers geographically around the globe. Some of that has been organic growth. Some of that has been through our acquisition of Tekfor, which expanded our customer base and relationship inside of Europe.
But if you go back to the opening, really, of your question was they think of us as sort of a truck axle business. And if you think about some of the growth segments in our business over the next five, 10, 15 years, clearly, electrification is a key piece of that growth story. And what's really interesting for us from an electrification standpoint, while you think about us as a truck axle and a crossover vehicle from an all-wheel drive applications, when we're moving into our electric drive units, these product sets can go now into almost every segment in the market, not just trucks, not just crossover vehicles, but they're in performance cars, AMG, which we announced a year ago.
A lot of fun to drive it.
We're into small little city cars in China. We're on the Beijing car, which you also mentioned.
Also fun to drive it.
In a different kind of fun. But yes. But also into skateboard applications. We're into crossover vehicles. We're into hybrid applications. This vehicle segment expansion for us, I think, is really probably the most underestimated element of our electrification story that we have, in my opinion. I think we'll continue to have growth in our core segments, truck and crossover vehicle, but we're now moving that electrification technology into all these other segments of the vehicle space that we really, for all practical purposes, don't play in today. We're not typically on front-wheel drive application cars. Maybe some components we supply. Our eDrive units absolutely are. If you go to the China marketplace today, we have a partnership arrangement with Inovance. We're shipping into over half a dozen different customers in China on front-wheel drive applications, all-wheel drive applications, and you're seeing our technology really take off.
That's where you're going to see some of this growth.
Chris, can you bring up the content a little bit you've done in the past? Help us, the content of the Axle and EV products relative to ICE products?
Yeah. Absolutely. So well, why don't we level set maybe first on the content on ICE, and then we can talk about on for EV. So we face off to the ICE market. We supply components to a wide variety of OEM manufacturers, either through our driveline. If we're supplying a lot of components, it's mostly through our metal-forming operation. And our content per vehicle on those applications can be anywhere up to $500 per vehicle, depending on what we sell into those applications. If we are the primary driveline supplier on, let's use, an all-wheel drive crossover vehicle, our content per vehicle is somewhere between $1,000-$1,200 per vehicle. If we are the primary driveline supplier for, call it, a full-size truck in North America, it's sort of the $1,500-$1,600 range from a content vehicle application, and that's all ICE. If they're hybrid applications, it'd be similar plus potentially some other content, as I mentioned, with our VCS product that we sell.
As we transition to electrification, our sort of go-to-market approach on electrification is really twofold. We have a very strong component business on our ICE franchise. Many of that product is manufactured and very similar to product that we can supply into the EV world, gears, differentials, sun gears , shafts. We forge these. We machine these. We do them for ICE. We'll do a very similar product for EV vehicles. That content per vehicle, our expectation is it'll be very similar to what we experience on ICE, meaning up to about $500 per vehicle, depending on what we supply.
The difference starts to move when you move into the full drive unit application for an EV vehicle, where, as you heard some of the numbers on the ICE, where it was either $1,000-$1,200 for an all-wheel drive or it was $1,500-$1,600 on a full-size truck. Our experience now and our expectation for content per vehicle in an EV world is much closer to $2,500 per vehicle plus if we're the primary driveline supplier. And you may ask, "Well, what's the difference?" Certainly, the complexity is they're a little more complex. But really, if you think about an internal combustion engine or internal combustion vehicle, you have an engine. You have a transmission, and you have an axle. And today, we're the axle supplier.
When you move to an EV world, that engine, transmission, and axle all combines into one, and it becomes the e-axle or e-drive unit. So you're picking up additional content, additional integration, additional assemblies, additional components, all inside of those drive units.
Capture more of the propulsion system, right?
Exactly.
Got it. That's helpful. Of that $2,500, how much is pure axle content, and how much of that can actually be passed through in that $2,500?
When you say pass through, you mean?
I mean buying subparts and components from each.
Yeah. Each one's different, whether it's a 2-in-1 configuration, meaning it's a motor and the axle, or a 3-in-1, where some OEMs want inverters, motors, and axles. We haven't broken down each one in a public setting, but each piece carries a nice load of that content per vehicle.
Meaning e-axle, you internally are able to do that entire system, soup to nuts?
Well, we're not vertically integrated today on motors or inverters. We do some on a very small scale for one small customer. But typically, we would work with the OEM. Oftentimes, we design our product to be more of a platform approach where we can be flexible to the OEM's needs. And what do I mean by that? Each OEM has different requirements for inverters. Each has different requirements for motors. Some want you to direct to certain maybe their preferred suppliers or their own motors or inverters. So we're able to accommodate all that, or we work in partnership with another supplier to bring a complete set. But we're responsible for design, engineering, integration, assembly, and then ultimately that product to the OEM.
I mean, not the inverters, but the motors, you guys are showing some of your own technology that's very, very competitive.
It's on our next-gen units. Yes.
Yeah. That's very competitive, if not class-leading in some ways.
Yes. If they're small, compact, high-speed motors, yes. Absolutely.
So when you think about that, though, I mean, in that process, I mean, what we're hearing from the automakers is an increasing level of willingness to outsource sort of the whole design and engineering of specific modules, if you will. When you're doing something like that, are you starting to hear sort of the sounds of, "Hey, listen, we got a lot to go on to do in the rest of the vehicle. This e-axle, you guys have shown competency here. You just take care of this. Deliver it. Let's figure out the specs that we need." And then you outsource anything you need to, insource whatever you want to. But you guys are tasked with, "Here are the performance specs, liability, and everything else we need," then go.
Yeah. I'll make a couple of comments, and maybe Matt might want to make a couple of comments on that. But look, at the big picture, each OEM's a little bit different, but absolutely, we're experiencing that, which then brings back to the skill sets that we have as an integrated driveline supplier. All that skill sets that we have, all that technology, all that capability on the ICE world applies into the EV world in terms of integrating these requirements, engineering designs, developments for these vehicles. And that's, I think, why you see a lot of sourcing for these type of applications going to, call it, quote-unquote, "maybe more traditional driveline suppliers" than maybe the new entrants you're seeing into that space. I don't know, Matt, if you want to make some comments on that.
Like you said, it depends very much on the OEM. But there are cases where OEMs are saying, "Hey, I've got my own corporate software, and therefore, I care very much about what the inverter would look like," or, "I have my own corporate motor plan, or I might even make that motor in-house. And in that case, I'm defining at least part of this. And I'll work with you, but I want to use this part of the system." Other OEMs see it very, very differently depending on, let's say, the market segment where they're in. American Axle traditionally has been very heavy in the truck space, and some of these truck products are so capable, they have so much power in them, they can't really read across that technology to the rest of their vehicle platforms in the same way.
And in cases like that, it's very much the story that you told where an OEM will say, "Hey, I've got this special vehicle. It's fundamentally different from what I'm doing with the rest of my portfolio, and I'd like to outsource that whole thing," soup to nuts. We're seeing that more now than I think we saw two or three years ago.
Got it. I mean, and there's been concern as we move towards EVs that there's one large EV manufacturer, which you may have some content on, that is theoretically more vertically integrated than the incumbents, which means that in a lot of cases, people think it would put suppliers at risk. I mean, this is kind of the opposite, the mirror image of the question we just asked.
I mean, what kind of risk is there, and is this sort of similar to what's going on with powertrain right now where they're outsourcing or they're sourcing parts of it and integrating it to themselves? Is that what people are talking about with vertical integration, or is there a real risk that some of the parts that you guys are bringing to the table get vertically integrated inside of the automaker and pulled away from you as we go through this EV transition?
Well, clearly, early days, the OEMs we've been working with, some have done some outsourcing, but a lot have done some insourcing in terms of some of the drive units that they are supplying into the product. I mean, for example, General Motors, for example, has done this. All the other OEMs have done something similar. But from our view, it is a couple-fold. This will continue to play out as the industry expands in volumes, expands in segments. The OEMs are going to reach to the supply base to provide a very cost-competitive, high-technology, advanced product to meet the needs of their widening marketplace to their end consumers. Our view of this is going to take a long time to play out based on the ICE EV mix as well. But that's a key piece.
If you think about the cost structure of some of these OEMs today versus maybe what it was a year ago, that dynamic is starting to change as well. If they want cost-competitive products, obviously, you have a very strong, capable supply base. It's us and others as well, to be fair, that can supply these products. One thing I think that also goes very much underappreciated, if you look at the products we supply today in an ICE world, every one of our customers, GM, it's Ford, it's Stellantis, Mercedes, make the same ICE products in-house too. This is not a new dynamic for the industry, and we would expect that to continue to play out. You're seeing some being outsourced, some doing inside. That's why we leverage our component business because we think there's a lot of content to be had.
Our component business in an EV world. As segments expand, volume expands, these OEMs are going to be reaching to the supply base to fill that up.
I think you were just reading my question sheet because you kind of led right into the next question.
Oh, you checked that one off?
Yeah. Well, no, no, no. I mean, this leads into it. I mean, obviously, you're a leading axle and drivetrain supplier to GM. Ford and Stellantis have a lot going on. A lot of that product is insourced or, in some cases, at other suppliers. What opportunity is there in, I would call, old-school or more core technology on axles and drivetrain with other North American truck operators? And it may include getting to the CapEx allocation discussion, where we're going to try to save for the end of maybe making acquisitions of assets. But this is the kind of stuff that's right down your fairway. You're better at it than they are, in my opinion. So I mean, it would be the kind of thing that would be great for the industry and them to.
Do you want to take that one?
To pass off to you guys or award you guys as a brother business.
Absolutely. Yeah. I think that to answer that question, you got to have a little talk on the fundamental difference between these EDUs that go into cars, which are broadly small axles, and then the truck axles, which we make today, whether electric or conventional. Those truck axles of the future are going to use a lot of the same components, a lot of the same structure that we use today for the ICE vehicles. Where does it go, and how can that lead to future growth is really related to what do those electrified trucks of the future look like? And we believe strongly that the products that go in those trucks of the future will look similar to the ones that we make today, but therefore, they'll just be electrified.
That's important to us because there are select few people in our segment who have, let's say, the technology and also the industrial capacity to make all of those components. When those other OEMs, where we'd like to grow our business, look to source the next-generation product, which, by the way, we think they will do, we think that they will continue to look in the truck space on the outside, we will be well-positioned because we have just those bits and pieces that kind of connect the center of the axle out to the wheel and to the frame of the truck.
But also on the sort of more traditional side, on the ICE, will there be an ever-operative need for you guys to gain some share with those manufacturers? Once again, we're talking about massive capital and human capital draws in these companies to get to whatever the future may ultimately be. I mean, passing this off and awarding it to a very capable supplier that can, once again, probably do it better than they are, seems like it might be an opportunity.
Well, I mean, that's how our company was founded, right? If you go back to day one, it was founded on that very dynamic. And clearly, we have the capability to would benefit from a situation that would also assist the OEMs. At the end of the day, it's going to be their decision to do. But obviously, in our view, we can offer a very compelling value proposition for them to do that.
Okay. I've got a few more questions left, but are there any in the audience? Okay. As we think about CapEx allocation, let's maybe start with CapEx in R&D dollars. I mean, I would assume relative to the size of the company or the top line, those may be coming down over the coming years. Maybe you could just talk about that in 2024 and whatever you can talk about in the years out.
Sure. Let's talk R&D first. From an R&D perspective, starting, I would call it, a couple of years ago, we started to very consciously clip up our R&D spend as we were building out our electrification platform technology. And we're reaping the benefits today of some of our new business wins with that technology. We think we have a little bit more to go in terms of investing in that R&D. So if you think about our guidance here for 2024, it's to continue to keep R&D elevated at, call it, a $35 million-$40 million per quarter range. And it could ebb and flow a little bit depending on cadence. But we'll build out that platform. And then I would expect over time that once that platform technology's built out, that would start to seed down. And then it would relate to, and you just call it more on the D side of any new business you're bringing in, okay? So we can see some seeding down of that over time as our platform's built out.
From a CapEx perspective, historically, we've had a relatively larger CapEx spend. Over the last couple of years, we've very consciously have been working diligently to reduce our CapEx spend on many fronts, repurposing capital, optimizing buys, increasing output on existing capital that we have that would therefore not require future capital investments. And leveraging that is even as we're winning new awards, whether they're new ICE awards or new electrification. And you've seen now over the last three years, our CapEx spend at one of the lowest levels it's been inside the company's history.
Guidance for this year, meaning 2024, is 4%-4.5% capital to sales ratio, which is still relatively low for us. Our stated goal in the near term, sort of past 2022 and 2024, is to try to keep that CapEx at 5% of sales or less. Could you get a pinch point where you're launching a lot of product within one year where it spikes? That's a potential. But right now, our goal is to keep it at 5% or less. We'll be investing into our electrification new business that we've won. Keep in mind also, over the next couple of years, we're launching a lot of activity for the next generation of ICE platforms we're on. So for this year, we're launching the new next generation of Ram.
We're on the next generation of another large customer's truck platform that we'll launch over the next couple of years, as well as some of our crossover vehicle applications. That book of business that we'll support will require a little bit of capital dollars. Our expectation is not the capital intensity that we saw in previous years. We think we can keep our capital intensity managed relatively well.
Just on that R&D, the $35-$40 per quarter, and obviously, there are going to be ebbs and flows through quarters on that. As we get out at the 2025 and 2026, do you think on a dollar basis, that's a good run rate relative to the size of the business, or is that, in absolute terms, a number that could come down?
Once that electrification platform build is done, which we're still working on finishing out here this year, just on the core investment electrification, that should start to turn down.
In absolute dollars?
Absolute dollars.
Okay. That's helpful. Thank you, Andrew. I want to take the opportunity to talk about the balance sheet a little bit. We've got bondholders here. You guys have been a pretty good steward of the bonds. You look to pay down debt. It's always been a priority to keep the balance sheet in stable condition. How does that fit into the future plans to invest in potentially new technology, return to shareholders, and just maybe kind of maybe just a little color on the free cash flow and how that kind of fits in?
Sure. Maybe the best way to answer that is how we think about capital allocation for the company on our cash flow generation, right? So we will continue to prioritize investing in the R&D we just talked about and continuing to invest in the appropriate capital spend for the company. I mean, that'll be priority number one. Priority two, as it has in the recent since really 2017, has been to use that cash flow generation to reduce our outstanding indebtedness, right? So we've been paying down, I think, over $1.4 billion in debt we've paid down now since 2017. We continue to reduce our outstanding debt again in 2023, and I would expect that to continue here in 2024.
If something made sense in terms of as we think about our product portfolio longer term, if there's some smaller tactical acquisitions that we can do inside of our cash flow-generating power envelope, it would be something we would consider. Two years ago, we did the Tekfor acquisition, which brought in about $400 million of revenue. Cash outlay for that was less than $100 million. We could still pay down debt the same year we did that. So we were able to accomplish both of those objectives in that year. That would certainly be something that we would think about. But that would be the other we have no outstanding buyback authorizations or dividends today. So priorities are going to be on the other items I mentioned first.
Thank you. Maybe lastly, I mean, I know you guys don't have a buyback program in place that you're going to go after, but I'd also sort of imagine that some people think your stock is reasonably inexpensive internally. What do you think the disconnect is in the market and what people don't have buys on your stock or folks that don't own the stock really should be focused on that they might be missing?
Yeah. Again, I think it's twofold. I think the profit and cash flow-generating power of our existing book of business will run longer, I think, than most people think. I mean, that's more of a near midterm item, which will continue to support good financial performance of the company over time. And two, the pivot to an electrified world, I think it's people's view of us, I think, is underappreciated. Every EV vehicle in the world needs an e-axle, right? So it's a large market for us to participate in. I think the expansion into other segments, the fact that we're winning awards in this space, will continue to grow.
Once the OEMs start to level out and assess their product strategies and expand in different segments, and they start to award more of that book of business out to the supply base, we'll be able to put even more proof points to make the demonstration of that pivot. I think that's underappreciated development. We got to sort of continue to provide proof points from that side of the equation, and then the rest will solve itself.
Great. With that, I think we're running low. We're on time. We appreciate the time, you guys coming and doing all these meetings. As always, thanks for the support.
Thank you. Thank you, John. Thank you.
Thank you.
Appreciate it.