I'm Doug Carson, the automotive analyst for Bank of America. Thank you so much for joining us with American Axle & Manufacturing. They've been a great partner, really, to the entire credit market, as well as a partner with Bank of America. They've been at this conference, I think, every year since I've been at B of A, and I've been at B of A for 19 years. American Axle is a pretty special company. They're really a leading manufacturer, like a manufacturer's manufacturer. They really take pride in the manufacturing process. I was just telling the team here that it was the first manufacturing plant they ever visited, I think it was about 29 years ago. It's really a fantastic set of assets to take a visit to. I know they're always welcoming investors to come see their plants.
Without further ado, I'll introduce Shannon Curry, the VP and Treasurer, who's up at the podium, and I know many know David Lim, who's the head of IR, and a great partner to me as well, so without further ado, I'll kick it over to Shannon.
Great. Thank you, Doug, and thanks, everyone, for being here. We really appreciate your interest in AAM and your attendance here this morning. Before I begin, I'll just direct your attention to our forward-looking statements. You can also find this on our website at aam.com, and we will be making reference to some Non-GAAP financial measures today. You can find that reconciliation and definitions also on our website. So let me start with some facts about AAM for any of you who aren't quite as familiar. We're a global leader in the design, engineering, and manufacturing of automotive propulsion systems and technologies. Our products support traditional internal combustion engine platforms, hybrid platforms, and electric vehicle platforms. We operate in 80 locations in 18 countries, and we have over 19,000 associates who are part of the AAM team today. We operate in two business segments, the driveline and metalforming business segments.
In the driveline segment, we're a leader in full-size pickup truck and SUV driveline systems, in all-wheel-drive systems for crossover vehicles, and also in driveline components. Excuse me. We have excellent products and technologies to support hybrid and electric vehicles. In the metalforming segment, we're one of the leading automotive forgers in the world, and we have a strong position in electrified propulsion components. We recently posted our third-quarter results, and you see a quick summary here on the screen. We reported solid third-quarter metrics. Revenues were $1.5 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $174.4 million, or 11.6% of sales. We continue to generate good free cash flow, and in the third quarter, our adjusted free cash flow was $74.6 million. In the third quarter, we paid down another $50 million of our senior debt.
Also, on the third quarter earnings call, we were pleased to announce a couple of new business awards. AAM was awarded business to supply an e-Beam axle to a Chinese OEM. This launch is scheduled for 2025, and this win reflects our ability to combine our strong technology and our experience in beam axles and electric drives. We also announced that we'll support a well-known premium luxury performance European OEM with electric vehicle components. Both of these wins are examples of our capabilities in the EV market. We can provide components and subsystems all the way to full turnkey eDrives and systems, and we continue to gain traction supporting ICE programs as well. Last quarter, we announced a win for a van program, and we've recently been awarded multiple ICE components for several OEMs.
In our view, combustion engines will be around for a long time and will coexist with the expansion of electric vehicle architectures and hybrids. As you know, we have great capabilities in this space. We have significant installed capacity in our core business to support these programs, so the extension of ICE programs is generally good for AAM. It allows us to leverage the extended ICE tail and an expanded hybrid portfolio for good free cash flow generation opportunities for time to come. AAM's comprehensive product portfolio positions us well for the future to support our customers' ICE, hybrid, and EV platforms. We have a goal to be fairly agnostic to the propulsion system so we can support our customers' needs in each of these areas. And finally, in the third quarter, we announced the sale of our India commercial vehicle business for a purchase price of $65 million.
We anticipate this deal will close around year-end. This is a good transaction for AAM as we focus our attention on ICE, hybrid, electric, and passenger car, truck, SUV, and van application space on a global basis. What you see here is a recap of our 2024 financial outlook as we shared on November 8th. Our outlook is revenues in the range of $6.1-$6.15 billion, adjusted EBITDA in the range of $715-$745 million, and adjusted free cash flow of $200-$220 million. For the full year, we expect cash taxes to be around $50-$55 million in CapEx, approximately 4% of sales. We ended the third quarter with available liquidity of approximately $1.5 billion, consisting of cash and committed borrowing capacity, which is primarily our unused revolver. This is well in excess of our target liquidity of around $1 billion.
Deleveraging has been part of our story for the past several years, and this chart does a nice job illustrating how consistent we've been in repaying debt since the 2017 large acquisition we did of MPG. Since the acquisition of MPG in 2017, we've repaid $1.5 billion of senior debt. This has been a priority for our management team and is consistent with capital allocation priorities that we've shared with our stakeholders. And this chart is updated as of yesterday. We paid the final stub. We redeemed the rest of our 2026 senior note. So we ended the third quarter with around $46 million outstanding. We fully redeemed and paid those yesterday. So aside from ordinary amortization on our Term loan A, we don't have any senior debt maturities until 2027.
So we have a nice mix of secured and unsecured senior debt, significant availability of liquidity, and no significant maturities until 2027. So a nice maturity profile and significant runway for future activity. To wrap up my prepared remarks, we have a long-term focus on profitable growth, product technology, and continuing to enhance our balance sheet strength. By leveraging our experience and our core competencies, along with the product innovations that we're continually developing and bringing to market, we're confident that AAM will continue to be a leader in the vehicle propulsion space well into the future. So thank you again for your attention. That completes my remarks. And Doug, I'll join you. David Lim and I will be available for questions.
Great. Great. So I'll just start off with a few, and then I'll turn to the audience and have it be interactive as possible. The transition from ICE to EV, three, four years ago, it was fear that it would hurt the ICE suppliers a lot. One, that doesn't seem like it's happened. And two, the ICE penetration is still very, very strong, and EV has been coming in at maybe 8% penetration rate in the U.S., roughly. So just maybe share with us a little bit about how you think about your profitability building EV-specific products versus ICE, and how do you feel like it'll play out in the next one to two years? I mean, no one knows where it'll be 5, 10 years from now, but just the next couple of years.
Yeah. So the way that I would think about it is, with any kind of profitability business case, you really need the volume. Until you get the right run rate of volume, you're going to go up sort of a margin curve. So for us, a lot of our platforms have been long-lasting. We've had these platforms for years, and they have great volume flow-through rates. So we have nice contribution margins on a lot of our core programs. Now, our goal is with any kind of new business that we win, they have to exceed internal hurdle rates, and it goes through a very rigorous business case process before we go out and actually bid. So that's probably the way that I would frame it.
Yeah, and I would just add to that as you talk about what's happening now with some of the ICE programs are being extended and things like that. Our company's view for the past several years was to attempt to be, like I said, propulsion agnostic because it appeared to us that kind of the forecasters were getting a little bit ahead of that EV curve, and our chairman, if you've heard him speak, David Dauch, had a pretty firm view that the ICE tail may be longer than what was being forecasted.
Which has been the case.
So we took a very reasonable approach. We were continuing to develop our R&D. We have great products for the EV market. We've won some meaningful awards, but we didn't give up on ICE. So a key part of the strategy for our leadership team was to kind of lock in our core business. So we've announced over the past several years successor awards for some of our key platforms that go well into the next decade. So that was really a meaningful part of our strategy.
So, as things are shifting a little bit right now with the EV curve projections and things like that, like I said, it positions us well because we can continue the ICE platforms while we're developing the EV space so we can balance out that profitability and also continue to generate strong, healthy cash flows that we generate off of our large volume programs today. So just to add a little bit more color to that.
That's very helpful. And if we look at an e-axle versus an ICE axle, the e-axle actually has very good profitability. So if the demand curve sloped higher in EV, it would not leave American Axle behind. I mean, you'd go right with it.
Yeah, and the content per vehicle for the eDrives can be meaningfully higher even than our core.
Right. Right. That's right. That's very helpful. Does anybody have any questions on EV versus ICE before I move on? Question in the back.
Morning.
Morning.
Two questions. The first is any views in terms of EV in Europe and European OEMs, which at the moment are going through some very difficult times, and the second question is, I hear you in terms of being agnostic in terms of propulsion, but over time, how long does it take in terms of that transition and in terms of your platforms to move to more EV?
Yeah. So it's hard for us to give you guys a clear opinion on Europe. We don't operate so much in Europe. We're very North America. But from an overall industry standpoint, I think where Europe has to contend with is a couple of factors. You've got the Chinese imports that are happening right now. Their Bill of Material and cost structure is very advantageous. If you take a look at the build quality in China, they've come a very, very long way. And we do have some products that we do supply with Chinese OEMs, and we have brought those vehicles over to the States. And we were literally very blown away by the fit and finish of the vehicle. So I think that's point number one. I think point two is, I think from a European standpoint, they got these massive regulations, CO2, etc.
And I think they're pushing something that they sort of have to balance. I mean, here in the U.S., the difference here in the U.S. is we're trying to balance out the infrastructure, whether it be charging stations with the electrification, the electric grid. And I think that's going to dictate what's going to happen more here in the U.S. I think Europe, I think there's a lot of other discussions that are occurring that's driven by policy. But if you take a look at the United States, I think the challenge right now, and we bring this up a lot, is the grid has to be upgraded. And there's a lot of stuff that's going on with AI, and AI is going to take massive amounts of electricity.
So until you have that infrastructure in place, energy generation in place, people will have to, the government or corporations have to pick and choose on what they want to develop first. Do they want EVs, or do they want artificial intelligence development? So, I mean, it's a bigger topic. It's a much bigger topic. What was your second question again? Transition, is it?
Then.
So I think with transition, again, it sort of touches on my first commentary. It really depends on. There's a couple of things on electric vehicles that people have to the government as well as corporations have to really understand. First thing is affordability. If you don't have the affordability, people can't buy it. Most consumers buy on the monthly payment and interest rates. The second thing is time to charge, range, and the electrical infrastructure. So something anecdotally, my kids play travel sports, and we're going up and down the Eastern Seaboard. And I'm not going to sit around at a station for 30 or 40 minutes waiting for my vehicle to charge. We're in and out, fill the gas tank, grab a bite to eat, and then we're off to the next city wherever my kids are playing sports.
So I know that people say, "Oh, you could sit down and have a cup of coffee, wait 30 minutes," but I sort of wonder how many people actually do that. I think our house's view, at least for right now, until there's more technology development, is it's going to be the second of two cars with maybe the electric, at least here in the States. But if there's a massive technology breakthrough, like solid-state battery where it charges quickly, you have 400-500 miles of range, and it's comparable to an ICE vehicle, then we could see that curve actually go up like a hockey stick. But until those factors happen, it's going to be really difficult to say there's going to be like a 70% or 80% take rate here in the States.
I agree with that. Maybe I'll go to EBITDA and margins. Really strong EBITDA quarter. Could you give us a little bit with how EBITDA margins have been expanding, how you're dealing with some of the production cuts we've seen in the industry? You've navigated quite well.
Yeah, so we're seeing improvements in our margin profile sequentially over all the quarters of this year, and a big part of that is just an extreme focus that we have in our plants on productivity. We've also experienced some stabilization in the supply chain, so we're experiencing less unusual costs, less expedited freight, less things like that. Our hourly labor availability has been a challenge for us and for the entire manufacturing industry in the U.S. really since COVID, and we've seen stabilization in our hourly workforce as well in the plants, which is big for productivity, also less scrappage costs, less training and turnover costs, things like that, so that's been really positive for the productivity and the profitability at the plant level, which is really what we're driving, is extreme focus on productivity as a way to offset some of the inflationary costs that we've experienced.
How optimized are the plants right now? Is utilization pretty good right now at the plants?
Yeah. We generally focus on utilization of around 85% or so, and we build in preventative maintenance and things like that so we can run our plants at pretty optimal capacity.
Maybe we'll touch on the free cash flow. I think you had 200-220, was that the estimate for the full year?
Yes.
Great. I mean, very strong free cash flow. If you can maybe share some thoughts around how you deploy that free cash flow in coming years between shareholder returns, delivering investment.
Yeah. Yeah. Our capital allocation priorities are pretty clear and have been very consistent. We'll continue to organically invest in our business through continued investment in the plants with CapEx and R&D. We are focused on driving our leverage down. We've set our target as two times. We haven't set a timeframe on that, but we'd like to be net leverage two times or lower over the medium term. That continues to be a focus. We've done some. You've seen us from a strategic perspective. We've done some M&A also over the past couple of years in a way that brought business benefit to the company and also fit within our capital structure goals. We continue to think of strategic opportunities like that. If there are compelling business reasons, we can execute on something like that.
We don't have any authorization at this point for shareholder dividends or share repurchases. At some point in the future, if we were to get closer to that two-times leverage target, that might change, but at this point, we don't have any authorization for that.
I mean, that's been coming down kind of steady, Eddie, over the last few years. I think if I'm right, you're sitting at a net leverage ratio of about 2.8, is that right?
Correct. Yeah, at the end of the quarter.
So another half a turn over time, we're almost at the target.
Yep.
As far as production, maybe we could turn to that a bit. In my head, the major kind of production cut that I witnessed across the companies I cover was really Stellantis, some of the plants for product at over 100 selling days. You've got more balanced exposure. 20 years ago, it was a lot of GM, and now it's kind of more balanced. How do you feel about your footprint and potential OEM production cuts, which we don't really see in the near term, but I thought maybe I'd ask?
So, I think some of the recent developments for us right now, so far in the quarter, is we are seeing production cuts. And we're trying to peel back the onion on to see what's driving it. Obviously, I think what we're thinking is driving it is elevated inventory levels.
Yes.
So we've seen cuts in November. We've seen cuts in December. And obviously, that will impact top-line generation. So we'll have to use that as a base, right? We have to sort of take a look at where we're going to end in inventories for the overall industry, get a better gauge on 2025 and what they're going to exactly do from an OEM standpoint.
I mean, inventories have crept up, but they're still well below where we were pre-COVID, so.
Yeah. But what the concern is, you're seeing both inventories go up, and you're seeing incentive levels go up. And that is a cause for concern. And I know that the OEMs have said that they're going to remain disciplined. And we'll see how that sort of unfolds over the next several quarters. But again, that's something that I think the industry has to really keep an eye on. When you start seeing 0% for 16 months.
Yeah. That's a little bit of a flag.
Yeah. It's a little bit of a flag. Correct.
Yeah. Just a couple of other points on some of our programs. You mentioned Stellantis and their inventories. We support the heavy-duty Ram, not as much the light-duty. We have components that go into the light-duty. So a lot of the inventory statistics that you see are on the 1500 platform.
Yep. Very heavy-duty.
So it does still affect us, but it's the heavy-duty program. So that's been a little bit less. And then in the third quarter and fourth quarter, two of our largest programs, the heavy-duty Ram and then also the GM midsize SUV program, the Delta II platform, those are in a launch phase. So we've also seen some. There's a launch curve. So there's some production that's lower levels as that launches up. So that's affecting us. And then early in the quarter, we had some volume effect from the hurricanes that caused some downtime at some of the OEM plants. So in addition to just the broader outlook on inventories, there are some specific things that are kind of keeping our attention this quarter.
Question in the back?
The outlook for compensation from OEMs when production schedules are significantly different to what was promised and how that looks on your new wins, is that the same sort of terms, or is it much easier for you guys if they change their production?
Yeah. Our contracts with our customers generally have kind of minimum and maximum kind of quantities and language that allows us, if it varies materially from that, to have a conversation. There's not necessarily any set mechanics on how you deal with that with the customers. But we have a good history of dealing with our customers when there's significant variation in volume expectations from what the programs were designed for. Yep.
I think there's a question in the front.
I want to go back to the EV platform a little bit. Right now, there's not a lot of, let's say, bigger vehicles that are EVs. They're mostly sedans or CUVs. That is not typically your mix historically on the ICE, at least less so than the 4x4 type vehicles. But the GM Silverado just started shipping. I don't know if that's a platform you're on, but can you talk about as EVs get larger and maybe have more 4x4, what opportunity that has you? If you could disclose or talk about a content per vehicle versus an ICE, just something like that to frame that maybe in the future, there'll be more and more of these larger EVs on the road and what that means for your EV platform. Also, I think your history with GM is quite well known, and that unit just started shipping.
If you could talk about the differences on your content versus the ICE versus the EV version as well.
Great.
Okay. So yeah, so on our large GM pickup trucks and SUVs, the T1XX program, call it about $1,500 in content per vehicle plus or minus. That's probably a fair number. And then if we were to supply an e-Beam Axle, so let me put it this way. The electric drives that we support on the Jaguar I-PACE, it's about $2,500 in content per vehicle, $2,500 plus. An e-Beam Axle could be significantly higher when it comes to that content. So the way that I would think about it is if we're supplying the e-Axle or the e-Drive, the content from an ICE to an EV is very comparable. In certain situations, the EV content could be more. And then. Oh, I'm sorry.
And then on the current, like the Silverado and stuff like that, the way that I would couch it is we've announced that we support Hummer EV, which is essentially a very similar platform, and we provide differentials for those.
Yeah. Our view longer term on some of these platforms that the OEMs have decided to make their own e-Drives internally is that longer term, when those are high-volume platforms, they'll extend that out to the supply base as you would see traditionally on any other kind of part of the architecture. We think that we are really well positioned when the industry gets to that point to take on a lot of that volume with our history and our relationship with our customers. So long term, we see quite a bit of opportunity with that. The e-Beam axles will be kind of a sweet spot for us, we believe.
I wanted to jump in before we run out of time, and then we'll go back to the audience. I'm sure you got a lot of questions on tariffs. I know it's kind of a little bit hard to predict, but we saw this, I think, eight years ago, tariff worries. If you could just explain to us what's important for us to look at as far as potential Trump tariffs, potentially Mexico, Canada, we're just trying to sort out steel tariffs. How are you thinking about it?
Yeah. It's hard for us to say or speculate on possible until there are actual rules or tariff statements that we believe will stick and have details. So it's really hard to say. But clearly, the U.S. and Mexico have such an interconnected supply chain in the auto industry. It would be a tough day for the industry as a whole if tariffs weren't enacted in the way that they've been discussed. So we believe that that probably won't happen or will be softer. We'll have some kind of exceptions or nuances that will not have a negative effect on the U.S. auto industry, such an important industry to our country, that there will be considerations of that. So we'll be watching, of course, the U.S., Mexico, Canada side, and then also the China tariffs.
Now, one really important thing to know about AAM is we generally have a philosophy to source in the regions where we produce, so we may be less affected by tariffs broadly than a company of our size, what you might expect, because most of our sourcing, for example, in the U.S. for U.S. plants, I mean, a significant majority of that sourcing comes from U.S. sources. Our steel, for example, our largest purchase, is generally U.S. sources, so we may be less affected on some of these than you might initially think, but we'll be watching all of it, and of course, it's really meaningful for the industry and the supply base as a whole.
I don't want to cut somebody off. We have maybe just 30 seconds.
Yeah. You talked about electric vehicle content being higher than gas. Just wondering why is that the case? Is the bill of material more expensive? Is the R&D that's more expensive? Or are the margins better? And how do you see that trending over the next five years?
I mean, look, it's potentially higher depending on what's being equipped. I mean, if you look at an e-Beam axle, you got some volume that's going into play there. You are looking at the actual material that's being used. So all in all, I think it is a bill of material as well as an R&D factor that goes into all of this. But as you have more and more volume over time, that could sort of—you're doing a larger purchase of these materials as well. So there's multiple factors that actually go into the content per vehicle number.
Yep.
That wraps us up. Thank you so much, Shannon and David. This was very helpful, very informative. Good luck with your small group meetings and one-on-ones throughout the day. Thank you so much.