Okay, thank you, everybody, for joining us. My name is Mark Delaney, and I cover U.S. autos and industrial tech. It's my pleasure to be hosting Lear for this session at the GS 17th Annual Industrials and Autos Week. With us from Lear, we have a great lineup. We have Jason Cardew, SVP and CFO, Jared Fedelem, VP Finance, Seating and E-Systems, and Mike Shanlikian , VP Finance, Corporate FP&A. Thank you all for coming.
Yeah, thanks for having us.
Thanks for having us.
Let's jump into the questions. I thought with an industry question, we could start off. Jason, I can direct this one to you, perhaps. There's been a lot of volatility in the industry around potential supply chain disruptions and customer-specific events such as the cyber attack on JLR and the Novelis fire. Given that backdrop, can you share your current views on how the quarter is shaping up?
Yeah, sure, Mark. And just before I start, I just want to take a brief moment and introduce Jared Fedelem and Mike Shanlikian. We were here this week for operations reviews, and thought it'd be a great opportunity for our two top operational finance leaders in the company to speak with investors today. So I look forward to sharing the stage with them today. And I appreciate, Mark, again, you accommodating us here. We always enjoy participating in this conference in London. It gives us a chance to connect with our team in Europe at the end of the year, and it really worked out well.
And so in terms of the fourth quarter and how we see it shaping up, just a reminder of when we provided guidance on our third quarter earnings call, we expected full-year revenues of $23 billion, operating income of $1.25 billion, and free cash flow of $500 million. And that midpoint of our guidance range really protected for further disruption from either Nexperia or perhaps a shortfall in JLR's restart of production after the cyber attack, and also the lingering effects of supply chain issues with the Novelis fire. And as the quarters progressed, in all three cases, things have held up pretty well. And so the quarter is tracking favorably to the midpoint of our guidance. As we sit here today, we're somewhere between the midpoint and the high end of the guidance range. So both businesses are on track to outperform the midpoint of the guidance.
And on the free cash flow, on the free cash flow side, we've seen real strength here in the fourth quarter. That's allowed us to continue buying back stock at a very accelerated clip. We now expect to buy back more than $300 million for the full year. And we had talked about buying back at least $300 million on the third quarter earnings call. So that's tracking favorably. In terms of operating margins, Seating in the fourth quarter looks like it's going to be 6% or a little bit north of that. E-Systems will be in the low fours. And so again, a little bit better than what we had anticipated as the disruptions that we talked about haven't been as impactful. And from a business standpoint, we've had a great quarter. We, particularly in E-Systems on the growth side, we've had a series of new business awards.
Since the third quarter earnings call, we talked about $1.1 billion in annual sales and new business awards this year. That's now $1.3 billion or a little bit north of that, so we've had several high-value additional awards since the earnings call, and that's a near record for us in E-Systems. And on the seating side, we've had three additional ComfortMax, ComfortFlex, FlexAir awards there, so now we have 31 awards since we introduced those new products after the acquisition of IGB and Kongsberg, so that's also tracking favorably, and so all this really sets us up for, I think, for some positive momentum heading into 2026.
We're not going to provide pinpoint guidance at this point, at this stage, but similar to what we talked about on the third quarter earnings call, we do expect revenues to be higher next year, earnings to be higher next year, and operating margins overall in the company to be higher next year as well, so good momentum in the business.
That's some great news. Thank you for sharing those updates. Glad to hear how the quarter is developing. Maybe we could pick up on that and talk a bit more on production trends by region. Have there been any surprises relative to your expectations and any early views you'd want to share on 2026, including the extent to which customer production impacts that you've seen in 2025 may be recovered?
Yeah, so let me comment on 2025 first, Mark, and then I'll comment on 2026. So initially, we were concerned about the combined impact of the JLR cyber attack and ramp-up plan, also the Nexperia chip issue, and then whether Ford and Stellantis would be able to deliver on their Q4 production in light of the Novelis issue. Fortunately, a majority of those risks have been mitigated, giving us really good momentum as we go into year-end. And as Jason highlighted, that's part of the reason why our guidance is trending between the midpoint and the higher end of the range. So it was a pretty good outcome for us so far. Now, with respect to 2026, as we sit here today, S&P is expecting that global production is going to be lower, about 1% on a Lear sales-weighted basis.
Looking at it by region, they're expecting North America to be lower about 2.5%, Europe to be relatively flat, and then China to be lower about 1.5%. So we're still working through our planning process, but we think that's a very reasonable entry point looking at 2026. Now, that also kind of highlights that there's a potential modest volume mix impact going into 2026. We don't think it'll be as significant as 2025. And if nothing else, we'll have the reversal of the JLR impact as well as Novelis on Ford and Stellantis. And as Jason highlighted, we're not here to provide guidance. We'll do that in our fourth quarter earnings call. But we just want to reiterate once again that we do believe that our revenue, our earnings, and our margins will be higher in 2026 versus 2025.
Mike, just to make sure I understood what you were referring to when you talked about volume mix, you mean kind of just the types of vehicles that OEMs are making, or did you just mean your OEM exposure?
Yeah, Mark, I'll respond to that. And so you may recall this year, we've had a pretty significant mix headwind on our platforms relative to the market. And that was really compounded by what happened with the JLR cyber attack and the Novelis fire disproportionately impacting us just because JLR is such a large customer in both segments for us. And then Ford and E-Systems in particular is our largest customer. And so that negative mix that we experienced this year, we see that moderating next year, if nothing else, because of the reversal of those two issues.
Okay. That's helpful. Thank you for clarifying, Jason. Maybe we could talk about automation. I mean, it's been such an important focus for Lear. You've acquired a number of companies to enhance your automation efforts, including StoneShield and WIP. You're also partnering with Palantir. Could you speak to where the company is on the journey of its automation efforts, including where it's making progress, what's to come, and what might be hard to automate, at least with current technology?
Yes. This is an area that we're particularly excited about, Mark. We've been methodically executing a strategy around product and process innovation. On the process side, we've had five acquisitions over the last nearly 10 years: ASI, InTouch, Thagora, WIP, and StoneShield. And that's really transformed our ability to deploy capital and automation in our assembly plants. And now, with our partnership with Palantir, which is nearly three years old at this point, we're just progressing on the digital transformation side of that equation as well. And it's amazing the way the company has embraced the Foundry tool. It's a powerful tool. And our latest development is the fellowship program we have with Palantir. But it's become institutionalized in the company. We have 14,000 users and 250 different applications or digital tools that have been built on the Foundry platform.
It's a low-code software development platform that we can use across our business that helps with data consolidation, data analytics. It leverages all the large language models from OpenAI to Gemini, Claude, and Grok, and whatever's to come next, and it's really not just impacting manufacturing. It's impacting product development and engineering, purchasing, and the administrative processes. It's helping us on the operating income side and also on free cash flow and what it's doing with inventory management. I think the best way to just demonstrate how impactful it is is to talk through a couple of examples. Mike's going to talk through an example of where we've deployed this on the manufacturing side in our chip plants. Jared's going to talk about what we've done on the administrative process side with one example in particular.
This deployment of Foundry just on an overall basis has been a key contributor to that $70 million of savings we've achieved this year and IDEA by Lear and the $65 million-$75 million we're anticipating in 2026 and 2027. We have a clear line of sight and a list, a roadmap of projects that are in process that we're invested in now that will facilitate achieving that task. Mike, why don't you talk about what we're doing just on the manufacturing side?
Yeah. Oh, thanks, Jason. So within Foundry, we have a tool that we call cycle time deviation. And what cycle time deviation does is it provides us real-time data on our shop floor performance, putting us in a position to make real-time changes and improve our processes and become more efficient. So for example, we're able to quickly identify bottlenecks that are in our process that, for example, could be caused by equipment failure. And we're able to quickly make those changes so that we can continue to be more efficient. We've deployed cycle time deviation 100% across North America and our European just-in-time facilities with a plan to deploy it in our global just-in-time facilities by mid-2026.
Now, we started this journey in Europe last year, but we have seen a meaningful improvement this year as we've deployed it in North America and Europe with savings of about $10 million annually. We've seen on average 3%-5% efficiency gains from this tool, and as we deploy it globally next year, we expect the annual savings of $10 million to increase to about $15 million.
Jared, if you could on the administrative side.
Yeah, sure. Yeah. It's been a tremendous tool, as Jason and Mike have highlighted. And what we've been able to do has been fantastic. So I was being put in charge of the tariff policies that we had. So when the tariffs started kicking in, and just to paint some pictures on what we were faced with at the time, at the time the tariff policy was kicked in, we had about, say, 150 trucks that would cross the border every day. Hundreds of parts, thousands of parts potentially crossing the border every single day that's out there. And what we were faced with was trying to apply all the HTS codes, looking at pulling the USMCA certifications over and everything. It was a huge undertaking for the team. It was killing the team. So we sat down with our internal team and with the Palantir team.
And we put together basically this concept, this enterprise solution, and took it from concept to completion in 10 days. And so now what we have is real-time information. When the parts cross, we apply the HTS code. We're able to take the USMCA certification, apply it. If it doesn't have a USMCA certification, it buckets it into whether it's an IEEPA, reciprocal, or 232 tariff. So it's something that can't be replicated that other suppliers don't have. And on top of all this, we've been able to write LLM, these large language models that communicate to us. If there's a discrepancy, we can use that to communicate to our customers and the supply bases if we're missing anything. So what has it done for us? It is real, tangible results. It's a reason we're able to get 100% recoverability on all our tariff costs.
It's actually, you're seeing cash come in. Our customers are extremely pleased with the fact that it's auditable. The information we can give them is real-time. They can see daily, weekly, what they want to see on what's crossing, and it's extremely, extremely powerful. And we can crack the joke now, but at the time the policies came out, we had all these consultants come to us, and we always laugh. We think it would have taken the consultants 10 days to put together the pack to present to us. We're able to take this from the speed to value, from concept to completion in 10 days, and it's been a hell of a tool we've been able to use.
Thanks, Jared.
No, those are some fantastic examples. It really helps to illustrate all the discussions you guys have had on this broader topic for a while now. So thanks for that. Maybe we just double-click with one more on this. And you mentioned the $65 million-$75 million of savings annually from these broader set of initiatives. Anything you can share in terms of typical payback period on those investments?
Yeah. So just in terms of our broader portfolio of Idea projects, which includes automation and some of these digital projects as well, a typical automation project now is a one and a half to two and a half year payback. For the first phase of our deployment of automation in our highest cost, just-in-time facilities, the paybacks were less than a year to a year and a half. Now, as we move into more difficult areas to automate, the paybacks stretch out a little bit, but still very attractive paybacks and financial returns. On the digital side, the payback is unbelievable. There's very little investment that we've made in this Foundry partnership. There's very little additional variable cost associated with it. As we build these applications using that tool, the payback is immediate.
Very helpful. Maybe we can speak more on the seating business. The company has spoken about how automation, as well as your regionalization efforts, are potential drivers of conquest business and seating. What has Lear seen on its ability to convert on these opportunities? Has the total conquest opportunity of $3 billion changed?
Yeah, Mark. I think we've clearly established our position as the leader in seating. We have the best operating margins and financial returns in the business, the highest quality as evidenced by J.D. Power scores. We've grown our market share to 26% over the last decade or so, and we have established a target of getting to 29%. Conquest awards are a key enabler to that, in addition to growth with the Chinese domestic automakers and our thermal comfort portfolio leading to additional growth. In terms of the conquest opportunities, specifically, the start of the year, we did talk about a $3 billion pipeline. As we sit here today, we've had about $150 million of conquest awards and seating this year, and our current pipeline is $2 billion of new opportunities that we expect to be sourced over the next 12 months.
We're not going to win all of that business, but it will be a key driver of our market share and growth ambitions in seating. And it's really underpinned by the cost advantage, the cost, quality, and speed to market advantage that we've built through our investments in product and process innovation. And the feedback we're getting from customers as we're quoting these conquest opportunities has been fantastic. They clearly recognize what we've done to differentiate ourselves in terms of cost and quality in our manufacturing plants. And while we're not going to break any news today on a big conquest award, we're getting very close on one that we've been working on throughout this year. These are difficult, complex decisions for our customers when they switch suppliers on an important program.
We're really close on one large opportunity there that we hope to talk about on the fourth quarter earnings call. In terms of the onshoring opportunity, we have seating business in Korea and Europe and Mexico where our customers are looking to onshore production into the U.S. Each of those sourcing opportunities is in a little bit of a different position in terms of the timeline of completion. There's one in particular with a large North American OEM that we're very close on. I don't want to front-run the customer on that. Again, we expect to be able to talk about that on the fourth quarter earnings call. We remain confident that we're going to be able to at least protect the share that we have and perhaps extend our market share through the onshoring initiatives.
In addition to the conquest opportunities, we've seen great growth with the Chinese automakers. We're ramping up business with Seres on the M7 program. We have business with them on the M6 and the M8 program as well. That's a fast-growing customer. We recently consolidated a joint venture where a portion of that business resides. We have a great portfolio with Xiaomi. The SU7 has been just an absolute hit for us. Volumes have been far in excess of what we had anticipated when that program was awarded. And we've also now won some business on the Xiaomi Kunlun platforms, which are a group of vans and SUVs, which we'll be launching in 2026 and 2027, mostly in a non-consolidated JV. And so we continue to win business with both of those growing customers and with BYD as well.
So that's another kind of key enabler to growth and seating in the years to come.
Thank you for all those updates on the seating business, and I think in your opening comments, Jason, you talked about some awards you've seen even just in this quarter. I think maybe you said three. Please correct me if I had that number wrong. Were those more new programs or were those some of the conquest business you just spoke to?
A little bit of both. With one customer, we had a thermal comfort award where we had a portion of the thermal comfort content, and we added content that was taken from a competitor as part of a ComfortFlex system that we will be launching with that customer.
Okay. And you also were just referring to momentum in China. So that, I know, has been a big focus for a number of suppliers, including Lear. Maybe you can put that into perspective for us. You've been targeting to reach 50% of China revenue from domestics in 2027. Just kind of level set us where you stand with some of the progress and some of the momentum you just spoke about.
Yeah, sure, Mark. I'll be happy to answer that. So it all starts, honestly, with the leadership we have there in China and in Asia. And we have a solid local leadership for the local market. And that's a big factor in driving growth and what we're seeing in the market, not only understanding the market, but the speed to market and the nuances of being able to bring in all our vertical integration capabilities on top of that. From a target standpoint, and we've talked about this in the past, the target we had for Chinese OEM, Chinese domestic growth, was around 37% in 2025. We're actually around 40% today, up from the 33% that we had last year. And in addition, the 50% target that you mentioned, Mark, for 2027, I'm happy to say here today that we are actually above that as we sit here today.
The relationships that we're able to build that Jason mentioned on some of the Xiaomi, BYD, and Seres are really paying benefits. The change we made in leadership, we took the leader in 2023, the leader of our seating business, and put him over seating in E-Systems. You're now seeing that growth on E-Systems as well with Geely, with Great Wall, with Dongfeng, DPCA, and FAW. This is leading to wins now on the eSystem front. I'm very, very excited for what's happening in China with our team and our leadership as they continue to build the relationships. Then they're also able to pull in our full on-site or vertical integration that we have capabilities sitting in China as well, which is key. When you can factor in this comfort, quality, and speed in China, that's a launching pad that we're able to have for growth.
We're seeing these wins, and we're seeing this pick up throughout the year. Like I said, very proud, very excited for the team in Asia and in China to watch this growth happen.
That's helpful, and on the China opportunity, the company had consolidated two of its seating joint ventures in China this year. How is Lear thinking about further consolidation going forward, and what impact might that have on margins and seating?
Yeah, you're right, Mark. We did have an opportunity to take operating control of two JVs earlier this year, and the reason, the rationale for taking operating control is we want that direct customer communication. We want to be able to talk to the customer, to meet the customer's needs. It actually allows us to drive our best-in-class operational efficiencies that are out there, and everything we're doing from an IDEA by Lear with the digitization, automation, we're able to talk to the customers, be the direct communication, and put these initiatives in to help improve margins that are out there, and every business, everything we're doing in China, we have the financial discipline to make sure we're getting a return in excess of our cost of capital.
All these relationships and being able to consolidate, to your point, in Q1, we took operational control of a JV, our BYD JV that does the Han L and the Tang 3. In Q2, we're able to take operational control of the Seres JV, which is the M5, 6, 7, 8 that Jason mentioned as well. For 2026, this is going to add about $160 million to the backlog numbers that Jason gave in the Q3 earnings call. We look forward to continue to see this grow with the relationship. We'll always work with our partners, Mark, to see what we want to do from a consolidation standpoint.
We got to make sure it's with the right customers and with the backdrop that whatever we're going to be doing, we're going to make sure we have the financial wherewithal and the discipline to take anything that we are able to improve and have returns greater than our cost of capital.
Mark, just to clarify one point, the $160 million of Seres backlog is part of that $1.3 billion or $1.2 billion of backlog that we announced for 2026 and 2027. It is a big portion of that, the $600 million of that backlog that's in 2026.
Okay. Thank you for that. And then just on a global perspective, TCS has been an important part of the opportunity for Lear. You already spoke about some of the progress the company has seen there. But as you think about ComfortFlex and ComfortMax, just any more comments around how that product has progressed?
Yeah, Mike's going to start out, and I'll finish up on this one.
Yeah, thanks, Mark. So we continue to build or gain or build momentum with our thermal comfort systems portfolio. 2026 is a critical year for us as we continue to scale both ComfortFlex and ComfortMax. We currently have nine programs that are in production with 12 programs that we're planning to launch in 2026. And then the more we get these technologies into the marketplace, the more our customers will embrace the opportunities. And then also, I do want to highlight that we did just recently open our industry-first fully automated facility for ComfortFlex, ComfortMax, and FlexAir. And with that, I'll let Jason give us some more color on that facility.
Yeah, Mark, this is something that I think Ray talked a little bit about on the third quarter earnings call. We're excited to be able to bring investors into that facility sometime next year. We, as Mike mentioned, we've launched that facility now. In fact, Ray had a staff meeting there this week on Monday. So the whole team was there to check in on the progress. It was really remarkable to see what we've been able to do on the ComfortFlex and ComfortMax. The biggest challenge that we had was how you automate the handling of soft parts. So trim covers, heater mats, massage, and lumbar bladders. That was the greatest challenge that we had.
But through the combined capabilities that we acquired through the acquisitions we talked about earlier today on the process side and our own product engineering capabilities in-house, we were able to fully automate that assembly process. So there is not one direct labor employee that touches the material from the inception of the process to the end of the process. And the equipment that's in place is production intent equipment. It's not prototype equipment. We still have some work to do on the cycle time of the process, but it's getting very close already. The production equipment that is in the facility will be used on a ComfortMax program that launches in 2028. And it was just really remarkable to see that. And FlexAir as well. We have our first full FlexAir assembly line in place in that same facility.
So we're excited to show that to investors as well. And so those initial FlexAir programs are launching in kind of low-risk applications, calf rest and things like that. Now we have awards that are close on the third row application. And then from the third row, we'll move to the second row. So it's really a chance to disrupt the seat cushioning space in general and replace what is a challenging product environmentally with a much better, lighter weight, higher performing system in the market.
That's great, not to think. Thank you for all those updates on thermal comfort. Maybe we could have a couple of questions on the E-Systems segment. The company commented on its third quarter call that it expects E-Systems to have a negative $100 million backlog in 2026 compared to the February outlook of positive $170 million. What's the driver of that? Lear has also spoken about the impact to E-Systems from wind down electronics business. How much additional revenue headwind would investors expect from this aspect?
Yeah. I think, Mark, the biggest kind of overarching driver has been the reduction in demand for electric vehicles, particularly in the North America market. That disproportionately impacted E-Systems. Now, you can contrast that with the remarkable success we've had this year in Conquest Awards and New Business Awards. It started with the F-250 Wire Award in the first quarter of this year that we announced, which had both a replacement component, but additional harnesses beyond what we have currently. Now, as I mentioned earlier in this conversation, we have a $1.3 billion of new business awards in E-Systems. So we have great momentum that we'll see benefiting 2028, 2029, and 2030 in the E-Systems business. To answer your question directly, in terms of the backlog, that $270 million change in the 2026 backlog, it's really driven by three factors.
The first was Stellantis's decision to cancel the full electric Ram REV truck. So we had the battery disconnect unit on that. That product's not coming to market. The second change was Ford's decision to build out the Escape and Corsair in the U.S., which was a large important program for our E-Systems business. And then the third, which is a little less of an impact, but important nonetheless, is lower volumes on some of the new EV platforms in the U.S., like the Acura ZDX or the early build-out or cancellation of that program. So those three things taken together really explain the bulk of what's changed. With that said, we still have some exciting programs that are ramping up or launching next year. We have the continued ramp-up of the Volvo EX30 Wire in Europe.
In addition to that, we have business with a global EV OEM, additional business with them in North America that's ramping up next year, so even though we've got some headwinds there in the near term, there are some green shoots of growth that we're seeing as well. In terms of the wind down, we took that decision back in 2022, 2023 to wind down certain non-core products where we did not see a path to sustainable returns and excess for our cost of capital, the biggest of which was our audio and lighting business, and we've been ramping that down. It's maybe profitable today, but as we looked at the next generation, the combination of the engineering investment required and the weak return profile of those product categories led us to the decision to exit those products entirely.
In terms of the impact on the next couple of years, we've talked about this earlier in the year. Our estimates are still the same. It's about $350 million of wind down impact between 2026 and 2027, with $160 million or $165 million of that in 2026 and then the balance in 2027. The total umbrella of wind down remaining is about $570 million. The bulk of it comes out in 2026 and 2027. There's a little more than $100 million in 2028. Then it's just very small impacts in the years beyond that.
Okay. And that's all very helpful context and some revenue headwinds. But maybe we can talk about margins and E-Systems. To what extent do you think the company can see some margin expansion, in part given some of the focus and automation efforts and just any more color on the margin trajectory you see in E-Systems over the next couple of years?
Yeah. This year, obviously, we took a bit of a step back with the impact of lower production volumes on key platforms. A lot of that we had anticipated at the start of the year, but that was compounded by the downtime that JLR took from the cyber attack and the impact of the Novelis fire on Ford's production. And so it offset or overwhelmed the impact of net performance. We had a great year in the areas where we can control our performance. We had 75 basis points of net performance in E-Systems this year. We're not at all satisfied with where we're at in terms of operating margins in that business, but we are increasingly confident that we can grow margins even in a flat volume environment, in a flat revenue environment for the next several years.
We see 80 basis points of net performance in 2026 and 2027, really leveraging everything we're doing and IDEA by Lear. But we also have restructuring opportunities, which have a great payback in E-Systems. We're continuing to shift from Eastern Europe to North Africa, for example, in our European business. And that's generating significant improvement in the business year over year. And we do have a positive backlog that starts up again in 2027 that has margins that are in line or accretive to our overall target margins in E-Systems. So over time, growth will be an enabler or a contributor to margin expansion in E-Systems. But in the near term, the net performance initiatives are going to be the key driver as we look at margins over the next couple of years.
Very helpful. Maybe we could finish up with capital allocation. How should investors think about Lear's capital allocation priorities?
Yeah. Our capital allocation priorities remain consistent. We're going to invest in the business first through capital expenditures to support the competitive position in both seat and E-Systems. And beyond that, some modest tuck-in acquisitions like we described earlier on the manufacturing integration and automation side, sort of those $10-$25 million type deals that have generated fantastic returns for us. We don't see any transformational M&A at this point in time. So the remainder of our free cash flow generation is going to be returned to shareholders through our dividend and share repurchases. And as I mentioned at the start of this discussion, we're now going to buy back a little bit more than $300 million this year on the heels of this strong free cash flow performance we're seeing in the fourth quarter.
Unfortunately, we are out of time. I'd like to give a big thank you to the entire Lear team, Jason, Mike, and Jared. I really appreciate you joining the conference.
Yeah. Thank you, Mark. Appreciate it.
Appreciate it.
All right.