Mobility Conference. My name is Emmanuel Rosner. I'm the lead autos analyst here at Wolfe Research. I'm extremely pleased to have with me today, Lear CEO Ray Scott, and Lear CFO Jason Cardew. Lear, as you all know, is one of the leading global Tier 1 suppliers built around two main businesses, seating, where Lear is a clear market leader, and E-Systems, which is the electrical and electronic distribution arm. Lear is also at the forefront of leveraging AI and automation, driving significant cost efficiencies, and it has had a strong start to the year, a record run of conquest wins across both segments, and a full-year outlook that the team has so far left unchanged. To discuss these dynamics and more, thank you so much for being with us. I look forward to the conversation.
Yeah. Thanks, Emmanuel. It's great to be here.
Maybe as we begin, Ray, can you give us a general update on the business?
Yeah. Well, you know, Emmanuel, we just had a town hall meeting yesterday because I really wanted to discuss with the team and say thank you to the team for all the things that we've accomplished. It's hard to believe it's six months into this year, but we had a good first quarter. Obviously, we're in a position to have a solid second quarter. We're in a really good position financially. I think what's really important is the new business wins. What I want to do is really thank the team because it's really been outstanding. We ended last year, I was talking about a major conquest win in seating with a North American OEM for some truck business. We secured that. We were able to announce that with the fourth quarter earnings call.
Equally as important with the next earnings call, we announced significant wins in E-Systems. I feel very comfortable and confident that we're on the cusp of another major announcement here. We've allowed work to do still with this particular OEM, but it's coming together nicely in Seating. Going from the Seating awards to the E-Systems awards to hopefully, not in the too distant future, we could have another major announcement in Seating. Things are going extremely well. The backlog or the pipeline is still very strong, $5 billion in Seating, $2 billion in E-Systems. We won Supplier of the Year, and this has been something that I really wanted to talk to the team about globally because for the first time in Lear's history, both E-Systems and Seating were recognized as the best suppliers supporting General Motors globally.
It was a very unique opportunity for me to recognize the team because I think it really shows how we're separating ourselves, not just from a performance perspective, but from a customer perspective, really focusing on the customer, delivering what the customers are looking for, and really continuing to execute at a level that exceeds their expectations. Couldn't be more proud of what we've accomplished already this year. I think, and you mentioned a little bit about this, but the continuation and the adoption of technology innovation in our manufacturing plants and our products. You know, Emmanuel, we've been at this for 10 years. It's interesting all the buzzwords that talk about AI and the digital transformation and automation within the manufacturing plant, but we've been securing and acquiring great companies over that 10-year span.
With ASI, InTouch, Thagora, WIP Automation, IGB, Kongsberg, all putting us, and most recently StoneShield with the automation of taping in our wire harness plants. All that is coming together really nice, and we're just at our facility in Rochester Hills. I extend an open invitation, Emmanuel. Love to have you out there. I'd love you to see it because I think that's what's really differentiating our company. We have two great product divisions, but at the heart of what we're doing is technology innovation around manufacturing, and it's designed for our personal uses. It's an area that we've been able to accelerate, I think, last year and why we're putting ourselves out there for our investors. We really drove $75 million of improvements, or $70 million last year, $75 million is the target this year.
We continue to really pressure the company around continuing to drive efficiency improvements within our manufacturing plants. This Rochester Hills facility really illustrates, and we've had customers come through. The feedback we're getting is, "Boy, no one's really getting at it the way you're getting at it." I really believe it's a defensible moat. It's something that you can't replicate. We've been at this for 10 years. Why I extend the invitation, Emmanuel, to you, I think it'd be really important for you to see what we're doing because when you see it at the core, what's in production, how we're driving technology, how we're really transforming the digital AI capabilities within our plants really becomes clear. These are things that are not in theory. They're in our manufacturing facilities today.
Things like the Orion facility that we're putting up in Michigan later this year will be the benchmark. It will have all the latest technologies. The new facilities we're putting in components, what we're doing within wiring are really changing the way you think about manufacturing. I think about this way, and maybe it's the right adjective or not, but our diversification of manufacturing capabilities are very unique. From E-Systems to seating, we have a broad understanding of how to manufacture under all kinds of different applications. When you bring technology innovation that is organic through acquisitions or organic investments we've made, it revolutionizes the way you think about the manufacturing plant and the products. The combination of technology and our manufacturing capabilities are really coming together.
That's what really excites me right now, is that we've talked about this for some time, but we have now 38 contract awards with modular components and FlexAir. The awards that we're winning in seating are focused on technology and innovation. I've talked about it before, where the North American OEM did an audit of our capabilities and technology and awarded it on the fact that we can produce at a different rate, a different efficiency, a different quality level. We have a lot more work to do, Emmanuel. I said this to the team yesterday. I'm really proud of what we've accomplished in the first six months. We got another six months, and we got next year, we got the following year. We're not content with where we're at, and we have to constantly push.
This industry that we're in, call it survival mentality, with a focus on how you survive and make sure you're driving technology, is working. I'm happy where we're at. Like I said, we have more work to do, but I'd really like to extend an invitation, Emmanuel, for you to see what we're doing, because I think you would have a really good understanding of how we're differentiating ourselves.
Yeah, no, that sounds good. I'm looking forward to it. Focusing maybe on the current quarter, you recently reiterated that second quarter is shaping up to be strong. Can you just remind us how you're tracking for revenue margins, free cash flow for Q2, and touch upon some of the puts and takes in the second quarter versus the start of the year, maybe?
Sure. The second quarter is continuing to track in line or slightly better than how we initially saw it at the start of the quarter. We expect revenues of $6.1 billion-$6.2 billion in the second quarter, with operating income at $300 million or just above that. Free cash flow, I think, has been a particular highlight. It's approaching $250 million in the second quarter, significant positive free cash flow, which is really allowing us to accelerate our share repurchases this year. Initially, we planned on buying back $300 million. I think we're on track now to buy back $350 million. Through the second quarter, it looks like we'll be at about $175 million of share repurchases. We're being pretty aggressive to take advantage of the strong free cash flow to return that cash to shareholders.
In terms of operating margins, we expect E-Systems to be around 5.4%, maybe a little bit better in the second quarter, and seating to be in the mid-sixes. Both of those could be a little bit higher, depending on how some of our commercial negotiations turn out here late in the quarter. The first quarter margins were higher in both segments, you may recall we had this kind of unique issue with the tariff refunds, the accounting for that. We had $175 million reduction in revenue that had no corresponding impact on earnings. Seating and E-Systems margins were a bit inflated in the first quarter as a result of that, 20 basis points in Seating and 40 basis points in E-Systems. Also in E-Systems, we did benefit from the run-up in copper prices. We revalued our inventory, that benefited the first quarter.
You strip those out, that largely kind of bridges the first quarter and second quarter operating margins. In regards to the production environment and how we see that here in the second quarter, things are tracking in line overall. North America has been stronger than expected for us. Europe's largely in line, Asia's been a little bit weaker. There were some one-off issues with supplier disruptions in Korea. There was a fire at a supplier, certain platforms in China have been a little bit lower than anticipated, that's been offset by the strength in North America. Again, we're sort of in line with what we expected in terms of revenue in the quarter.
Great. That's extremely helpful. Turning back to the new business. You announced $400 million in incremental new business wins in the first quarter. You indicated some conquest wins, like the GMT1 SUV, for some of the wiring coming mid-cycle. Can you just touch upon the new business bidding environment and why you think you're winning conquest business in both segments?
I think they're slightly different between the two segments, we have been extremely successful with these conquest wins. Like I said earlier, the pipeline is still very deep, we still see opportunities. I mentioned we're in the process right now of quoting a significant platform that 50% would be conquest and the other 50% would be new business, it'd be great backlog for us. We're doing everything we need to do to secure that, hopefully over the next several weeks, we'll be able to make an announcement. We feel like we're putting ourselves in a good position. I think in Seating, like I mentioned, right now with what's going on in the industry, particularly around being cost competitive, driving technology, looking at your business differently, our customers are really paying attention to the capabilities we've put in place.
The modularity success that we've had is very unique. We bought Kongsberg and IGB for the reason to integrate components into a singular design. I know modularity is used in a lot of different ways and is defined differently even by some of our competitors. The way we're looking at it is re-engineering products for modular components that drive efficiency and cost out. That's really accelerated. I know we differentiate ourselves there because we are the only ones designing those products. We have over 200 patents on it. Every time I talk to Jason or Frank in Seating, they tell me we've got a new win. What was 29 is now 38 wins. I think we're differentiating ourselves there just because we're the only ones that can really design products because we have the engineering capabilities.
The IGB Kongsberg acquisitions were absolutely essential and necessary for us to be successful. The technology that we're putting in our manufacturing plants and why the open invitation is there, Emmanuel, I think you have to see what we're doing in the plants. That's 10 years of us really looking at how you build capabilities and capital within a plant for manufacturability around automation and digital transformation. The acquisitions we've made have allowed us to accelerate that. The first thing we did, we're not selling this externally, we're keeping it all internally. We manufacture our own capital now. In a typical plant where we would maybe manufacture 20% of the capital, we're now manufacturing up to 80%, and it's very purpose-built capital for our own consumption, and we're retaining that.
When the customers, we quote these programs, they're very sophisticated when they come through an audit, they understand that we have a different way of assembling products within our plants, and we're much more competitive. I think that's been very successful. These systems, we've really went through, you've seen it, where we've focused our product portfolio in areas where we can be successful. We have a roll-off of some different types of business right now that we didn't have a long-term success or didn't think it would be successful long-term, we've really minimized the portfolio where we think and actually believe we can get a great return, and that's really helping us.
The continuation of some of the competitive elements that are out there right now, there's some strategic elements, there's others that are having quality issues, there's others that are having issues that are allowing us to gain access to quotes. That's the facts. The win that we had on the T1 was very unique, and I think it is very representative of continuing to execute to the customer's expectation. The Supplier of the Year, I think, backs that really in a strong way in how we're performing, and then just continuing to deliver where we can. Supplier of the Year was last year. We have to execute this year. We have to execute next year. The pipeline in E-Systems is still really strong. We had more wins in China in the first quarter in E-Systems than we had all last year.
We had a strong award cycle in E-Systems for $1.4 billion. Emmanuel, what's important is I absolutely know in my mind that we're going to continue to drive and expand margins in E-Systems and Seating, and the new business, as we quote, is at our target margins. It's important to think about from an operations perspective, we're fixing the business. We've seen great improvements in the operation, both commercially and what we're doing in the manufacturing plant. Equally as important as we talk about these new business awards, they roll on with accretive margins. We're not chasing business. I want to be clear on that. We have targets internally that we are going to stay disciplined to. It's important that we expand our margins. It's our number 1 goal. It's above everything else.
The new business that we're quoting is at target margins and is accretive to the margins we have today. We have to continue to work. We're not happy where we're at by any stretch in both businesses. We got to continue to expand margins. The pipeline is really deep, and we're putting ourselves in a good position. I hope over the next several weeks, I have another announcement. We got some work to do on that one.
Just to Emmanuel, two comments to add, to Ray's comments. One, the sourcing environment has finally normalized after a couple of years where there's a lot of uncertainty around our customers' plans with their powertrain strategy, and now we've returned to a nearly normal sourcing cadence. I think that's one reason you're seeing sort of a pickup in the new award dollar values that we're talking about in terms of what happened at the end of last year and the start of this year. Also just want to point out the $400 million of awards that we talked about on the first quarter earnings call, that's the benefit to our three-year backlog, 2026, 2027, 2028, and $250 million of that will benefit our 2026 and 2027 backlog. A little bit of that's in the tail end of 2026, but the bulk of that is in 2027.
That momentum that we had in the fourth quarter and the start of the year is really continuing. As Ray mentioned, we were close on a couple of additional awards, but we've already seen some meaningful progress on the near-term backlog that we had announced on our fourth quarter earnings call through these awards.
That's great color. I guess just zooming back on that T1 SUV, Ray, you emphasized how the Conquest win was significant basically for Lear. The CEOs of Aptiv and Versogen, they responded pretty forcefully to this, and in particular suggested that might be lower content or also lower margin build-to-print. Can you speak about the return and capital hurdles on this type of business, and if there is any difference versus the rest of the business?
Well, first of all, I was surprised it got as much play as it did. It must've hit a sore spot or something. It was a win for us that I was extremely excited about. I thought it was a great win for Lear Corporation. When we look at it, and we do both, Emmanuel, we've fully engineer and designed harness assemblies for all of our customers, including General Motors, and we have build-to-print contracts with our customers, too. What we do is we ensure that we're there for our customers in any type of solution. What we look at is returns. Each have pros and cons from our perspective. We have build-to-print contracts that do extremely well financially, and we have full engineered programs that we manage that do extremely well financially.
At the end of the day, we look at returns, we look at where our customers need us, as far as growing our business in the type of applications and platforms. I think it's important to understand, particularly on that program, that is a very unique program. To be sourced that business on that platform in that timeframe, I think the smartest decision by our customer is build-to-print. It minimizes risk. The thing that we want to do right now is be successful. At the end of the day, it's all about execution. If it's build-to-print or if it's a full engineered wire harness program, we have to be successful, because I know if we can keep delivering for General Motors or other customers, that it puts us in a really good position to win more business.
Listen, I think the build-to-print's great. It minimizes risk, it gets us good returns, and it puts us in a great position to continue to win business. I don't see a downside to it. We don't differentiate between those two different types of products, between engineered or design responsible versus non-design. It's all about returns with us, and we have to expand margins.
I think, Emmanuel, just to add to Ray's comments, the key distinction between the two is oftentimes the level of investment. You think about engineering investment, CapEx, working capital, those are impacted by design responsibility and the complexity of the harness. You would expect a program where you have design responsibility, and that's very complex to have a larger upfront investment, and you would expect higher margins as a result of that. If you look at the return profile of our current portfolio, it's very similar between our build-to-print programs and our design responsible programs. There really isn't much difference in the return profile. I think, one distinction on a program where you have early design involvement, it does give you an advantage in terms of sourcing your own connection systems. That's attractive to us.
We have a great connection systems portfolio, and so that is one advantage. That's not to say that you couldn't ultimately put your connection systems on a program that's build-to-print, but it's harder. We typically do see higher margins where we're more vertically integrated. Just looking at it at a high level, the big driver is the level of investment in the program that will determine the margin, but the return profile itself is very similar.
On the Seating side, you announced the award for the Orion facility as GM expands its U.S. footprint. How well is Lear positioned to capture additional onshoring business opportunities?
Well, first of all, I thought that was a great win. It really was. In some respects, it was a conquest win, how we're positioning ourselves on that platform. We remain the Tier 1 supplier on the T1 truck business for seating. As they expand their product portfolio and their volumes will continue to expand our revenue dollars. It was a great win. I mentioned earlier, too, Emmanuel, it's going to showcase the best of the best capabilities here in our facility, so it's going to become a showcase for us as far as technology innovation around IDEA by Lear. As we look at the continuation of onshoring, we have a number of different opportunities that are being presented and we're reviewing and quoting, but they all come with different scenarios under different types of returns. We'll continue to quote, monitor.
We'll be very strategic in our approach to the onshoring. There are opportunities that are being presented today that we are reviewing and quoting with our customers, but they're all not equal, we look at them slightly different. There's capital that could be in a particular location that may not make sense for us to compete against, or other areas regarding the platform itself that we're not necessarily interested in because of risk. We monitor that. I think on a broader approach, we continue to stay focused. We have 26% of the market share today. We have a target of 29. We continue to see opportunities with not just the traditional OEMs around the world as we continue to expand and win conquests and new business opportunities, with those customers, but with the domestic Chinese and with the Japanese.
We're still focused on our overall market share target. We've been successful early out of the gate, particularly with the traditional OEMs. We continue to win and are quoting with the domestic Chinese, we think the door's open with the Japanese OEMs. I think we're in a really good position, we look at it broader.
Each different quote, each different platform, each different customer, there's different risk that we take into consideration. At the end of the day, we feel like we're in a really good position to continue to grow market share.
Let's turn to your full year outlook and guidance. It sounded like the midpoint of your guidance incorporates quite a bit of conservatism. I think you said that you would have been a beaten race in Q1, if it wasn't for the Middle East uncertainty, and that none of the $400 million midpoint to higher end or $400 million low to midpoint protection had been used through the first half. Recently it sounded like you're more confident that you may raise your full year outlook on the second quarter call. I guess, what are the puts and takes and is that indeed the case?
Yeah. As we sit here today, with a strong first quarter and strong second quarter, it certainly puts us in a good position to raise our full year guidance. We'll go through our typical process, which includes talking to customers, looking at sales data, looking at inventory levels, talking to our global teams. All indications are at this point, we don't see a need for the low end of that guidance range. We would likely be in a position to raise the midpoint based on what we know today, and maybe take out all or certainly a significant portion of the low end of that guidance range. Nothing has changed from what we said last week.
There's been some talk recently about weakness with certain customers at certain markets, but our latest reviews with the team here suggest that the full year is sort of tracking in line with what we've said publicly, last week at another conference, between the midpoint and the high end of the guidance range. We're particularly confident in free cash flow and I mentioned that again at another conference last week where the midpoint of our guidance range was at $600 million. We definitely see room to bring that number up, and that's supportive of being a little bit more aggressive around share repurchases. I think the business is performing at a real high level operationally, commercially, and that's fueling the confidence that we have that we should be in a position to formally raise guidance on the second quarter earnings call.
I guess within that, how should investors think about the first half to second half bridge? I think you flagged some, the usual Europe downtime in Q3, the fourth quarter calendarization dynamic. Will continued cost savings and accelerating backlog, would that basically provide an offset?
Yeah, those are the sort of puts and takes as I think about the first half to the second half. We do expect revenues in the second half to be a little bit lower than the first half as a result of what you described there with the typical summer shutdowns, particularly in Europe and maybe to a lesser extent in North America. Production come back in the fourth quarter, and revenues in the fourth quarter will be similar to what we saw in the first and second quarter of the year. We do expect about $400 million lower revenue due to volume mix backlog, wind down, all those pieces taken together from the first half to the second half, offset by about $200 million of non-recurring tariff refunds that impacted revenue.
Net something like $200 million lower revenue in the second half of the year. Offsetting the impact of the volume reduction, or lower production volume assumptions would be the benefits of our performance improvement programs. That's a combination of our traditional programs on efficiencies in the plants, supplier negotiations, commercial negotiations, but also the continued benefits of ramping up IDEA by Lear related savings, digital and in automation as well as restructuring. That's the basic framework first half to second half.
As part of that, the net performance dollar target that you've highlighted is $135 million, 40 basis points in Seating, 80 basis points of margin in E-Systems, after a record almost $200 million in 2025. Can you help us frame the long-term cost savings opportunity? Is this year's run rate a reasonable run rate over the next few years?
Yeah, I think that, as we look out at this year, we're very confident in delivering the 40 and 80 basis points in Seating and E-Systems net performance respectively. Looking at 2027 and the pipeline of opportunities that are in process and on track for implementation next year, we're comfortable continuing with that level of performance commitment to investors for next year. A similar profile next year with 40 and 80 basis points in Seating and E-Systems respectively. As we move out into 2028, 2029, we're in the early stages of our annual long range plan process, we do see similar level of savings in that time period. We also have a stronger backlog, particularly in 2028 and 2029. There's some engineering investments to support that in 2028.
There's some launch costs associated with that higher level of backlog, new facilities that we're putting in place that may weigh on that number a little bit, moving out into that time horizon. I think the key point is We're continuing to generate improvements in the run rate that are sustainable and durable in both Seating and E-Systems. I think that underpins our margin expansion plans in both segments. As the backlogs strengthens in that longer time horizon, 2028, 2029, you see the benefits of the backlog rolling on at or above segment margins. I think a really important point to make is when we think about the level of savings we're generating through IDEA by Lear, as we launch new facilities, we're embedding those ideas in production at the start of production. Margins will be a little bit higher.
Of course, we're sharing some of that with customers to motivate the sourcing decision, but the balance of that we're retaining. Over time, we would expect maybe the savings derived from automation to diminish, because they're showing up in the backlog as our backlog converts at a higher level. I think, there's three examples just really quickly to talk through that are driving the savings that we're seeing in that performance and in IDEA within that. One is the cycle time deviation project in our just-in-time seat facilities. Where we've deployed that, we've seen an efficiency improvements of 3%-5%. We had $10 million of savings last year, that grew to $15 million this year. We're continuing to roll that out globally. That could be as much as $25 million next year, so an incremental $10 million opportunity.
Another area which we just reviewed again yesterday, at our automation center, is what we're doing with automated sewing. Think about how labor intensive our cut-and-sew operations are. We have roughly 18,000 employees that sew trim covers, and about 10% of that sewing is 2D sewing. We have in production today, automation of 2D sewing. We believe we can automate 100% of that over time. The more complicated automation is 3D sewing. We've reviewed some technology yesterday, and we are making great progress there. I think we're the only ones doing this. We think that ultimately, 5%-10% of our 3D sewing, which makes up the bulk of the employment in our cut-and-sew plants, will be automated longer term. The last one, which Ray alluded to with StoneShield, is automated taping, and we reviewed that as well.
15%-20% of our headcount in our wire facilities are involved in taping. That's the most labor intensive portion of the wire harness assembly. We see an opportunity to reduce cost through automation. It's one of the more challenging automation projects that we have, but the partnership with StoneShield and ultimately the acquisition of StoneShield, bringing that capability in-house, is really accelerating the path to do just that. We have the first program launching next year with automated taping, that's a really exciting opportunity. Those are just three examples, and we have lots more, as Ray mentioned, on display at our Rochester Hills facility. I think seeing it in person really brings to light just the magnitude of this opportunity that we're on the cusp of achieving.
We're very excited about the runway we have in front of us to generate savings through this IDEA by Lear initiative.
Emmanuel, like I mentioned, those are acquisitions. We consume those internally, and so we don't share those. Those are not something that you buy in the open market. Everything that we're designing is for our own use. We're doing it with the intent to be much more efficient, much more focused on our manufacturing processes, but solving solutions that will revolutionize the way you think about the manufacturing process itself. That's where I mentioned earlier on I couldn't be more excited. We are really connecting the dots at an accelerated pace. We have examples, but they'll continue to expand our margins, too.
Okay, great. Maybe focusing on these E-Systems' longer term picture, I think in the past you've characterized E-Systems as an 8% plus margin business. Obviously, it's faced significant headwinds in recent years, including the EV, not playing out as hoped. What are the key actions Lear is taking to expand the E-Systems margin back to generating returns above the cost of capital? If I could sort of put that inside that as well, a follow-up to a question I asked on the earnings call, which is obviously one of your newly independent North American competitor is printing these, already these kind of like 8%, 8.5% target EBIT margins. What do you see as the main delta between your performance and that of those peers?
Well, first of all, we're not satisfied with where we're at, Emmanuel. I think the E-Systems division and business is really good business, and we are tracking to where you mentioned some of, a competitor may be mentioning their margins are at, and we believe without question, we will get there, and we can get there. When you think about E-Systems, we've done a lot of different things. Obviously, simplifying the portfolio was a great step in the right direction. We had invested and done a great job of winning new business in EVs, and obviously the decline of the EV market here, particularly in North America, we took a step back With the capacity we had installed, the inefficiencies that we were trying to commercialize or at least negotiate with our customers because of volume.
We did take a step back, and then we repivoted, rethought through the product portfolio. I think last year's business wins is an example of what we can do. I've said this before, we're not chasing business. The business that we're winning is at the target margins that you're suggesting and where we believe we can get to. Right now, we're still continuing to work the operations. We have some issues that we're still managing through. We've seen some good improvements. The trajectory is on the right trajectory. I think the team's doing a great job operationally. We are working hard primarily in Mexico, and that we've seen great turnarounds within our Mexico operations. Commercially, we still negotiate the most part of the deals, but we still have some commercial settlements we're working on with our customers, but a smaller portion of that.
The operation part of that is a continuation of improvement and expanding of margins. I think equally as important, as we mentioned, is as we roll out new business, one business we'll be launching with domestic Chinese later this year, heading into next year. We have the 2027 launch with General Motors, and then the continuation of the new backlog that's going to be launching that will be at an accretive margin. The combination of those are a simple way of thinking about where we're at with the business, but nothing that we haven't managed before, and nothing that I would sit here to say it's going to set us back. We have everything in front of us to get the job done. I'm happy where the team is pushing the margins. We have more work to do.
We're not happy where we're at, but we absolutely believe we can get there.
Emmanuel, it's important to highlight we are expanding margins this year, E-Systems, albeit modestly based on the midpoint of our current guidance, and that will be a little bit better when we update our guidance for the full year. We're expanding them, even with two pretty significant headwinds, the negative backlog resulting from Ford building out the Escape, Corsair, and Focus was a pretty significant program for us. Plus the wind down of products that we took the decision to exit. It's still the right decision, but that's impacting revenues. The peak of that impact is in 2026 and 2027. It's about $350 million of business rolling off over that time period. As I think about getting back to 8%, there's really three key drivers to that.
One, as Ray just described, continuing to execute operationally, commercially, achieving the 80 basis points in that performance this year, next year, and beyond. Second is returning to growth. Once we get through this wind down period and you start to see the benefits of all this business we're winning rolling on at or above segment margins. The third is, I think, improving customer mix. If you look at the business we're targeting and the programs that we've won over the last couple of years, with the F-250 with Ford, a program we're on. We also conquested some additional content on that at the start of last year. In E-Systems, we had the T1 SUV that we've won. We're targeting programs that have appropriate scale, a long history of success in the marketplace, more stability around volumes as a result of that.
Lastly, growing with the Chinese domestic automakers, not all of them, but targeting. We've got eight to 10 that we're particularly focused on that we think have the clearest path to long-term success and to returns for us, in excess for our cost of capital. Those are really the three kind of key drivers to getting us back to 8% and closing that gap with our competitor, which I think is very achievable over the next several years.
Great. Maybe just to conclude, I think, Ray, you recently said there's no M&A alternative today that creates more value than buying back our own stock. Is that still your capital allocation strategy, and what would have to change, whether it's valuation, availability, balance sheet, for Lear to pursue an acquisition in either Seating or E-Systems?
Yeah. Well, I think first of all, we study and review and think through any different ways we can create value for our shareholders. That's the number one thing. At the particular moment that I said that there was nothing on the horizon that would make sense. We're always looking at opportunities that would make sense for our shareholders and studying those in a way that could be strategic or could change the way we look at an acquisition. We have been focused at this point on our capital allocation. It's been very disciplined, and it's worked for us with the tuck-in acquisitions, to accelerate our technology innovation. I do believe, and I've said this before, too, Emmanuel, I believe the dynamics in this industry are going to create consolidation. I think it's necessary. I think there's too much capacity out there, I think.
I don't just mean from a supplier perspective, I mean from an OEM perspective, too. We're going to see changes that are going to be necessary to be more efficient across the board. That's why we keep a close eye on what's going on. We want to make sure that we're monitoring opportunities that could present themselves that would make sense for our investors. I do believe the dynamics in the industry have shifted in a way that it's going to take, and it will be necessary for consolidation in certain areas and with certain OEMs to really drive efficiency within our industry.
That's great. Great place to end. Thank you so much. Really appreciate all your time and insights. We look forward to keep monitoring the progress on those awards, and on the operational front. Thanks again.
Yeah. Thanks, Emmanuel.
Thanks everyone for joining.
Great. Thank you.