Next up, we're very pleased to have with us PHINIA. You know, tier one supplier for automotive, commercial vehicle, aftermarket, parts. Market cap a little bit under $2 billion, but I know Brady wants to, to get that higher, so.
Should be higher.
Thanks for joining us. We do have with us Brady Ericson, CEO, Chris Gropp, CFO. I mean, I guess, just to kick things off, you know, three weeks left in the quarter, probably have schedules out here for the balance of the year, probably heading into third quarter ready. Can you just talk a little bit about what you, what you've seen, how you've seen the quarter play out in terms of the customer production schedules, how have those developed? Anything meaningful? Obviously, there's always some, some adjustments here and there on the light vehicle side in particular. Anything material to sort of note that sort of played out different than what you thought earlier in the quarter?
No, I mean, our view is in our full year guide, I think we're still comfortable with it.
Mm-hmm.
And again, just as a reminder folks, we're seeing probably most of the volatility in the North American market.
Mm-hmm.
That's still a small percentage of our business.
Mm-hmm.
Europe is still kinda hanging in there, doing well.
Mm-hmm.
Asia doing well, South America doing good, India doing good, and our aftermarket continued to be strong.
Mm-hmm.
From our perspective, it's, you know, it's kinda well within our original expectations.
Mm-hmm.
We know Q1 was a little bit soft. That's primarily because of the, you know, a Chinese New Year always in Q1. And, you know, I think people came out, after the, the winter shutdown and Christmas shutdown a little bit slower. As far as current run rates and EDI, you know, we think things are pretty consistent right now to our expectations.
When you're talking about some of that, volatility in North America, is that on the, you're specifically talking about the light vehicle side or including some of the commercial vehicle side?
The commercial vehicle as well. I think we're seeing some of that, but in many ways, it's just more noise, in investors or the market or press.
Mm-hmm.
Our order boards have remained pretty consistent.
Mm-hmm.
Again, we supply into the engine manufacturers, and they tend to have less capacity, and so they continue to kinda run at a pretty consistent clip on the engine side, and maybe the vehicle side may see a little more volatility.
Mm-hmm.
We've had slightly more strength on the aftermarket in North America than we expected. We're not talking massive numbers, but it has picked up, and it's been stronger, coming back stronger. Last year, it was our European aftermarket was extremely strong, and that's held, but we're seeing, North America aftermarket actually coming up.
What's driving that?
Good question.
I think, one, we did some organizational changes there as well, and we continue to bring more products to market.
Okay.
We announced it with each of our earnings calls, you know, some of the new wins. In aftermarket, you win, and generally, within three to nine months, you've got the business coming in.
Mm-hmm.
It's a much faster cadence. Again, Europe, I think, last couple years was really strong because we rolled out steering, suspension, and braking.
Mm-hmm.
With a new product line, and now we're starting to bring more of that product line to North America, and so they're seeing a little bit more pickup there too.
Okay.
We've also had strength in China light vehicle, so GDI has been really selling well in China.
Mm-hmm. In North America, let me, and let's stick on the light vehicle side. I just wanna sort of, you know, there, it seems like there's some, like, near, mid, and long-term dynamics that I'd sort of like to, to sort of walk through. You know, in the near term, for instance, like, we know GM is one of the big customers, and again, not saying IHS or S&P is sort of the Bible, but you look at some of their forecasts there, I think they do have some of their programs down somewhat materially, in the back half of the year. Wondering if that is something that's embedded into your outlook as well, or whether you think there's maybe some adjustments that need to happen there.
We think there's probably more adjustments. Again, we see, you know, a consistent order board across.
Mm-hmm.
Pretty much all of our customers. What we saw kinda last year, Q3 and Q4 were soft.
Mm-hmm.
That has kinda continued into this year. From a run rate and a production, we have not seen a lot of changes. We were originally hoping to see things kinda pick up in the second half, both on commercial and light.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe the pickup isn't there as much as we expected, but it's not going down from kinda current run rates that we see right now.
Mm-hmm. I guess, you know, mid and longer term, right, and I think this has sort of been your view since the spin-out, is that, you know, the ICE engine has a much longer tail than people expect. That's proven, I think, to be correct, and I think if you look at the way, you know, regulatory policy on emissions and EVs and California is evolving, maybe there's even more extension than people thought.
Now, I know none of that is officially settled or set in stone yet from a policy perspective, but I am curious if you're starting to have some conversations with your customers about, you know, supporting programs for longer or maybe even some new programs that, yeah, might be hybrid, might be plug-in hybrid or whatever, but still have sort of that combustion engine that would need a PHINIA product.
Yeah, I mean, from our perspective, the conversations with customers have been consistent. It was happening before we spun.
Mm-hmm.
People didn't believe us.
Mm-hmm.
These things were happening with, you know, some of our Chinese OEM customers that are known for battery electric vehicles. They were asking us for 350 and 500-bar GDI technology for their plug-in hybrids and full hybrids and range-extending EVs back in 2021 and 2022.
Mm-hmm.
Because they recognize that battery electrics are good for some applications and some percentage of the population, but it's not for 100%.
Mm-hmm.
I think, we even saw it, you know, with GM with their latest announcement with their engine plant. Now they make a press release about it.
In New York, yeah.
Three years ago, they were doing $1 billion to their Flint and truck, but they didn't make a press release about it. You know, they just didn't highlight it.
Right.
I think people are just, you know, whatever gets on the front page, they think that's the first time it's ever happened, but it's actually been happening for years now.
Mm-hmm.
and then even, you know, we're talking with folks, and I still don't think they understand when they talk about electrification, for some reason, they always bundle together plug-in hybrids.
Mm-hmm.
A plug-in hybrid still has a wonderful combustion engine in it with a GDI system in it.
Mm-hmm.
It has to have the same performance as a standard combustion engine.
Mm-hmm.
Because that plug-in hybrid's only gonna be good for, you know, some transient response improvement and maybe 30 or 50 mi, and you still have to have the full performance and drivability in that combustion engine in that plug-in hybrid, and that still requires a full, you know, GDI-type system, and I think it's confusing folks.
Yeah, that's a good point. I guess, like, you know, you sort of brought up China earlier where obviously this has been more pervasive. Like, we've also seen the advent of, you know, the EREVs or the range-extender EVs in China, which also have a combustion engine, but maybe just for a different purpose. Are those also using GDI technology or is it?
Either GDI or PFI. I think we've got a PFI application, you know, launching with the range extender. There's still some technology that they're gonna need depending on, you know, how they wanna use it and how efficient.
Mm-hmm.
I think the initial ones will probably be a, you know, a PFI. They're trying to make it, you know, run steady state, you know, as efficiently as possible. I think there may be a potential down the road where there's a cost-effective GDI system that works for them too.
Okay. And then just with the customers specifically in North America, I mean, I think at least to me, my understanding was that there were conversations with customers about extension of current program and engine programs. I guess the question is though now, like, are we actually even seeing conversation about new potential programs?
Yes, I think they are. I don't think we'll see a ground-up engine.
Mm-hmm.
Development, you know, as far as new blocks, new heads.
Mm-hmm.
I think they're already working on, "Hey, how do we convert some of our pure combustion to hybrid?
Mm-hmm.
and they're looking, saying, "Hey, we need to go from 350 to 500- bar.
Yeah.
Hey, can you increase the compatibility with E15 or E20 or E80 or E100, you know, alternate fuels?" That's gonna require some adjustments to our fuel injection systems.
Mm-hmm.
I think we're seeing more and more of that now. I think we've announced, you know, our first E100 in Brazil. You know, we're in ethanol, we're in natural gas, we're in diesel, gasoline, hydrogen, ammonia. We can do all those types of fluids.
Mm-hmm.
We're gonna continue to develop the next-generation technology for them, and because I think they're gonna continue to have these engines for decades to come in parts of the world. Some parts of the world may go more electrification, but I still think we're gonna be seeing combustion engines in the, you know, in 50 million-60 million units a year.
We see the extensions on the light vehicle side, but where we really see more of a request for an extension and commitment to longer term is on the CV side, for sure. Brady's for sure been in conversations with the owners, the people that are running those companies and asking us to stay in longer to give them commitment. We've actually had quotes come back to us because some of our competitors did not want to commit beyond 2030 and beyond, and we've actually had them come back and had the buyers actually come back and ask us to re-quote because they need commitment beyond that period of time.
That's actually a great segue to the next question, which was on the competitive environment, and maybe, maybe you just sort of gave an inkling to the answer here, but, you know, I think part of the interesting aspect of the PHINIA story was, you know, you had this market which, A, maybe wasn't gonna decline as much as some people thought, but B, you definitely had competitors who chose to exit the market because they thought there wasn't a future in it, which led to share gains for you.
Mm-hmm.
I guess now that you've proven to be maybe more right than wrong, have you seen any retracement on some of those strategies from the competitors and say, "Maybe we don't wanna get out as fast. Maybe we should invest some capital here?
I think it's gonna be very, this is a very capital-intensive and very R&D-intensive product line, you know, for direct injection. Once you go direct injection, there's a lot of competitors that fell off because port fuel injection was relatively low-tech. A lot of people were in it, and therefore it was, you know, a much more competitive market. Once you go to direct injection, your number of competitors gets shrunken significantly. Now, a lot of the small players that were in the low to mid-single digits, you know, market share, they're the ones that are exiting.
Mm-hmm.
For them to not invest in R&D and then try to reinvest to kinda get back in.
Yeah.
I don't think it makes any financial sense for them whatsoever because we don't need more capacity.
Mm-hmm.
Necessarily because the market's still gonna be kinda flat to down.
Mm-hmm.
If they're gonna get back in and there's gonna be four or five competitors and they're, you know, one-tenth the size of the largest competitor, I think it's gonna be very difficult for them to compete. I think the smaller players are gonna continue to kinda exit.
Mm-hmm.
and, you know, some of them have sold off some of their plants and manufacturing already. I think it's basically the three big ones with Bosch, Denso, and ourselves. I think we're the ones that are clearly committed to this.
Right.
Midterm and long-term.
Mm-hmm.
and, you know, we're focused on the next-generation technology and being great partners for them. and I'm, you know, I think, one of our competitors is not necessarily saying they're committed to long-term.
Mm-hmm.
Another one is, you know, in it significantly.
Mm-hmm.
I guess they've got the bulk of the share.
Right.
Again, it's a small piece of their overall business.
I think whether, you know, and I don't wanna sort of name competitors, but I think, like, when you look at the larger competitors, right, like one, I think you had a question, you could have questioned over the past couple of years, just commitment to the product, but the other consideration, right, internally at the organization is capital to that product versus other potential alternatives, right? And that's sort of, again, you're sort of solely focused. You're committed, right? Like, this is what you're investing in. I guess that was sort of the real impetus of the question. Like, have you seen any evidence that there's been a retracement on their strategy to maybe start to reinvest a little bit more or commit some more capital to?
I think I wouldn't say add more capital. I think they may be getting a little bit more aggressive on pricing to keep their existing programs.
Mm-hmm.
I think on new programs and, on our own business, we haven't lost any of our own business, so we're not losing, what we consider kinda maintaining our current business. The Conquest business for us to gain market share may be a little bit tighter with.
Mm-hmm.
With one of them, but there are still other markets that we continue to grow in.
Mm-hmm.
Our goal for our light passenger vehicle business is just to gain enough market share to keep our revenues flat. There's a, okay, they're getting a little more aggressive, but guess what? The combustion engine decline is not as steep anymore.
Mm-hmm.
I don't need to gain as much in order to keep that, you know, just shy of about $1 billion of our revenue.
Is there still not, like, if they're sort of trying to start to play the price game to sort of maintain share, but they didn't make the necessary investments in the years prior, isn't there a technology gap that, like, yes, your product might be a little bit more expensive, but, like, look what you're getting for this product, and does that help you win in the market?
Absolutely. That is why we've been winning a lot in China with our 500-bar technology. We are the first one to market with that, and we continue to gain more customers and launching at more applications. That is an area where, you know, we're differentiating. If they want to go down that path, it's a great solution for them. Do they have to have 500-bar technology? No.
Mm-hmm.
They can spend more money on variable cam timing or turbocharging or more valves. There are other technologies they can use.
Mm-hmm.
It may not be as cost-effective as switching to our 500-bar technology.
I understand that most of the technology, if they shed it, what they're shedding on the R&D side are the people, the engineers that really understand this because I've been in, in Brady has been in a lot of different automotive businesses, but I've never been in one that had such precision, and there was such knowledge held by the engineers themselves, and they're driving it. If our competitors have gone through and if they have shed those heads or pushed them out to try to spend on other areas, it's hard to get that back. It creates a huge gap, and we have not done that. We really still have all of that, still that asset remaining because it's important.
Mm-hmm.
For the technology, for sure.
Maybe, just going back a little bit to your, your, the, like, the here and now and your recent results and your outlook, I think you talked about $4 million of tariff impact in the first quarter.
Mm-hmm.
Or that you expected to get some recovery. I'm not sure if that's happened yet or if that's sort of taken a, a—so that's been settled. We've gotten that.
Not all of it, but the majority is still.
Yeah. I think we've resolved with most of our customers already, you know, the pass-through mechanism at 100%.
Mm-hmm.
We're confident we'll get there with the rest of them, you know, in the quarter. Maybe a little bit of hangover, but I don't expect much. I think this is a much easier one to share exact information of what we're paying and the implications.
Mm-hmm.
I think we've got those systems and processes in place from the inflationary costs, pass-through, and the challenges that we had from 2022 and 2023. We fired it back up again, and Chris and her team have done a great job to actually add it as a line item to track it and make it very clear and transparent for our customers.
Mm-hmm.
you know, kinda going forward.
Just to be clear, like, that $4 million or, or sort of what you embedded to keep going forward from a tariff perspective, that relates to the non-USMCA compliance portion, that.
Majority of it, yeah.
You're incurring that you have to pass on. Yeah.
If there are reciprocal tariffs put in place.
Okay.
You know, some of our suppliers have some impact depending on the material they're bringing in.
Mm-hmm.
That was just in total of all, both from our suppliers as well as us, you know, shipping to our customers, in the U.S. We've worked, you know, a lot with them in order to mitigate it, whether it's shipping directly to their plants in Mexico.
Mm-hmm.
whether it's, you know, increasing our USMCA compliant.
Mm-hmm.
We have plans to offset. We're working very quickly and closely with customers to try to mitigate it first.
Mm-hmm.
We're not just putting up our hands and saying, "Hey, you've gotta pay for it all.
Right.
We're really working with them as a partner to try to resolve it as quickly as possible because we ultimately want them to be successful, and we're trying to offset as much as possible for making it to the consumer.
Right. Now, I think, is part of the reason why some of those reimbursement mechanisms have been, you know, swimming along in terms of customer conversations is because, and I think this is, my timing might be off here, but I think, like, when you issued your guidance, we did not yet have this 3.75% sort of mechanism for the automakers to recover. Once they got that ability, did that make those conversations a little bit easier to sort of try to get, start to get the reimbursements?
I think it may have, but again, we were well down the path even before that came out.
Mm-hmm.
You know, I think the expectation was there. The communication was there with customers of what was expected, and it's not something that we can just kind of, you know, absorb on our own. You know, the numbers are just too big.
Plus, it's in two different pieces. The aftermarket, it's actually in piece price, and we've already pushed through one price increase for that, and I've already put notification out of possibly another one. We're not gonna do it if we don't need to, but there's possibly gonna be another one. The other is basically a surcharge.
Mm-hmm.
Based on the HTS code of the component that, you know, that it ends up being. It is coming out in two different pieces. Yeah, I agree with you that when we went out, that last MSRP, basically duty drawback, was not in place.
Mm-hmm.
That gives the argument for us to push it through even more because at the end of the day, they have a pool of money that they can then pull back and swap.
Is it Chris, is there any, like, earnings or sort of cash flow timing impact we should expect for this? Like, are the automakers actually paying you for this yet or, or because it's.
Yeah.
It's part of the, it is okay.
Yeah. No. Some of it is gonna be in the surcharge, which is gonna come in on their normal terms.
Mm-hmm.
It'll be based on our normal either 45 days or whatever their payment days are. We've had one that is wanting to do it on a quarterly basis, and they're a very good partner, so we're contemplating that.
Mm-hmm.
It's not a big cash-wise. It's not gonna be a big issue.
Okay. I think just sort of heading back to the guidance, and this has sort of been one of the bigger, you know, I think, investor conversations we've had since you reported was, you know, the reiterated EBITDA guide, you know, about, you know, for I think it implies like 14.5% over the next three quarters. Now, I understand, like, that's just average there, right? Like, nothing is sort of smooth like that. It does imply, I think, based on sort of everything else you're saying, like, there's some additional cost savings needed in order to sort of get that run rate EBITDA up. I know you sort of talked about some, you know, maybe there's some uniqueness to some of the first quarter margin that sort of shouldn't repeat.
I guess this is a long-winded way of asking the question, which is, like, how can investors get comfortable with, you know, the step up from 1Q levels to sort of what's implied and needs to happen over the balance of the year?
I guess the first thing I do is take a look at all of our quarters. There's always gonna be there's not a direct tie between revenue and EBITDA, and there was a quarter where we had, you know, north of 15% EBITDA for the quarter.
Mm-hmm.
on lower revenues. There's always gonna be some kinda puts and takes, you know, in each quarter.
Mm-hmm.
We get, we're fortunate enough that we actually get to take a look at our forecast.
Mm-hmm.
in a detailed manner. You guys have to kinda guess a little bit, and so from our perspective, we're very comfortable with our revenue guide and our EBITDA dollar guide.
Mm-hmm.
I think the challenge is really gonna be on the, say, that $40-$50 million of tariff pass-through at no margin.
Mm-hmm.
On the OE side, does that put a little bit of pressure on?
Right.
The EBITDA percentage, but it's not gonna put pressure on the EBITDA dollars.
Not at all. Yeah.
And again, I think in general, you know, we saw the volume impact that we're seeing and now is in our latest forecast is offset by the tariff pass-through as well as some FX, you know, being less of a headwind. They are kinda balancing each other out. Again, we take a look at our numbers and what we see in the EDI, and we're very comfortable with where we are on the guide.
Are there some additional cost savings?
We do have cost savings. I mean, our teams are working on that all of the time. They are, I mean, you've seen our GSM numbers. They are looking for savings all the time. That is coming through. And then productivity with our units, that's just something that they constantly do is looking at, you know, better productivity, so.
Yeah. And with things with uncertainty, we've already, you know, gone to folks saying, "Hey, as far as travel, you know, discretionary spending, what can we do to try to mitigate that, you know, over time?" So people are doing that, kinda delaying some hiring. Again, we still see the number of new program launches and our new business wins and our growth still there.
Mm-hmm.
In the long term, and that's what we're really focused on a little bit less, you know, just specifically on one quarter. With the OE being down and aftermarket up, that's also gonna be from a mixed perspective, good from a margin perspective as well.
Mm-hmm.
I think there's gonna be, you know, some puts and takes. Again, we're still very confident with our guide.
Glad you found the budget to join us here in New York. So, metals. So, just remind us sort of of the, you know, steel, aluminum sort of metal buy, some of the exposures there. And then, you know, we obviously saw over this past weekend sort of another round of, of tariffs, maybe, maybe not, but I guess maybe yes. So what's sort of the, the sensitivity there in, in terms of sort of your, your the pass-through agreements you have for any changes that occur there?
Yeah. From a commodity standpoint, aluminum, copper, steel, those are all the standards.
Yeah.
That kinda go up and down. Commodity cost as an overall percentage of our sale price is relatively low, low single digits.
Mm-hmm.
Most of the components we have going into our parts are gonna be highly complex, you know, type components. Probably the biggest part of it is gonna be aluminum castings.
Mm-hmm.
You know, for our starters and alternators.
Can't the cost of those go up?
Yes. But they're on the, in, they're on the index.
They're on the index.
They get automatic pass-through.
To your customer.
Yes.
Right. Okay.
Yep.
There might be a little bit of timing there as well with that.
Yeah. They're relatively.
Yeah.
Well-timed.
Exactly.
Okay. And then, you know, the other sort of, you know, topic that's come into a bunch of focus of late is rare earths. Not sure if you have any sort of direct exposure there on rare earths, but would be curious to see even if there's an indirect exposure, meaning you've seen any sort of fluctuations or sort of changes in production schedules because, you know, maybe there's been a hold-up in some other part of the vehicle, and so, you know, your customers are saying, you know, hold-up, hold-up shipments.
Yeah. I mean, again, our strategy is we're generally designing, developing, sourcing, producing in region.
Mm-hmm.
Okay? So if probably most of the rare earths that we have in some of the ECUs is in China for China.
Mm-hmm.
There's no restrictions for that.
Mm-hmm.
It's more coming out of China, and there's very little that we actually have coming out of China.
That's 97% of our direct exposure.
Mm-hmm.
Is in China.
It's a rare earth.
In China.
In China.
In China for China.
For our customers.
Then again, the rest of it, same thing. You know, there's not a lot of rare earths. We have, you know, with our starters and alternators, we're in pretty good shape, and we haven't seen any customers drop out production. I think most of the disruptions, again, are generally gonna be at vehicle plants, and we're supplying the engine plants. I think we've seen the engine manufacturing stay relatively consistent because the vehicle plants, I think, can generally, even if they're down, they can make it up once they get the slug of material in.
Mm-hmm.
Where the engine guys, engine plants, they can't flex 30%-40% like some of the vehicle plants that are running one shift.
Got it. That's super helpful. You know, we talked a little bit about earlier, you know, some of the way policy around emissions and EVs is seemingly headed in the U.S. You know, I don't think I, I think you've always sort of talked about your capacity and your sort of footprint as sort of being sufficient. Is that something you may need to reevaluate? If, you know, we, you know, California's removed ICEs much longer than expected, or is your footprint rather calibrated for, you know, how things seem to be trending now? Like to your point, it's like you guys always believe this, and the rest of us are just sort of waking up to it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, from our, we like our existing footprint right now. It has, we have some surge capacity capability there. I don't see combustion engines ramping up.
Right.
I just think it's not going down or ramping down as much as before. I think we've got plenty of capacity to meet their demand, and we're continuing to reinvest.
Because the plants were capacitized for, you know, back when there were no electric vehicles, or the footprint anyway. Conceptually, you could go up to that.
On the diesel side, but on the GDI side, really, that started coming in after. So we're, you know, we have capacity, but it's not excessive. And where we've had even diesel capacity, we've been able to take that capacity and convert it for other uses and for other products.
Mm-hmm.
Again, from a manufacturing standpoint, our equipment is relatively fungible. We had a lot of excess capacity in Europe at one point for GDI. We sent lines to China, and a lot of the ramp with GM came from the lines we had in Europe to ramp up here in North America. That actually was ramped up quite a bit from a revenue standpoint. It went from basically zero to.
Yes.
Full speed over the last couple of years. We have sent one of those lines down to Brazil as well, for GDI down there and as well as E100.
Mm-hmm. Now, on commercial vehicle, you mentioned that's where maybe there's sort of been the bigger change, right? Like especially post-2030, I think, where, you know, people realize that, you know, the combustion engines, they're for longer. I know you had talked about when there was sort of this greater hope or idea for sort of a pre-buy this year or last year that their customers were sort of funding some of that capital. Did that actually end up occurring, or has some of that been pushed back, pulled back, or?
I think, I mean, we had to be ready to produce yet this year. With the lead times of, you know, 12-18 months to get some of this stuff in place, they're kinda in flight already.
Mm-hmm.
and kinda continue to ramp up, you know, capacity for those, just in case. Do we expect to see that big pre-buy for the North American business? No. I do expect it to kinda come up latter half of 2025 and into 2026. We'll see how much we need. At the same token, our customers also buy third-party engines.
Mm-hmm.
They could also change some of the mix between, they've sometimes been limited in capacity on their own engine, and this may free up some opportunity for them as well.
Yeah. I guess the question is, is like, does that capacity that they're sort of helping pay for, for, you know, a quote-unquote surge actually end up paying dividends well into sort of 2030 and beyond now that sort of the combustion engine sort of lasts, lasts?
Yeah. I mean, we get to reuse it, right? Or do they take it away?
Yeah. We could, we, it's in our plants. We can continue to use it. It could help us with our footprint, or if they have another, another new business program, we can put on that for them, and support them. It is, you know, allocated and, you know, for them.
Mm-hmm.
If they have a demand for it, we'll produce on it for them.
Mm-hmm.
If they don't have a demand and we can use it in other areas, we can do that too.
Mm-hmm.
One of the things that's come up in talking to some of the automakers is that they are having discussions with supply base, and I'll use that as sort of a broad term, right, about upping US content or, you know, or I guess at first USMCA content, eventually sort of US content, right? It seems like that's sort of being targeted for higher value parts, right, that, you know, maybe that involve less labor, etc. I'm curious whether you've started to have any conversations with your customers about what would it or what could it look like if you were to sort of move, shift capacity?
No. Our focus is, you know, being prepared for the renegotiation of the USMCA.
Mm-hmm.
Our view is making sure we get all of our parts USMCA compliant as well as probably getting prepared for a higher percentage in order to maintain USMCA compliant with the renegotiation.
Mm-hmm.
you know, our plants have been in place for 20, 30, 40 years.
Yeah.
To think that we're gonna uproot those plants and move something, I think doesn't make a lot of sense. Are we, is there some potential for us to do or source with some suppliers in the U.S. for highly precision machine components, potentially? But, you know, those are things that generally take a couple of years to get requalified and approved. It's gonna be a slower process. I think the industry's gonna have to see, you know, some stability first to then make the right decisions. We have not had any conversations with customers saying, "Hey, we want you to move plants back to North America.
Is your view just, 'cause it's, you know, it's not the first time this has sort of come up about this upcoming USMCA renegotiation. Is your view that USMCA compliance might remain, you know, exempt as, you know, for sort of vehicles made in the US, but that the requirements to be USMCA compliant might move away?
Maybe make more stringent whether there's a U.S. content requirement or rather than 70%, 70% or 75%.
Mm-hmm.
You know, from North America, it gets bumped up to, you know, 75%, 80%, 85%.
Do you think you have enough flexibility in your facilities to sort of like, obviously, we do not know what it is going to, but like, do you think, you know, barring it being some, you know, some extreme, like, you could sort of adjust to be compliant with those?
Yeah. I think we can. And again, as I mentioned, you know, a lot of our manufacturing equipment, if there's something that we need to do to add more capacity to one region, we can move things, you know, I wouldn't say easily, but it's possible. And we've done that and proven that we can do that before. It may change.
Mm-hmm.
You know, where we produce some components, some of the key components, it may justify us to move it over.
Mm-hmm.
We don't see any wholesale changes in our footprint at this point.
Okay. Maybe just to, you know, bring the conversation home, I'd wanna start talking about the balance sheet, and, and cap allocation. I think you bought back around $100 million worth of stock last quarter. You know, just remind us sort of how you think about cash, how you, you know, what level you're sort of comfortable, minimum cash, minimum liquidity you're comfortable going to. You know, Brady, in the past, you've also sort of talked about some potential sort of tuck-in M&A, how you sort of evaluate that versus share repurchases.
Sure. I think on the minimum cash, I think conservatively, I think it was about $225 million. Now we're working, I'd like to see if we can find other ways to get that a little bit lower, but, you know, $225 million, the way that we're currently structured, you know, makes sense. And we currently, I think, have, you know, end of the quarter, we had $378 million. So we have plenty of excess cash. Our net debt's at $1.4 billion. Our target's kind of at $1.5 billion. We said we'd potentially go up as high as $2 billion for the right, kinda M&A at this point, but adding debt just to add debt doesn't make sense.
Mm-hmm.
From an M&A perspective and a share repurchase perspective, they're gonna be competing. You know, do I buy myself at 5x EBITDA with a known long-range plan and something that we have a lot of confidence in, or do I buy, you know, a similar type asset at 7x that has risk to it? It's gonna make a lot more sense for me to continue buying my shares. Now, we are limited, based on our spend to the tax matters agreement, it says we can only buy back up to 20% of our shares.
Mm-hmm.
through July 3 of this year.
That should be coming up pretty soon.
It's one month away. We've kinda, after our $100 million that we purchased in Q1 of this year, we bought back 16.5% of our shares since we've spun.
Mm-hmm.
and so we're getting kinda close to that. The board, you know, we're getting close to that limit, and the board authorized another $200 million of share repurchases in Q1 of this year. We still have over $300 million available on that share repurchase program. Each quarter, we're gonna sit down, take a look at our debt, take a look at our cash flow projections, take a look at where we're trading, take a look at the M&A pipeline, and kinda decide, "Hey, what, what's this next quarter look like?" Based on what that is, we may then put together a grid and/or a target of share repurchase for that quarter.
Mm-hmm.
Then review it at the next quarter.
Mm-hmm.
Doing anything longer than that, you don't know what's gonna happen six months from now. So this, that allows you some flexibility.
Was it just to be clear, once we get past July 3rd of this year?
No, no more restrictions.
Right. It's more just the restriction is sort of versus the other opportunities set. It's not really a restriction. It's more a constraint.
Yeah. It's gonna be, "Hey, if we see a really good deal that's trading at or below our multiple or that we think is gonna add more value to our shareholders than buying back our shares, then we'll consider it.
Mm-hmm.
you know, if we're trading at, you know, 10 times.
Mm-hmm.
That's gonna make some of the M&A that we can acquire at six or seven a lot more attractive than buying our shares at 10x .
I guess just on the M&A environment, I mean, how would you sort of describe it out there? I'm sure you, you know, you always sort of, you know, have a pipeline or sort of funnel. And, you know, it's always interesting to me what happens to those sort of, you know, I guess, you know, buyers and sellers when there's periods of high uncertainty or sort of disruption. Excuse me, are you seeing that funnel widen? Is there a little bit of loosening, or how would you sort of describe it?
I mean, we've always seen a consistent flow of M&A, just not many that we liked and/or with an evaluation that we thought was fair.
Mm-hmm.
And so the volume of deals we're seeing is still the same. I do think that sellers are becoming a little more realistic on their pricing expectations, and, you know, we're getting close on a couple of smaller ones. We'll see. You know, even from the day we spun, we were in negotiations and talking with folks because M&A takes a long time.
Mm-hmm.
You never wanna rush it. You never wanna just jump on whatever's available. You want something that fits your criteria and fits your business.
Mm-hmm.
We do not need to do an M&A to continue to execute our strategy and deliver great shareholder value.
Mm-hmm.
You know, over this decade. And so we're being very selective.
Mm-hmm.
and we're looking for assets that make a lot of sense for our own capability. So we're precision machining, fluid management, electronics and controls, calibration capability. We want parts that, you know, are gonna get serviced two to four times over their lifetime to support our aftermarket and really focusing a lot on, you know, commercial vehicle and industrial and, you know, areas that are, are gonna have less headwind to electrification.
I mean, maybe you sort of just touched on this, but like, what about, like, I guess, are there opportunities where you think you could use sort of your core competitors to expand or sort of diversify by end market? So into, you know, away from sort of transportation markets of light vehicle, commercial vehicle.
Yeah. I mean, we're doing that right now. I mean, again, our strategy, we think, is a lower risk but a highly cash-generative strategy to where we're leveraging our human capital and our manufacturing capital to go into these end markets. You know, the engineers that we had working on light vehicle diesel are the ones that we moved to GDI, are the ones that we moved to commercial vehicle, are the ones that are now working on the aerospace, you know, injectors. The manufacturing equipment, well, guess what? The manufacturing equipment that we're using for aerospace is a refurbished light vehicle diesel line.
Mm-hmm.
You know, take out some of the automation, but it's still, you know, precision machining, coatings, assembly, final test, quality systems. It's the same manufacturing processes and core competencies.
Why is there less automation?
Because it's lower volume.
Just lower volume. Okay.
Pricing, you don't need to sell so many of them.
Right. Right.
In order to get the margins and the revenues because these are, you know, these are some of these applications, you know, I think we're starting out, I saw some of the numbers where we're gonna have, you know, upwards of $5,000-$10,000 per engine.
Mm-hmm.
That was not a lot of volume.
Mm-hmm.
You know, there's opportunities for us to increase that by a factor of 10, you know, per engine. There's a lot of opportunities. We've converted one of our GDI lines to diesel to actually run a 350- bar diesel application for an off-highway application because as tier four emissions and tier five emissions are coming out, they need more advanced fuel injection systems. You know, we can convert that over to off-highway applications using those same engineers and same equipment. We've got a lot of flexibility, you know, in our manufacturing capital and our human capital.
Great. I think it's a great place to close, and we're out of time. Thank you for joining us.
All right.
Appreciate the time.
Thank you.
Thanks again.