Thanks for joining us this morning. My name is Luke Junk. I cover vehicle tech and mobility for Baird. We're very pleased to have Gentherm with us today. Gentherm is the auto market leader in seat heat, heated and cooled seats, and steering wheel heaters, as well as pneumatic comfort and massage through their somewhat recent acquisition of Alfmeier. Joining us today, seated immediately to my left, is Phil Eyler, CEO. We also have Matteo Anversa, CFO. I'll do my best to work in questions. You can send those to session3@rwbaird.com. With that, I'll turn it over to Phil for some introductory remarks.
Great, Luke. Thank you very much. I'm gonna spend just a minute to go through a few slides. First of all, thank you for having us. We're excited to be here. I'll just jump very quickly in and give just an overview of the company and some key highlights around what's going on. First of all, I'd like to always start off with our investment thesis. I'll start from left to right on the slide. First and foremost, Luke pointed out we are the global leader in thermal and pneumatic comfort in the space. And we're really at the epicenter of what we think is one of the most important trends in the automotive space, and that's around the experience in the cabin.
Obviously, there's significant transformation happening in automotive, and our products play a very important role in creating value for our car company customers, and that's around wellness, comfort, health, and energy efficiency. It's very important to know that we are a pure play in this space. We're very laser-focused on this. We focus on areas where we know we can win, command a strong market share position, and drive outsized margins in the industry. Secondly, when you look at the market we play in, obviously, the automotive market is cyclical. If you look over the next several years, you know, there's a lot of different estimates of what's gonna happen in the space.
One of the positives around Gentherm's model is that if you look at the auto production today, still relatively low adoption and penetration of our products. We see a lot of tailwinds just in the market, in the space that we've chosen to play, so we're pretty excited about that. We'll talk more throughout this discussion on how we're gonna drive, higher take rates, adoption, and also content per vehicle. Our company is really driven by innovation and technology. If you look at our, our products and technologies, which you'll hear about, more today, we, we generally are one to two generations ahead on technology, and that's how we really position ourselves, and stay in front of, where the market is going and, and kinda lead, our competition.
The final area that we're really proud of is our consistent execution on our strategy, our strategic plan, and that's really two main areas that I wanna highlight. The first one is focused growth. We try very hard not to get distracted and execute strong around our mission, which is improving health, wellness, comfort, and energy efficiency, and then driving margins. We have a strong plan through our Fit for Growth program, which I'm sure Matteo will talk about here shortly, to enhance margins. So, you know, if you look at our company, we believe we're poised for high return growth and being able to outpace the market.
You know, to kinda put that into perspective, between 2023 and 2026, we're forecasting about a 10% per year on average growth rate in that period of time, on a market that's growing 1%-2%. So we're really excited about this growth in adoption and penetration. And then also, our plans will lead to about 100 basis points of EBITDA margin improvement, per year between 2023 and 2026. So if you look at where we're planning to be in 2026, roughly around $2 billion in revenue and 16% EBITDA margin. What gives us confidence in that growth rate is really how fast we're winning new business right now, and there are five areas you can see on the slide. One, expanding our core thermal.
That's where the company started. That's, that's an area we focus heavily on. We're winning in multiple regions around the world. We're really excited about momentum with select domestic Chinese OEMs, such as Li Auto and BYD, that are adding to our expanding space. Luke mentioned the pneumatic massage and lumbar business from our acquisition of Alfmeier within the last two years. The thesis there was to take this small private company, who has only a few customers, and expand it into Gentherm's strong customer space, and, you know, that's happening faster than we expected. We've actually won nine Conquest New Customer awards. I'm gonna talk about a brand-new one, which will be fresh news here in just a moment. So we think that's gonna fuel significant growth for us. We're combining thermal and pneumatic.
You'll see that is a major trend for us. Our customers are very excited about, you know, what can we do by combining these solutions? And I talked about increasing vehicle content. Our ClimateSense and WellSense platforms, which are two innovative system-level solutions, which I'll talk more about later, are helping us to convince OEMs to add more content. So, you know, instead of just the front seats having thermal and pneumatic, they're looking at rear seat applications. We're looking at more surface heating, surface cooling, really encompassing the body with solutions. And then the last one, this is an area most people really aren't aware, is that we're very much an electronics and software company.
So when you think about the hardware that we install, we create the intelligence behind it, so the electronics, the software. A great proof point of that is the fact that we've actually won a software award recently for our ClimateSense with General Motors that's eventually gonna be across nearly all vehicles in the GM lineup through their next generation architecture. Two great examples of, you know, how our combined systems are starting to take on pretty significant content per vehicle. The BMW X Series, which I think all people know is a very high volume, high revenue play for BMW, and we have our complete suite of thermal products, heating, cooling, steering wheel, massage, lumbar, and heated surfaces. So we're really proud of that.
Similarly, we announced that, at last quarter's call, that we won a conquest award for pneumatic lumbar and massage with General Motors, for the truck platform, the Sierra and Silverado platform. Very excited about that. That program also has our suite of thermal solutions, including software, ClimateSense software, and our ECUs. So these are two great, great proof points. As we talk about innovation, I'll give you one more great example that's hot off the press for us. We just won our very first pneumatic lumbar and massage award with Hyundai on a next generation Genesis SUV. And even more exciting, is this will be the first release of our proprietary Pulse A massage technology. So our very first production award.
This technology we think is gonna be a game changer. It actually uses the normal pneumatic massage, but adds a pulsation, which really replicates the kind of deeper tissue treatment that you would experience in, you know, from the human touch. And we think it's one of a kind, and we expect this to really continue to help separate Gentherm and add more content per vehicle. Finally, I'll talk a little bit about innovation, and most of these probably will show up in Q&A as we go through the day. You know, on top of hardware innovations that we drive, such as the Puls.A technology I just mentioned, we are very much a system provider. We use our science to develop software, which then in turn we can use to develop a complete solution.
You know, the science behind what we do is very important for us. Thermophysiology, physiotherapy, are really two of the core areas we invest a lot of resources into through PhDs and scientists. Those folks will then in turn develop solutions which our software teams puts into algorithms or routines that can orchestrate all the hardware in the vehicle. So I think that's a huge differentiator for us, and you can see a couple of those examples with ClimateSense, which is our unique microclimate solution. WellSense, which is a software-driven comfort, health, and wellness solution that really fits perfectly into the software-defined vehicle architecture of the future.
And then more on hardware is ComfortScale, and, you know, the fact that we now have, thermal and pneumatic, we can really combine those into a very efficient package, which is providing a lot of value to OEMs. So with that, hopefully, that was a good overview, and we'll pass it to Luke to dive into the Q&A.
Yeah. Thanks for that overview, Phil. I wanna start with some recent items of note which really weave into those three big pillars that you had on the previous slide here, and the first one would just be ClimateSense and the software side of the business and your capability. Maybe if we could just dig a little deeper into that GM ClimateSense award. Frame up what in particular you're providing to GM, and then you mentioned those truck platforms that you announced with first quarter earnings, but, you know, there's line of sight to a lot of vehicles across GM's lineup.
Yeah.
Just pacing of that and maybe how quickly that can unfold based on the-
Sure
... the infrastructure piece.
Luke, we've talked a lot in the past about our movement to a scalable solution for ClimateSense, and obviously, General Motors is our point customer when it comes to ClimateSense. So we worked a lot with them in terms of determining how ClimateSense can help orchestrate all ranges of thermal solutions in the car. All the way from basic heating and steering wheel heat, to CCS, to more advanced full systems like you're gonna see in the Cadillac Celestiq, which is gonna have an incredible ClimateSense setup. You know, anxious for you and more to get an experience with that.
But the idea was, okay, let's make sure that our software, which really is the orchestrator of our thermal solutions in the car and helps to drastically improve the experience of the consumer, heating and cooling at just the right location on the body for just the right amount of time, but also helping especially with the EV transition, to reduce the power consumption. So that was really a goal that we had together, and, and the idea was that we were gonna put software in every future vehicle that has a microclimate solution, and that that software will help to orchestrate using the intelligence behind the software algorithm.
Any comments at a high level on pacing? I think you said that, you know, it's gonna be next generation architectures to some extent. Can you just unpack what that might mean for pacing?
You'll probably see the first launch in the 2026-2027 model year timeframe.
Okay, got it. And then-
Other than the upcoming Celestiq and Escalade IQ that we've announced.
Okay, that's helpful. Then just, you know, this seems like the full realization of ClimateSense right now. Like you said, you've been pushing towards this more modular direction. So we look across other OEMs you've been working closely, as you mentioned, with GM for many years on this platform. How close are their OEMs to adopting this kind of software-first approach? And I don't know if you can kinda scale or frame the level of engagement right now, but even just directionally, I think anything would be helpful.
Yeah. Since we've made this movement to a modular software platform, definitely the rate of discussions has picked up, so we're very optimistic in scaling this. The other thing that—the other side effect is that we can very easily demonstrate the power of higher content thermal solutions in the vehicle. And we're seeing, you know, OEMs add more more seats in terms of heating and cooling, adding heated and cooled panels on around the body. Radiant heat is becoming a trend that we're seeing more and more of. So I'd say kind of two things happening: one, more interest in ClimateSense, but secondly, even where there's more of a longer-term view to getting that done, and maybe the SDV capabilities are farther out for an OEM, they're looking at the benefit of adding more hardware.
Mm-hmm.
So it really has been a big benefit for us. I mentioned BMW, the interior heat that we'll be launching-
Mm
... on the X vehicles. Honda has been a great customer for us for interior heat and, and more to come.
Okay, well, stay tuned there. I wanna talk about WellSense, too. So this is something that you unveiled at CES this year, and I look forward to getting in the Celestiq. But I did have a chance to check out WellSense, which was, I thought, really cool and just very different from what you'd find in the car today. And, you know, now you're coming out with this Puls.A announcement, you know, first booking. It seems pretty quick to go from rolling out-
Yeah
... the product at CES to first booking with some of the tech underpinning that. Can you just talk about customer engagement and how you got Hyundai over the line so quickly?
WellSense played a huge part. The fact that we, you know, we developed the software behind WellSense and released it at CES, and then created... We've been around the world to all of our customers demonstrating the WellSense. Luke, I know you experienced it. You experienced Puls.A -
Mm-hmm
... and gave us good feedback, by the way, on that. So that was kind of the impetus behind the interest that we're getting, not just from Hyundai on the Genesis, which obviously is now gonna be, you know, under full-scale development for a launch. But more OEMs are seeing that. I think what it's done is unlocked a vision of what can be done in the future, and to have that vision, you better have the content in the vehicle. And, you know, what we... To kinda encapsulate WellSense, what we showed was the ability, with a software-defined vehicle, to add wellness features over time in a vehicle after it's purchased, and you have to have the hardware content to do that.
So as an example, we showed some very interesting samples that said, okay, if you have a WellSense app, so to speak, in your vehicle, and someone buys a nicely contented vehicle with maybe Puls.A massage and heating and cooling, our scientists will be constantly generating new solutions that can be sold to consumers, whether that's through a subscription or through a download. You know, one great example that we like to use is helping to manage lower back pain. It's a chronic issue, and using heating, cooling, pulsating massage, you can actually do some great things around that, and that could be a solution that could be offered post-sale.
Mm-hmm.
Really unlocking some of the revenue streams, you know, with our OEMs.
I wanna turn to maybe some near-term things. So your orders have shown really good strength, especially coming out of the Alfmeier deal. Can you just unpack what's driving that, just where you're winning incrementally right now?
Yeah, I think we're- it's really a kind of across the board. Our thermal products, we think we have some innovative solutions, you know, underpinned by the software and electronics that I mentioned. That puts us in a very unique space to solve problems for OEMs. So our thermal business continues to win at a great pace. Expanding that in China with domestic OEMs, like Li Auto and BYD, has been big for us. And definitely on the pneumatics, that is gonna fuel some significant growth for us because that was, you know, relatively small business that only did... You know, Alfmeier only did business with a handful of customers, but had the best technology on the market. So we're scaling that, and as I mentioned, nine Conquest Awards in the space.
That's probably gonna be our fastest-growing product line over the next couple of years, as we start rolling out new products. Electronics and software is a great area for us to grow, too. More of the OEMs are actually looking at adding edge ECUs that can control multi-functions and help them to combine ECUs, so that's been an area of focus for us too. And we're really excited about our position. Ours is clearly, our customers value what is, I think, one of the most important value propositions for Gentherm, which is we are not only the largest provider, but we're independent. And what does that mean? It means we can supply our product and solutions to all 50-plus OEMs that we work with, and growing, through any seat manufacturer or interior manufacturer.
So we work with 30+ seat manufacturers, and our product has the flexibility to be adapted for all those combinations, and that's a really unique position for us. And, you know, that obviously, as we've talked about quite a bit, majority of our business is sourced directly by OEMs, some by Tier 1s. But we can move anywhere in that ecosystem and provide unique solutions, and that's been, you know, really valued by our customers.
What about ComfortScale to those Tier 1 customers, especially, and just the level of intimacy and understanding of their-
Yeah
processes that you have, and you had ruled that out at our industrial conference last year, kind of formally introducing it. Now it's been, you know, about six months. Just an update on where that stands in terms of conversations and potential bookings ultimately.
A lot of good momentum. We haven't announced the win yet, but a lot... There's a lot happening on that front. The concept basically is, if you look at our thermal solutions and our pneumatic solutions, there's a lot of independent pieces. We've created a really a product that can be two part numbers at the end of the day, that combine all of our thermal and all of our pneumatic solutions, that we can provide to the OEMs through seat manufacturers or to seat manufacturers.
What we did is we used our knowledge of the 30-plus seat manufacturers and all of the OEMs' strategies around, you know, how they're designing product, and created something that's really a platform that can be scalable with many changes and something mechanically that can be kind of dropped in, you know, very quickly, drive down labor costs for our OEMs and Tier 1 customers, and really tailor to the solutions that they want.
So you mentioned China, and let me double click on that for a moment here. Just maybe an update on your positioning with local OEMs in China, and maybe if you can give us some line of sight into just what's in your backlog right now and what you've already booked, but maybe not be, might not be in the P&L at this point.
Well, yeah. So first of all, still the majority of our revenue comes from transplants in China.
Mm-hmm.
You know, the Volkswagen, General Motors, BMW of the world. But we've been selectively pursuing domestic OEMs over the last handful of years and, you know, choosing companies that, you know, fit our model. In other words, they're gonna have more content, we think they're a viable customer for us to invest in and kind of latch on to. Examples of those have been Great Wall, BYD, certainly for some specific platforms. Li Auto has been a great customer for us in terms of growth. Most of that is all in the backlog right now.
Mm-hmm.
You know, it's still relatively small on the domestic side, but fast growing. Great Wall actually is starting to show some pretty strong growth for us. Li Auto will be going into production this year and scaling up really quickly. Same with BYD. So we're really excited about that. We're not chasing everything. We're trying to be very selective. You know, it is a market that you have to be very careful of and invest properly. But we're pretty pleased with the direction we're going. We have a very strong team in China that's leading this exercise. We run a very localized operation there, both on the business development, application engineering, and manufacturing side.
Mm-hmm
... which is, puts us in a strong position.
What about the opportunity to follow Chinese OEMs as they're starting to look at export markets, especially export markets into Europe? Do you think that changes the competitive dynamics at all and change their view on the amount of content that they're gonna wanna put in the car? Anything preliminary you can report there?
I'd say it's early to-
Mm
... to tell that, but, I would speculate that the shift into those markets is probably gonna have more content, because that's an expectation in the U.S. market, certainly in the European market. There's a really growing demand, consumer demand for these kind of features. So I think that puts us in a pretty good position.
Let's dial back to some bottom line type topics. Matteo, maybe if we could talk about Fit for Growth.
Mm-hmm.
you know, performance versus expectations thus far. Is it in line with what you'd expected, or are you exceeding expectations?
Yeah
in certain areas?
So let me just, for a second, take a step back. Fit for Growth is our initiatives that we launched, about a year and a half ago, roughly. Where we are aiming at taking about $80 million of cost, net of inflation, out of the company, primarily on the variable cost. It's a cross-functional team, involves several, you know, work streams, primarily, the activities are centered around value engineering, so taking cost out of the bill of material. Sourcing savings, so working with our sourcing partners to keep reducing the material cost for the company. Automation is key for us, particularly this year, as we are seeing a heightened level of labor inflation in Mexico and a couple of countries where we operate in Eastern Europe.
Footprint optimization. We announced, you know, about a year ago, the closure of one of our facilities here in the U.S., opening a new facility in Monterrey, Mexico, and then a new facility in Morocco, which will come up and running sometimes in 2025. So these are where the bulk of the savings are gonna be centered. In terms of your question, we're actually pretty happy where we stand. It's a little bit going ahead of plan, I would say. If you look at the numbers that we reported on the financials in the first quarter, we're actually better than what we had originally anticipated at the beginning of the year, and this is really thanks to Fit for Growth. We saw acceleration of some of the benefits coming from value engineering sourcings.
The team was able to negotiate some of the sourcing savings maybe a little faster than what we had expected. So we are- we're pleased where we are. There's a lot of work to do. You know, it's $80 million. We have about projects that are either implemented or in the process of being implemented account for about 75% of the $80. And then we have a good line of sight for the remaining 25%. But we feel, we feel strong and actually yesterday, you know, we announced that our board authorized a new share repurchase program for about $150 million in the next three years.
And that's, you know, a testament of the confidence that we have, both the board and the management team, on the income trajectory for the company, the growth, as well as obviously, the cash flow generation.
Yeah. So you mentioned, you know, one of those key buckets is sourcing savings, and certainly, electronics is an area that had inflation and is now an area for-
Yeah
Potential recoveries. You know, would you attribute... I would assume you'd attribute the fact that that's coming faster than expected to good execution on the part of the team. But what about what you're finding in the supplier base, and sort of flexibility in wanting to work with a company that can deliver growth and the opportunities?
A lot came from execution, to your point, but overall, I think, in general, the environment is definitely, you know, much improved, compared to where we were about a year ago. Not only in terms of deliveries, we clearly don't have the same ups and down that we faced in 2022 and at the beginning of 2023, but also our ability to negotiate with the sourcing partners, I think, is definitely improved. So the environment is, is better than what we had in the past.
Just to add to that, Luke, we are getting actually a surprising amount of attention from the semiconductor makers, positively.
Mm-hmm.
And I think it's because they keep a close eye on what's happening in the automotive space and what the trends are, and we believe we're out in front when it comes to wellness and health, and those kinds of additions. So, I mean, I've had CEOs of pretty large semiconductor manufacturers come into our office in Michigan. You know, in the grand scheme of things, we're pretty small, but I think they are excited to be part of that movement.
Okay. Got a 3.5 minutes left here. Certainly want to touch on some near-term things. So first would just be top-line growth, and, you know, you're expecting a lift as we go into the back half of the year. Can we just talk about your visibility to ramping growth and some of the key drivers in terms of launches and whatnot?
So generally, when we, you know, build our plans and even before the regular earnings call, the way we estimate our revenue forecast, it really comes from work that we are doing directly with our customers, so OEMs and Tier 1s. And then, our processes, we use S&P Global, almost like a sanity check, and we, if there is a difference, then we probe. So the revenue projections that we confirmed in the last earnings call really come from this type of work. And what we are seeing is second quarter, it's in line with what we were expecting, so a little better in terms of revenue sequentially, compared to the first.
And then there is a, you know, sizable increase in the second half compared to the first half, and that's really coming from two factors. One is a sequential production volume increase, and then also a significant amount of launches that are expected to come in the second half compared to the first half. So that's why we have a sequential increase of the revenue. And overall, we are projecting this organic growth for the year to be around 5%. Production volume, S&P Global has it pretty much flat in our relevant markets.
We think actually it's gonna be maybe slightly down, so we're a little bit more pessimistic, but a nice pace of the production volume as a result of the launches, and then, the take rate improvements that, Phil, talked earlier.
Yeah, and then the margin side of things-
Yeah.
Obviously, more volume should help on the margin front. I know we've got some plant-related activity-
Correct
that's going on right now. So we still be expecting that to really be focused on the second quarter and then free up some margin expansion.
Correct
potential on the back half?
Dynamic is gonna be volume clearly helps. You're gonna have the continuous work on Fit for Growth, and we're gonna see a little bit of an acceleration on the margin improvements in the second half, and then, partially offset by some of the startup costs that we projected since the the fourth quarter earnings call, related to the new facilities, which are ramping up according to plan, both in Morocco and Monterrey. Monterrey will be, you know, we're starting to see some production out at the end of the year, and and Morocco will come in in 2025.
Got about, not quite a minute left too. Maybe just comment on the award environment and, you know, what that might mean for Bookings through the rest of this year.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, last year, we had kind of a banner year of $2.6 billion in awards. First quarter this year, $530 million, which was a record for the first quarter. The pipeline still looks robust for the rest of the year. You know, I'm not sure we'll hit $2.6 again, but certainly good track to the $2 billion mark plus. So we're pretty excited about it. Still a lot of activity out there, and we feel really good about how we're positioned.
Okay, well, that takes us right to time, so I'll... If you do have additional questions for management, they will be available for a breakout here in the mezzanine level. That'll be in the Rockefeller Foyer, and please join me in thanking-