Aptiv - Q2 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Welcome to the Aptiv Q2 2023 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Jane Wu, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

Jane Wu (VP of Investor Relations and Corporate Development)

Thank you, Elana. Good morning, and thank you for joining Aptiv's second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. The press release and related tables, along with a slide presentation, can be found on the investor relations portion of our website at aptiv.com. Today's review of our financials exclude amortization, restructuring, and other special items, and will address the continuing operations of Aptiv. The reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures for our second quarter financials, as well as our full year 2023 outlook, are included at the back of the slide presentation and the earnings press release. During today's call, we will be providing certain forward-looking information that reflects Aptiv's current view of future financial performance and may be materially different for reasons that we cite in our Form 10-K and other SEC filings.

Joining us today will be Kevin Clark, Aptiv's Chairman and CEO, and Joe Massaro, CFO, and Senior Vice President of Business Operations. Kevin will provide a strategic update on the business, and Joe will cover the financial results in more detail before we open the call to Q&A. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Kevin Clark.

Kevin Clark (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Jane, and thanks everyone for joining us this morning. Beginning on slide three, we delivered a record quarter, demonstrating outperformance in an improving supply chain environment. Touching on a few of the highlights, revenue increased 25% to $5.2 billion, a new record for quarterly revenue, representing 10 points of growth over underlying vehicle production, driven by strong demand across our portfolio, as well as across all geographic regions. Revenues in our active safety and high voltage electrification product lines increased almost 50%, underscoring the strength of our safe, green, and connected product portfolio. EBITDA and operating income totaled a record $695 million and $530 million, respectively, reflecting solid flow-through on volume growth and fewer supply chain disruptions, partially offset by unfavorable foreign exchange rates, commodity prices, and ongoing material and labor inflation.

New business bookings totaled $6.1 billion, further validating our industry-leading portfolio, the strength of our customer relationships, and our ability to execute flawlessly in a dynamic environment. Turning to slide four, our first half performance was substantially in line with our expectations. New business bookings totaled over $20 billion, driven by customer awards for our SVA compute and software, high voltage electrification, user experience, and active safety solutions. Record revenue, representing 20% growth, 8 points over underlying vehicle production, in line with our long-term framework, record EBITDA and operating income, as well as significant year-over-year margin expansion, the result of strong volume growth and increased operating efficiencies, partially offset by the headwinds I mentioned on the prior slide. We're ahead of plan for both Wind River and Intercable Automotive Solutions, with both companies experiencing an uptick in commercial engagements and customer awards.

Although supply chain issues persist, we experienced a sequential improvement in the supply of semiconductors, resulting in more stable vehicle production schedules. From a macro and industry perspective, global vehicle production has been strong, with the North American and European markets being the most resilient. Given the current industry backdrop, we're updating our outlook for the full year. We now expect global vehicle production to increase 3%-4%, principally driven by stronger vehicle production in North America and Europe. Our updated outlook does not take into account any labor disruptions in North America, although we do recognize that this is a real risk. Joe will provide a more granular update on our revised outlook when we review the financials.

Regardless of the market backdrop, we remain laser-focused on enhancing our portfolio of safe, green, and connected solutions, executing on our commercial strategy and optimizing our business model, which will continue to position us to benefit from the secular tailwinds. Moving to slide five. As I already mentioned, new business bookings during the quarter were $6.1 billion, bringing our year-to-date total to over $20 billion. Advanced Safety and User Experience bookings totaled $1.7 billion, driven by $1 billion in user experience bookings, including awards for Aptiv's integrated cockpit controller and driver state sensing solutions. Signal Power Solutions bookings reached $4.4 billion, including $1.4 billion in bookings for our high voltage electrification solutions, comprised of awards across our high voltage product portfolio with both traditional and new battery electric vehicle manufacturers.

Given the strength of our commercial pipeline, we have clear line of sight to exceed last year's $4.2 billion in high voltage business awards, and we remain highly confident in achieving our full year bookings target of $32 billion, further validating the strength of our portfolio of advanced technologies and our ability to deliver exceptional value for our customers. Turning to slide six to review our Advanced Safety and User Experience segment's second quarter highlights. AS&UX achieved record revenue of $1.5 billion, increasing 24 points above underlying vehicle production. Active safety revenues increased 49%, with strength across North America, Europe, and China, as the launch of our level 2 and level 2 plus ADAS solutions continue to ramp. User experience revenues increased 33%, driven by volume growth across key programs in both Europe and North America.

Lastly, smart vehicle compute and software revenue grew 30%, reflecting Wind River's commercial success in both the automotive and non-automotive markets, which I'll cover in more detail on the next slide. In terms of new business bookings, we were awarded over $400 million of active safety bookings, including program extension awards with a North American customer. As I mentioned, we're also awarded roughly $1 billion of user experience bookings, including a significant program extension with the VW Group. This particular award is for an integrated cockpit controller, first launched on the Porsche Taycan, and now being rolled out across numerous other vehicle platforms. As vehicle life cycles get shorter, the ability to cost-effectively extend our solutions across both luxury and mass-market vehicle platforms reinforces Aptiv's value as a strategic partner.

As demand increases for more advanced active safety and user experience solutions, the need for more advanced compute, software development, and integration capabilities is required. Our ability to provide a full suite of flexible platform solutions that are cost-effective while providing our customers with choice, differentiates us from our competitors. As a result, we've experienced an increase in the number of strategic customer engagements and are confident that additional business awards will follow later this year. Moving to slide seven. Wind River delivers edge-to-cloud software solutions for mission-critical applications, enabling software-defined systems that require the highest levels of safety, security, and performance.

The Wind River team's done a great job increasing the partnership ecosystem while also winning new business, particularly in the aerospace and defense, telecom, and automotive markets, including a new program award for an A&D customer, GMV, to provide its edge software, and with a global European truck manufacturer to provide its Linux edge software and services for their next-generation communication gateway, providing a nice entree into the commercial vehicle market. The Wind River team continues to be actively engaged with several automotive customers on enabling the software-defined vehicle of the future. They've announced several new partnerships to expand their ecosystem, including with Samsung, to develop a fully integrated software and hardware solution for the automotive industry. This solution will be enabled by Wind River's Helix Virtualization Platform, which will allow end users to utilize a diverse set of runtime environments, including the VxWorks RTOS, Linux, and Android.

Last month, the team also announced a strategic collaboration with Horizon Robotics to provide Wind River's complete edge-to-cloud portfolio for Horizon's automated driving compute solutions for the China market. These partnerships in automotive, along with Wind River's continued commercial success in its traditional markets, allow Aptiv to capitalize on the transition to a more software-defined future. Together with Wind River, Aptiv is well-positioned to provide cloud-native software solutions that help customers reduce complexity while enabling flexibility, lower total system cost, faster speed to market, and new business models. In order to provide you with a deeper look at our software strategy and the value that we can deliver to customers, we'll be hosting a software teach-in in September. We're excited to tell you more about the Aptiv Wind River opportunity, and we'll provide more details as we get closer to the date.

Turning to the Signal and Power Solutions segment on slide 8. S&PS second quarter revenues increased 21%, 6 points over vehicle production, the result of strong revenue growth in China as we lap the COVID disruptions during the second quarter of last year, a 48% increase in high-voltage revenues, reflecting strong growth across all regions and product lines, and a 32% increase in commercial vehicle revenues. The $1.4 billion in high-voltage bookings that I mentioned previously included another strong quarter from Intercable Automotive, which I'll touch on in more detail on the next slide. Multiple awards with the Hyundai Motor Group, including for both power distribution and battery pack electrical architecture, and a high voltage electrical center award from a global European truck manufacturer, further increasing our penetration of the commercial vehicle market as it begins to transition to battery electric vehicle platforms.

Moving to slide nine. As I mentioned earlier, we're well on our way to exceeding last year's record of $4.2 billion of high-voltage bookings. We continue to enhance the breadth of our high-voltage product portfolio as we introduce new offerings in power electronics and battery management systems. The addition of Intercable Automotive Solutions expands our portfolio to include high-voltage busbars, solid-state electrical centers, and battery cell interconnect solutions, further widening our competitive moat. We expect Intercable revenues to increase roughly 30% per year over the next several years, strengthening our position as the only full system provider of high-voltage solutions. With approximately $1 billion in bookings year to date, Intercable has already exceeded its 2022 full-year bookings amount, and their pipeline for 2023 new business awards is now more than $2 billion, validation of the strength of their best-in-class, high-voltage electrification technologies...

Already a market leader with European customers, Intercable recently launched production from one of Aptiv's facilities in North America, with customer delivery scheduled to begin this quarter. In addition to what interconnect brings, we continue to experience significant commercial interest in our growing portfolio of power electronics and battery management system solutions for both battery producers and high-volume battery electric vehicle manufacturers. With our unique portfolio of high-voltage solutions and full system capabilities, we're perfectly positioned to be the partner of choice for customers around the world as they transition to an optimized electrified vehicle architecture. Moving to slide 10. Before I turn the call over to Joe to walk through the financials, I wanted to take a minute to recognize an important achievement by the Aptiv team. In July, Aptiv was recognized by Volkswagen with the prestigious Volkswagen Group Award, one of just a handful of suppliers.

Aptiv was chosen for more than 40,000 suppliers for the top spot in the category of Global Performance Champion, recognition for our product innovation, and ability to keep Volkswagen connected during these challenging times. The VW and Aptiv strategies are fully aligned, our teams have been working closely over the last three years to design and develop the vehicle architecture that will enable the software-defined vehicle of the future. The Aptiv team is extremely proud of this award and looks forward to continuing to innovate and further strengthen our long-standing and strategic partnership with the VW Group. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Joe to go through the numbers in more detail.

Joe Massaro (CFO and SVP of Business Operations)

Thanks, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. Starting on slide 11. As Kevin highlighted, Aptiv reported another quarter of strong financial results, reflecting robust execution across both segments and continued improvement in operating performance. Revenues are up 25% to $5.2 billion or 10% above underlying vehicle production, excluding the impact of acquisitions, with outgrowth driven in part by strength in our AS&UX segment, particularly in active safety, as well as continued traction in our high voltage and commercial vehicle product lines. Adjusted EBITDA and operating income were $695 million and $530 million, respectively, reflecting flow-through on increased volumes of approximately 30%.

Continued progress on our ongoing performance initiatives, including a $70 million improvement in supply chain disruption costs from last year, and margin headwinds of 90 basis points from FX and commodities, primarily due to the stronger Mexican peso and weaker Chinese RMB. Earnings per share in the quarter were $1.25, an increase of $1.3 from the prior year, driven by higher operating income, which more than offset the negative FX and commodity impacts. Operating cash was $535 million, which was $440 million above the same period last year, primarily driven by higher earnings and reduced working capital investment during the quarter. Capital expenditures were $222 million. Looking at revenues in more detail on Slide 12. Revenue in the second quarter was a record $5.2 billion, representing adjusted growth of 25%.

Growth was broad-based across regions and segments, and our recent acquisitions added $176 million of revenue in the quarter. Net price and commodities were positive, more than offsetting the FX impact on revenue. From a regional perspective, North American revenues were up 19%, 4% above market, reflecting program timing at several customers, with increased launch activity expected in the second half of the year. In Europe, revenues increased by 28%, 14% above market, supported by growth in Advanced Safety and User Experience. In China, revenues grew 41% or 20% over market, reflecting the strength of our underlying product portfolio, particularly in active safety and high voltage. Moving to the segments on the next slide. Advanced Safety and User Experience revenues rose 39% in the quarter, or 24 points over vehicle production.

The outperformance was driven by strength in several product lines, including active safety, where revenues were up 49%. Segment adjusted operating income was $138 million, up $168 million when compared to the same period last year, despite a 90 basis points headwind from FX. With strong flow-through on incremental volumes of approximately 30%, as well as net price and operating performance that offset higher material and higher labor costs. Signal and power revenues were up 21%, 6 points above market. Market outperformance was driven by strength in several key product lines, including high voltage and commercial vehicle. Segment operating income totaled $392 million, up 61% from the prior year, despite an FX and commodity headwind of 90 basis points.

Driven by strong flow-through on incremental volumes, offsetting the net price and commodities impact, as well as improvements in operating performance, including lower disruption costs, which more than offset the impact of higher labor costs in the quarter. Turning to slide 14 and our updated 2023 macro outlook. We have increased our outlook for adjusted growth to 11%-13% for the full year, a meaningful increase from our original range of 7%-9%, and we continue to expect to outgrow the market by 9%. The change in outlook primarily reflects increases in customer production schedules in North America and Europe, resulting in vehicle production growth of approximately 4% and 5% at the midpoint, respectively. Please note that our production outlook does not assume any significant North American labor disruptions.

We expect China to be essentially flat on a year-over-year basis, in line with our prior guide, although we continue to see strong EV penetration, particularly with our Chinese OEM customers. In addition to changes in vehicle production volumes, we have also reflected current foreign exchange and commodity rates into the updated guide. The next slide summarizes our updated 2023 outlook. We now expect revenue in the range of $19.95 billion-$20.25 billion. EBITDA and operating income are expected to be approximately $2.8 billion and $2.1 billion at the midpoints, respectively. This reflects year-over-year operating income flow through of 21%, in line with our historical range of 18%-22%, despite significant FX and commodity headwinds.

Adjusted earnings per share of $4.75 at the midpoint, up almost 40% from prior year, driven by higher earnings, partially offset by higher tax and interest expense. Operating cash flow of approximately $2 billion, an increase of approximately $100 million over the prior guidance. Slide 16 walks prior guidance to our current outlook. Starting with revenue, sales volume increases by $700 million, reflecting higher European and North American customer schedules. Net price, commodities, and foreign exchange contribute positively to revenue, driven by the rate changes I previously discussed. Adjusted operating income is up $125 million over prior guide, as flow-through on sales growth and higher operating performance is partially offset by the negative impact of foreign exchange and the timing of copper price adjustments to our customers.

Net pricing, which includes the impact of customer price downs, price recoveries, and material inflation, remains in line with our original guidance. As previously discussed, the impact of foreign exchange movements, particularly the stronger peso and weaker RMB, have been significant this year, representing a $100 million headwinds to the original guide. Assuming rates for the balance of the year remain relatively consistent with the rates used in our updated guidance, including a stronger euro that partially offsets the negative peso and RMB impact, we believe the majority of the negative impact has been reflected in the first half results. In summary, we are pleased with Aptiv's year-to-date performance, including the continued growth of our key product lines, strong bookings, and continued margin expansion.

Our performance initiatives, including efforts to significantly reduce and ultimately eliminate disruption costs and to offset significant labor inflation, are on track and will continue to build throughout the year. Although we remain cautious about potential negative macroeconomic conditions over the next few quarters and the potential for labor disruptions in North America, we remain confident in our ability to meaningfully outgrow vehicle production. We also believe we are well-positioned to take advantage of stronger market conditions should the noted concerns not materialize. With that, I'd like to hand the call back to Kevin for closing remarks.

Kevin Clark (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, Joe. I'll wrap up on slide 17 before opening the line for questions. 2023 is off to a good start with record first half revenues, EBITDA, and operating income, and strong margin expansion. We maintained our momentum on new business awards for optimized full system solutions that deliver increased performance at lower cost to our customers. Our outlook for industry volumes has increased, and easing supply constraints have led to fewer production disruptions and improved operating efficiencies. We continue to focus on optimizing our cost structure to further enhance our operational resiliency. Our culture of innovation and commitment to keeping our customers connected is clearly translating into strong commercial momentum, which gives us confidence in our ability to execute our strategy, maintain our track record of outperformance, and deliver sustainable value creation for our shareholders. Operator, let's now open the line for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Participants may only ask one question and one follow-up question. Again, press star one to ask a question. We'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal for questions. We will take our first question from John Murphy from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

John Murphy (SVP)

Good morning, guys. Thanks for all the info this morning. Just a, just a, a simple question first on, on AS&UX. You know, it seems like, you know, you suddenly just kind of gotten to escape velocity here. And I'm just curious if that's kind of a, a fair statement, particularly with these margins at 9%, they are weighed down by, you know, some other factors. I mean, you know, on a normalized basis, they actually were approaching 10%. You know, in, in these, you know, these ramp up of some of these growth segments, I mean, is this, is this where we're, we should be thinking in terms of the travel rate for margins, or was something else going on in, in the quarter, other than just this, this kind of escape velocity being reached?

Kevin Clark (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, I, I, John, I'll start, and Joe certainly should add to it. Clearly, the environment for semiconductors and supply chain associated with semiconductors has improved. I think, as an industry, with the semiconductor manufacturers, we've been, you know, working over the last 2 years to enhance visibility, to enhance alternatives or choices. With the slowdown in some of the consumer electronics markets, it's certainly freed up incremental, incremental supply. As a result, it's made our supply chain much more efficient, which results in lower costs from a manufacturing standpoint, as well as from a, you know, from a freight and other standpoint. That's reflected in our numbers to date.

We would expect that to continue into the, obviously, into the back half of the year as we have lower- Sorry, it sounds like we had a little feedback. As we have lower disruption costs, more operating efficiency, we're able to operate more efficiently, and then continue into 2024 and beyond.

John Murphy (SVP)

Okay, and then just one, one follow-up on, on Intercable. Using that sort of as a test case for, you know, some of these acquisitions that you're making. I mean, it sounds like you can't sell this or explain it, you know, well enough as, as to how the, sort of, the expansion opportunity is in front of you for, for Intercable. I'm just curious, in the current base of customers and, and the $1 billion that's been won year to date or booked year to date, are we still looking at a European-centric revenue base, as far as the customers, and there's just extreme opportunity in other regions and with other automakers outside of the European automakers? I'm just trying to understand where, where this is ultimately gonna go.

Kevin Clark (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, make sure I understand the question. I, I, I think today, the bulk of their revenues are related to European BEV programs. But as, as we talked about previously, one of the reasons that, that, that we acquired Intercable is, in addition to their technical capabilities and their broad portfolio, a view that we could easily provide them with entrees into the North America market, which we've done to date. As, as I mentioned in our prepared comments, we're all already producing products in one of Aptiv's existing manufacturing facilities in Mexico. And we'll be delivering product to a North American OEM starting this quarter, and we see significant opportunities with the other North American OEMs.

Similarly, with, with China, although they have manufacturing capabilities in China, just given our knowledge of the market and our experience there, we feel as though that we, you know, we're a great leverage point for them to sell their product into that market as well. You know, as I mentioned, their, their, their funnel for bookings opportunities is well over $2 billion. The opportunities are really significant with Intercable. They have a great portfolio. They have an even stronger management team, so we're really excited about the acquisition.

John Murphy (SVP)

Great. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

We will take our next question from Itay Michaeli from Citi. Please go ahead.

Itay Michaeli (Managing Director and Head of Business Architecture Governance)

Great. Thanks. Good morning, everybody. Just two questions from me. Just first, maybe, Joe, I was hoping we could just walk through the how you think about the H2 versus H1 margin bridge embedded in your, in your guidance. Then just secondly, I, you know, I did notice restructuring expenses kind of moved up in Q2. I think you raised your, your outlook there. Maybe just hopefully you could elaborate on where you're seeing these restructuring opportunities and how much more of a lever that could be going forward for margin expansion.

Joe Massaro (CFO and SVP of Business Operations)

Yeah, let me start with that one, and then go to H1, H2, Itay. I would say that that is, you know, we've talked about that, not necessarily in the context of the restructure dollars, but things like pivoting engineering to best cost countries, those types of activities, it's obviously what you're seeing. And, you know, as we laid out in Investor Day, particularly with engineering, that's really part of the established margin guidance into 2025, right? So I would think of that as us, you know, taking the necessary actions over time to, to continue to move towards that, that commitment versus, versus something incremental. From a, from a bridge perspective, from an H1 to H2, not gonna get into a lot of detail, but you're gonna see a couple of things.

you know, there's a slight volume uptick, a little less than $100 million. That sort of flows at, call it, 30% on volume. FX will be better. you know, we had about, you know, be better by about $30 million. We don't expect that these current rates to have as much transaction hits as we did in the first half as we adjusted down. Then you've got, you know, what I'd call performance initiatives, as well as some inflation recovery. That's, that's gonna be over $100 million. That's really the big bucket. Some of that's coming out of disruption costs.

The other, as I noted, is going to be, you know, a continued, a continued march on these performance initiatives that we've talked about, and they'll, they'll continue to improve over the back half of the year.

Itay Michaeli (Managing Director and Head of Business Architecture Governance)

Terrific. I appreciate all that detail. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We will now move to Rod Lache from Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Rod Lache (Managing Director)

Good morning, everybody. We wanted to just ask you kind of a couple big picture things. One is in the margin bridge that you presented from 2022-2025 at your Investor Day, you had a bucket of $1.7 billion. It was I think you called it performance. It was elimination of COVID costs. Part of it was some supplier costs. Can you just update us on where that bucket stands now, and what proportion of that $1.7 billion you think we will actually see in 2023?

Joe Massaro (CFO and SVP of Business Operations)

Yeah, Rod, it's Joe. Let me start. Remember that bucket, that was a 22-25 bridge, right? You had-

Rod Lache (Managing Director)

Right.

Joe Massaro (CFO and SVP of Business Operations)

You know, the biggest individual item in that $1.7 billion is about over $300 million, call it $330 million-$350 million of supply chain disruption costs. We expected a lot of that to come out this year. We had $130 million in the original guide. It's improved now, maybe $100 million, around $160 million coming out this year. The balance will come out next year. The remaining is just sort of what I'll call sort of those annual material and manufacturing improvements for the three years, 2023, 2024, 2025. You know, I would say you could sort of take those across each of the years. They're a little back-end loaded. They grow into 2024 and 2025, but for the most part, we're on track.

It's really what you're seeing sort of come through, in the performance bridges as we've talked, you know, just, just even over the past, this past quarter, right? $70 million improvement in, in supply chain disruption costs alone. I'd say we're tracking in line with, with those expectations.

Rod Lache (Managing Director)

Okay, thanks for that. Just switching gears, a few Western companies seem to have lately realized that the EV platforms that they were working on were just too expensive, and we've already seen Volkswagen reach out to Xpeng to use their platform, and seemingly there's a few other discussions in the industry about using Chinese platforms. I'm just wondering, from Aptiv's perspective, how you, how that affects you. You, you did mention, again, on the call that you've been working with Volkswagen on the architecture of the future. Would you, would you be agnostic to that, or are there some implications for you as, if, if that is something that continues?

Kevin Clark (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, Rod, maybe I'll start with it. Listen, I think as we've talked about in the past, our overall outlook for penetration of battery electric vehicles and electrification overall has been, I'd say a bit on the conservative side relative to kind of industry perspective. That has been our underlying perspective, and a significant amount of that perspective is shaped on costs and an understanding of our OEM customers and sensitivity to cost and sensitivity to the cost of new technologies. You know, that's one.

Two, just given, given the breadth of our product portfolio, given our, our full system approach to, to high voltage electrification in, in this particular case, we have an opportunity to present our customers with a solution that is much lower cost than, than a traditional approach to battery electric vehicle architecture. And, you know, we've had examples, and we've talked about this in the past, where existing customers with existing BEV platforms have come to us, asked us to evaluate opportunities to optimize. And using our, our, our, our design capabilities and our portfolio of solutions, we've been able to reduce weight and mass by 25%-30% and overall systems cost by 20% or more.

Given our historical capabilities or given our, our, our strength in, from a product portfolio standpoint and our knowledge of, of vehicle architecture, we bring a lot to bear. I'd say the third piece, you know, as we've talked about, this transition to battery electric vehicles, which in reality has been underway for a long period of time, and we've seen elements of fits and starts during that period, and we've been impacted by those fits and starts. We've been very selective as it relates to those customers, those platforms that we operate on, and we operate on those that, you know, we have a high level of confidence. They'll be global. They're designed specifically for battery electric vehicle platforms, therefore, we'll get volume.

You know, from a contracting standpoint, we contract very carefully to the extent, you know, we see volume reductions, there are changes in pricing. Just, just given our past experience, again, as we've seen battery electric vehicles developed and the attempt to introduce them into the market for the last several years, you know, we've learned a lot of lessons, and we've established a really, I would say, a fairly conservative approach in terms of how do we manage risk, but at the same time, how do we develop a portfolio capability that provides our customers with lower-cost solutions? Because we are big believers that over a period of time, you're going to continue to see, you know, significant penetration of electrification in our industry.

Rod Lache (Managing Director)

Great. That's helpful. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We will take our next question from Chris McNally from Evercore. Please go ahead.

Chris McNally (Head of Global Auto and Mobility Research)

Thanks so much, team. Maybe I could start, you know, on the top line and macro. I know it gets kind of confusing talking about North America with the upcoming UAW issue. Maybe, Joe, we could focus in on Europe. Just some quick numbers on the 4%-6% production, which is, you know, lower than the forecasters. I think we had something like 15%, 16% in the first half, you know, so it implies down in the second half. You know, obviously, inflation crisis and, you know, cost of living, et cetera.

Curious if you're seeing anything specific, you, you obviously have a lot of insight there, or if there's just a, you know, a bit of conservatism built in for the next couple of months as, as schedules firm up.

Joe Massaro (CFO and SVP of Business Operations)

s a good place to start. I would say, you know, Q3, we're on production schedules, right? So we've, we're sort of locked in at this point with our customers, and we've obviously, have been through July. Certainly, and as I said in my prepared remarks, you know, certainly to the extent there is more production in the back half of the year, I think we'd certainly benefit from it. Remaining a little cautious, just given all the, you know, all the potential, you know, sort of macro ups and downs. It's still, you know, the environment's not perfect. It's still, it's still a challenging environment. It's, it's as Kevin Clark said, it's much better. But yeah, a little bit of caution and, and but more in the fourth quarter than, than in the third.

In third, we're, we're fairly locked in at this point on customer schedules.

Chris McNally (Head of Global Auto and Mobility Research)

That's really helpful. If I could just follow up some numbers to Mark's comments on AS&UX, where the, you know, the margin progression does seem like it's starting to take off. I think from your 8%-9% full year, it sort of implies the back half, roughly 10%. You know, we usually, you know, I think because of some of the price issues, we can sort of use it as, like, a base. You have a 13.5% 13%-13.5% target for 2025. Given that, I think that $190 million you just laid out in recovery, a lot of that will come in AS&UX.

Is it, you know, assuming that we have okay, you know, up small, low single digit volumes next year, that we can kind of split the difference and, you know, start to think about, you know, 2024 being somewhere in between the halfway point of that 10 and let's call it, 13.5%, or is there anything that, that takes longer, why, why it would be more of a back-end loaded, you know, 13%+ margin in 2025?

Joe Massaro (CFO and SVP of Business Operations)

Yeah, listen, we remain. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna get into 2024. It's a little too early in the year to do this. I think we, you know, we remain confident in the 2025 numbers for both total Aptiv as well as the segments. You know, I would think it will be a steady march of, you know, continued volume growth in the key product lines, continued improvement, the price. The team has done a good job on our inflation recoveries. The environment, you know, you could still have lumpy quarters between then and 2025, but feel like it's gonna be a pretty steady march. Exactly, you know, where 2024 falls out is obviously something we've got to work at.

As we look at what's rolling on in that business, increased software content, those types of things, still remain confident in that 2025 range.

Chris McNally (Head of Global Auto and Mobility Research)

Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We will take our next question from Adam Jonas from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Adam Jonas (Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research)

Thanks, everybody. Kevin, I thought your, your answer to Rod's question. There's a bit of an echo. On, on the pulling back or the more conservative EV targets, given your experiences, is, was really well done. I guess if I follow up on that, if there was a scenario where your 2025 and then longer-term EV assumptions were really dominated by Tesla and the Chinese, like, I'm thinking 75%+ share of the, of the, the EV market being those two regimes, would that, would that be mix adverse for you? Or yeah, I, I just kind of leave that open-ended, but just kind of think. Curious how you would approach that level of concentration, because there, there may be some scenarios where there's a winner take most on these global platforms. Then I have a follow-up. Thanks.

Kevin Clark (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. Not gonna talk about specific customers, Adam. I, I would say when you look at our revenue mix by region, we're pretty balanced between North America, North America, Europe, and China. Growth opportunities in China, I'd say on a relative basis, are more significant. From a, a funnel standpoint and a bookings opportunity standpoint, that is an area that, that we're, we're very focused on. Your comment on winner take all, our China high voltage or BEV customers are very focused, not only on the China market, but increasingly regarding exports into other markets, which I think is a part of, of, of what you're alluding to.

Our China customers, from a system standpoint, tend to be more inclined to buy a full system solution from us, so that tends to be a higher margin solution relative to selling component parts. I'm not sure if that's a net benefit for us or just a net neutral.

Adam Jonas (Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research)

Okay, Kevin. Thanks for that. Either Kevin or Joe, on Motional, can you give us a latest update on, on the capital need there in terms of cash consumption, and then what you got left in the tank before you need to put, put more in the kitty? Thanks.

Joe Massaro (CFO and SVP of Business Operations)

Yep, yep. No, Adam, no changes on that front since the last couple of quarters. They have cashed through, or at least into Q2 of next year. You know, continue to make progress on the technical and commercial side of things. As we've said previously, you know, probably not the most receptive capital markets at this point. Obviously, our partner, Hyundai, and ourselves are looking at it. You know, if we had to, if we had to call it today, I'd say the partners fund another year of operations. Haven't made that decision yet, but that would be the most likely outcome, I think, if we had to call it today. You know, they're going through about $500 million-$550 million of cash per year, so it would be, you know, a split of that.

Adam Jonas (Head of Global Auto and Shared Mobility Research)

Thanks, Joe. Thanks, Kevin.

Joe Massaro (CFO and SVP of Business Operations)

Yep. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We will take our next question from Dan Levy from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Dan Levy (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking the questions. First, wanted to just ask on commodities. It was you noted it was a, it was a headwind in the quarter. Maybe you could just provide us, Joe, with a, a, a bit more color on what the drag in the quarter was, was related to. And more broadly, what are you seeing in semis? Is there... It sounds like, you know, the environment is getting better, it's more stable. Is there any path to, to relief on the, the, the cost pressures that you saw in recent years in semiconductors?

Joe Massaro (CFO and SVP of Business Operations)

Two, two distinct questions there. Let me take commodities. For us, commodities is still mainly copper. Sort of nothing, nothing's changed over the last two years of that. We, we're indexed to copper with our customers for the vast majority, 80% of our copper buy. Those prices get adjusted either quarterly or, in some cases, semiannually. We have 1 customer, a large customer, where we actually do monthly. All we're dealing with there is really the lag, how much copper we have in at a certain price before we can pass it along or before we can, in this case, increase the prices. You wind up with, you know, that lag every once in a while, and copper tends to be more of a margin rate impact than margin dollars.

As it relates to semi, we've obviously passed along the price increases that we have received to date. We've been sort of direct, you know, a chip goes up, we pass that cost along to our customers. We will continue to do that as if and when we see additional inflation coming in the year. I would tell you at this point, and, you know, don't see any, any indications of chip prices coming down. I think if you looked, at least in some of the chip, chip folks that are, have a large automotive presence, I think they've been sort of echoing that, at least the, you know, the potential to hold or maybe even go up, in some of their public comments. We remain vigilant.

We would expect to pass additional price increases through to our, through to our customers, but certainly don't see any, any downside on, on those prices at this point.

Dan Levy (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you. Just a related question. If we just zoom out and look at the last few years, obviously, the results have been dragged by, you know, all of the material inflation headwinds, you know, largely semiconductors. I, and I assume that when you're booking your bookings, that that pricing is based on the commodity or input cost outlook at that time, and obviously, it's progressed to be, you know, a bit tougher since then.

What steps are you taking to ensure that as, as your backlog rolls on, as that becomes revenue and launches, that you're gonna get the appropriate pricing to ensure that the margins are, in line with what you'd like them to be, as opposed to being dragged maybe by, an input cost outlook, from a prior time?

Joe Massaro (CFO and SVP of Business Operations)

Dan, and, and we've talked about this a couple times before. So the, so the renegotiation on price with customers covered in process, products, right? Products that were being manufactured and things that were near launch, call it within sort of 12+ months to, to launch. For programs that are longer, further out from a start date perspective, we, we have the opportunity, and we've done this even before semiconductors, prices have gone up. You know, typically, before we really start to put capital in the ground, right, you got a sort of a two to three-year window before programs start. There are various touch points with customers around the economics of the program. Customers want that, we want that, suppliers want that. Those tended historically to have been around volumes, right?

If a program looks like it's gonna be significantly higher in volume, the OE wants to have a discussion. If it's gonna be lower in volume, the supplier wants to have a discussion. BOM costs are historically part of those. As we get, you know, I have, you know, up to the point of starting production or putting capital to work to start production, you know, we have a mechanism in place, and the team does a good job with it, to go back to customers on the overall economics of the program. BOM costs are gonna, you know, obviously now are included in that.

Have always been, but are now sort of at the, at the top of the list, particularly with semiconductors, of things that get discussed and, and sorted out to get the program back to the original economic deal that was struck.

Kevin Clark (Chairman and CEO)

Dan, if I could add one comment. I think Joe did a great job explaining how we contract and how we operate with our customers. At the same time, right?

The last couple of years has been a lot of focus on, one, keeping our employees safe, and then more recently, obviously, just supply chain connectivity, right? Keeping our customers connected, and as Joe articulated, passing on price increases to, to, to customers. At the same time, you know, we've been very focused on how do we continue to enhance our business model? So from a supply chain standpoint, whether it's semiconductor, semiconductor chips, or it's resin or other inputs to what we manufacture, we've been very focused on how do we redesign product and take out content, lower cost? How do we operate with our supply base more efficiently and more effectively to lower cost? You know, how do we operate with our customers from a supply chain standpoint as well, to, to, to, to, to increase efficiency and take out cost?

At the same time, when you, when you look at, you know, inflation in, in around areas like labor, how do we continue to rotate where we do things? You know, how do we move manufacturing, engineering, other, as well as how do we improve the productivity within the existing four walls so that we, you know, again, on a, on an organic basis, we're driving down our cost of operating. It's, it's really a two-pronged approach in terms of pushing, you know, incremental inflation onto our customers, while at the same time, trying to operate more efficiently, whether or not we're experiencing material inflation in other items.

Dan Levy (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you. That's helpful.

Operator (participant)

We will take our next question from Mark Delaney from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Mark Delaney (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my question. You mentioned that Aptiv has been a little bit more conservative on its EV volume projections, given the cost of those platforms. I'm hoping you can clarify, has there been a change at all in Aptiv's own outlook for EV volumes this year? Because some OEMs have certainly talked recently about seeing some slower EV growth, but perhaps some or all of that is being offset by upside that other OEMs may be realizing.

Kevin Clark (Chairman and CEO)

No. Listen, our, our assumptions have always been lower than, than, than, what I think some of the industry forecasts have. I'd say from a baseline standpoint, overall view on BEV penetration, high voltage penetration has been lower and has been for a extended period of time. As we evaluate business cases for specific platforms or, or, or customers, our assumptions on volume tend to be on, on the more conservative side. And, and as I mentioned, as it relates to contracting and pricing, we have some levers that we include to provide us with some risk mitigation. Nothing has changed in terms of our, our overall outlook. I would say the industry's probably coming closer to where, where our initial perspectives were as it related to BEV penetration.

Having said that, although we're, we're more conservative, you know, revenue growth in the second quarter on high voltage solutions is close to 50%. We're still expecting very significant growth for the balance of the year and, and, and into the out years.

Joe Massaro (CFO and SVP of Business Operations)

Yeah, Mark, it's Joe. I mean, we had talked about Investor Day, you know, high voltage being at least 30% grower per year for 2023, 2024, 2025, and that, that view has not changed at all. I, I think that's, you know, that, that was reflective of sort of where we were on our estimates relative to the broader sort of forecasting community.

Mark Delaney (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

That, that, that's very helpful context. Thank you. My other question was just around software and Wind River, and, and some OEMs have continued to struggle with, you know, the, the understandable large challenge of, of software integration. You, you mentioned momentum with Wind River, and I'm curious if you could elaborate a bit more on the types of engagements Wind River is seeing with auto OEMs, and perhaps there's been a recent uptick related to some of these challenges that the industry is facing and that Wind River can help to address. Thanks.

Kevin Clark (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, I, I'm not sure there's an uptick. I think the industry still wrestles with software. There, there are still major challenges. Wind River's announced a number of program wins with OEMs. I'd say today we're actively engaged with, I, I don't know, 10-12 OEMs as it relates to their, their, their underlying kind of software architecture and some of the needs that, that, Wind River can provide. So, a lot of momentum there. As I mentioned in my prepared comments, would expect by the end of the year to have some additional announcements to make. Those challenges present an opportunity for Wind River.

Then when you think about above the, the middleware, the real-time operating system as it relates to Aptiv, whether it be in user experience or, or, or ADS or other areas, certainly opportunities, for the, Aptiv as well.

Mark Delaney (Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Thank you.

Kevin Clark (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We will be taking our final question from Tom Narayan from RBC. Please go ahead.

Tom Narayan (Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst)

Hi, thanks for taking the question, guys. Joe, maybe can you help us understand AS&UX timing in 2023? I remember from Q1, I think there were some orders that may have been pushed out. Did those really come in in Q2, or are there kind of more to come there on H2? I know I think there were some engineering credits that you expected later in the year. Just trying to understand how, how we should think about the AS&UX business.

Joe Massaro (CFO and SVP of Business Operations)

Yep. On the engineering credit, that's a very normal flow that happens every year on AS&UX. You know, last year, by way of example, was about $40 million of credits in the back half of the year. I'm not saying it will be that amount this year, but that's order of magnitude, you know, call it somewhere, you know, sort of $20 million-$40 million is sort of a good, good range to use on that. As it relates to-- You're right. As it relates to Q1, AS&UX had a couple of launches that launched but were ramping slower than expected due to supply availability at, from other suppliers. As we talked about at the time, those programs really came back online in March and have been hitting schedules since, and that was in North America.

I think AS&UX North America's growth over market was north of 20% in the 2Q. You know, those are, those are back. You know, what you saw now in North America, I referenced, you know, we've got, which is, again, nothing to do with supply chain, sort of getting back to sort of normal ebbs and flows of the business. On the SPS side, we've got some programs winding down. We've got a heavier launch calendar in the back half of the year. I think as you get to the end of the year, North America growth over market will look like the rest of the business. You always get a little bit of lumpiness from time to time in some of those, some of those numbers.

Tom Narayan (Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst)

I don't know if you guys can answer this, but, you know, on, on the whole UAW situation, and, and this might be a question really for the OEMs, but have you guys noticed OEMs kind of building inventory ahead of it? Maybe put another way, you know, looking back at what happened in 2019 for you guys, is there anything you've learned from that experience that could help you prepare in the event something happens? Thanks.

Joe Massaro (CFO and SVP of Business Operations)

Yeah, I-- listen, I, I think we, we direct you to our OEM customers, so we, we don't, we don't have a UAW workforce in North America. From a direct employee standpoint, that's not something where we have exposure, where we have exposure. I, I think we would, we would say, having gone through it in 2019, there's some small operational lessons learned as it relates to kind of supply chain management, inventory management, things like that. I, I think it's a question more appropriate for our OEM customers.

Tom Narayan (Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

That concludes today's question and answer session. Kevin Clark, at this time, I will turn the conference back to you for any additional or closing remarks.

Joe Massaro (CFO and SVP of Business Operations)

Great. Thank you very much. We appreciate everyone joining us this morning. Have a great day. Take care.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.