Dana - Q4 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning, and welcome to Dana Incorporated's fourth quarter and full year 2025 financial webcast and conference call. My name is Regina, and I will be your conference facilitator. Please be advised that our meeting today, both the speaker's remarks and Q&A session, will be recorded for replay purposes. For those participants who would like to access the call from the webcast, please reference the URL on our website and sign in as a guest. There will be a question and answer period after the speaker's remarks, and we will take questions from the telephone only.

To ensure that everyone has an opportunity to participate in today's Q&A, we ask that callers limit themselves to one question at a time. If you'd like to ask an additional question, please return to the queue. At this time, I'd like to begin the presentation by turning the call over to Dana's Senior Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications, Craig Barber. Please go ahead, Mr. Barber.

Craig Barber (Senior Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications)

Thank you, Regina. Good morning, and welcome, everyone. Today's presentation includes forward-looking statements about our expectations for Dana's future performance. Actual results could differ from what we discuss today. For more details about the factors that may affect future results, please refer to our safe harbor statement found in our public filings and other reports with the SEC. I encourage you to visit our investor website, where you'll find this morning's press release and presentation.

As stated, today's call is being recorded, and the supporting materials are the property of Dana Incorporated. They may not be recorded, copied, or rebroadcast without our written consent. With us this morning is Bruce McDonald, Dana's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Byron Foster, Senior Vice President and President of Light Vehicle Systems Group, and Timothy Kraus, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Bruce, I'll now turn the call over to you.

Bruce McDonald (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, Craig. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us on our Q4 earnings call. With us today, in addition to the usual cast of characters, we have Byron Foster, our incoming CEO, with us. You know, I've known Byron and worked with him for many years. He and the rest of the management team here at Dana have been instrumental in our cost reduction activities and our transformation plans, as well as the development of our Dana 2030 strategy.

And so I think the board and myself have the utmost confidence in the team under Byron's leadership, and I'm very confident in the team's ability to deliver on the financial objectives that we're gonna share with you today. Turning to the business overview, our final results for the fourth quarter came in higher than our preliminary estimates. So you can see here for the fourth quarter, our margins at 11.1%, with $10 million, 40 basis points higher, $10 million higher than the announced pre-announcement numbers. In terms of full-year cash flow, we came in at $331 million, which is $16 million higher.

And I'd point out that that cash flow is the highest the company has delivered since 2013. We completed the sale of the Off-Highway business on January first and used the most of the $2 billion proceeds to repay down debt, and Tim will take you through what our new debt profile looks like later on in the pack. In terms of cost reduction, great job by the team. You know, we had originally committed to a $200 million run rate. We upped that to $300, and we delivered $248 in a year and a run rate of $325, going into 2026.

You know, we've talked before about our stranded costs post the sale of Off-Highway being about $40 million. We're very confident in our guidance. We're assuming that we're gonna be able to substantially eliminate those in next year. In terms of new business, we shared our backlog a couple weeks ago at $750 million. So despite, I'd say, the turmoil in the EV side of our business, the teams secured a higher backlog than we had last year, of which $200 million is gonna flow through in 2026.

And then I think if you look at our capital return, we returned just over $700 million for our shareholders last year, and we've grown our dividend. So I think, you know, where Dana sits exiting 2025, I think we're extremely well-positioned. We have strong momentum, and I think we've got a strong plan going forward here. Just a little bit more on the capital return plan, which we upped to $2 billion of share repurchase through 2030, and that really reflects our confidence in the delivery of the longer-term financial targets that we're gonna share on the call later today.

For 2025, we bought back just a shade over 34 million shares, which on an average cost of $18.96, and paid $54 million in dividends. In the first quarter here, we've already bought back $100 million worth of share, a little bit over $27 a share. In the balance of the year, we forecast buying back another couple hundred million, which, you know, at current prices, $5 million-$6 million, something like that. Lastly, on the dividend, we upped our dividend by, excuse me, by 20% to $0.12 a quarter. The way we're sort of thinking about this is we're gonna grow our dividend as our share count declines.

We got a lot of confidence in the value that we're creating. I think if you look at the company right now, while we're able to accelerate growth investments and margin enhancement investments in our business, we're also de-leveraging, growing our dividend, and comfortably buying back a significant amount of stock every year. So with that, Byron, I'll turn it over to you.

Byron Foster (SVP and President of Light Vehicle Systems Group)

Okay. Thanks, Bruce, and good morning, everybody. ... So just to cover on page six, a little bit on the market outlook as we look at the 2026 plan. On the light truck side, we continue to see the light truck market holding steady, and our plan is built around really kind of flat volume year-over-year from 2025 levels. I would say we're seeing a consistent operating environment and volume from our customers, which is allowing us to run at a good, steady clip. On the commercial vehicle side, as well, we've built the plan around flat volumes to 2025 levels.

However, I would say there is some optimism that towards the back half of the year, perhaps we'll see some improved volumes on the commercial vehicle side. As Bruce mentioned, you can see on the right-hand side of this page, our three-year net backlog of $750 million, of which $200 million is built into our 2026 plan, and you can see kinda how that matures through 2028. If we go to page seven, I thought it might be interesting to give you a bit of a view of how our new business pursuit activities have kind of evolved here over the last 7 or 8 years.

You can see a really dramatic increase in business pursuit activity, kinda in the early 2000s, really dominated by increasing EV activity. Then, you can see here more recently how that trend has really pivoted and reversed itself from kinda 80% EV level activity to now really heavy mix towards our more traditional or ICE powertrain types of vehicles.

And we really expect that trend to continue as our customers are revisiting their product plans to adjust to consumer demand for ICE, more traditional ICE-type vehicles, as well as hybrids and some full BEVs will still exist, but obviously at lower rates than kind of what we saw a few years back. So we're encouraged by that, and as we talk about growth going forward, we expect that's really going to play into our ability to capitalize on that opportunity. So with that, I'll hand it over to Tim, and he'll take us through the numbers.

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

Thanks, Byron. And good morning to everyone. Please turn with me now to slide nine for a review of our fourth quarter and full year results for 2025. All results discussed this morning reflect continuing operations, except for adjusted free cash flow. Starting on the left side of the fourth quarter, sales were $1.867 billion, an increase of $93 million compared with last year. Improvement was driven primarily by customer recoveries and currency translation. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $208 million, resulting in an 11.1% margin.

That's a 640 basis points improvement over the prior year's fourth quarter, reflecting better mix and continued benefit of the company-wide cost improvement actions. EBIT from continuing operations was $61 million, compared with a loss of $117 million in last year's fourth quarter. Interest expense was $49 million, an increase of about $12 million from last year due to higher average borrowing costs tied to our accelerated capital return initiatives that we did last year.

Operating cash flow was $406 million for the quarter, an increase of $104 million, driven by higher earnings and disciplined working capital management. Turning now to the full year results on the right side of the slide. Sales for 2025 were $7.5 billion, down $234 million from 2024. As we noted earlier, this reflects weakening market demand across both light vehicle and commercial vehicle sectors, partially offset by customer recoveries.

Full year adjusted EBITDA was $610 million, an improvement of $215 million from the prior year, resulting in an 8.1% margin, up 300 basis points. The year-over-year improvement was driven by accelerated cost savings, higher production efficiency, and improved execution across the entire Dana organization. EBIT from continuing operations was $138 million, compared with a loss of $176 million last year. Interest expense was $171 million, up $26 million from last year. Note that we closed the Off-Highway divestiture on January first and began our delevering program in 2026.

So this is not yet reflected in our 2025 results. Finally, operating cash flow was $512 million, a $62 million increase compared with last year, supported by improved earnings and continued working capital discipline. Overall, 2025 delivered meaningful margin expansion and stronger free cash flow generation, despite a challenging demand environment, underscoring the effectiveness of our cost action programs and operational execution. Please turn with me now to slide 10 for the drivers of the sales and profit change for the fourth quarter of 2025.

As a reminder, results are presented excluding the Off-Highway business, which is classified as discontinued operations. The removal of $561 million in sales and $102 million of profit from 2024 provides a comparable baseline for our continuing operations. Starting with sales, our fourth quarter 2024 continuing operations for the quarter was $1.774 billion. Year-over-year volume and mix increased sales modestly by $2 million, with light vehicle growth largely offset by weaker demand in certain commercial vehicle markets.

Performance action contributed an additional $17 million, driven by commercial recoveries and pricing initiatives implemented earlier in the year. Tariff recoveries were $27 million, and currency translation added $31 million, largely due to the benefit of the euro against the US dollars. Commodities provided a further $16 million dollar benefit for the quarter. Altogether, these items resulted in Q4 2025 sales of $1.867 billion. Moving to adjusted EBITDA, starting from $84 million in Q4 of 2024, representing a 4.7% margin, volume and mix contributed $33 million of incremental profit in the quarter.

This was driven primarily by a richer mix in Light Vehicle Systems. Performance added $6 million, reflecting pricing and commercial actions, mostly offset by higher conversion costs. Cost savings contributed $74 million, tariffs provided an $8 million benefit, while currency added $3 million. Commodity impacts were neutral year-over-year. Bringing these together, adjusted EBITDA for our continuing operations was $208 million, representing an 11.1% margin, a significant expansion from last year.

This improvement reflects strong performance execution and the structural benefits realized from our cost action programs. Next, I will turn to Slide 11 for the drivers of sales and profit change for the full year 2025. This slide shows full year sales and profit changes for 2025 on the same basis as the previous quarterly slide. Starting with sales, our 2024 continuing operations baseline is $7.734 billion. For 2025, year-over-year volume and mix reduces sales by $464 million, primarily due to lower demand across both our end markets, with commercial vehicle and light vehicle largely equal contributor to the lower sales.

Performance, which includes pricing and commercial actions, adds $981 million of sales. Tariff recoveries were $102 million, representing the majority of our tariffs for the year. Currency translation provided a $28 million benefit, largely driven by strengthening euro against the US dollar. Commodities added an additional $19 million, supported by market stability and our structured recovery mechanisms with our customers. Taken together, these drivers result in 2025 sales of $8.4 billion for our continuing... or $7.5 billion for our continuing operations.

Moving to Adjusted EBITDA, starting from $395 million in 2024 and a 5.1% margin. Volume and mix reduces profit by $112 million, consistent with the reduced sales level and some unfavorable mix early in the year. Performance actions added $90 million, reflecting both pricing and ongoing efficiency improvements across our manufacturing footprint. Cost savings remain a meaningful contributor, adding $248 million in 2025. These benefits more than offset the margin pressure created by lower volumes and continue to demonstrate the momentum behind our cost-saving programs as we enter 2026.

Tariffs represented a $14 million headwind due to timing of recoveries. Together, adjusted EBITDA for our continuing operations was $610 million, representing an 8.1% margin, a 300 basis points improvement over last year. This improvement is driven primarily by operational efficiencies and our accelerated cost action program, which more than offset both the volume declines and the modest tariff impacts for the year. Next, I will turn to slide 12 on a detail of our fourth quarter, our full year cash flows.

Accounting for cash flow includes both continued and discontinued operations to align with the transaction structure. For 2025, we delivered adjusted free cash flow of $331 million, which represents a $250 million improvement over 2024. This significant step up reflects higher profitability, disciplined working capital management, and a meaningful reduction in capital spending. Starting at the top of the walk, adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations drove $215 million of improvement, stemming from stronger operational performance and structural cost actions executed over the past two years.

This was partially offset by lower profit of $86 million from discontinued operations. One-time costs, largely related to restructuring and ongoing strategic initiatives, were $30 million higher year-over-year. Net interest expense increased by $16 million, driven primarily by higher borrowing costs associated with funding our capital return initiatives ahead of the planned deleveraging in early 2026. Taxes were a modest headwind with $3 million, with no material changes to our underlying tax structure.

Working capital and other items contributed $57 million of improvement, reflecting disciplined inventory management and favorable timing across payables and receivables. Finally, capital spending decreased $113 million, supported by lower program launch requirements, as significant investments made over the last several years begin to taper. Please turn with me now to slide 13 for an update on our full year guidance.

As we look ahead to this year, our outlook remains unchanged from our January call and reflects continued operational execution, accretive new business, and ongoing benefit of our cost reduction initiatives. Overall, we expect results to be broadly consistent with 2025 on the top line, with meaningful profit expansion driven by improved mix and sustained cost management. Starting with sales, we expect 2026 revenue to be approximately $7.5 billion, consistent with this year.

Increased backlog and the benefit of higher margin new business are expected to largely offset a modestly softer market environment and changes in product mix. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be around $800 million, an increase of roughly $200 million compared with 2025. This improvement is driven by full-year run rate of our cost savings program, continued operational improvements, and incremental margin from business that carries higher profitability.

At the midpoint of the range, this represents an adjusted EBITDA margin of roughly 10%-11%, an expansion of approximately 250 basis points year over year. We are reinstating our diluted adjusted EPS guidance for 2026. We expect diluted adjusted EPS this year to be $2.50 a share at the midpoint of the range. For this calculation, we are using a share count of about 109 million shares and are not including future share repurchases in this target estimate. Adjustments for EPS are similar in nature to those made for adjusted EBITDA.

Adjusted free cash flow is expected to be around $300 million, in line with our 2025 performance. Adjusted free cash flow stability reflects disciplined working capital management, improves earnings, and the normalization of capital spending as major investments over the past years begin to taper. Our 2026 outlook demonstrates continued profit improvement drivers by new business, operational efficiencies, and the structural benefit of cost actions, all while maintaining a consistent cash flow profile, positioning us well as we launch new Dana.

Please turn with me now to slide 14 for the driver of sales and profit for our full year guidance. Beginning with sales, volume and mix is expected to reduce revenue by approximately $95 million, as lower demand in traditional commercial vehicle markets, as well as ongoing softness in electric vehicle, light vehicle platforms impacts our battery and electronics cooling business. Performance is expected to be modestly lower, reducing sales by about $30 million, reflecting a more normalized pricing environment as we lap last year's commercial actions.

Tariffs are expected to improve sales by roughly $50 million, largely due to the timing of recoveries and the impact of a full year's worth of tariff environment. Foreign currency translation adds approximately $60 million, primarily driven by the strengthening euro compared to the US dollar. And commodities are expected to add about $15 million in sales due to the continuing effectiveness of our recovery mechanisms, with which we recover approximately 75% of our commodity price changes. Together, these drivers result in 2026 sales of approximately $7.5 billion, in line with 2025 levels.

Let's turn now to Adjusted EBITDA. Starting from the $610 million we generated in 2025, representing an 8.1% margin, volume and mix is expected to add approximately $20 million. Favorable mix within will drive higher profit on slightly lower sales. Performance is expected to increase EBITDA by roughly $100 million, largely from continued operational efficiency. Please note that we are expecting to eliminate about $40 million of post-divestiture stranded costs, which is included in the performance line of our walk.

Cost savings, in addition to the stranded cost reduction, will be a meaningful contributor, adding $65 million of profit for the year. Tariffs are expected to be a $10 million tailwind due to the timing of recoveries. Commodity cost recovery is expected to represent a $15 million headwind driven by timing of recoveries and expected material cost changes. All combined, adjusted EBITDA for 2026 is expected to be approximately $800 million at the midpoint of our range, or a 10.6% margin, representing an improvement of roughly 250 basis points over 2025.

This step change in profitability is driven by our ongoing performance improvements and cost savings initiatives. Next, I will turn to slide 15 for details of Adjusted Free Cash Flow outlook for 2026. You will note on this slide that 2025 includes profit and free cash flow from discontinued operations that will not be included in 2026. Even without the discontinued operations contribution, we expect full year 2026 Adjusted Free Cash Flow to be about $300 million at the midpoint of the guidance range.

One-time costs will be about $30 million lower than last year due to lower expected levels of restructuring as our cost-saving programs wind down. Net interest will be about $70 million in 2026, about $95 million lower than last year due to our aggressive debt reduction that we executed earlier this year. Taxes will be about $100 million, about $75 million lower than 2025 due to lower taxable income and jurisdictional distribution of profits for new Dana. Working capital will be a source of about $25 million in 2026, a $40 million improvement over last year.

Finally, net capital spending is expected to be about $325 million this year, which is about $70 million higher than last year as we invest in efficiency improvements at our operations and support the new business backlog. Please turn to slide 16 for a review of our balance sheet and debt reduction actions that we executed earlier this year. As a reminder, the Off-Highway divestiture closed on January 1, and we will be reporting at year-end without the benefit of the sale and subsequent deleveraging. So I thought it'd be helpful to show our balance sheet post-divestiture and after the debt reduction.

If you look on the left side of the page, we ended January 2026 with $659 million of cash and a total liquidity of about $1.8 billion, including the revolver capacity of just over $1.1 billion. As we progress through the year, we expect our average cash balance to be approximately $400 million, consistent with our operating needs and lower liquidity requirements.

We are continuing to evaluate opportunities to optimize the balance sheet, including right sizing of our revolver capacity and the examination of our real estate lease portfolio, while we also pursue additional divestitures of non-core operations where appropriate. We also continue to see positive response from our delevering actions from the rating agencies, with upgrades from both Fitch and Standard & Poor's. This reflects the strength of our improved balance sheet and expanded margin and free cash flow profile.

Now, turning to the right side of the page, you can see the impact of the meaningful deleveraging associated with the Off-Highway sale. Relative to our starting position, we have reduced total debt by approximately $1.9 billion, highlighted by the red boxes shown across the maturity ladder. This leaves us in an extremely strong capital structure position. Importantly, we now have no near-term maturities. Our first maturity is in 2029 at just over $200 million.

The remaining debt on our balance sheet carries an average interest rate of around 6%, providing both predictability and flexibility as we continue to strengthen the business. On the bottom right side, you can see that the deleveraging results in less than 1x net leverage through 2026. This enhanced financial strength positions us well to navigate a dynamic market environment while we continue to invest in growth and deliver value for our shareholders.

Overall, our balance sheet is now significantly stronger, with ample liquidity, reduced debt, and a long-dated maturity profile that supports our strategic priorities moving forward. I will now turn the call over to Byron for a sneak peek at our targets for the Dana 2030 on page 17.

Byron Foster (SVP and President of Light Vehicle Systems Group)

Okay, great. Thank you, Tim. And, hey, before I get into the targets here, I do want to take the opportunity to thank Bruce for his leadership through Dana's transformation here over the last year and a half or so. And as he mentioned, we will have a very seamless transition here through the end of Q2. And, myself and the management team, we couldn't be more excited for the opportunities ahead for Dana. So let's take a look at our long-term targets and our plans to continue to drive performance of the company to new levels.

So if you look at the 2030 financial targets, starting with revenue, we're targeting close to $10 billion of sales, which would be 33% higher than the midpoint of the 2026 guide that Tim just took us through. We expect margins to increase by close to 400 basis points, to 14%-15% at the EBITDA line, and adjusted free cash flow at 6%, which would be about a 200 basis point improvement from our 2026 guide.

In terms of returning capital to our shareholders, you can see that we plan to return $2 billion vis-a-vis stock buybacks, of which $650 million has been completed in 2025, with the remaining plan for 2026 through 2030. And specifically in 2026, we're targeting $300 million of buybacks. And that's on top of the 20% dividend increase that was previously announced. In terms of our roadmap of how we plan to deliver that level of performance, it's really all under our strategy that we've called Dana 2030.

And you can see the five pillars of that plan, three related to growth in our aftermarket business, our traditional light vehicle and commercial vehicle business, as well as our EV and Applied Technologies, which basically takes, Dana's know-how and technology and explores opportunities for growth in new and adjacent markets. In addition to those growth pillars, there's two pillars around efficiency and execution in everything we do, both at the manufacturing level as well as our structural cost and support, of the business.

We look forward to sharing more details of our 2030 plans, with you during our Capital Markets Day, which is planned for March 25th in New York at 9:00 A.M., and we're hoping to see you guys all there so we can talk more about the future ahead for Dana. So with that, I'll hand it back to Regina for Q&A. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We kindly ask that you please limit yourself to one question at a time. Our first question comes from the line of Colin Langan with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Colin Langan (Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Oh, great. Thanks for taking my question. I just want to follow up on the target for sales of $10 billion by 2030. That's faster than, you know, we've seen growth historically from Dana, and particularly, you just gave a backlog. I think there's 550 from, you know, 2027, 2028 coming. So, where's the other, you know, almost $2 billion? Is that market factors? Is there M&A assumed in there?

Bruce McDonald (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. I'll, I'll, I'll take that. I'll take that, Colin. So, so here's, here's kind of like the way you should think about it, is, is if of the $2.5 billion that we're committing to grow over the next five years, our backlog, as you said, for 2027 and 2028, is 550. We, we anticipate that a normalization in the North American CV market's worth another $200 million-$300 million. So that's kind of a third of it. Then we've got five growth strategies. One is, and, you know, you know, the slide that Byron covered off around our quoting activity, really around, you know, ICE is gonna be here for longer.

Our customers are changing their product plans to reflect more SUVs and CUVs. So the market, we do expect to continue to win new business on new programs that our customers are introducing. Secondly, is in CV. You know, that business is very North American-centric. We have a very strong position in the market right now. We have a brand-new world-class, low-cost manufacturing facility, greenfield site, that we opened up in Mexico.

That plant is performing for us at a very high level, and as a result of our delivery performance, our quality, and our cost base, I think we're well positioned to gain share of wallet at our main North American customers. Third, aftermarket. You know, it's an area that we haven't really focused on in the past. You know, so we have several growth strategies within the aftermarket, but the one I would sort of point to as being front and center here is our North America sealing and gasket opportunity. So this is a market where we've got 30%-35% share in Europe, and we're just looking to enter North America.

We see that as being a $250 million opportunity that we're just starting to get our foot in the door this year. Fourth, I would point to EV. You know, we have adopted more, you know, rigid and commercially sensible, I'll say, quoting disciplines, and there's still opportunities there, as particularly as what we're seeing on the range extended products from our customers. Then lastly, you know, Byron touched on Applied Technologies, where we're looking to get into adjacent markets or areas that we've historically underinvested in.

And we got four or five of those opportunities, but just a couple of examples, I'd point to one, Powersports. So this is sort of the off-roading, you know, quad vehicles. Those vehicles are becoming larger and larger. The supply chain in terms of our products for those is largely Chinese and old technology, so we think we have a big opportunity to enter into that market. And we have $several hundred million of RFQs, as we've put some resources into that business. So that's a good example of an adjacent opportunity.

And then if I thought about something that I'll say we've kind of neglected, I'd point to defense. We got a, you know, very highly profitable, and we just haven't, we haven't put the sales and technical resources into capturing growth in that market. So, so those Applied Technologies as a bucket, we think, are another $400 million-$500 million. So that's, that's kind of the path to the $2.5 billion. Kind of a long answer. I apologize for that.

Colin Langan (Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

No, I appreciate all the color. And just as a second question, would just be, you know, any help from that—we've seen all, pretty much all the Detroit Three have these big, recovery programs for EV cancellations. Was any of that helping 25? Is that any of that baked into the guidance, and, any, any help actually in cash flow as well?

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

Hey, Colin, this is Tim. You know, as we mentioned in Q3, we took some charges that you know due to some of this. So we did get a little bit of recovery in the fourth quarter, but you know, in terms of the recoveries, a lot of what we're seeing is really adjustments to ongoing sales prices because many of our programs haven't completely canceled. Many of them are just volume down.

But in terms of the other recoveries, it's really a net coverage of the cost that we've incurred and what we owe in terms of suppliers and other development costs.So it's largely not a big tailwind in terms of profit drivers for us in the short term. But it obviously avoids our necessity to continue to write amounts off like we had to do in the third quarter.

Colin Langan (Director and Senior Equity Analyst)

Got it. All right. Thanks for taking my question.

Bruce McDonald (Chairman and CEO)

Yep. I would just add is, if you look at, you know, Tim showed the volume mix slide and how it's a little bit strange that the top line's negative, bottom line's positive. Some of the benefit of repricing EV programs is in that bar.

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

... Got it. Okay. Thank you. That's helpful, Colin.

Operator (participant)

Our next question will come from the line of Tom Narayan with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thomas Ito (Global Equity Research Autos Senior Associate)

Hi, this is Thomas Ito on for Tom. Thanks for taking the question. So you guys are guiding to those 14%-15% EBITDA margins by 2030, which is about 400 basis points higher than your 2026 guide. This might have to wait for the capital markets day, but can you give us any sort of rough breakdown of the contributions you're expecting from those items listed to the right of slide 17?

Bruce McDonald (Chairman and CEO)

No. We don't—I don't really want to get into a lot of the detail. I mean, what I would tell you, and if you think about margin enhancement, where you know, how do we get that 400 basis points? It's in two places. One, structural cost reduction. You know, we cut $325 million out of our cost base this year. And if we look at the opportunities that we have that are longer term or require systems investments, we think there's, like, $100 million there. And just a couple of examples of that would be putting our shared service, expanding our shared service center and a lot of ERP and other system standardization.

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, I think the thing like we encourage you to come see us in New York. We're going to lay out what, you know, the walk and how we get there and why we're so confident. And so come to the capital markets day, we'll lay it all out for you. But look, we're highly confident. I think what you've seen from Bruce and the management team here over the last 14, 15 months is, you know, we're very bullish on what we can deliver and what we tell you we're going to deliver, we do.

And I think we have that same confidence as we start looking forward to the strategy to deliver the $10 billion and the 15%-16% margins in 2030. So, encourage you guys to come down and, you know, we'll take you all through it in March.

Thomas Ito (Global Equity Research Autos Senior Associate)

Okay. Got it. Thank you. As a quick follow-up, it looks like your commercial vehicle margins expanded pretty significantly in Q4, even though sales are down year-over-year. It sounds like this is mostly a mix and a cost reduction story, but I was wondering if you guys think that margin level is sustainable going into 2026, or whether there were any one-offs in the Q4 results? Thanks.

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, not a lot of one-offs. I mean, obviously, this has been a part of the business, you know, over the last few years that we've focused quite a bit on improving our operating efficiency, and you're starting to see some of that. Bruce mentioned, you know, we did over the last years build a new plant, state-of-the-art, and as we continue to ramp that plant up and have more production in there, we are getting the benefits of that into the efficiency and the margins in that product.

So we don't-- we're not done yet. We think we've got more opportunity to continue to improve margins in the CV business because they're not where we think they should be.Stay tuned. I think there's more good things to come when you think about our CV segment.

Bruce McDonald (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, maybe just add to that is, you know, we've the team in CV has done a great job this year, great job, but we've been fighting volumes falling against us all year long. And as we get into this year, we're going to start to see that flip around and have volume as a tailwind as, instead of chasing the year-over-year declines.

Thomas Ito (Global Equity Research Autos Senior Associate)

Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from the line of Edison Yu with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

James Mulholland (Research Associate)

Good morning, this is James Mulholland on for Edison. A quick question on our part. So if we do just a bit of math, even with the share buyback and increased dividend that you've outlined with your sort of longer-term free cash flow guide, it looks like you're looking at a materially higher cash position than what you've historically maintained or even guiding to. So do you have any thoughts on to where you're going to put that to work? Would you consider further inorganic investments, shareholder returns? Just any thoughts you might have there.

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, I think, look, we've obviously laid out a pretty significant increase in the amount of capital that we would return to shareholders. As we move out, and, you know, we'll talk a little bit about this in March as well. As we move out beyond 2026 and we think about our growth strategy, there certainly could be opportunities for some acquisitions or other investments that are inorganic in order to fill in the parts of the portfolio that we think can help accelerate the growth.

So, you know, I think... But we're really focused right now, you know, in continuing to execute on the plan. But again, we do think that the business that we own and the management team that we have is going to be able to continue to drive the business forward and deliver a superior returns for the shareholder.

James Mulholland (Research Associate)

Got it. That's helpful. And I guess on the, the flip side of my prior question, in the presentation, it sounds like you're thinking about other non-core operations that could either be sold or perhaps shuttered. You know, are there other parts of your business that can be as cleanly separated as the Off-Highway business, or is there something that specifically you're thinking about that you can share with us now?

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

... Yeah, nothing obviously we can share with you now, but like, we're talking about some of the smaller things that we—and we have a number of different, you know, smaller businesses, but nothing on the scale or size of Off-Highway. But to answer your question, yes, we believe that those are imminently separable. We did a few of them. We had a few of these last year where we sold a couple of interests we had in some joint ventures. So we'll continue to look at the portfolio, whether that be, you know, individual JVs, plants, or just product lines in some of the businesses.

So, I think, you know, as we continue to think through the portfolio, I think there's a number of opportunities where, you know, maybe we're not the best owner or they're not the most profitable of product lines or part numbers, and we'll continue to, you know, sort of cull through that and make those adjustments so... But we do think that there's some opportunities there for us on the portfolio side. Again, these are smaller type things.

James Mulholland (Research Associate)

Great. Thank you, guys.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from the line of James Picariello with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

James Picariello (Director and Senior Automotive Analyst)

Hey, sorry, just to clarify, what was the last answer regarding... Like, is there a possibility for M&A within this revenue target, or that would be in excess of the $10 billion?

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

There's no M&A in the $10 billion.

James Picariello (Director and Senior Automotive Analyst)

Okay, all right. That's, that's what I thought. So yeah, when I think about the capital deployment out to 2030, right? If there is no M&A embedded in the target, which I think is a great thing, right? Free cash flow is slated to double over 2026 to 2030. If I just assume a linear annualized step up, right off the $300 million this year to the $600 million targeted for 2030, right? That, that cumulative free cash flow generation looks something like $2.2 billion-$2.3 billion, right? In, in that zip code. Why would the... You know, we're looking at $250 million in dividends, right?

$50 million a year over 5 years, and you've got the $1.35 billion in buybacks, which leaves about $650 million left over in excess capital. Just curious, you know, how you're thinking about that, where you disagree or agree on, you know, how I laid that out, and just, yeah, what are we doing with that additional, you know, $650 million or so?

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, I mean, look, I think, you know, won't get into specifics. Obviously, leaves us some flexibility in what we use the cash flow for. Obviously, we have maturities coming due, so, you know, we can use it to reduce leverage on the business if we want, and if we're in... You know, depending on where we are in the cycle, that may be something we do. Otherwise, you know, we have more opportunities to return, you know, capital to shareholder shareholders if that seems to be the best use of that capital.

I mean, 2, 3, 4, 5 years from now is a long time and a lot of things can happen, but, like, I think what we're, what we're planning for is having an exceedingly strong operating performance through the business cycle with a, with a capital structure that allows us to continue to be exceedingly nimble in our ability to continue to invest in the business, regardless of where the markets are.

I think that's really, really important to think about, given where we were and, you know, the high 2 turns leverage and what we're gonna be able to do through the business cycle, regardless of where the end markets are, going forward. We're just leaving ourselves some flexibility.I think what we've said is, "Hey, we're gonna continue to drive really high shareholder returns," and that's our intention.

James Picariello (Director and Senior Automotive Analyst)

Okay. Yeah, no, that, that makes a lot of sense. My follow-up is a quick one. What's the assumed effective tax rate for this year to inform the adjusted EPS range of two to-

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, it's somewhere... We've had some pretty strange ones. It's somewhere between 20% and 30%. It really depends on some of the jurisdictional mix, but that's kind of where we're targeting somewhere. That's a wide range, but given the balances that we have and how the income mix can change, you know, it moves around. It happens to be a pretty reasonable rate this year, just based on the jurisdictional mix and where the balances are.

James Picariello (Director and Senior Automotive Analyst)

Understood. Thank you.

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

Yep.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from the line of Joe Spak with UBS. Please go ahead.

Joe Spak (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks. Good morning, everyone.

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

Good.

Joe Spak (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Maybe just a question on CapEx, but with two flavors of view. So, you know, looks like your low 3s 2025 guidance calls for low 4s this year. I'm assuming that's just a step up to support some of these growth initiatives, but maybe you could add some color there. And then how should we think—I know you gave the free cash margin guidance for the 2030 plan, but should we think about any material change in CapEx to sales to support that growth opportunity? Is 4% the new, like, right go-forward rate we should be thinking about?

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, I think 4% is probably, you know, a good number to kind of pencil in as you go forward. I think—look, we're—we will have to spend both on growth initiatives and on the initiatives to drive margin expansion. You know, Bruce, Bruce mentioned, you know, our plant level, you know, operational efficiency. You know, we've taken a lot of costs out at a relatively modest investment. You know, the next step is we'll have to have a higher level of an investment, which is largely CapEx, in order to drive that next lockstep change in our margin profile, especially at the plant level.

But that's, like, that's built into our targets, both the 2030 target that we're giving you and the target that we have for CapEx in 2026. So we've committed significant amounts of CapEx to help drive both growth and the efficiencies in the business.

Joe Spak (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

... Okay, thank you. You alluded to this a little bit earlier, but was wondering if you could just sort of get a little bit more color. You know, you're showing you're guiding 250 basis points of margin expansion this year. It sounds like we should be maybe above that level in CV, given some of your comments, so maybe slightly a little bit below that in Light Vehicle to get to the number. But was wondering if you could just sort of help us understand some of the profit drivers or margin drivers by segment for 2026.

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, I mean, I think you have it right. I mean, obviously, we're going to have continued flow-through on the cost savings, and then we will continue to get, you know, performance improvements, which is, you know, fairly consistent on a relative basis in the segments. Probably a little bit more in CV because we got a little more opportunity there, but generally pretty balanced between the segments. But I think the important thing to note here is that, you know, we continue to focus on our ability to expand margins through actions that are completely within our control and that are low risk and have high returns.

You know, so you think about some of the things we're doing, you know, with automation, you know, efficiencies within the plants. I mean, you know, largely those are in plants that are on ICE programs. So we know what the volumes are going to be, and we know what the investment and the returns look like. So, we're highly confident in our ability to both make those investments and deliver the expanded margins that they will deliver so.

Joe Spak (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, great. And I should go on with this, but, congrats to both Byron and Bruce, and looking forward to learning more at the upcoming investor event. So thanks, everyone.

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

Oh, we plan to put Byron out there so you guys can go right after him in March, okay?

Bruce McDonald (Chairman and CEO)

Look forward to it.

Byron Foster (SVP and President of Light Vehicle Systems Group)

Thank you.

Bruce McDonald (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you.

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

Thanks, Joe.

Operator (participant)

Our final question comes from the line of Emmanuel Rosner with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Emmanuel Rosner (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Oh, great. Thank you so much. First question is. I appreciate the sneak peek on the 2030 financial targets. I wanted to ask you about the high-level drivers of the 400 basis points in margin expansion. How much of it is growth driven versus cost savings? I think, Bruce, you mentioned maybe a $100 million opportunity from the systems enhancement. I don't know if there was anything else you'd call out on the cost side. And what implication does it have in terms of potential cadence?

400 basis points is, you know, obviously averages out to about 100 basis points a year, but I would assume that the cost savings are maybe more front-end loaded, whereas like some of the growth initiatives may take a little bit longer. So anything you could share on that?

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, I think we're well, come see us in March. I think is the line of the day. You know, I think some of what you said makes some sense, but look, we're able, given where we're at today, we're going to be able to invest in both the growth and the margin expansion initiatives and deliver them over time. But we'll lay it out in detail, you know, in a few weeks, so come down and see us.

Bruce McDonald (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah, I-

Emmanuel Rosner (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay.

Bruce McDonald (Chairman and CEO)

I would say, though, that the margin and getting to the 15 is not because of the growth. In other words, we will expand our margins based on investments that we're making and cost actions. The growth will help out, but the main driver is the investments that we're making in our manufacturing operations and automation, things like that.

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't say the growth is coming through at super high, you know, rates. Well, like, we still operate in the mobility business, for goodness sake. So like, you know, we, and like I said before, a lot of what we're thinking about is things that are completely within our control and tied to programs that are tried and true. So, you know, high return, low risk type things to drive margin improvement.

Emmanuel Rosner (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

I appreciate the call. If I could just follow up on this, based on what's disclosed in today's slides, obviously. Revenues target of $10 billion, up from $7.5 billion, I guess this year. If you just have like, I guess, what is the right incremental margin on that kind of, you know, revenue increase? Because if you just apply that to $2.5 billion in revenue, you'd already have probably, like, $500 million of uplift in EBITDA. Just curious if there's-- how do you think about, you know, that piece just based on the numbers that you already shared with us?

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, I mean, I think there's, you know, you also have to realize that the, you know, there are some costs associated with some of that growth. So it's not-

Emmanuel Rosner (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

... it's not like we just go out and sell it and put it in the same plant. Like, it isn't that-

Emmanuel Rosner (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

... simple, but I think, again, we'll give you a front-row seat, Emmanuel, in March, and we'll take you all through it, and we'll answer all your questions.

Emmanuel Rosner (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

I look forward to that. Then maybe just on 2026, on slide 14, the walk to the 2026 EBITDA by factor. Can you just remind us what goes inside the performance and the cost savings bucket in terms of-

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

Yeah, so,

Emmanuel Rosner (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Cost?

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

... so cost, yeah, think of cost savings as our $325 million that's all above the plants. Okay? That, that's what's in that number, and that's the last piece of that $325 million, right? So and then if you think about performance, that is all the improvements that are going on at the, you know, really at the plant level. So this is, you know, material cost savings, engineering cost savings that's coming through as a result of, you know, design and whatnot, updates, conversion cost savings.

And then we've also included in here about $40 million of the stranded cost avoidance that we're taking out this year. So that's one of the reasons why that number looks, you know, pretty large. There's 40, 40% of it, $40 million is related to the structural cost takeout related to stranded costs from the deal.

Emmanuel Rosner (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Understood. All right, thank you.

Timothy Kraus (SVP and CFO)

Yep.

Bruce McDonald (Chairman and CEO)

Okay, hey, that's the last of the questions. Thanks, everybody, for joining us here this morning. Clearly, I wanna give a big shout-out to the Dana team. I know a lot of them are listening in on this call. You know, an incredible 2025, and I thank each and every one of our team members for helping make this happen. You know, coming into 2025, we made some very bold commitments, and the team's delivered on all fronts. I'm very proud of them. Looking ahead, the team's laser-focused on performance and delivering on our financial commitments.

You know, as I said earlier, right now, Dana is exceptionally well-positioned. We have a strong balance sheet. I talk best-in-sector balance sheet. We have a strong top-line growth story. We have a very clear plan and actions to deliver significant margin expansion. You know, our free cash flow is accelerating, to the point where we can first grow our investment in our business. Second, return a significant amount of capital to our shareholders via dividends. Third, grow our buyback, and right now, we can comfortably buy 8%-9% of our shares per year, all while deleveraging. I love how Dana's positioned right now. In the auto space, I wouldn't change places with anybody else. Thanks for joining us this morning.

Operator (participant)

This will conclude our call today. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.