Nexteer Automotive Group Limited

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Next Year Audubon Group Limited 2025 Interim Results Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. I would now like to turn the conference over to Investor Relations Director, Mr. Tony Wang. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Betsy. Welcome, everyone, to our 2025 Interim Earnings Call. We made the announcement of our interim results this evening, Hong Kong time. Before we begin today's call, I would like to remind you that this presentation contains a safe harbor statement. For additional information, please refer to the content on the second page. The presentation accompanying today's call are available on our company's website. Please visit nextgears.com to download slides if you have not done yet. Joining us today are Robin Milovic, Executive Board Director, President, CTO, and Chief Strategy Officer. Mike Bierlein, Senior Vice President and CFO. Irvi Boyer, Senior Vice President and COO. Starting the presentation, Robin and Mike will provide business and financial highlights respectively, and then we will open a line for your questions. Please follow the limit of two questions per person. With that, let me turn the call over to our President, Robin.

Thanks, Tony, and thanks, everyone, for joining this call for the next year 2025 interim results announcement. So to start off, I'll provide a brief business overview for the first half of this year. Then I'll hand it over to Mike and he will go through the financial assessment as well as some operating considerations for 2025. So on this next slide, the first half of 2025 is off to a very strong start. In just six months, we launched a record of 31 programs across all regions. 23 were new or conquest awards, including our first dual-pinning EPS launch with the Chinese OEM, which is a milestone achievement for us. We also successfully secured $1.5 billion in new business bookings during the first half of the year. These included a major power column win in North America with a full-size truck platform, which we previously reported in the first quarter. Since then, we expanded business into Indonesia and Brazil with a leading Chinese OEM, and we booked our first rear-wheel steering program with a European customer, securing a strategic foothold in that growing segment. These notable bookings are a direct result of our technology leadership and megatrend alignment. In the first half, we successfully expanded motion-by-wire chassis control, including stair-by-wire, rear-wheel steering, electromechanical brake, or EMB, and Motion IQ software suite to pioneer the future of motion control. Our technology leadership also supports our continued growth among Chinese NEB customers. I'd like to also highlight how our technology pipeline is timed to anticipate and meet industry megatrends. while we are also simultaneously invading within existing product lines to drive competitiveness. Lastly, our operational efficiency and flawless execution remains the most critical focus area. We continue to balance the optimization and expansion of our manufacturing footprints regionally, improve material, supply chain, and manufacturing efficiencies, and accelerate our digital transformation. Furthermore, we continue to strengthen regional engineering competencies and improve supply chain cost and resiliency to further capitalize on growth opportunities. This combination of launches, bookings, technology leadership, and operational discipline positions us well for the next phase of growth. This next slide summarizes our program launches for the first half of the year. These launches reflect the diversity of our customer base as it continues to evolve with market opportunities. During the first half, we launched 31 new programs, including 23 representing new or conquest businesses and 22 representing new energy platforms supported by next-year products. As opposed to providing a detailed launch list line by line as we've done in the past, Starting from last year, we began highlighting significant milestone programs to reflect how new business bookings successfully convert to revenue growth. With that approach in mind, here are several notable launches from the first half. Our first dual-pinion EPS program launch with the leading Chinese OEM. Following our first dual-pinion launch with Stellantis in their light commercial van platform, we are seeing further dual-pinion launch opportunities with multiple Chinese domestic OEMs and other European OEMs. Next, our first modular columnist EPS or MCEPS has been successfully launched in EMEA SA. Next year's MCEPS was announced in October of 2021, which was first introduced in the China market. It leveraged our existing industry-leading EPS building blocks. Now, the successful launch in EMEA SA market shows that both global and China domestic OEMs desire this cost and speed-to-market product solution, along with outstanding steering reliability and performance. Out of 31 program launches, 24 program launches were in APAC. supporting both Chinese and global customers, which is another proof point of next year's strategic targeting and capitalizing on the growth opportunities in the region. Notably, one of our programs, Mi Auto YU7, is expected to be one of the best-selling EV models in China based on its strong pre-order performance. Building on strong performance in column EPS programs, Our industry-leading RAC EPS and newly launched dual-pinning EPS are set to drive growth in the near to mid-term. On the next slide, we'll be moving from launches to bookings. This slide shows that next year's new business awards in the first half totaled $1.5 billion. The contribution from Chinese OEMs is nearly 40% in the first half. Our strong booking momentum remained with leading Chinese OEMs, both domestically in China, including rack EPS, rear wheel steering, and dual pinion EPS, as well as in support of their globalization strategies, expanding into Indonesia and Brazil with a leading Chinese customer. As I mentioned earlier, we also secured a significant power column business with a key North America full-size truck program that further improves our competitiveness and scale in that market. Nextier secured the first rear wheel steer program and additional dual pinion EPS with a global customer in Europe. With the addition of rear wheel steer and dual pinion, our capabilities provide a portfolio expansion of various EPS solutions with this specific customer. Lastly, as next year has unveiled its latest motion control innovations at the Shanghai Auto Show this past April, our motion by wire suite includes steer by wire, rear wheel steering, brake by wire, and software. We're becoming increasingly confident to secure more by-wire related bookings throughout this year and accelerate this trend as we enter the second half of the decade. As we examine how we're tracking towards our 2025 full-year booking target, our $1.5 billion of bookings in the first half is on track with our plan to achieve the $5 billion for the full calendar year. Looking at bookings across our product lines and regions, overall 69% of our bookings were in our EPS product line and nearly half or 47% of our bookings were secured in the APAC region. The diversified portfolio indicates that our technology is becoming the product of choice by many Chinese as well as global OEMs alike. On the next slide, in early this year at the Shanghai Auto Show, we unveiled our latest motion control innovations and multiple technology announcements that reinforce our commitment to pioneering the future of motion control through vision, velocity and value. Our motion by wire chassis portfolio is a great example of this commitment. So let's elaborate a bit more on each of these core products. First, steer-by-wire and rear-wheel steering, including hand-wheel actuators, road-wheel actuators for both the front and rear of the vehicle, software and systems integration. We made great progress to secure several significant steer-by-wire bookings in the past couple of years, including one that enables level four automation for a mobility as a service application with a global EV leader. and another win with the leading Chinese NBD OM. We are expecting additional steer-by-wire opportunities in the near term, especially driven by the China market. In terms of rear-wheel steering, next year strategically designed our rear-wheel steer to solve industry challenges by leveraging our existing technology leadership and building blocks. We had earned two rear-wheel steering contracts with the leading Chinese OEM, and we expect to start production with this product next year. Next is brake-by-wire. Our electromechanical braking system was publicly debuted in the 2025 Shanghai Auto Show. We leveraged our technology building blocks again to create a modular, high-precision braking system strategically expand into motion by wire casting control. We're looking to secure our first EMB, electromechanical braking, with the Chinese OEM later this year. Braking technology is experiencing a shift from hydraulic-based to electrical-based braking. This technology shift aligns very well with next year's core competencies. including our electric motor design, our electronics, our mechanical actuators, and software integration. These are natural extensions of our current steering technology. Combined with our competitive goal supply chain, plus our manufacturing excellence and expertise, we are well positioned to aggressively compete in this new market segment. Next is software. which is the intelligence that powers bi-wire motion control and the software-defined chassis. Just this week, we announced our latest development in software with our new MotionIQ software suite. I'll talk more about that on the next slide. But beyond our motion bi-wire chassis portfolio, we're also dedicated to enhancing competitiveness and performance of our existing products that ultimately give our customers even greater options to balance their wide ranging price and performance requirements. We have high output column EPS. Now compared to standard column EPS, which is used to steer smaller vehicles, typically with 40 to 95 newton meters of steering loads, our high output column EPS further expands steering assist capacity up to 110 newton meters. This supports even larger and heavier vehicles, including vehicles that would typically require dual pinion or even entry-level rack EPS systems. It can also maintain steering precision, battery and fuel efficiency, and cost effectiveness without requiring more complex premium underhood EPS solutions. With the addition of modular column EPS, we now offer a complete full suite of high output EPS architectures, delivering a scalable, cost-efficient platform that offers OEMs greater design flexibility, faster program launches, and enhanced steering feel and NVH performance. Lastly, we also featured some driveline innovations, including a new face spline wheel hub interface eight ball constant velocity joints, and premium double offset joints, focusing on reducing weight, enhancing NVH performance, and improving long-term durability. As a proven global innovator of safety-critical motion control, Next Year is a trusted partner across global markets. We've been growing alongside leading Chinese OEMs, enabling them as well as legacy OEMs to anticipate, adapt, and get to market quickly with the latest technologies that have built-in quality and value. Automotive OEMs are choosing next year because of vision, velocity, and value that are critical to succeed in this hyper-competitive and quickly shifting market. So building on our stronger staff announcements, This week, we unveiled our latest development in software, which is our new MotionIQ software suite. MotionIQ is designed to help our customers move faster, reduce cost, and seamlessly adopt the latest bi-wire technologies by streamlining bi-wire chassis control development and vehicle health monitoring workflows into one single software suite. The MotionIQ suite comprises three product groups that provide advanced vehicle dynamics functions for superior driving experiences, prognostic software for smarter data-driven maintenance, and software development tools and expertise to help our customers seamlessly integrate new features. This software suite reinforces our commitment to helping vehicle automakers bring their software-defined vehicle platforms to market faster, enhancing quality and cost efficiencies, all while simplifying and accelerating the path from concept into production. With MotionIQ, next year is positioned to become the trusted motion control partner for our customers, not just by delivering smarter software, but by transforming the way chassis systems are engineered, integrated, and scaled globally. Finally, transitioning from innovations that drive efficiencies, I'll talk a bit about two strategic footprint expansions that further capitalize on growth momentum across China and the broader APEC region, as well as driving operational efficiencies. First is Changshu. Next year's state-of-the-art Changshu facility opened only in January of this year, with over 90,000 square meters of total land area. To meet growing demand from both global and domestic customers in APAC, Changshu's new plant will offer a comprehensive product portfolio, including gear-based EPS, like pinion EPS and rack EPS, steer-by-wire, rear-wheel steering, as well as electromechanical braking. The site will also support engineering. collaborating with our APAC Technical Center in Suzhou to meet the growing customer demands in the region. The new facility is also aligned with China's New Quality Productive Forces Initiative, which emphasizes high-end, intelligent, and sustainable manufacturing. This expansion reinforces next year's commitment to advancing mobility solutions in step with local economic and technological development priorities. Now let's cover our second expansion in Liuzhou. We held a groundbreaking ceremony for a new smart manufacturing facility that will replace the existing operation and is expected to be fully operational by the first half of 2026. The new facility will span more than 40,000 square meters, 130% bigger than the current facility, and it will include advanced laboratories and a test track. The new Yojo facility increases our production capacity on column assist EPS systems, as well as modular power packs that enhance safety, serviceability, packaging, and integration for intelligent vehicle platforms. These two expansions represent a strategic step to scale our capacity and meet the growing demand for our technologies across China and the broader APEC region. By investing in smart, sustainable, high-quality manufacturing, we can better anticipate and meet the evolving needs of our customers while supporting the future of intelligent mobility. With that, I will pause and hand it over for Mike for the financial report. Mike?