Aptiv PLC

Good day and welcome to the Aptiv fourth quarter 2020 earnings conference call. My name is Simon and I'll be your conference operator today. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Thank you. Elena Rossman, Aptiv Vice President of Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Simon. Good morning, and thank you to everyone for joining Aptiv's fourth quarter 2020 earnings conference call. To follow along with today's presentation, our slides can be found at ir.aptiv.com. Today's review of our actual financials exclude restructuring and other special items and will address the continuing operations of Aptiv. The reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures for both our Q4 financials as well as our outlook for the full year 2021 are included at the back of today's presentation and the earnings release, the earnings press release. Turning to slide two, please see a disclosure on forward-looking statements, which reflect Aptiv's current view of future financial performance, which may be materially different from our actual performance for reasons that we cite in our Form 10-K and other SEC filings. including uncertainties posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the difficulty in predicting its future course and impact on the global economy. Joining us today will be Kevin Clark, Aptiv's President and CEO, and Joe Massaro, CFO and Senior Vice President of Business Operations. Kevin will provide a strategic update on the business, and then Joe will cover the financial results and our outlook in more detail. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Kevin Clark.

Thank you, Elena, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Our 2020 results and our outlook for the year ahead underscore the work we've done to build a stronger and more sustainable business, one that grows faster and more profitably and generates more consistent earnings and cash flows. I'm proud of how well our teams performed during these difficult times, and it remains challenging to meet recovery demand while managing through the COVID-19 pandemic and the further tightening of the global supply chain. Our continued resiliency is a result of the passion and the commitment of our team members to deliver for our customers and our shareholders. And as a result, we experienced strong fourth quarter financial results. Revenue increased 14% to $4.2 billion, representing 13 points of growth over the underlying market. Operating income and earnings per share totaled $476 million and $1.13 million respectively. resulting from strong volume growth, partially offset by incremental manufacturing and logistics expenses associated with ongoing supply chain challenges, which I'll cover in more detail shortly. Our 2020 results further validate our business strategy, including revenue growth of 10 points over market and $18 billion of new business awards, reflecting our unique position at the intersection of the safe, green, and connected megatrends that are accelerating in our industry. Moving to slide four, as we enter the start of the economic recovery, we face a new set of supply chain challenges while also continuing to operate safely in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our outlook for 2021 reflects market share gains and content growth in our key product lines, including high voltage electrification and active safety, driving 16% revenue growth, six points over underlying vehicle production, and translating into strong margin expansion and earnings growth. We also are forecasting significant cash flow generation, and our ability to reinvest that cash to deliver incremental value creation is a key component of our investment thesis. At the same time, we're closely monitoring and adjusting to the impact the COVID-19 pandemic is having on our operating environment, and our industry is now facing increased pressure from a global shortage in semiconductor chips, impacting virtually all of our suppliers and customers around the world. As a result, we expect the environment to remain challenging for at least the first half of the year and have reflected the uncertainty associated with OEM production schedules and the timing of replenished inventory levels in our full-year forecast for vehicle production, which we now expect to increase 10% in 2021. While our team is doing an excellent job minimizing these effects, as customers idle plants and look to prioritize certain vehicle platforms, the costs associated with the related labor and manufacturing inefficiencies and higher logistics expenses have been included in our financial outlook for the full year. Due to limited visibility to near-term production schedules, this precludes us from providing guidance for the first quarter. However, our confidence in the strength of the underlying economic recovery combined with the plan's second-half increase in semiconductor capacity does give us a reasonable level of confidence in our full-year outlook, which Joe will cover in more detail shortly. Turning to slide five, despite the challenges we currently face, we remain focused on further enhancing our track record of outperformance and long-term value creation. While our business model has been tested over the last several months, our performance has validated our industry-leading position through cycle resiliency. As we look ahead, we've positioned Aptiv to continue to outperform with focused investments that have enhanced our business model and expanded the addressable markets we served, leveraging our unique brain and nervous system capabilities to deliver even more content on the electrified, software-defined vehicles of the future. yielding accretive growth opportunities in our two business segments and presenting incremental value creation opportunities through smart capital deployment and delivering meaningful shareholder returns as the economic recovery unfolds. As shown on slide six, fourth quarter new business bookings totaled $7.5 billion, reflecting robust win rates and a ramp up in consumer activity. Full-year 2020 bookings reached $18 billion roughly flat compared to 2019 levels when you adjust for the current outlook for global vehicle production. Our advanced safety and user experience segment new business bookings totaled $4.7 billion for the year, including $3.7 billion in active safety awards. New business bookings for our signal and power solutions segment totaled more than $13 billion, including another $2 billion of high voltage electrification awards. We continue to see an acceleration of powertrain electrification, driven by both more stringent CO2 regulations, principally in Europe and China, and the increasing momentum of consumer acceptance in the U.S. Our complementary high voltage distribution and connection systems, as well as cable management solutions, significantly reduce the weight and mass of the vehicle architecture through smarter, more efficient design, perfectly positioning active to benefit from the twofold increase in addressable content on a high voltage electric vehicle. In summary, the cumulative amount of our new business bookings over the last few years gives us confidence in our ability to sustain strong above market growth across both of our business segments, validating the strength of our portfolio of market-relevant technologies aligned to the safe green and connected megatrends. Turning to slide seven, Aptiv is enabling our customers to accelerate their transition to an electrified software-defined vehicle by employing a more holistic engineering and development approach to optimize the software and system solutions that span the full vehicle stack. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we continue to fully fund strategic growth initiatives And last month, we unveiled the latest result of those investments in our Innovation in Motion virtual event, which included Aptiv's smart vehicle architecture, which represents Aptiv's vision for the full electrical and electronic architecture of the vehicle. SVA represents a scalable approach that lowers the total cost of ownership for our OEM customers while unlocking more value in the vehicle at the point of aggregation. creating new hardware and software revenue opportunities for both Aptiv and our OEM customers. Our industry-leading position in domain controllers and expertise in advanced ADAS solutions provides a terrific launching pad as we work with our customers on their next-gen architecture solutions. For customers on the path to SVA, we unveiled our next-gen ADAS platform, leveraging our deep systems expertise and learning from deploying the industry's largest most diverse safety install base over the last 20 years with active safety technologies in use by 20 different global automakers. We also highlighted our new approach to zone controllers, which leverages insights from our unique position with both the brain and nervous system of the vehicle to safely and efficiently distribute power and up integrate body functionality while simplifying the vehicle manufacturing process thereby enhancing the scalability of advanced vehicle architecture systems. Aptiv will be the first to market with zone control with a European OEM in 2022, and we have a robust pipeline of commercial pursuits planned for 2021. Electrification is also an integral part of the SVA roadmap, and Aptiv has emerged as a partner of choice capable of providing comprehensive and optimized high voltage solutions to our customers. That agility has led to increased share of wall with both leading and emerging electric vehicle manufacturers ramping up production globally, including a leading US EV company, as well as companies such as Rivian, NIO, and Volkswagen. Lastly, many of these same advancements apply inside the cabin, where we've developed a scalable user experience platform solution, enhancing performance, while reducing total systems costs through seamless integration of multiple functional domains. As we look to 2021 and beyond, the innovation that we have in motion will further expand our competitive boat and take us closer to our mission of delivering a safer, greener, and more connected future of mobility. Before turning it over to Joe, on slide eight, I want to take a moment to highlight a number of commercial and technological milestones at Motional, our automated driving joint venture with the Hyundai Motor Group. In December, Motional announced an agreement with Lyft to launch a multi-market robo-taxi service in major U.S. cities beginning in 2023, utilizing a scalable, automated mobility on-demand vehicle platform developed in partnership with Hyundai and available to customers beginning in 2022. Last year, Motional also entered into a partnership with VIA to deploy self-driving vehicles on their network in a city to be announced soon. And in January, Motional announced a partnership to deploy Cox Automotive Mobility's Pivot as their premier fleet service provider. Beginning with Motional's self-driving fleet in Las Vegas, this partnership lays the foundation to support the company as it expands the market for robotaxis in other major U.S. cities. These commercial developments are underpinned by rigorous, third-party validation, and safety assessments, which have allowed Motional to receive approval for testing of fully driverless systems on public roads in Nevada in early 2021. In summary, Motional made tremendous progress delivering on its commitments in 2020, paving the way for commercial success in the years to come. I'll now hand the call over to Joe Massaro for an overview of our financial results. Joe?

Thanks, Kevin, and good morning, everyone. Starting on slide nine, the recovery momentum in the fourth quarter generated strong sales, income, and cash performance in the quarter, despite significant incremental safety, manufacturing, and logistics costs associated with operating with COVID and the mounting supply chain constraints. Revenues of $4.2 billion were up 14% year over year, significantly ahead of vehicle production, which was up 1% in the quarter. The stronger-than-expected sales volumes resulted in adjusted EBITDA of $678 million, up 40 basis points compared to the prior year, reflecting stronger volumes and disciplined cost management, partially offset by approximately $70 million of COVID and supply chain-related costs. Earnings per share in the quarter were $1.13, reflecting higher operating income, offset by the emotional JV and higher share count and tax expense. Operating cash flow was strong at $799 million, driven by higher EBITDA and lower year-over-year cash taxes. Lastly, capital expenditures were $95 million, bringing the total to $584 million for the year, just under our $600 million outlook. Looking at fourth quarter revenues in more detail on slide 10. Globally, we benefited from stronger vehicle production as well as increased demand for high-voltage electrical architecture and engineered components, primarily in Europe and China. North America revenues grew 11% despite the market being flat, driven by new launch volume and favorable truck and SUV platform mix. In Europe, the trend of strong double-digit market outgrowth continued. as the production rebound benefited active safety and high-voltage electrification programs. Lastly, our China growth was 9%, outpacing the market and expectations, as a stronger recovery in sales led to production upside with our major customers, including high-voltage launch volumes. Moving to the segments on the next slide, advanced safety and user experience revenues increased 7% in the quarter, reflecting six points of growth over underlying vehicle production, including double-digit active safety growth in all three major regions. Segment EBITDA declined 1%, excluding the impact of the Motional JV deconsolidation, primarily driven by the COVID and supply chain costs Kevin mentioned earlier. Signal and power solutions revenue were up 17%, reflecting 16 points of growth over market, We also saw strong growth across all product lines and regions, including demand for high voltage electrification products in Europe and China, favorable truck and SUV platform mix in North America, and industrial and market recovery globally. EBITDA in the segment increased 17% as strong sales growth offset additional costs and FX and commodities in the quarter. Turning now to slide 12 in the 2021 macro outlook. As Kevin mentioned earlier, the worldwide shortage of semiconductors impacting the auto industry is limiting near-term production visibility. Based on our discussions with customers and suppliers, we expect the intermittent disruptions to continue during the first half of the year and assume the industry should recover the majority of lost production units tied to these shortages during the second half of the year. Accordingly, we will not be providing guidance for the first quarter, as there is a high likelihood of vehicle production shifting between the first and second quarters. However, we believe we have adequately reflected the current situation in our guidance for full year 2021, which estimates global vehicle production of 84 million units, up 10%. Looking at the regions, in North America and Europe, improved levels of demand should support stronger production rates while a more modest recovery is planned for China, following a sharp bounce back in demand starting in the second quarter last year. While the supply chain remains extremely tight, we are doing everything we can for our customers to meet increased levels of demand, and we are confident our leading industry position and technologies aligned to the safe, green, and connected megatrends will continue to yield strong growth above market, consistent with the framework we have previously provided. Turning to slide 13, despite the uncertainty that remains near term, we are confident in the guidance range for 2021. For the year, we expect revenue to be in the range of $15.1 to $15.7 billion, up 16% at the midpoint, with six points of growth over market, driven by our portfolio of relevant technologies. EBITDA and operating income are expected to be $2.4 billion and $1.6 billion at the midpoint, respectively, with margins approaching 2019 levels. Despite 100 million of COVID-related operating costs, and given the volatility in customer schedules and supply chain disruptions, we are incurring additional manufacturing and logistics costs, which we have estimated at $80 million for the year. Lastly, benefits of our ongoing performance initiatives are more than offsetting the lapping of $150 million of austerity measures taken in 2020 during the pandemic-related shutdowns. We expect earnings per share in the range of $3.35 and $3.85 a share, or $4.20 to $4.70 per share when excluding the impact of the equity losses of our emotional joint venture. High year-over-year non-cash operating losses in the Motional JV reflect the finalization of purchase accounting, in addition to higher spending, as Motional prepares to meet the commercial milestones Kevin highlighted earlier. Lastly, we expect operating cash flow of $1.85 billion. Turning to slide 14 on the segments, beginning with advanced safety and user experience, We expect growth over market of 13 points, translating into approximately $4.4 billion of revenue in 2021, driven by new launches and continued strong active safety growth. EBTA margins of approximately 13% reflect five points of expansion off 2020's depressed levels. Signal and power solutions revenues of approximately $11 billion reflect four points of growth over underlying vehicle production, with content accretive growth and high voltage electrification up 50% year-over-year. Our CV and industrial end markets are also expected to outgrow the industrial market. We expect EDTA margins approaching 17%, up 250 basis points year-over-year, and reflect favorable volume growth, partially offset by the dilutive margin rate impact of higher copper prices. We thought it would be helpful to walk revenue in EBITDA compared to 2019 levels on slide 15. Starting with revenue on the left, despite a 10% reduction in industry volumes, we expect 2021 revenues to be 7% higher than 2019 at the midpoint. The investments we've made to add scale in our fastest growing product lines, like active safety, high voltage electrification, and engineered components, are generating sustained strong growth over market. and we expect a modest tailwind on FX and commodities, which combined more than offset our normal price downs. Moving to the right-hand side of the slide and adjusted EBITDA, the benefits of our flexible and scalable cost structure are driving strong volume flow through on higher revenues, and the benefits of our performance initiatives yielding EBITDA of $2.4 billion at the midpoint. As you can see, we are expected to recover to 2019 EBDA margins in 2021, despite the ongoing operational impact of COVID and the supply chain disruptions. This is a true testament to our relentless focus on discipline and accretive revenue growth and cost structure optimization, creating an even more sustainable business with the ability to outperform in any environment. Turning to cash flow on the next slide, Our sustainable business model is enabling us to convert more income to cash, generating higher operating cash flow and free cash flow conversion. As we approach a more normalized business environment, we expect operating cash flows of $1.85 billion in 2021, above 2019 levels, with free cash flow conversion greater than 100%. This assumes approximately $160 million of restructuring cash outflows and CapEx of $750 million, consistent with our targeted funding levels of 5% of sales. With cash flow growing strong double digits, there is no shortage of attractive reinvestment opportunities. We will continue to maintain a consistent approach to capital deployment, aligned to our strategic framework. Our M&A strategy remains focused on transactions that enhance our scalability, accelerate speed to market, and also provide access to new addressable markets. We believe highly disciplined capital deployment is a major differentiator for Aptiv and an important lever for shareholder value generation. With that, I'd like to hand the call back to Kevin for his closing remarks.

Thanks, Joe. I'll now wrap up on slide 17 before we open it up for Q&A. As we navigate 2021 and the new challenges ahead, it goes without saying that we remain laser-focused on delivering on our commitments and continuing our track record of outperformance, while advancing our vision of the company in 2025 and beyond. This vision is the extension of our business strategy, which is enabled by our industry-leading competitive position and execution capabilities. Delivering our vision results in a more sustainable business defined by an improved and more predictable growth profile, increased profitability through global scale and accretive growth opportunities on the path to electrified smart vehicle architecture, the accelerated compounding of earnings and cash flow generation, and additional value creation upside from the disciplined deployment of that cash. We're well positioned to continue moving forward, a company with a strong financial position, low cost of capital, and the flexibility to reinvest in its people, processes, and portfolio to create significant value for its customers, for its employees, and for its shareholders. So with that, we'll open up the line for Q&A.

Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please be sure to mute your function. It's turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Please limit your questions to one and one follow-up. So once again, that is star 1 to ask a question. And we'll now move to our first question over the phone, which comes from Adam Jonas from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Hey, everybody. So, Kevin, hey, look, I never congratulate people on good quarters, and I'm not going to do that here because, you know, we all know good companies are not made on good quarters. They're made on good strategy. And what we're seeing here is really, I think, a great strategy coming together. So I just had to say that.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Yeah, just in the outset. It really must be said. And more to come, but two questions. First on emotional, okay? My first thought is if this thing really works, you know, emotional, the emotional JV stage, maybe just your share of it could be worth more than all of active. Okay, now there's an arms race going on as these autonomous players, Waymo, Cruise, et cetera, kind of get close to deployment. And even by your own growth and losses, it looks like you're keeping up with that. So what's the plan to add capital or to access capital for that unit? And could we see 2021 be a year where we see greater visibility in tapping different sources of capital? That's my first question. And my follow-up is more specific on SPCB, or the Flexible Printed Circuit Board, technology, which I'm sure you're very familiar with, so maybe this is one for Glenn, but we're starting to get questions about the role of this technology to really dramatically simplify electrical architecture. We understand Tesla wants to use it too, but then it's not really in production yet. There's, there's, there's issues. It's just not ready for prime time. So would love your color on, is this the kind of, you know, where is, where is Aptiv on that development path? And when could you see that type of technology coming into production? Thanks.

Okay, great. Great. Those are two, two great questions. So I, I'm emotional about, Listen, we've made tremendous progress over the last couple of years, significant progress last year with our partner, Hyundai. And as I went through a list of announcements that were made during 2020, you'll see more announcements made as it relates to 2021 from a technology standpoint and from a commercial standpoint. Adam, the business is on track from a resource standpoint. There's been a significant investment in resources in and around technology, in and around areas that are accelerating the underlying technology. As you know, we have vehicles on the road today. We finished or completed our Gen 1 platform. which you'll see out on the road in Las Vegas soon, and we'll have our Gen 2 platform available for sale to customers commercially beginning in 2022. So a tremendous amount of progress. As it relates to capital, recall the transaction, HMG contributed a billion four of cash back in March of 2020. We're using that cash to make the investments that we've talked about. Both of us as partners are focused on how do we develop the technology and how do we maximize value so we're completely aligned on value creation and value creation within that business, if you know what I mean. So focused on how do we drive value through Motional. To the extent we see opportunities where our view on value of the business aligns with one's willingness to contribute capital, that's something that we as partners will evaluate, and it's something that we'll continue to monitor. But at this point in time, we feel like, at this point in time, we have more than enough capital for the foreseeable future to continue to accelerate our investments. But it's something, again, that we continue to watch and we watch closely. So I would not refer to capital as a constraint. On the flexible printed circuit boards, as you know, we've been very focused on vehicle architecture for the last several years. And how do we develop solutions for customers that reduce the constraints associated with traditional vehicle architecture. So how do we remove copper content? How do we replace that with real value-added content like the flexible printed circuit board technology that you're talking about, which overall is a part of our FCA solution? So that's technology that actually is under development. It's actually technology that we're in discussions with multiple OEMs about. And as you know, we have relationships with several of the leading OEMs, even those who I would say are less traditional OEMs who've been evolving vehicle architecture and have been most aggressive as it relates to changing vehicle architecture so that we can separate software from hardware. And, you know, there's going to be more to come there. We feel like we're a leader given our position with the brain and nervous system. We feel like there's a number of opportunities for us. As I mentioned, we've been in discussions and development programs with a number of OEMs, and we'll keep you and others updated on our progress.

Thanks, Kevin.

Thanks.

We'll now move to our next question over the phone, which comes from Joseph Spack from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Maybe to start the first question just on the free cash flow, which was really strong this quarter, and the guidance, 1.1, impressive, especially since it still has 160 million restructuring in there. I'm not sure if you consider that an elevated level or more ongoing. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts there. you know, you mentioned the conversion over 100%, even if you back out emotional loss, it's still like, you know, around 90. So is that the right new level of conversion that we see that, you know, this company can start converting that going forward?

Joe, do you, why don't you take that?

Sure. Yep. Yeah, Joe, it's, that has been the target for a while. We've talked about moving sort of, you know, even if you go back to the capital market days in 17 and 19, about a a steady march up to the 90%, and that's where we believe we are. You're right, the emotional math gives us a bit of a boost there as well. But yeah, I think that's the right range.

Okay. And then, Kevin, just because this is a question we've been getting increasingly as there's a lot of headlines flying around and we're seeing different automakers take different software strategies, right? So you have Volkswagen trying to move some of it in-house. You have others partnering, like you saw the Ford and Google announcement, I believe that was this week. How do you view the role of a supplier like Apple? I mean, I know you ship a lot of software to the OEMs, but to date there are really more takers and sort of integration of software all over the place. And you mentioned a number of times the change in electrical architecture and everyone's moving to more software-enabled platforms. Yeah. It seems like there's an opportunity for a player like Aptiv, but you'd have to get involved even earlier in the work and work more closely with the OEMs. So there's a role for you. Is that a correct assessment? And maybe you could just update us on what Aptiv is doing and the strategy there.

No, Joe, it's a great question. And I think the point you make is right. So I think given where we play, given where the industry is going – having a much more strategic relationship with the OEM customer is a must, right? What we deal with, where we operate, it's a cross-section that's highly complex. And that's actually where we play. So we have the benefit of our legacy kind of nervous system vehicle architecture combined with our our newer capabilities in and around software that, to your point, started in areas like infotainment, user experience, and active safety. All of those are coming together and merging in what we've been talking about in terms of smart vehicle architecture, all of them. And given our capabilities in both areas, we've been positioned to have strategic discussions and, quite frankly, strategic development programs with several of the leading global OEMs. And I would say even strategic programs that we're on today, whether it's our Gen 1 ADAS solutions or our Gen 1 integrated cockpit solutions, that ultimately lead to, that lead to the SVA solution. Clearly there's an acceleration, the separation of software and hardware. It's happening as we speak. It presents a huge opportunity for us. We talked about our Gen2 ADAS platform where we give, where we can provide the full stack solution, but also provide OEM customers who want the ability to do more of the software on their own, the ability to do so, For those who don't have the capabilities, we can provide the full solution, and we do that today. And there will be a universe of OEM customers who want to do more, and we're going to enable that and provide both hardware, software, and integration services in those sort of scenarios. There's going to be other OEM customers who... really don't have that capability, aren't interested in investing in it, and will do more of a full-stack solution. And from our perspective, what's important is really to serve both so that we have that revenue opportunity and make sure that we're the driver of change versus reacting to the change. So that's why we made the comments in our prepared remarks about continuing to invest during 2020, which was a challenging year. will continue to invest during 2021 and beyond on all the solutions that we're developing, the platforming of our various technologies, and cannibalizing some of our traditional product lines and replacing them with higher tech solutions that take out mass, that take out weight, that provide OEM customers with more flexibility and really enable the technology that's going into the car. It's a long-winded answer, but I hope I've addressed it.

I appreciate the caller. Thank you.

We'll now move on to our next question over the phone, which comes from Chris McNally from Evercore. Please go ahead.

Hey, Chris.

Hey. Thanks so much, Tim. So one long-term question and one active safety question. If we take the top end of your margin values at 10.7%, and we actually look at some of the, you spoke about, you know, roughly 180 million expected in 21, and we add that back, we get almost that 12% bar, you know, that we've been talking about for some time looking out. And that's still a couple of billion before we're back to the 90 million pre-COVID production. I think that's pretty exciting to think about the underlying progress here on margins as we've been waiting for ASQE to come up for some years. Could you talk about sort of the margin progression and when you may actually formalize some of the old margin targets and we get new ones? Because it looks like you're about to go into a strong period where you hit those margin targets we've been speaking about for some years. Joe, do you want to respond to this one? Sure.

Yeah, no, Chris, I think you're, listen, I think you've framed it correctly. You're thinking about it. We've obviously spent, you know, a lot of effort over the last couple years on the cost structure of the business, taking out overhead. You know, and I know as we talked about last year, you know, we didn't have any sort of big moment where we said, aha, because of COVID, we can change things. We felt that the business had been structured pretty well. and would continue to take advantage from a margin perspective as those product lines grew into their own and started to add increased volume. And I think you're right. If you take out what are a fair amount of investment around COVID and now these supply chain costs and assume eventually we work out of those over the coming couple of years and we continue to see the strong a creative product line growth and things like active safety, high voltage and engineered components. You know, I think we're on that trajectory. As far as a longer term update, you know, that'll come as we, you know, as we, you know, in our next capital markets day, which we plan on for 2022. But I do think your trajectory and the way you're thinking about it is correct.

Great. And then I guess the related question is in active safety, right? You know, 4 billion of orders sort of on average now, you know, you had a strong year, even despite COVID, we're seeing a lot more emphasis on level two plus where, you know, you have a sort of a higher market share. So there's a lot of momentum there, clearly. You know, like 18 months ago, you mentioned that you need to have a step up in spend to keep up with the order pace and the bid pace. Could you just give us an update? Do we maybe need to see a second step up if we start to hit four or five billion in orders? Or can we start to see some of the scalability? Because, again, that's really important for driving ASUE margins.

Yeah. Maybe I'll start. Our real focus, Chris – as it relates to our next generation ADAS solution, is leveraging the software that's been developed to date, driving reuse of that software, and really driving platforms within the ADAS business. And that's really across the various ASUX product lines, right, on the journey to ultimately an SVA solution. So it's really about how do we drive more solutions more leverage. Listen, I don't think we foresee any real incremental step up like we talked about previously, that $90 million, which was really about how do we drive additional pursuit opportunities? How do we better position ourselves as it relates to SVA, both from a hardware and software standpoint? And now it's taking advantage of that investment opportunity to drive more scale and widening our competitive mode. Now, there may be within quarters, periods where we decide we're going to invest a bit more given the competitive dynamic or to drive technology advancement. But by and large, given we've introduced Gen 1, we're rolling out or launching on several vehicle programs now as we speak. and we're heading into Gen 2, you should start to see a fair amount of scale come through.

Okay, great. Thank you.

We'll now move to our next question, which comes from Mark Delaney from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Yeah, good morning. Thanks very much for taking the questions. I was hoping to start on the advanced safety business and what the company is seeing around Level 2, Level 2 Plus, and Level 3. You're guiding for some really nice growth over market in that segment this year. But if we start thinking out to the 2022, 2023 type of timeframe, there's been an increased number of announcements of deployments of those sorts of technologies. ADAS capabilities. So if you could talk a little bit more on what Aptiv is seeing out over the intermediate term for advanced safety and what opportunities there could be to maybe sustain this kind of nice growth over market that you're seeing in advanced safety.

Yeah, I'll start with the qualitative and then Joe can walk you through all the growth rates. I mean, our booking activity has remained strong It was very strong last year in what was a very choppy environment given COVID. Bookings were close to $4 billion. Advanced safety for our OEM customers is a solution that sells. So the focus on driving advanced safety solutions from our customers is significant. Solutions that reduce the on-cost but provide the sort of performance that consumers are looking for is in significant demand. So it will continue to be a huge growth opportunity for us for the foreseeable future. Joe, you should walk through all the numbers.

Yeah, no, Mark. It's very consistent with what we're talking about. This is a strong double-digit grower market. You know, we expect to be a little shy of $2 billion by the end of 2021 in active safety revenue. But, you know, continue to see that business growing, you know, at or above 20% from a KGAR perspective over the next three years. And when you get to that 2022-2023 timeframe, we expect to be the largest from an industry perspective. We'll have active safety content over 20 OEs, different platforms on 20 OEs. So, You know, that strong sort of 20 plus percent care we've talked about, you know, continues to be in place. We obviously feel very good about it. There's a little bit of a larger numbers, obviously, with the growth rate as the business continues to grow. But, you know, a very strong, very strong compounding growth rate over the next number of years.

That's helpful. Thanks. My second question was on Motional and how to think about this level of equity losses around $240 million for 2021. Should we think about that as a run rate or maybe even increasing in terms of the degree of losses as you're trying to bring your technology to market? And then as these programs start to ramp in the 2021 to 2023 timeframe, as you are articulating in your prepared remarks, is that going to be enough to get these losses to start to decline, or is that really further out in time before we should think about equity losses and mitigating that from emotional? Thanks.

Yeah, the real focus now, and Joe can walk through the numbers, the real focus now is advancing and accelerating technology adoption. So that's where our real focus is. We've completed the Gen 1 platform. You'll see that on the roads. Gen 2 for 2022 for sale to customers in 2022, on the road with Lyft in 2023. So that's where our real focus is. Now, we have more than enough capital to meet our timetable and meet the tech roadmap that the team has mapped out. To the extent we need capital, We view that as something, to the extent we need capital and it reflects the value of the business, that's something with our partner we'll entertain. Joe, do you want to add to my?

Yeah, no, just real quick. About half of the increase from prior expectations is just the finalization of the purchase accounting, so that's effectively non-cash, obviously coming through the P&Ls. So the remaining half is the step up in investment. And to Kevin's point, we'll see that increase over the next couple years, but it's still well within the plan and the original funding. When we formed the JV back at the beginning of last year, I thought we had four to five years of funding in the JV, and that continues to be the case.

We'll now move on to our next question over the phone, which comes from Emmanuel Rossner from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hi. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Emmanuel. I wanted to ask you about high-voltage electrification bookings. We're seeing all these announcements from automakers that seem to signal massive acceleration towards electrification, some pretty bullish volume targets by 2025. some, you know, 100% EV by 2035 from GM. And I was curious, should we expect to see inflection higher into your rate of hooking? I think it's been trading around, trending around 2 billion a year or so in electrification. And then related to that, I think last quarter you were talking about this fairly high win rate that you have in high-voltage hooking, you know, 70% or so, just wanted to see if this is something that you have seen or expect to see continue.

Yeah, Emmanuel, it's Kevin. So, yeah, so from a win rate standpoint, our win rate continues to be north of 70%. I would say we have a, to reiterate, we've talked about it previously, a very focused strategy as it relates to high voltage electrification. So we're very focused on a select group of OEMs who, you know, have a strategy that brings high voltage electrification across multiple platforms. So we get the benefit of we get the benefit, they get the benefit of significant volume. A year or two ago, we were basically evaluating 15 programs on an annual basis. This year, we'll be evaluating north of 40 programs. So bookings activity and dollar value of bookings will certainly kick up in 2021 and beyond. It's important to note, the reason we're so successful is we are the only only competitor, only player out there that has the ability to bring, you know, the vehicle architecture, the connector component, the cable management component, the electrical center component, and the wire harness component together and provide a fully optimized solution to an OEM that takes out mass, it takes out weight, I mean, a significant amount of mass reduction. Adam asked that question earlier with respect to, you know, flexible printed circuit board technology, but reducing mass by close to 40%, which takes out cost and gives the OEM space. And the value of what we deliver, the packaging of that full system is translated into significant win rates and a huge opportunity for Aptiv. Joe can walk through the numbers, but high-voltage electrification will be our fastest-growing product line for several years to come.

Yeah, I mean, we're expecting, just based on the bookings and the increased activity, your point, you know, we had talked about that business growing at 40% through 2020. We expect it now to be growing over 50% in 2021, and that's obviously on a larger number. We'll certainly be, you know, above a billion dollars of revenue in 2022. Our original target was to sort of get to or get close to a billion in 2022, so we'll now be above that. and continue to have sort of that same profit profile. It continues to trend above segment margins and is accretive to the SPS segment. So I would say both within the bookings and the revenue trajectory, the trends you're talking about from an OE perspective about greater levels of electrification, we're seeing in the numbers as well.

Okay, great. And then just one point of clarification on your overall outlook for growth of our market this year of six points. I think back in the third quarter when you were sort of giving sort of an initial, you know, view into 2021, I think you were thinking six to eight points or so. Can you maybe just give us a final point around, you know, what has changed? Is it just the uncertainty of the environment and to what extent it would impact the growth over market versus the LVT growth?

Yeah, I love that I asked that. Yeah, Kevin. You know, we remain very confident, Emmanuel, in the long-term 6% to 8% growth over market framework. I don't think anything has sort of strategically changed there at all. You know, we are at the lower end. As you can imagine, you know, the chip constraints obviously affect the tech-enabled products. So, We are at the lower end of the range as we go into the year, but long-term, we still have a high degree of confidence in that 6% to 8%. And, you know, as we've talked about a lot, you know, that number doesn't shoot perfectly straight every quarter, but very confident within that range. And I wouldn't say anything material has changed from that perspective.

Okay, thank you.

We'll now move to our next question over the phone, which comes from Dan Levy from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.

Hey, Dan.

Hey. Hey, good morning, guys. Thank you. A couple questions, one on outgrowth and then another on emotional. First on outgrowth, and I know you mentioned Investor Day probably next year, but We did see your bookings accelerate in fourth quarter. Presumably there's more opportunity into 2021 as you get some of this post-COVID catch-up on bids. And we haven't really been seeing anything related to SCA yet. But I know at the same time, it's harder to maintain growth as products mature. So maybe you can give us a sense of what the bookings say about your ability to meet that 68 points of outgrowth. beyond the 2022 timeframe that you've talked about. So how do you think about the bookings in six to eight points beyond that 2022 timeframe?

Yeah, I think, Joe, I'll start. As Joe said, last year and then the first part of this year, giving the semiconductor challenges or supply shortages creates a bit of a choppy environment and limits the amount of near-term visibility However, everything that we see going through COVID and dealing with these challenges really underscores our view that you're going to see an acceleration of technology adoption, right, whether that's high-voltage electrification, whether that's ADAS solutions or connectivity, that consumers want those products. They want more of them. So it gives us a high level of confidence beyond 2022, right, in the six to eight points of growth over market. And that's what's reflected in our bookings. And quite frankly, that's what's reflected in our long-term outlook from a revenue standpoint. So management team is very confident in that level of outgrowth. Joe?

Yeah, no, I'd agree completely with that. And Dan, as you know, we watch the sort of the longer-term CAGR bookings growth carefully over time because that ultimately is is what drives the outgrowth. And when you look at the key growth areas around active safety, high voltage, engineered components, you know, the connectors, helmet-type business, those bookings have remained, you know, exactly at or above where we need to be at that 6% to 8%. So we've got, again, a very high level of confidence in that outgrowth range.

Thank you. And the SBA piece, when will we see that showing up in bookings?

Well, SVA, you already, remember, Dan, SVA is an evolving solution, right? So it's effectively, and we've talked about it previously, it started with the consolidation of compute with domain controllers, integrated cockpit controllers, items like that. It's now evolving or continuing to evolve to zone controllers. We've already booked a program with a major major global european you know european-based global oem we have a number of of potential program wins in front of us during 2021 so more to come on that the program that we were awarded previously will launch on a vehicle in 2022 and then there's a lot of activity that our sva team has focused on our pdc solution where we separate hardware from software so So I think over the next 12 to 24 months, you should get more visibility to the commercial wins, the commercial opportunities, and the progression of revenue.

Great. And then, thank you. And then maybe a follow-up just on emotional. Maybe, you know, you could walk us through the key steps or milestones ahead between now and 2023 that we should watch out for between now and commercialization. And then just broadly on commercialization, I believe that the goal in the past was to really be a systems provider to others who want to operate their own fleet rather than you running the fleet. So maybe you could just give us a sense of where the business focus is now because it seems like, yes, it's on the Lyft network, but it seems like you are now running your fleet.

Yeah, no, the overall strategy hasn't changed. So it's really about providing the full systems and software stack for customers OEMs or fleet providers to put in place on their vehicles. So that strategy has not changed. To the extent that we are partnering and operating rideshare networks, we get the benefit of validating the technology in real-world situations and understanding better understanding ultimately the customers who operate those networks or our ride-sharing providers. So we have a great partnership with Lyft. There's a lot of sharing of information as it relates to technology, as it relates to consumer experience, as it relates to fleet management solutions. So it allows them to be better and us to be better. And we'll continue to do that. So it's almost, you know, it's validation of the underlying technology. The key milestones over the next couple of years are the Gen 1 out on the road doing real-world testing, which you'll see, which will happen very, very shortly. Gen 2 out on the road or available for customers in 2022. So we're a little over a year away on that. The team is making significant progress on that vehicle. It's a HMG battery electric vehicle platform. And then during calendar 2021, more commercial announcements related to partnerships. whether it be the purchase of the underlying technology or plugging that technology into other networks. So there's a lot of... Expect the launch of VIA as well this year. I'm sorry, go ahead.

I was just going to say, we've announced one, Kevin, to your comments on the prepared remarks. We'd expect VIA to be launching this year as well in a city to be determined.

Due to time, ladies and gentlemen, we don't have time for any further questions. I'll now hand the call back over to Mr. Kevin Clark for a closing comment.

Okay. Well, thank you, everyone. We appreciate you joining our call. We appreciate your support of Aptiv. Have a good day and a good rest of the week. Stay safe. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.