Aptiv PLC

Good day and welcome to the Aptiv Q3 2024 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Jane Wu, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jess. Good morning, and thank you for joining Aptiv's third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. The press release and related tables, along with a slide presentation, can be found on the investor relations portion of the website at Aptiv.com. Today's review of our financials exclude amortization, restructuring, and other special items and will address the continuing operations of Aptiv. The reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures for our third quarter results, as well as our 2024 outlook, are included at the back of the slide presentation and the earnings press release. During today's call, we will be providing certain forward-looking information that reflects Aptiv's current view of future financial performance and may be materially different for reasons that we cite in our Form 10-K and other SEC filings. Joining us today will be Kevin Clark, Aptiv's Chairman and CEO, and Joe Massaro, Vice Chair and Chief Financial Officer. Kevin will provide a strategic update on the business, and Joe will cover the financial results in more detail before we open the call to Q&A. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Kevin Clark.

Thanks, Jane, and thanks, everyone, for joining us this morning. Let's begin at slide three. During the quarter, we were busy executing on a record number of year-to-date vehicle program launches, which were more than offset by further weakness in production schedules from the D3 in North America, especially with a large European-based OEM, and from select global OEMs in Europe, and continued weakness in production schedules with the multinational JVs in China. As a result, third quarter revenues declined 6%, as we experienced more headwinds than previously anticipated, which weighted more towards our electrical distribution product line. Despite the dynamic market environment, we delivered record third-quarter operating income and margin, as well as an all-time record for quarterly earnings per share, reflecting our continued strong operating performance. EBITDA and operating margins expanded 180 basis points and 120 basis points, respectively, and EPS increased 41% versus the prior year, benefiting from strong operating performance as well as completion of the emotional restructuring and a lower share count. Moving to slide four, although we're encouraged by our strong year-to-date operating execution, we're updating our 2024 outlook to reflect a weaker industry backdrop that includes an incremental slowdown in EV adoption and an overall reduction in global vehicle production, further impacted by our customer mix. Joe will cover our updated outlook later. However, we remain confident that the long-term trends towards a software-defined electrified future will continue, and as a result of the resilient business model we've built, our revenue growth will reaccelerate once industry and customer dynamics have stabilized. In the meantime, we've implemented additional profit improvement actions, including prioritizing investments in productized solutions, both on flexible open platforms, which enable higher performance at lower cost, proactively diversifying our customer and market exposure, and consolidating our manufacturing footprint and reducing direct and indirect labor across each of our regions. We remain confident that our portfolio of advanced technologies, coupled with our optimized cost structure, positions us to deliver long-term value to our customers and to our shareholders. Moving to slide five. During the third quarter, we booked $3.6 billion of new business awards. bringing the year-to-date total to just under $21 billion. Advanced safety and user experience bookings total $3.8 billion year-to-date, driven by continued strong momentum in active safety bookings in the quarter. Signal and power solutions new business bookings total just under $17 billion year-to-date, including new program awards across the automotive, commercial vehicle, aerospace and defense, and industrial and markets. Our pipeline of new business opportunities continues to expand, we've seen some delays in customer program awards, causing shifting timelines across our business. These delays do not represent program losses or cancellations, but do impact our expectations for timing related to new business bookings, which is reflected in our updated 2024 bookings target of $30 billion. Our industry-leading portfolio of cost-effective full-system solutions and global scale continues to position us to win new business and support our customers in navigating both the near and long-term market dynamics. Turning to our advanced safety and user experience segment on slide six, this segment achieved record earnings and margin during the quarter, underscoring the strength of our product portfolio and benefits associated with our productivity initiatives. Revenues declined 1% to $1.4 billion in the quarter, reflecting growth over vehicle production across our major regions. Active safety revenues increased mid-teens, partially offset by declining user experience revenues. Operating income totaled a record $196 million, representing margins of 13.7%, reflecting benefits from manufacturing and engineering productivity initiatives. We continue to build strategic supplier partnerships and further localize our vendor base to both increase supply chain resiliency and lower cost. This is demonstrated by our investment in MaxEI during the quarter, a China-based vision software supplier that provides a local perception alternative for our ADAS platform. Recent commercial highlights include a new radar award with a local OEM in India, a smart camera solution with Geely that utilizes an SOC provided by China Basics Era, and a vision solution provided by MaxEI, underscoring the benefits of the open, abstracted architecture of our Gen 6 ADAS solution and how we're leveraging this in the China market. And the extension of an existing ADAS program with a large North American-based OEM, which, as a reflection of our strong performance, includes increased content and will be launched across additional vehicle programs. During the quarter, we also launched multiple new vehicle programs, including our ADAS solution for Geely, which incorporates our Gen 7 radar the industry's first base-level forward-facing radar with 4D capability. Our user experience solution for Mahindra's SUV, which will be followed by additional vehicle program launches early next year that utilize our integrated cockpit controller, which consolidates multiple ECUs into a single compute platform, capable of supplying higher levels of performance and scalability. A significant ADAS program for a large multinational OEM that is fully scalable up to level 2+. And lastly, the successful launch of WindRiver's Elixir Pro, the first enterprise-grade Linux solution for the Cloud Edge continuum. This solution expands the open-source Linux ecosystem and enables the deployment of mission-critical and data-intensive workloads, including AI, ML, and computer vision. Customer engagement for Elixir has been promising, and we're planning further expansion of Wind River's portfolio to drive growth. Moving to the next slide. We recently held an ADAS investor roundtable to dive deeper into our ADAS technology stack, which delivers high-performing, scalable solutions at a very competitive cost. The foundation of our solution is a services-based architecture and cloud-native tool chain. that support modular software running on abstracted hardware. This approach enables our OEM customers to accelerate software development, streamline deployment, and optimize lifecycle management. Our full system solution efficiently scales from compliance up to hands-free urban driving and even level three autonomy, enabling greater flexibility at a much lower cost. Turning to our signal and power solution segment on slide eight. Revenues in the segment were down 8% during the quarter, reflecting declining revenues in our electrical distribution system and engineered component product lines of 12% and 4%, respectively. EDS revenues were impacted by customer schedule reductions, particularly from select OEMs in North America and Europe, while engineered component revenues benefited from strong growth in non-automotive end marks. including continued traction in aerospace and industrials. Operating income totaled $397 million, representing a margin of 11.5%, reflecting the impact of lower production volumes, partially offset by savings related to operating performance initiatives. Signal and Power Solutions booked approximately $3.2 billion in new customer awards in the quarter, including program extensions, with two major global OEMs for the North American market, and Conquest Awards with the largest Chinese local EV manufacturer across low and high voltage electrical architecture solutions. As mentioned, we also delivered a record number of vehicle program launches year-to-date, including major EV launches for both a Chinese OEM and a Korean OEM, as well as several programs across our portfolios for OEMs in North America and in Europe. Turning to slide nine, looking beyond the quarter, I'd like to highlight a few of our recent technology showcases, which are a great opportunity for us to display our cost-effective solutions and engage with the engineering, purchasing, and executive teams across a broad range of customers, regions, and markets. At each of these events, Aptiv hosted hundreds of customers presenting tailored content, live demonstrations, and technical deep dives. resulting in new commercial opportunities across our entire portfolio. In China, we hosted numerous technology showcases with fast-growing local OEMs, including BYD, Chang'an, and Great Wall Motor. And we just returned from ICB in Wolfsburg, where we had the opportunity to host the Volkswagen Group's executive leadership team in our vehicles on the road and in our booth, as well as engage with partners and customers across the broader supply chain. In addition to the automotive market, We're also pursuing opportunities in other markets. Our presence at EIA Transportation was well received and sparked interest from many major commercial vehicle customers. As industry landscapes evolve, these technology showcases are increasingly important and are one of the levers we use to further solidify our position as a partner of choice with leading customers. Moving to slide 10, before I turn it over to Joe, I'd like to remind everyone that consistent with prior years, we'll be unveiling our newest innovations at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this coming January. We'll be showcasing solutions at the intersection of software and hardware and functional, fully integrated vehicles on the roads of Las Vegas, demonstrating how we can partner with our customers to build the software-defined, cloud-native, and electrified vehicles of the future. With that, I will now turn the call over to Joe.