American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings, Inc.

Good morning. My name is Nick, and I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the American Axle and Manufacturing third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer period. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press the star key, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the star key, then the number two. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. David Lim, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Lim.

Thank you, and good morning. I'd like to welcome everyone who is joining us on AAM's third quarter earnings call. Earlier this morning, we released our third quarter of 2025 earnings announcement. You can access that on the investor relations page on our website, www.aem.com, and through the PR Newswire services. You can also find supplemental slides for this conference call on the investor page of our website as well. Now, to listen to a replay of this call, you can dial 877-344-7529, replay access code 434-6240. This replay will be available through November 14th. As for upcoming investor conferences, we'll be at the Barclay 16th Annual Global Automotive and Mobility Tech Conference later this month. We'll also attend Bank of America Leverage Finance Conference and the UBS Global Industrials Transportation Conference in December. We look forward to seeing you there. Now, before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that the matters discussed in this call may contain comments and forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties which cannot be predicted or quantified and which may cause future activities and results of operations to differ materially from those discussed. For additional information, please reference slide two of our investor presentation or the press release that was issued today. Also, during this call, we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Information regarding these non-GAAP measures, as well as a reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures to GAAP financial information, is available in the presentation. With that, let me turn things over to AM's Chairman and CEO, David Dowk. Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone.

Thank you for joining us today to discuss AM's financial results for the third quarter of 2025. Joining me on the call today is Chris May, AM's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. To begin, I'll review the highlights of our third quarter financial performance. Then I will touch on some commentary about AM's recent business developments, After Chris covers the details of our financial results, we will open up the call for any questions that you all may have. So let's begin. AM's third quarter 2025 sales were 1.51 billion. AM's adjusted earnings per share was 16 cents per share. Operating cash flow was 143.3 million, and adjusted free cash flow was approximately 98.1 million. From a profitability perspective, AM delivered strong year-over-year margin growth driven by performance. AM's adjusted EBIT in the third quarter was 195 million, or 12.9% of sales, a robust 130 basis point improvement versus last year on flat sales. This was led by our driveline business unit, which achieved adjusted EBIT margins of 14.9%, the highest third quarter margin since 2020. The performance was supported by a focus on operational efficiency, continuous improvement, quality, and managing factors under our control. On the metal forming side, we still have additional work to do to reach our full margin potential. Let's talk about the operating environment. In the near term, we are seeing onshoring opportunities within our metal forming group, and we continue to assess our footprint to optimize to support our customers' needs as we're all dealing with the tariff environment. With the discontinuation of EV tax credit in the U.S., changes to emission regulations and trade policies, OEMs are assessing their long-range product plans and the market, especially trying to determine electric vehicle natural demand. Currently, bidding activity leans more towards ICE than EV, and an extended ICE tail is good for AM as we can further leverage our installed asset base with our core products. We continue to believe that large truck and SUV demand appear to be very healthy, both sweet spots for AEM. With that said, we also have a strong foundational technology in electrification with our components, electric drive units, and electric beam axles. Our portfolio will only strengthen and expand as we complete the DALY acquisition. As we have communicated earlier, our goal is to have a propulsion-agnostic product portfolio that adjusts with the market demands. Let me talk about some business updates on slide four. From a deal transaction standpoint, both shareholder approvals were completed in July. In October, we completed the permanent financing for the transaction by securing $850 million of senior secured notes. 1.25 billion of senior unsecured notes, and 835 million of term loans. Additionally, we redeemed all of our 2027 senior notes and a portion of our 2028 senior notes with the financing mentioned. On the regulatory front, we continue to make great progress. The European Commission clearance decision was issued on October the 1st, meaning that the EU antitrust condition has been completely satisfied. We also recently cleared regulatory approval in Brazil this Thursday on November the 6th. The combination has now been cleared and the related conditions to the combination satisfied under the antitrust laws in eight of the 10 required jurisdictions where antitrust filings were made, namely in the United States, India, the UK, Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, the EU, and most recently, Brazil. The clearances that remain outstanding under antitrust laws are Mexico and China. We expect Mexico to be cleared here in the fourth quarter of 2025. In China, the parties are actively engaged with the State Administration for Market Regulation, otherwise known as SAMR, with respect to its review of the combination, and AM remains highly competent on obtaining antitrust clearance in late 2025 or early 2026. Regarding the deal closing timing, we now expect the deal to close in the first quarter of next year as we communicated in a press release on October the 27th. As such, we are very excited to close on this transformational combination. From a product win perspective, AMOs want new and replacement programs as well as volume extensions in both business units. One win in particular is a meaningful volume uplift for a popular heavy-duty truck program. We supply critical transmission products for that platform. These wins in general support a broad spectrum of powertrains signifying AM's agnostic approach. Transitioning to our guidance, we have updated our 2025 guidance ranges on the strength of our results through the first three quarters of the year. AM is now targeting sales in the range of 5.8 to 5.9 billion, adjusted EBITDA of approximately 710 to 745 million, and adjusted free cash flow of approximately 180 to 210 million. Our guidance ranges are supported by an assumed North American production volume of approximately 15.1 million units and assumptions on certain platforms that we support. Chris will provide additional details on the assumptions underpinning our guidance. In summary, AM continues to deliver solid performance while successfully navigating market volatility and policy uncertainties. We remain extremely focused on managing our business and driving efficiency regardless of the operating environment. Meanwhile, we continue to make excellent progress for the regulatory bodies to close our combination with Dow Lane. We are excited about the combination's potential and the long-term vision of the new company. This deal is truly transformational, benefiting our customers, suppliers, employees, and most importantly, our shareholders. Let me now turn the call over to our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Chris May, for the third quarter financial details.

Chris? Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. I will cover the financial details of our third quarter 2025 results and our updated guidance with you today. I will also refer to the earnings slide deck as part of my prepared comments. So let's go ahead and begin with sales. In the third quarter of 2025, AEM sales were $1.5 billion, flat versus the third quarter of 2024. Slide 7 shows a walk of third quarter 2024 sales to third quarter 2025 sales. Volume mix and other was favorable by $8 million. Metal market pass-throughs and FX translation increased sales by approximately $25 million. And these gains were offset by $30 million of lower sales due to the successful sale of our commercial vehicle axle business in India that took place earlier in the year. Now, let's move on to profitability. Gross profit was $189 million in the third quarter of 2025, compared to $171 million in the third quarter of 2024. For the third quarter of 2025, adjusted EBITDA was $194.7 million and adjusted EBITDA margin was 12.9% versus $174.4 million and 11.6% last year. You can see the year-over-year walkdown of adjusted EBITDA on slide 8. In the quarter, adjusted EBITDA was higher due to volume, mix, and other by $9 million versus the prior year. This unusual contribution margin rate this quarter was driven by mix. Sales of certain higher margin programs increased, while sales of lower margin programs declined. RAM heavy-duty production, which is a significant program for us, increased year over year. R&D was lower by $3 million versus last year as we continued to optimize our engineering spend. And lastly, performance and other was favorable by $16 million. The year-over-year favorability was driven by a combination of factors, including operational performance and other productivity, partially offset by tariffs and SG&A expense timing. AAM remains focused on productivity, efficiency, and cost optimization in all areas of our business. Let me now cover SG&A. SG&A expense, including R&D, in the third quarter of 2025 was 98.8 million or 6.6% of sales. This compares to 94.6 million or 6.3% of sales in the third quarter of 2024. AAM's R&D spending in the third quarter of 2025 was approximately $37 million, down from approximately $40 million. For the full year, we continue to anticipate R&D expense to be down on a year-over-year basis by nearly $20 million driven by current market requirements and continued focus on engineering efficiency. Let's move now on to interest and taxes. Net interest expense was $35.7 million in the third quarter of 2025 compared to $38.1 million in the third quarter of 2024. The improvement was due to a lower weighted average interest rate of our outstanding long-term debt and lower year-over-year debt balances. In the third quarter of 2025, we recorded an income tax benefit of $10.9 million compared to a benefit of $12.1 million in the third quarter of 2024. The third quarter of 2025 includes a discrete benefit of $22 million related to the impact of the accounting for the one big, beautiful bill. For the fourth quarter of 2025, we expect an adjusted tax rate of approximately 10% to 15%. As for cash taxes, we expect approximately $60 to $75 million this year. Taking all these sales and cost drivers into account, our gap net income was $9.2 million, or $0.07 per share, in the third quarter of 2025, compared to net income of $10 million, or $0.08 per share, in the third quarter of 2024. Adjusted earnings per share, which excludes the impact of items noted in our earnings press release, was $0.16 per share in the third quarter of 2025, compared to $0.20 per share for the third quarter of 2024. Let's now move on to cash flow and the balance sheet. Net cash provided by operating activities for the third quarter of 2025 was $143 million compared to $144 million in the third quarter of 2024. Capital expenditures net of proceeds from the sale of property, plant, and equipment for the third quarter of 2025 were $64 million. Cash payments for restructuring and acquisition-related activity for the third quarter of 2025 were $18.6 million. Reflecting the impact of these activities, AAM's adjusted free cash flow was $98 million in the third quarter of 2025. From a net leverage perspective, we ended the quarter with net debt of $1.9 billion and LTM adjusted EBITDA of $735 million, calculating a net leverage ratio of 2.6 times at September 30, 2025. We also maintain a strong cash position of over $700 million. AAM ended the quarter with total available liquidity of approximately $1.7 billion consisting of available cash and borrowing capacity on AAM's global credit facilities. With that background in place, let's talk about our guidance on slide five. Our outlook has been updated from our previous targets. Our updated targets are as follows. For sales, our new range is 5.8 to 5.9 billion versus 5.75 to 5.95 billion previously. This new sales target is based upon a North America production assumption of approximately 15.1 million units and certain assumptions for our key programs. We now anticipate GM's full-size pickup truck and SUV production in the range of 1.35 to 1.39 million units. From an EBITDA perspective, AEM anticipates a range of $710 to $745 million versus $695 to $745 million previously. We now anticipate adjusted free cash flow in the range of $180 to $210 million. Our CapEx assumption is unchanged at approximately 5% of sales as we ready the organization for important upcoming launches, especially for one of our major truck programs. In addition, while not included in our adjusted free cash flow figures, we estimate our restructuring-related cash payments for AAM as a standalone entity to be approximately $20 million for 2025 as we look to further optimize our business and further reduce fixed costs. With the updated guidance in mind, let me provide some additional color on the fourth quarter operating environment that we see. From a production standpoint, We expect normal seasonality plus some additional production volatility. We anticipate AEM's project expense to be overweight in the fourth quarter as we prepare for some significant upcoming launches that I mentioned previously. We continue to be excited about the new RAM heavy-duty launch cycle. It has gained momentum throughout the course of the year, and we will continue to manage other costs such as R&D. We underscore that the guidance figures that we are providing today are on an AAM standalone basis, pre-combination basis, and excludes any costs or expenses related to our announced DALI transaction. As it relates to the DALI acquisition, as David mentioned earlier, we completed the permanent financing for the transaction. This includes a nice balance of term loans, secured notes, and unsecured notes. As part of this positive financing activity, we were able to opportunistically refinance all of our existing 2027 senior notes and a portion of our 2028 senior notes. As a result, we extended the weighted average maturity of AAM's senior debt to well over six years. The revised debt maturity profile provides AAM with flexibility, and we will have no significant maturities until 2028. This is very good news from multiple perspectives as we ready for the closing on the DALI acquisition. And for 2026, we expect to provide formal guidance early next year. However, let me give you some of our thoughts as we head into next year. While the industry faces various challenges, we remain excited about our product and markets. We anticipate large SUV and pickup truck markets to remain healthy. As you know, our primary driveline truck platforms are the GM T1XX and the Ram heavy-duty platforms. We also have very good content on the Ford Super Duty. We believe ICE and ICE hybrid powertrains will continue to have meaningful longevity and consumer demand. Tariff and world trade dynamics should create opportunities for global suppliers with strong capabilities and scale, such as AAM, and also a soon-to-be much larger AAM with the completion of the Dolly acquisition. And lastly, we will continue to focus on our core cost efficiencies and aggressively drive towards realizing our $300 million synergy goal. So in conclusion, AM delivered good results through the first three quarters of the year and has successfully navigated both production and tariff volatility. Fundamentally, we will continue to manage factors under our control and course correct through market, supply chain, and policy changes that we may face. Furthermore, our aim is for continuous improvement and operational excellence, and these should manifest in future results. Thank you for your time and participation on the call today. I'm going to stop here and turn the call back over to David so we can start the Q&A.

Thank you, Chris and David. We have reserved some time to take questions. I would ask that you please limit your questions to no more than two. So at this time, please feel free to proceed with any questions you may have.

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause just for a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from Joe Speck with UBS. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Chris, maybe just a first quick one, some housekeeping, I guess. If you could just remind us sort of what's in the bucket or what was driving it, like the $9 million volume mix other and EBITDA on $8 million in sales. What just stands out a little bit? What's going on in those buckets?

Yeah, that's a great question. Of course, with the low change in revenue, obviously you get a little bit of dynamics in the percentage ratio here. But what we experienced in the quarter was a continued, I would say, year-over-year strong performance on the RAM platform. So we saw elevated sales from our full-size truck franchise from that standpoint. We had some declines in some of our other business, think some passenger car and crossover vehicle and component business. So that mix sort of caused that dynamic of sort of a ratio of some higher margin business coming in in terms of versus prior year, and then some lower margin business sort of lower to give that sort of odd ratio between volume mix and other from a contribution margin mix to the revenue that you see. You do have some tariff recoveries flowing through that line as well that kind of accentuates that issue a little bit, but that's principally what's going on. All normal activity is just an odd mix.

Okay. David, just the second question in bigger picture. I was wondering if you could just sort of update us on your conversations with customers in terms of sort of where they're at in reshoring activities and other sort of investments in the U.S. and what type of conversations you've had with some of your customers there and opportunities. And I guess... Are you also able to start to go to those customers with some of the potential benefits from the DALY acquisition, or is that not yet feasible or part of those conversations? Thanks.

Let me start with the last question first, Joe. We're not able to have any discussions with customers regarding DALY directly because it would be considered gun-jumping as far as the two of us working together. We're very distinct in regards to only talking about what AEM can do today versus what Dowling might be able to do in the future. But that will enhance our opportunity clearly once that becomes part of the AEM family. As I indicated in my comments and Chris did as well, is that we are seeing a lot of opportunities from various customers, both the OEM level and the tier level, on our metal forming business for localization, especially forging and castings and powdered metal parts. So that's increasing some of our sales opportunities, and nothing to announce at this time, but we're working actively with multiple customers right now. Regarding plant footprints, you know our policy is always to try to buy and build local in the local markets that we serve. That's mitigated a lot of tariff exposure to us. We're clearly watching the USMCA negotiations, anticipating that there will be a higher U.S. content requirement in the future. We have had conversations with various customers about what their intentions are, knowing that we ship big products. We like to be in closer proximity to our customers. So once they can make their final decisions, then we'll make appropriate footprint adjustments in concert and in alignment and in agreement with those customers on a go-forward basis. So I'd say that, yes, there's ongoing discussions taking place. Nothing that we can announce at this time is going to be largely dependent on when the customers finalize their loading plans.

And your next question today will come from Tom Narayan with RBC. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks for taking the question. The first one is just on the regulatory antitrust clearing. Just seeing if, I mean, you guys are confident China late 25 or early 26. Just curious if that was like a surprise at all or was that always contemplated? Is there a specific risk there or Is there like an overlap there? Is that what's causing that where it might lead to divestitures or something? Or is it just kind of just, you know, regular course of action? And I have a follow-up.

Yeah, Tom, this is David. We're highly confident in regards to we'll get all the jurisdictions approved. We clearly anticipated that Brazil, Mexico, and China would be the long poles in the tent. Brazil, as I mentioned, we got verbal acknowledgement earlier. in the month, but we got final formal approval just yesterday. We expect Mexico here yet this month. In China, we're in discussions with them, but I don't expect us to have to do anything from a large remedy standpoint in that area. We're just going through the normal discussions and their inquiries and questions, just like we've done with other countries. Their process is just taking a little bit longer. We did anticipate that geopolitical issues could potentially impact this, but quite honestly it hasn't at this point in time, and we hope that it doesn't. But we're getting full cooperation from SAMR at this time.

Okay, got it. And then my follow-up, just on the kind of production that you guys are assuming for North America 15-1, it does feel like it implies kind of a downshift in Q4, you know, pretty significant one. Just curious maybe, is that, Is that baking in some conservatism? Maybe in Xperia seems to be there's some positive indications there on resolution there. I know that that's a market number, but just curious if that's just conservatism or something specific you're seeing.

Tom, this is Chris. Of course, we anchor this a little bit around, as you mentioned, a market number. But at this point in the year, too, we're also really kind of calibrating and locking into our specific customer schedules. And as you may be aware, we've experienced a little bit of downtime in the fourth quarter, early in the quarter, meaning October, early part of that. We had one of our customer assembly plants at Wentzville down that impacted some of our production. We've seen a little bit of extra holiday downtime we anticipate near the end of the year. And also, as you mentioned, the other issues in terms of supply chain. We've had a little bit around the edges in terms of some volatility there, but we're trying to calibrate into what we see in the current market environment. And that's sort of our best estimate right now at the time. Got it. Thanks. Yep.

And your next question today will come from Itay McCally with TD Cowan. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Just going back to the on-shoring opportunity, as you think about that opportunity as well as your recent business wins and ICE extensions, I'm curious kind of how you're thinking, at least at a high level, of the company's kind of growth over market potential over the next few years or so.

What I would say, Yitai, this is David. I think we have an opportunity to benefit strongly on our metal-forming side of the business with respect to the on-shoring activity that we mentioned earlier. Once we're able to pull Dowlade together, we also think there's insourcing opportunities because they buy a lot of their forging and some of their powdered metal on the outside and casting, so we think there's some opportunity there. I don't have off the top of my head our position in regards to this growth over market, but I think we can keep up with the market with respect to what's going on. We do have some products that will be transitioning off, some older transmission-related products, so clearly we're going to have to offset that in order to show incremental growth aligned with the marketplace. But I would say overall we should be able to hopefully hold on to where the market's at.

Yeah, and I would say, this is Chris, in addition to some of that with these extensions that we're seeing, obviously some conversion into hybrid creates some opportunity for us. And you may recall from our last earnings call, we announced a great award with Scout. So these are examples where our next-gen technologies into electrification will also drive some of that uplift in terms of growth over market opportunities for us.

Terrific. That's very helpful. And as my follow-up, just on the Q4 outlook, do you have any kind of bias within the EBITDA range? And maybe just talk about the different factors from here through year-end that may cause you to be coming at the lower or maybe higher end of that range.

Yeah, in terms of that range, you know, obviously, first and foremost, it does – it pins around our absolute revenue for the quarter. And, you know, our contribution margin generally is somewhere between 25% to 35% range. So that is – The key, probably the primary factor is I think about our EBITDA range inside of the fourth quarter. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we do have some, I would say, heavy load of project expenses. We're getting ready for some next-gen product launches, also aligned with some of our heavier capital spend that we're anticipating here in the fourth quarter. But you do get a little timing movement associated with that. As I mentioned, also some of our production volatility causes a little bit, but we're also focused on some cost optimization side on our engineering spend, as well as some productivity improvements in several of our facilities. So those are kind of the key factors that have plus or minus to it, but the largest piece is volume at the moment.

Terrific. That's very helpful. Thank you.

The next question comes from James Piccariello with BNP. Please go ahead.

Hey guys, this is Jake on for James. You saw a pretty healthy step up in driveline margins this quarter. Could you just share if there were any one-timers in there, or is this a number you guys think you can do going forward?

Yeah, well, each quarter obviously has a unique story, whether it's a mix of volume and products, but we, on the driveline side, if you look consistently now over the last four to six quarters, has been very strong and stable in its ability to generate margins on its product mix. As we talked a little bit about RAM earlier on a year-over-year basis, it continues to be very strong for us. That's obviously one of our full-size truck franchise products that we supply. And then, quite frankly, they've been doing a nice job managing their cost environment. So each quarter is a little bit different in terms of its margin, but holistically the trend is for them to continue to perform very strong.

Thank you. And then you guys have pretty significant exposure on – you know, these, you know, heavy-duty, heavier-duty pickup trucks. So can you talk about the impact you're seeing from the expansion of the 232 tariffs to the medium and heavy-duty truck space? Have you seen any kind of shifts from your patterns, or, you know, are you potentially having an easier time in discussions about recoveries? Thank you. Yeah, great question.

Yeah, no, we obviously have a lot of exposure on those platforms for all three of the North American OEMs. And as you know, that's a very strong demand product and built all throughout North America in different locations. Right now, at the moment, no, we've not seen any negative impact associated with that. Our customers continue to build those very well in terms of capacity and in terms of meeting their end market demand as well. But currently, we're not seeing any significant impact associated with that.

And your next question today will come from Edison Yu with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you. This is Winnie Ong for Edison. So I guess I wanted to go back to the quarter for a little bit, especially the performance and other markets category, which is very strong. I just wanted to see if you can break that down, the compositions of it, and then what's sustainable and what's not on a go-forward basis. Thank you.

Good morning, Winnie. This is Chris. I'll take that one. If you look at our performance bucket on our year-over-year walks, about two-thirds of that performance is associated with our driveline business unit, sort of in response to the question that was just answered previously. And I would expect them to continue to have very strong normal operating performance. The remainder of this bucket was a net of a few things. We've seen some positive momentum in our, I will call it, material costs as a company. It was offset slightly by tariffs, a couple million dollar net negative impact inside the quarter as it relates to tariffs. And then some timing of our SG&A expense also offset some of that gain. But structurally, again, I would expect the driveline to continue to perform very well. And metal form, I would expect to improve over the next couple of quarters as it relates to performance.

That's very hopeful. And then maybe just looking ahead to, you know, 2026, you've mentioned, you know, that mix in your quarter was a strong contribution to the strong incrementals that you guys have been seeing. Can you help us maybe think about, you know, how that could potentially roll forward to 2026 as we look at, you know, volume and mix heading into next year? Maybe on the, you know, profit-cost side, you know, what are some of the good guys or bad guys, best guys? High-level, you know, color, that would be great.

Yeah, as it relates to our contribution margin on our product mix, you know, we've been pretty consistent. We see it flow through almost every quarter. Our range would be 25% to 35% is our specific. So use that midpoint of 30%. It does depend a little bit on mix of product, but that's pretty consistent. I would expect that to continue in that range going forward. Look, as we think into 2026, you know, we're going to be very focused on optimizing our cost structure, keeping our product engineering spend in line with market trends. But really, we're going to start to pivot here in addition to our core productivity, but pivot towards the acquisition with DALE and the synergy realization and really sort of growing our margin and cash flow opportunity from that perspective.

And the next question will come from Nathan Jones with Stiefel. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Nathan. Just one follow-up on the mix equation in the third quarter and how to think about that going forward. Obviously, you can have some different impacts during any given quarter, but is that something more structural in the mix where these more profitable programs that you are on should structurally grow faster than some of these less profitable programs that are maybe rolling off and we should continue to see, not necessarily from one quarter to the next, but a more structural improvement in that mix?

I would expect, as I mentioned, Nathan, our standard contribution margin is around 25% to 35%. Our North America trucks generally are towards the higher end of that range. You know, passenger cars are a little bit towards the lower end, and crossover vehicles are sort of in the middle. I do not see that fundamentally changing going forward.

Okay. Maybe a question on the metals business. Maybe you could just talk about the restructuring actions that you have taken in that, what's left to do, and the levers that you're currently pulling and the levers you need to pull in the future to get the margins back to a more acceptable level in that business. Thanks.

Yeah, this is David Dow. We're clearly looking and acting on restructuring efforts with some activity that we've got ongoing in Europe right now. We're executing that plan. We hope to have that completed in the next year, so that would be positive. The other part is addressing just some utilization matters and throughput matters within a couple of our existing plans that have struggled a little bit. One, first on labor availability and just technical skill sets, so we're addressing those matters. We're highly confident that we can get the margins back up into a double-digit type category. I don't know historically if we can get them to those levels next year, but we'll continue to work in that direction. But, you know, obviously we've had some challenges there that have been lingering on a little bit longer than we would like, but we're very focused on what we need to do to fix those matters going forward here. So I'd leave it at that.

The next question will come from Doug Carson with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks, guys. Good morning. Morning. I want to focus on the balance sheet just for a moment. So it looks like net leverage is in good shape at 2.6. I just wanted to kind of double-click on the DAO acquisition and it being kind of conservatively set. Am I right in saying that performing that leverage is about flat following acquisition?

Yeah, when we announced the transaction earlier in the year, our leverage we closed last year was around 2.8. First quarter, we were around 2.9. And we said at that point in time, we would expect the leverage of the company once at close to be somewhat around neutral. to that time, spot, and location. We still expect that to be true based upon what we stated earlier in the year. What you are seeing going on this year inside of AAM standalone is we had several initiatives to monetize some of our assets, meaning exiting our joint venture in China, our sale of India commercial vehicle, and pool cash towards that close. And this is tracking exactly along the line of the plan we anticipated and able to make that statement earlier in the year that we expect to be numbers that we had when we made the announcement. So we're still expecting that to be true.

That's great. Thanks for that update. If I could just look at maybe at the long-term leverage framework. So since the Metal Line acquisition, I remember in maybe 2016, lowering leverage focus on the balance sheet was pretty much a priority for almost 10 years. How do you kind of look at the future framework for leverage now that the company's revenue is almost going to be double and you've got, I guess, more diversity? I'm just kind of curious of where leverage is going to go over the intermediate term.

Yeah, well, first of all, in the short term, our priority will continue to be to de-lever the company. cash flow generation to paying down debt. That is our anticipation. That was our commitment when we announced the transaction with Dolly earlier in the year, and I would expect that in the near term and transitioning towards the medium term. Through that announcement earlier in the year, we did indicate once we crossed the two and a half times net leverage threshold, we would have, I would call it a little more balanced capital allocation playbook. We'll continue to focus on paying down debt. We'll continue to focus on reducing the leverage of the company. That is a priority for us. but we would open up our playbook to maybe consider some other actions from a shareholder perspective. But reducing the leverage, continuing to pay down debt in the near term will be our top priority and will continue to be a priority in the medium and longer term.

Great. Thanks so much for that. That's it from us.

Thanks, Doug. Thank you, gentlemen. Your last question is a follow-up from Tom Narayan with RBC. Please go ahead.

Hey, thanks for bringing back in. Just a quick one. On the press release you guys issued October 27th, it discusses some of the management folks you guys invited from the Daole side. Just curious how you see that playing out. Is it like kind of a plug and play where those folks continue to lead their respective kind of organizations? Yeah, just at a high level, after seeing that press release, curious how you think about integrating executives from DALL-A. Thanks.

Yeah, Tom, this is David. Clearly, we were hopeful that Roberto Fiorone would join the executive team. Initial indications were headed down that path. At the same time, he made a personal and family decision. We have and will respect those decisions. At the same time, we'll make the necessary adjustments from a management team standpoint. Roberto's current capacity is the CFO at DALA. Chris is clearly the CFO at American Axles, so we'll continue with Chris in the capacity where we are. and then we'll make some slight adjustments in regards to other things that we were planning. So, again, we're disappointed that Roberto can't join us, but at the same time, we've got an outstanding executive team today, and we'll continue to lead the organization going forward, and we're going to work collectively together to blend the teams at all the different levels, including the board of directors, so that we can pick the best athletes and have the best talent to support the strategic combination of the two companies. Got it.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Tom. And we thank all of you who have participated on this call and appreciate your interest in AM. We certainly look forward to talking with you in the future. Thank you.

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