Cooper-Standard Holdings Inc.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Cooper Standard 3rd Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. During the presentation, all participants will be in listen-only mode. Following company-prepared comments, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. At that time, if you have a question, you will need to press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. And to withdraw your question, please press star then 2. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. and the webcast will be available on the Cooper Standard website for replay later today. I would now like to turn the call over to Roger Hendrickson, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thanks, Sylvie, and thanks to all of you who have taken the time to join our call this morning. The members of our leadership team who will be speaking with you on the call this morning are Jeff Edwards, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and John Bannis, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I need to remind you that this presentation contains forward-looking statements. While they are made based on current factual information and certain assumptions and plans that management currently believes to be reasonable, these statements do involve risks and uncertainties. For more information on forward-looking statements, we ask that you refer to slide three of this presentation and the company's statements included in periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This presentation also contains non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the appendix to the presentation. So with those formalities out of the way, I'll now turn the call over to Jeff Edwards.

Thanks, Roger, and good morning, everyone. We certainly appreciate the opportunity to review our third quarter results and provide an update on our business and the outlook going forward. So to begin on slide five, I'd like to highlight some key third quarter data points that we believe are reflective of our continued strong commitment to operational excellence and our core company values. In terms of product quality, 98% of our customer scorecards were green in the quarter. For new program launches, our customer scorecards were 97%. So we continue to achieve outstanding operational performance, allowing us to deliver exceptional value to our customers. In addition, the safety performance of our plants continues to be excellent. If I could find a stronger, better word, I would. During the third quarter, we had our best ever safety performance with a total incident rate of 0.20 reportable incidents per 200,000 hours worked. That's well below the world-class benchmark of 0.47. And it's truly an outstanding achievement. And I want to come back to the topic of safety and provide you some more details in just a moment. In terms of cost optimization, we had another solid quarter with our manufacturing and purchasing teams delivering $15 million of savings through lean initiatives and other cost savings programs. In addition, the aggressive restructuring initiative we announced in the second quarter has been implemented successfully and is driving the planned savings. In the third quarter alone, we realized an additional $10 million in savings from this most recent initiative. And so that's on pace to achieve the expected $40 to $45 million in fully annualized savings. These savings are helping us offset the headwinds of lower production volumes and unfavorable foreign exchange that have persisted during the first nine months of the year. And finally, we're continuing to leverage world-class service, technical capabilities, and our award-winning innovations to win new business. In fact, during the third quarter of 2024, we were awarded $44 million in net new business awards. We're pleased that in an increasingly complex and dynamic automotive industry, our customers continue to turn to us to help design and develop new technologies for some of their most important new vehicle programs, including ICE, hybrid, and battery electric vehicles. So turning to slide six, I want to go back and focus again on the topic of safety and provide a few more details on the outstanding performance we had in the quarter And I mentioned we had our best ever quarterly total incident rate of 0.20. And this brings the TIR for the first nine months of the year to just 0.28. And leading this outstanding safety performance were the 29 of our plants that had a perfect safety record of zero incidents so far this year. And I also want to recognize our global safety team that has worked continuously over the past several years to establish a true safety culture throughout our company in all facilities around the world. In September, we conducted our fourth annual safety month. And that's basically a month in which all of our people are encouraged to re-intensify their focus, on learning and implementing the best safety practices from around all of our global operations, and most importantly, reprioritize our goal of zero safety incidents for everyone. In collaboration with our global communications team, new training videos were added to our existing extensive library, and those were made available to all employees through our online communication portal that we call CS Connect. The safety teams at each location were encouraged to conduct and document their own safety activities and share them with the entire company. Each year, the enthusiasm and employee engagement in safety month activities builds and improves on earlier successes, and we've seen the tremendous improvements as a result over the years. I certainly want to thank our global safety team, our plant managers, and our employees around the world for their continued commitment to making safety a top priority every single day and driving our ultimate safety goal of zero incidents for the entire company. Thank you all. Turning to slide seven, in addition to prioritizing employee safety and providing our customers with world-class products, technologies, and service, that are critical to our success, we also place a high priority on being a good corporate citizen and steward of the environment. And we continue to garner outside recognition for our leadership and sustainability. In fact, in the most recent quarter, we were pleased to again be recognized by Echovatus for our leadership and achievements in sustainability. This is the eighth year the company has earned a medal and the seventh time receiving silver medal status. Notably, our improved score this year places the company in the 88th percentile in the top 15% of the companies that were assessed by Ecovatus in the past 12 months and the top 4% of motor vehicle parts and accessories manufacturers. So consistent with our company values and purpose, we remain committed to creating sustainable products and solutions that create value for all of our stakeholders. Now let me turn the call over to John to review the financial details of the quarter.