Forvia Se

Good morning and welcome to our half-year results presentation. With Olivier Durand, our chief financial officer, we will guide you through our H1 performances. Our presentations include four chapters. We will start with H1 2024 key highlights, followed by H1 2024 financial performance, then the outlook, and finally, the takeaways. On Chapter 1, key highlights for H1. I propose to look at the worldwide automotive production and the pace of electrification. Worldwide automotive production stood at 43.6 million light vehicles in H124, broadly stable compared to H123, with contrasted situations by geography. We have clearly more volumes in China and less in Europe. In Europe, excluding Russia, which accounts for 47% of the group's sales, production was down 5% at 8.4 million, representing around 19% of worldwide production. In North America, which accounts for 24% of our sales, production was up 1.8% at 8.1 million, representing around 19% of worldwide production. In China, which represents 19% of our sales, production was up 5.2% at 13.2 million, representing around 30% of worldwide production. We are strong in Asia, and being in Asia is crucial due to the region's fast-growing automotive market, but also because of its competitiveness. For the full year 2024, light vehicle production should be down 2% compared to 2023, at around 88.7 million according to latest S&P estimates. Now regarding the pace of electrification on the left side, the first half of the year presented a slowdown in Europe while the EV market slightly increased in North America and continued to be driven by China up 50 basis points between H123 and H124. This slowdown in electrification is most probably temporary. It is due to market adaptations related to infrastructures, technologies, prices and ongoing regulations. The European CAFE regulation sets a 15% CO2 emissions reductions target in 2025 compared to a change in 21, so from 21 to 24. And because of that, in order to avoid penalties, Additional EV volumes will be needed, and it needs to be prepared starting in H2 2024. I would like to remind you that 4VR is mostly powertrain agnostic for related supplies. We might be impacted by an ad hoc designed part dedicated to a battery electric vehicle. As an example, a seating set assembled into a battery electric vehicle. If this vehicle is not selling, but this is true for whatever the powertrain, we are impacted. In this context, Fovea recorded steady progress. Let's have a look on four key figures. First, Fovea posted an organic sales growth of 2.7%, outperforming the market by 290 basis points. And excluding a negative impact of geographic mix, we outperformed the market by 460 basis points. Operating margin grew by 20 basis points year-on-year to 5.2% of sales. This figure reflects margin improvement in all business groups, with the exception of a one-off impact for interiors in North America of 47 million euros representing 30 basis points. This operating loss results from an supplier-driven issue. the Mexican supplier Comaplast. It started early 24 and generated major disruptions until mid-April. We had to refurbish and resource about 100 plastic injection tools while minimizing supply disruptions to six OEMs. This situation also impacted lounge preparation at a time of record new SOPs. we had 18 launches in nine plants in Mexico, out of which two are green fields. And this to be compared to three launches in H1 last year, or seven launches in the full year 2023. The combination of these circumstances resulted into significant extra costs, including very high freight costs. But to be clear, June results were back to normal. Finally, in H1, the group continued to manage effectively its debt, successfully issuing new debt instruments in H1. Let's look more in detail into it. In H1, the group successfully issued around 2 billion of new depth instruments, essentially maturing in 29 and 2031. This almost cleared our 24 and 25 maturities and allows for VN to significantly extend its average debt maturity. Now of 3.6 years versus 2.9 years end of 23, our target is to be above 4 years as quickly as possible. We were also able to contain the average costs of our debt at 4.6%, only up 30% versus the end of last year. Let's move to our top priority, deleveraging the company. We announced in October 23 a second disposal program of $1 billion. after the successful completion of our first 1 billion disposal program. We made good progress in the execution of this second program since the start of the year, with the closing of the disposal by Fourvier-Haller of its stake in BHTC to AUO, and with the sale of Hoog Engineering, our clean mobility business specialized in depollution systems, to OGEPAR. With these two transactions, we already achieved 25% of the program. Looking ahead, progress underway gives us strong confidence to finalize this second program by the end of 2025 as planned. I move to our order intake, which is driven by Asia and backed by electronics and innovation. Asia first. Six billion made in Asia, China representing 4.9 billion out of it, and with more than 60% of which was made with Chinese OEMs. Electronics. $4.3 billion, key awards from Cherry, from GM, and U.S. EV carmaker. Innovation. I think it's important to highlight that we achieved an order intake, several order intakes, but for an accumulated amount of $700 million in hydrogen storage. It includes the largest award ever in this field. We also won a very significant virtual key program for General Motors and three awards for Materia Act. I think these ones are the most interesting. Premium OEM, 3.5 billion, mainly driven by German and Chinese OEMs. And I would like to highlight that this under a real commercial selectivity, which allowed us to achieve a high level of operating margin and reduced upfront costs. This totalizing 15 billion in the first half. strengthening partnerships with Chinese OEMs in China but also beyond the domestic market. Here are some examples of our recent developments. First, with BYD. We announced yesterday that we are extending our successful partnership to Europe through the Hungary Business Award. This represents a significant step for both companies and brings our collaboration to a new level. This, while we have also announced earlier this month the opening of a new seat assembly plant in Thailand, it will serve as VIA's export hub for the Asia-Pacific regions and, again, will deepen the global partnership we have developed with BYD. With CHERRY, we signed in April a joint venture agreement which reinforces our strategic cooperation in the field of smart and sustainable cockpit. We are speaking here about the full interior perimeter, the full cockpit perimeter. This is why our ambition to reach 1 billion sales in 2029 is justified. From the starting of the year, we won six awards with Cherry, which is showing that this dynamic is ongoing. We also have significant business acceleration with other Chinese OEMs, significant ones, with an order intake up to 3 billion in H1. We developed our intimacy with leading players such as Geely, Li Auto, and Leap Motors. In parallel to these developments in Asia, we have also made significant strides in H1 marked by deals that bolster our commitment to sustainability and innovation. Some highlights. In the field of connectivity and user experience, we completed in May the acquisition of the remaining 50% shares from Aptoide in the joint venture for Asia Aptoide Automotive. This represented a strategic move to position ourselves in the automotive apps market. We have high ambitions to achieve a 20% market share in automotive apps by 2025 and 35% by 2030. In the field of sustainability, Materia Act continued its strategic development in two key regions. In early 2024, the company established a joint venture with PCR Recycling in North America to accelerate the development and delivery of recycled compounds. In April, Materia Act signed an MOU with GRI Electric in China to finalize a joint venture in October to produce plastics with a very high recycled content. Speaking about sustainability, we recently received new ESG ratings with systematically improved scores. In the first half of 2024, we improved our scores with Moody's and Sustain Analytics and maintain our A rating with MSCI. These new ratings are an important recognition of our convictions in terms of social and environmental responsibility. We will clearly continue our efforts to lead the way. Last February, we announced the launch of EU Forward, a five-year project aiming at reinforcing the competitiveness and agility of our operations in Europe, which is characterized by structural overcapacity. We have to deal with a capacity which went from 21 million vehicles produced to 17 million. Our target is to achieve an operating margin in Europe exceeding 7% in 2028. 7% operating margin. The effective start of this project showed already interesting progress. 14 operations have been announced. They represent close to 20% of the overall project. The restructuring costs are on track. Restructuring expenses in Europe amounted to 186 million euros out of the 222 million euros recorded for the group in H1. Savings are on track. Impact will start in H2 2024, when the people will leave the company, and will accelerate in 2025. This is ending the first part, and now I will leave the floor to Olivier, who will deep dive in our financial performance.

Thank you, Patrick, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to share with you some detailed comments about our group financial performance in H1 that shows that we have made progress on all our key financial metrics. Let me start first with revenues. We have recorded sales of 13.5 billion euros in H1-24. It represents an organic growth of 2.7%, i.e. 290 basic points of hard performance in a market that was slightly down. This hard performance is actually 460 basic points if we take into account the unfavorable geographical mix of each one and represent the same trend that we have had since the setup of Forvia after the acquisition of ELAB. On a reported basis, however, the sales were down by 0.6% as we were impacted by two elements that will neutralize or reverse in the second half. The first element is, as in the second half of last year, sales continue to be impacted by the unfavorable currency impact. It has been at 2.6% in H1. It relates to the weakening of the RMB versus euro, but also to the impact of the strong depreciation of two currencies under hyperinflation, Argentinian peso and Turkish lira. for which the evolution has been more stable or at least eroding slowly in 2024. The second impact is the negative scope effect. We sold the CVI business to Cummings end of Q3 last year as part of the first 1 billion disposal program, and therefore this is out of our numbers. And vice versa, we have the consolidation from January 1st of the HBBL joint venture in lighting in China. Those two elements will turn neutral to positive in H2 and will sustain the growth in the top line compared to H2 last year. Now, if I turn to the operating margin, it stands at 700 million for the first half, i.e. 5.2% of sales, an increase of 20 basic points versus H1 last year. The increase was driven by continued synergies of the combination. the anticipated benefit of the exit of the loss-making contract that we had in island parks, as well as the gains from volume and mix. And in this respect, I would like to highlight the improved inflation pass-through performance through the rigorous negotiation that we have with our customers. One element, however, weighted on the performance, which has been highlighted by Patrick, which is this sizable one-off of extra costs faced by Interior in Mexico, which had an impact of 47 million euros or 30 basic points. This topic is now closed and will not impact the H2 figures. On an ongoing basis, our operating margin run rate in H1 is, in fact, 5.5%. Now, if I detail those results by business group, let me start, of course, with interiors. Interiors is recording strong growth, is recording stronger performance, but the profitability is, of course, significantly hit by the one-off that we mentioned. However, the other business groups are showing solid performance and showing margin expansion of a sizable nature for many of them. Seating. Sitting pursuit is margin recovery towards pre-COVID level. We are recording a 130 basing points improvement year on year. This is not only the end of the loss-making contract in Island Park, but is also benefiting from the better pricing and inflation pass-through, as well as an improved execution, which is the case in all the geographies. Clean mobility benefited from the slowdown electrification, recorded an outperformance of 330 basic points on the total market, and also improved its profitability, driven by the sound performance of our ultra-low emission activity, which returned to double-digit profitability in this semester. On electronics, electronics is, of course, an engine of growth beyond pure electrification. It records 470 basic points of outperformance, and it was boosted by the double-digit organic growth of Foresia Clarion Electronics. Let me highlight also that forestry and clarion electronics is actually the dominant part of the 150 basic points margin improvement that we are recording in this segment. And we have now this activity which is recording a positive profitability over the last 12 months and in the direction to be no more dilutive in coming semesters. Lighting recorded a flat organic growth in the context of consolidation. This is, however, on a reported basis plus 5% thanks to the consolidation of the joint venture I mentioned, HBBL, which reflects the expansion of our activities in this domain with Chinese OEM, which is an important topic. The profitability is a solid 5% stable from a year before. Now I will turn to regions. From a regional standpoint, EMEA is showing a margin expansion of 50 basic points. This is on the back of the outperformance that we have in the region, in interiors, in lighting, and also the first benefits of our actions in EU Forward, not only restructuring, but cost consciousness and reduction of external costs. Americas is showing a strong organic growth. This is driven by interiors, but this is also reflected in the seating and electronic development and key customer wins that we have been obtaining in this large and important market. But the margin improvement is notable given that we had this sizable one-off extra cost that we mentioned in Mexico. It means that the improvement in the region is larger than the impact of the exit of Island Park contract. It means better execution, better discipline in this region in many business groups. Finally, Asia is showing again a double-digit margin, even though we had headwinds on our customer mix in China, as we already saw in Q1. Let me highlight that in H1-23, we recorded a very sizable outperformance in China to the tone of 14%. This outperformance is now mitigated in this first half with sales decline with BYD and also with the leading U.S. EV car makers, which are not fully offsetting the acceleration, which is not fully offset by the acceleration of the diversification rate and the momentum that we have with new customers, Sherry John Ventures, Lyoto Development, and others. But if we look on a two-year basis, we continue to have an outperformance in this market thanks to our overall growing presence with Chinese OEMs that are getting shares in this market clearly. Let me go to net income below the operating margin. We are recording a break-even net income. This is on the back of two opposite elements. We have, of course, an increase in the European restructuring costs coming from the strong start of the EU Forward Project that Patrick mentioned before. This is the main component of the €222 million of restructuring costs that we are posting. There is also a non-recurring expense of 43 million, which is related to the supplier that Patrick mentioned at the very beginning of this meeting in interior in North America. However, we have been able to offset Largely, those impacts with capital gains in our disposal activity, the main one, of course, being the €134 million that we are recording for the sale of the 50% stake in BHTC held by Forviarela that has been sold to EU back in April, which was kicking off the start of our second disposal program. So, breakeven in net income. The cash flow is posting an increase again this semester. We are up 16% versus a year before. And this is despite the one-off that we mentioned before. And in fact, the one-off are twofold. You have the 47 million of costs mentioned in terms of extra costs on the launchers, but there was also the cost related to Comaplast, the supplier mentioned. So a total actually of 80 million of negatives. Even with this, we are posting an increase. We are at 201 net cash flow in H1. This is showing, in particular, the growing effectiveness of our managed by cash program. CapEx were down 36 million in the period. Capitalized R&D are stable. Inventories have decreased, finally, by 119 million euros. The financial expense in this context were high, I have to recognize. This is related to the high-level activity that we had in the refinancing, and in particular, the buyback of some bonds. But vice versa, we have been able to normalize the tax cash out with the reimbursement of the 68 million withholding tax related to the extraordinary dividend that was received last year from Forvia Ella, which is solidifying that this is a lack just of one year in our financials. Let me highlight as a complement the improvement and the enhanced quality of our net cash flow. You see on the graph at the bottom right of your slide the net cash flow excluding working capital, excluding factoring. It has been at 104 million euros in H1. It represents 50% of what we did in this period compared to only 7 in a year before. This is clearly showing that not only we are growing our net cash flow generation, but we are improving its quality, its sustainability, and you will see that continuing in the coming semesters. Let me move to the evolution in our debt and in the leverage ratio, the central element of our financial performance. The net cash flow, as well as the proceeds related to the two transactions being concluded, BHTC and UG Engineering, have been contributing to the reduction of our net debt, even with the dividend of 50 cents per share that we paid in June to the Forvia shareholder. and the abnormal level of new lease costs under the IFRS 16 line, 125 compared to 76 a year before. As a consequence, the leverage continues to decrease. Our net debt to EBITDA ratio now stands at 2.0 times at the end of June 2024, compared to 2.5 times a year ago and 2.1 times at the end of 2023, which is reflecting the clear commitment of the company towards the reduction of our financial leverage towards normalcy. Let me turn to the quality of our debts in complement. Patrick alluded to the topic. We have been very active on the market. We have been raising close to $2 billion of new financing. coming from not only the Eurobond market, but the return in big fashion to the Schulzstein market for a total of 740 million euros in two transactions, 200 million at the beginning of the semester under Forvia ELA and 540 million under the Forvia name. We have been able also to extend for 650 million of bank loans to 27, and this is used to reduce our gross debt by 300 million at the end of July on a pro forma basis to have a clear benefit in our financial costs on a future basis. We have also repaid in advance our maturities. 24-25 are mostly cleared and we did quite a lot on 26. As a consequence, we have improved our overall maturity to 3.6 years by 0.7 years in 6 months. Finally, let me highlight that our, of course, liquidity is solid, 6.2 billion, comprised of 4.3 billion in cash, plus close to 2 billion that we have in revolving credit facilities combining Forvia and Forvia Ella. And they are, of course, not drone. And you can expect that we will continue to be active in the market, to continue to diversify our source in financing, to increase our flexibility, and to continue to work on our maturity profile as well as the reduction of the gross debt itself. This concludes our H1 performance financial review. I will now detail elements on our outlook for the remaining of the year, our full year guidance, and also our financial vision for 2025. Let me start with what can we expect in the second half of the year. The top line is expected to be boosted by more volume, the continued outperformance that we have enjoyed since the setup of Orvia, as well as a leveling off of the currency and consolidation impact that I mentioned earlier. As we stated earlier this year, and consistently also to the previous year, we expect a strong sequential improvement of our group operating margin in H2 versus H1. On top of the volume, the elements are in fact related to three. You have inflation recovery, in which we have additional elements in the second half. We have two self-help drivers, the end of the extra cost of interior in North America, now that the case has been closed and operations return to normalcy, and second, the actions on cost. First, on the synergies with ELA in order to reach the 80 million target that we have for the full year, and the first benefits of EU Forward as well as other action on cost in terms of external cost and strict utilization of our resources. That should lead to at least 6% operating margin in the second half. And this is, therefore, translating in our confirmation about our full year 24 guidance. This is, however, with specific precision on sales and operating margin. We expect our sales and operating margin to be in the lower end of the initial ranges of between 25.5 and 28.5 billion euro, and between 5.6% and 6.4% of sales, respectively. We confirm our net cash flow and net debt adjusted EBITDA targets. Let me remind those ones. Net cash flow at least at the level of last year, i.e. at least $649 million for the year, and leverage ratio equal or less than 0.9 times. Those elements are taking into account our H1 performance. the expected acceleration we mentioned for H2 in particular on the cost, and we are taking into account the latest estimate related to production for 24 presented by standards and pools, and the latest update, of course, in terms of currency rates. I will turn now for a short information on 25. We would like to remind you that our 25 sales ambition, as it was presented in the Capital Market Day back in November 22, was based, of course, on certain exchange rates which were prevailing at the time. In the last 18 months, currencies have evolved negatively versus euro and impact the top line that we can project by close to 1.5 billion euro. This impact is primarily linked to the depreciation of U.S. dollar and RMB versus euro compared to this period, but also to the impact of hyperinflation in specific countries, which are Argentina and Turkey, where we operate. Lastly, the evolution of market conditions could lead to another adjustment to the previous objective that should not exceed 500 million. As a consequence, taking those two factors into account, we are therefore re-evaluating our 25 sales target to between 28 and 28.5 billion euros versus the initial ambition of circa 30 billion euros in revenues. Arguably, those evolutions in sales will have some impact on the progress of the operating margin and cash flow that we can generate. To give elements in this direction, the drop-through that we can expect on the translation impact is around 10%, which is concerning the 1.5 billion revenue, so the vast majority of what we are talking about. And on the more volume and mixed uncertainties, the fall-through will be more in the 15% to 20% range in operating margin. Let me stress, however, that we expect strong increase in 25 versus 24 in both operating margin and net cash flow generation. We expect operating margin to be boosted by the continuous improvement of the profitability of the different business groups. You have seen the progress in seating. You have seen the progress in clean mobility. You see the evolution in lighting. We have only one topic that is lagging, which is interior, and we are tackling this. The continued synergies of the combination. We expect cumulative synergies of at least €350 million by 2025, and sizable additional synergies will materialize in our numbers in 2025. On top of this, our further actions on fixed cost reductions, not only in R&D but also SG&A, on the back of EU Forward, artificial intelligence and digitalization have a clear impact. In complement, you have additional elements that will further improve the conversion in cash flow. The progress of the managed by cash program is now more and more visible. You have seen that we are getting traction on capex and inventories. This will continue and will enlarge on the inventory topic. And this will be also the case in the R&D, since if gross costs are improving, the capitalization will be lower. The reduction of our gross debt will also benefit our financial costs and will allow a gradual decrease of this value. And last but not least, our tax charge will normalize thanks to a better geographical mix of our profitability, and in particular with the better performance in Europe, as well as what you have seen on the withholding tax recovery on dividends from Forvia Ella to Forvia. This enhanced net cash flow generation, combined with the expected proceed from the finalization of the second disposal program, will both contribute to accelerate the reduction of the debt, to accelerate the deleveraging of the group, and hit our central Power 25 objective, which is to get below 1.5 times by the end of 2025. In this context, we are confirming the central objective of Power 35 and we are adjusting the sales evolution, taking into account this evolution mostly of foreign currencies from 30 billion to 28 to 28.5 billion euros in revenues. We expect strong improvements and development of operating margin and net cash flow generation. We will further update the sales target when we will announce the results 24 in February. Of course, at the time, we will also detail the targets on operating margin and net cash flow of 25. But those upcoming evolutions will not have any impact on our Power 25 ambition. we will be below 1.5 times in net debt to EBITDA. As stated by Patrick, our confidence to execute and close the second disposal program by the end of 2025, combined with the growth of our cash flow generation and our cash flow performance, lead us to confirm this target, which is about rebalancing the financial structure of the company. And to highlight this, I would like to show you what we are talking about. We are talking about returning by the end of 2025 to the leverage that we had pre-acquisition, which was at 1.6. We are talking about a reduction of €2 billion of the debt by the end of this year and to more than €3 billion in debt by the end of next year. This is not only the disposal. This is about our cost actions and, of course, our conversion in cash thanks to the Manage by Cash program. So we expect, in fact, to have a reduction of the debt, which is higher than what we committed during the investor day. The number that was mentioned was $6 billion. You see here that we are talking about a reduction that is going further in order to have not only the reduction of the leverage, but also the reduction of the financial cost so that we have a full absorption of the acquisition of ELAB. On this note, I hand back to Patrick for the conclusion.

Thank you, Olivier. This will be our last slide before the Q&A. And I would like to summarize the presentation of our performance for the first half, starting with thanks. Thanks to the commitment and hard work of our teams, we progressed on all our key financial metrics. we recorded a positive organic growth of 2.7%, with a market outperformance of 290 basis points, 460 basis points, excluding the geographical mix. We gained new businesses aligned with industry megatrends. Our strong order intake includes significant steps with Chinese OEMs in Asia and in the rest of the world. We generated a solid net cash flow in amount and quality. We moved forward in the refinancing of the group with new important steps for our adept maturities. We made good progress with EU Forward, on track with our initial assumptions, and developed new synergies with Fovea Heller. Collectively, we stayed steady, focused and determined to achieve our deleveraging targets, which is the top priority of Fovea. All these elements make us confident that our H2 performance will allow us to reach all our 2024 objectives, as indicated during the presentation. And now, I'm happy to answer to your questions with Olivier, and we might start with the questions performed.