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Forvia Se
10/20/2025
Good morning, this is the conference operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the FORVIA third quarter sales results conference call and webcast. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Martin Fischer, CEO of Farvia. Please go ahead, sir.
Yeah, thank you very much, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today for our Q3 2025 sales call, which I'm presenting together with our CFO, Olivier Durand. I'll start by sharing our third quarter highlights. Then Olivier will talk you through the details of our Q3 sales. and in the end, I'll wrap up with our outlook for the full year of 2025. By now, you all know the three priorities we have set for ourselves, best-in-class performance, business transformation, and invigorating our culture. They are now firmly embedded in the way we manage internally, and they also determine how we engage externally. I'm very pleased to highlight the progress that we made in Q3. First of all, our best-in-class performance. We operate in an uncertain market. Customer mixed volatility in the third quarter added to regional fluctuations already amplified by the tariffs. Nevertheless, sales proved to be resilient, and it was flat in Q3 and slightly up organically over the first nine months of the year. In such conditions, the focus is ultra-clear. We maintain discipline in operations and launches, We keep tight control of costs and cash and thereby offset all the market volatility. Thanks to the discipline and despite mounting uncertainties, we are on track to deliver on our 2025 guidance as presented earlier this year. Second, our business transformation is moving forward. Starting with our domestic program, we have a target to sell additional sizable assets. And for those, we have received strong inbound interest from both private equity and strategic players. The divestitures are progressing according to our plan, and at this point in time, we still will not comment on market rumors and any speculations around those. At the same time, we are introducing our target business portfolio, which we will present at our CND in February 2026. It will indeed reflect a simplified group structure, focusing on product lines with clear leadership positions and a disciplined approach to capital allocation. Thirdly, let's come to invigorating our culture. The new division-centric model that I presented during our half-year results call at the end of July is now in place. Also, the simplified project that optimizes SG&A and indirect costs has resulted in immediate actions. A governance structure is established, and we drive short as well as long-term initiatives under Simplify. Last but not least, there have been further personnel changes in essential functions. Rafael Villar was appointed as CBIO in charge of artificial intelligence, digital, and IT. And second, In order to drive our innovation internally and together with partners, Manessa Pipa was promoted to Chief Technology Officer. So as stated before, we enforce the most important functions of the company that serve our mission. So speaking of technology, our goal is very clear. We position the group to lead the transformation of the automotive industry. And in the third quarter, we continue to leverage market dynamics. I would like to start with the technology trends. Electronics are at the heart of the transformation. That's very obvious. And this activity keeps growing at a double-digit rate at 4W. The Q3 growth was majorly driven by radar products and in-vehicle entertainment systems. As a specific product announcement, our new radar generation, 4W7, has just received its first award, and it provides good solutions to key environmental data generation for advanced automotive driving. Secondly, clean mobility is also performing very well in Q3. It benefits from the slowdown in fuel electrification and the growing shift towards high winds. Thanks to our leadership, the business continues to consolidate the market. This is very well illustrated by the recent SOP after taking over ultra-low emissions products from a German OEM's in-house production. Next one is heating, and heating constantly keeps innovating at fantastic speed. We presented the new Venn massage seat at the Shanghai Auto Show. We talked about that in an earlier call. Now it will soon be featured on the LS9, the new 6C luxury model from IAM Motors, which is the joint venture between SAIC and Alibaba. Lighting is moving ahead, too. After the success of its flat-light rear applications using micro-optics, the team is now bringing it to a front version. And in parallel, Lighting also received several awards in Q3, especially in the volume segment. This underlines the scope extension of the lighting business from technology leadership to mass market penetration. So let's move on to the next. In parallel to relying on our strong technological edge, we also pursue our diversification strategy to unlock untapped customer potential. We are happy to supply our Asian customers when they serve global markets. In Europe, We want a new interiors program with Toyota for an electric vehicle car line. Also, we secured our first seating order with HKMC outside of Korea, delivering comfort modules both in Europe and in the U.S. The same holds true for our Chinese customers, where we have just signed a letter of intent to extend our partnership with Cherry beyond China. In the Chinese market itself, we further broaden our customer portfolio to become more robust against customer mix volatility. Let me give you two examples. Number one, we've added a fast-growing EV player from outside the traditional auto industry to our panel. And number two, lighting received numerous awards from Geely across several of its brands. And last but not least, India is emerging as a new growth market After my visit earlier this month, we have re-emphasized the focus on India. So we have already booked 500 million euro in orders this year, mainly in electronics. And we are also now better leveraging our strong engineering presence in India to generate local product sales. So you can conclude our direction is very clear. We are becoming a more focused company in our portfolios. and at the same time, we become more diversified in our customers and regions. With that, Olivier, please take over for the Q3 CIO's details.
Thank you, Martin, and good morning to all of you. Let me now take you to the main highlights of Q3, with a focus on the sales evolution, but also our recent refinancing actions. Regarding sales, As mentioned, the sales reached 6.1 billion euros in Q3, which is down 3.7% on the reported basis, which is entirely due to currency effects. As in Q2, sales were impacted by the depreciation of the U.S. dollar and the yuan versus the euro, which is the main reason of this forex hedging. But organic sales were flat overall, with product sales up 1.1%, while tooling sales are normalizing after exceptionally high levels of last year due to a record number of program launches, notably in interiors. Let me highlight that product sales represent the recurrent evolution of our activity. For the first nine months, sales totaled 19.6 billion euros, at 0.8% on an organic basis, i.e. excluding forex. Regarding forex impacts, which started in Q2, it is now at €443 million for the year and should continue to wait on sales in Q4 as well as early 26 if currencies are following the same trends. But let me highlight that it has a very limited effect on our operating margin as our cost base are essentially local in the three dominant markets, China, Europe, and North America, providing largely a natural edge on currencies. Let me now go through the details of the Q3 sales performance across business groups and regions. I will start with business groups. Electronics remain our strongest growth engine, up 18.6 organically, which is actually the highest growth momentum since the ELA acquisition. Growth was strong across all regions, driven by radars and infotainment systems. BIM Mobility delivered a solid 8.7 organic growth. Two key drivers behind this evolution. First, the slowdown in electrification, which supported ice and even more hybrid car production in North America and in Europe. And second, the takeover of an exhaust business from a major European OEM, which is now impacting the sales. Life cycle solutions return to organic growth after five quarters of decline, and we see this positive momentum continuing into Q4. I will turn now to CT. After a solid first half, the business faced headwinds in Q3. In Europe, sales were hit by subdomains from premium brands, which included some unfavorable timing effects. In China, the growth with Sherry was more than offset by lower production at BYD and Lyoto. You know that BYD and Lyoto have reduced production overall in the period. And North America showed modest growth supported by Ford and Stellantis. Now moving to interiors, product sales were up 6.9% organically with solid momentum in China and North America. The total organic sales of the business group were down 1.4%, which is related to the normalization of tooling sales that I mentioned before. This normalization should continue in Q4 before stabilizing in Q6. Finally, 19, performance was broadly in line with H1, with programs not yet offset by new launches, especially in China and Europe. The business is rebuilding its program pipeline, and Q3 hardware intake was encouraging with new needs in the mass market and in China. Now moving to page 9, we are showing a mixed picture across regions. In North America and in the rest of Asia, i.e. Asia outside China, sales clearly outperformed market production, mainly thanks to the strong contribution from green mobility and electronics. In Europe, performance was softer. affecting lower volumes with premium OEMs and the temporary production stops at GLR. In China, market growth was once again driven by Chinese OEMs, but with some important swings inside. Sherry and Gili clearly net the markets, and we benefited from the expansion of Sherry, but we are less present with Gili. Conversely, BYD and IOTO registered significant decline in production, which has resulted in our sales. In this context, we continue to act decisively on what we can control, in particular by enhancing cost flexibility at plant level to protect our performance and manage volatility in China and globally. Let me close now this Q3 overview with a word on our debt profile. Once again, in the third quarter, we have been quite active in the refinancing domain. We completed around 1.3 billion of refinancing, which means a cumulative year-to-date number of 2.7 billion euros. As you can see on the chart, this has allowed us to clear most of our 26 maturities and divided by two our 27 maturities. We have a maturity deficit a debt maturity of 3.6 years now, and we have a much more balanced debt situation from 27 onwards. At the same time, we have done those actions with a broad funding sources, not at least with two U.S.-bound issuance, the last one being in September. These actions solidify our financial profile. With this, I will now hand it over back to you, Martine. Yeah, thanks, Olivier.
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