ABC Technologies Holdings Inc.

Greetings and welcome to ABC Technologies Q3 fiscal 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during today's conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn this conference over to your host, Nathan Barton, VP, Investor Relations. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Thank you, operator, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today for ABC Technologies Q3 Fiscal 2022 Earnings Conference Call. With me on the call are Todd Sheppelman, President and Chief Executive Officer of ABC Technologies, and David Smith, Chief Financial Officer of ABC Technologies. This call is being webcast live on ABC Technologies' investor relations website, and the webcast and accompanying slides will be available for replay for 12 months following this call. The content of today's call is the property of ABC Technologies. It can't be reproduced or transcribed without prior written consent from the company. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that today's call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties, that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. Any such statements should be considered in conjunction with our cautionary statements in our earnings release and risk factor discussions in our filings with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities on CDAR. Please refer to slide two of the presentation for additional information. We assume no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements or information unless required by law. I want to remind our investors that we are on a fiscal year that began July 1st, 2021, All references to Q3 fiscal 2022 are to our fiscal quarter ended March 31st, 2022, and Q3 fiscal 2021 are to our fiscal quarter ended March 31st, 2021. References to fiscal 2022 are to the 12 months ending June 30th, 2022. I also want to note that while ABC shares trade in Canadian dollars, the company reports its financials in U.S. dollars. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Todd Sheppelman.

Thank you, Nathan, and good morning, everyone.

I'm excited to welcome you to our third quarter earnings call. This quarter marks one year since our very first earnings season as a public company, and what a year it's been. We've had some very significant wins and accomplishments over the year, and I remain excited about our journey. After our initial public offering in February 2021, Apollo acquired a majority stake in June of the same year, which was followed by Oak Tree, taking on the remaining minority stake in October. We subsequently closed on two key acquisitions and launched a private placement as well as a rights offering, while booking record levels of new business to support future growth and optimizing our cost structure, all against the backdrop of a very demanding macroeconomic environment. In response to these challenges, ABC has remained focused on controlling the controllable factors of our business, and has remained resilient as demonstrated by our sequentially improving financial results promised at the beginning of the fiscal year and executing on our early steps of our new M&A roadmap. On that note, let's go into the highlights for the quarter beginning on slide four. David will provide his full rundown of our financials and his upcoming remarks. But at a high level, our revenue and adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter landed at $286 million, and 30 million, respectively. Both were up year over year, as well as quarter over quarter, benefiting from less volatile OEM production schedules, contributions from recent acquisitions, with offsets from ongoing supply chain disruptions, which impacted both OEM customers and ABC directly. Moving now to a broader production environment, which has been a hot topic for more than a year, this quarter was no different. We continue to navigate numerous challenges, including ongoing but lessening semiconductor shortages, COVID lockdowns, and persistent material and labor cost inflation. In the context of this taxing environment, OEM customer plants are still running at reduced volumes, but ABC's focus on prioritized truck and SUV platforms aided outperformance relative to IHS production figures. We have seen new difficulties unfold this quarter of both humanitarian and operational in nature, as with the crisis in Ukraine. Our thoughts are with those affected, and we have endeavored to assist in this humanitarian effort. Through Carl Essel, employees of our Mulacher Germany plant, in joint effort with the company, have donated to the Ukrainian cause. We've also continued to support Ukrainian relief efforts by actively hiring individuals who have been evacuated from the region and are providing support to them and their families through our plant in Poland. As for the impact for our business, there's been limited flow through to our results for the quarter given our North American geographical emphasis, but we will continue to monitor customer volume developments closely. Shifting gears to our operational performance, we also delivered several highlights this quarter that we're very proud of. First, ABC registered its highest new business wins by revenue in recent history as several high-volume truck and SUV platforms were awarded. Second, the acquisition of DLH Bowles and Carl Ethel, which were announced at signing last quarter, and closed in the first week of March. We are already seeing positive contribution from both in our financial results, with early signs of success through integration activities, synergies, and cross-sell opportunities. Finally, on April 30th, We signed a definitive agreement to sell the real estate associated with Carl Edsel to a German real estate investor in a sale-leaseback transaction that will bring in approximately $50 million of proceeds, which will be used to pay down debt. Though there's still a high level of uncertainty as to when the macroeconomic crisis affecting the industry will normalize, we continue to expect these challenges to be transient in nature, and are confident that the long term growth trajectory and solid fundamentals of our business remain unchanged. Despite the near term headwinds, we see many reasons to remain optimistic about the longer term industry dynamics, as well as the overall ABC story. Moving to slide five, Q3 results were once again impacted by factors outside of our control, including semiconductor shortages, inflated input costs, and other OEM production issues. Beginning with the cost pressures, ABC has seen ongoing and significant inflation with respect to raw materials, including resin, glass fiber, rubber, paint, and steel, as well as higher logistics and labor costs. Beyond the impacts of elevated resins quantified in these bridges, ABC has also contended with rising wage pressures across North America, as well as fuel and container surcharges on truck, rail, and air transport, that were at 15-year highs in some areas. Combined with suboptimal utilization in our plants, primarily as the result of OEM production scheduling issues, these items drove the adjusted margins that you see on the right of the page and below the level ABC is capable of operating at in a normal production environment. Next, as we continue to live with the impact of the pandemic, last quarter's reprieve from COVID outbreaks and lockdowns were again interrupted in March and April. While Shanghai and other new lockdowns across China did not have a material impact on results for the current quarter, we anticipate impacts in future quarters as logistics backups unwind and other supply chain disruptions continue, though at a lesser degree than we've seen in prior quarters. And finally, before we move off this slide, I'll end on the impact to our business from the Russian-Ukraine conflict. As I touched on earlier, ABC has been materially insulated from negative impacts due to our primarily North American geographic exposure. Importantly, however, we expect that select OEM customers may be affected in the coming quarters, though with limited impact on ABC and its European plants.

On slide six, you'll see our regular update of the larger production and inventory environment.

In a revision to what we've seen IHS signal in prior quarters, the production forecast is once again declined in the near term. According to IHS, a normalized production environment, reflecting approximately 4 million vehicles produced per quarter, will not return until at least the beginning of the calendar year 2023. With that said, there's still a lot to look forward to on the demand side of the industry. North American OEM production, which was roughly 3.6 million vehicles in the third quarter, is expected to rebound steadily to 4.1 million vehicles over the next 12 months and average almost 4.2 million vehicles per quarter through the end of 2029. On the right side of this slide, you'll see that the total US inventory has remained steady at near low record levels. With 1 million vehicles on dealer lots, the current average inventory of 25 days is roughly 65% lower than dealers have historically kept on hand pre-COVID. As we look forward, ABC is well prepared and looking forward to capitalizing on a return to a more normalized production and inventory environment. On slide seven, I'll touch briefly on some of the important launches and program wins for the quarter, beginning with one of our most significant sales achievements to date. This past quarter was the largest for new business wins in many years, demonstrated continued strength in quoting activity from the customer, along with ABC's ability to capitalize on these opportunities. We received over $1.5 billion of lifetime new business wins during the quarter, which puts us well ahead of our plan for the year. The balance mix between replacement and new wins for this quarter highlights both our ability to continue to meet existing customer requirements while offering innovative new products that are taking share in the marketplace. In addition to major ICE wins we've had, We had another strong quarter of EV wins with 114 million of lifetime revenue from seven awarded programs. Many of these wins were in ABC's pickup truck and SUV space, where we continued to win as the vehicle shift from internal combustion engine to battery electric vehicles. On the left hand side, you'll see some of the important launches for the quarter. These include the mid cycle updates of the Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra for both light duty and heavy duty. an exterior systems launch for the Hyundai Santa Fe and Kia Sorento through Mobus, and an interior systems launch on the Kia Sportage. For this quarter, our launches really highlight the new business wins over the past years with the Asian OEMs that we mentioned during the IPO really come to fruition. Last but not least, we're also in the middle of multiple launches on the new all-electric Cadillac Halo vehicle, the Lyriq. On slide eight, I'd like to touch on some of the new innovations and technologies that we are introducing to customers, as well as implementing internally to drive greater productivity and cost efficiencies. One of our more recent innovations is the screwless airbox that you see here on the left. This airbox provides the ability to service the air filter without the difficulties of removing screws or the risk of having parts fall into the engine, and allows for installation and removal of the airbox upper with just one hand. This patent pending design provides cost reduction, weight savings, tool and production cycle time savings, in addition to making servicing the vehicle much more efficient. Another development I'd like to highlight today is the Ford Bronco rear bumper ADAS sensor integration. Adding to our long list of prior innovations, ABC is the first company in the industry to integrate park assist sensors into a blow molded bumper. representing a new baseline for blow-molded bumper systems capabilities. The sensors can be assembled via snap-fit features, eliminating any additional hardware required to retain the sensors in place. This technology allows for rugged SUVs and other light trucks and transit vehicles to include park assist functionality in lightweight plastic interior systems and designs. Additionally, ABC has been recently nominated as a finalist for the prestigious Automotive News Pace Pilot Award in recognition of our recent industry first process developments for variable cooling and our blow molding technology. This innovation drives reductions in cycle time and energy consumption in the manufacturing process, allowing for additional production capacity and at a lower cost versus traditional blow molding processing. These are among the many innovations and developments that continue to differentiate ABC as preferred tier one supplier of highly engineered technical plastics.

With that, I'll turn the call over to David. Thanks, Todd.

I'll start with an overview of our financial performance in our fiscal third quarter ended March 31st. This slide shows sales, adjusted EVA-DA, EVA-DA margin, and free cash flow. But I will spend some time to give color to the significant aspects of our major income statement line. ABC's revenue for Q3 fiscal 22 was $285.8 million. up 31.1% from Q3 fiscal 2021. As expected, Q3 revenue was supported by the acquisition of both Carl Etzel and DLH Bowles, which contributed one month of the quarter, as well as rebounding North America auto production, partially offset by volume-related losses from semiconductor shortages affecting ROEM customers' production. Cost of goods sold as a percentage of sales was 86.6%, up from 85.8% a year ago. SG&A expenses were $29.3 million in Q3 fiscal 2022, compared to $38.2 million in the prior year. Last year's higher SG&A expenses were primarily the result of one-time items, including $7.7 million in transaction costs to complete our IPO, as well as $6.5 million of transactional recruitment and other bonuses related to the IPO. These positive variances to SG&A expenses in fiscal 21 were partially offset by higher wages of 2.8 million, higher depreciation expense of 1.6 million, acquisition-related costs of 1.3 million, and directors' and officers' insurance of 0.8 million. In Q3 of the current fiscal year, operating income was 9.6 million compared to an operating loss of 6.3 million in Q3 fiscal 2021. As noted, the large year-over-year swing is largely attributable to 14.2 million of costs related to the IPO included in Q3 fiscal 2021. The current quarter net loss of $6.3 million compares to net loss of $20.7 million in Q3 fiscal 2021. Primary contributors to this year-over-year variance are a $7.4 million increase in gross profit in Q3 fiscal 2022 due to higher sales, $8.9 million due to lower selling and general administrative costs, and a reduction in interest expense of $12.1 million, offset by a $13.6 million swing to income tax expense from recovery. In Q3 fiscal 2022, there was a net loss per share of $0.07 on a fully diluted basis against a net loss per share of $0.39 in Q3 fiscal 2021. Adjusted EVDA for Q3 fiscal 2022 increased 18.9% to $30 million from $25 million in the prior year. This quarter's adjusted EVDA margin was 9.5% compared to 10.3% a year ago. Adjusted free cash flow was $7.7 million versus $9.9 million in the prior year period, primarily due to higher net cash flows from operating activities of $7.2 million, offset by higher purchases of property, plant, and equipment of $4.6 million, and lower one-time advisory bonus and other costs of $4.2 million. As a result of cost pressures, the company's joint ventures did not issue dividends in Q3 fiscal 2022. Our business continues to be adversely impacted by reduced production volumes that are away from customers through the semiconductor chip shortage, which leads to unpredictable production scheduling and related production inefficiencies. We note this impact appears to be lessening in degree. With increasing severity, however, the company is experiencing higher input costs, not just from resin, which has been well publicized, but also glass, rubber, paint, and steel, as well as elevated labor in several markets and freight costs. Excluding the semiconductor shortage and other OEM production issues, management estimates revenue would have been $310 million. Management further estimates that adjusted EBITDA would have been $44 million in Q3 fiscal 2022, excluding the impact from the semiconductor shortage, other OEM production issues, and inflated resin costs. Finally, before I move on to the next slide, I'd like to note for modeling purposes that our adjusted EBITDA includes our 50% proportionate share of our JV's EBITDA, And likewise, the computation of adjusted EBITDA margin includes 50% of the JVs revenue in the denominator. Given that the JVs are included in the income statement on the equity method basis, you need to refer to our MD&A to see the JV proportionate sales and adjusted EBITDA details. Our MD&A is filed on CDAR and is also available on our investor website. Briefly, slide 11 shows the walk from cash from ops down to adjusted free cash flow. As you can see, cash from ops is down just slightly versus last quarter, but has seen a significant improvement since the beginning of the year against the backdrop of recovering customer volumes and normalization of working capital. We expect this recovery to continue in Q4 and into fiscal 2023. The working capital tailwind we experienced over the last two quarters is expected to normalize throughout fiscal 2023. Moving on to slide 12 now, where you will see details of our capital structure and liquidity. During the quarter, we increased the size of our credit facility to $550 million, extended its maturity by two years to February 2027, and improved pricing. We remain fully compliant with all covenants under the amended credit agreement. And as we've previously mentioned, we maintained a high draw on our revolver due to lower levels of industry production. This has resulted in a commensurate and expected temporary increase in leverage. Importantly, management expects our leverage to multiply the decline in the near term as improved financial performance, integration of our recent acquisitions, and the proceeds of the sale of Carlisle Real Estate allows us to pay down debt and return leverage levels below three times. With that, I'll turn it back over to Todd for a few closing remarks. Todd?

Thanks, David. I'll wrap up by saying that steadily increasing OEM production, albeit still at depressed levels, has provided greater production predictability compared to prior quarters. However, ABC still remains impacted by both the weaker OEM production environment and elevated input costs. We continue to build upon the strength of the prior two quarters in terms of total new business awards, including the EV space, with our third quarter being the highest in recent of ABC's history for new business wins, including a key replacement of the high-volume North American truck and SUV platform. Additionally, the combination of a $14 million US SAR with flatlining dealer inventories at record lows suggests that demand continues to outpace supply, foreshadowing the need for multiple years of elevated production in order to replace lost volumes and meet heightened consumer demand, a phenomenon that bodes well for ABC's growth prospects for years to come. As I've already mentioned, we were thrilled to close on two M&A transactions in our pipeline during fiscal Q3. and market volatility continues to present numerous high-quality opportunities that ABC intends to capitalize on. There are still targets in the pipeline that meet our mandate of diversifying ABC's customer and geographic footprint while driving profitability, scale, cash flow, and increased ability to serve our customers globally. In closing, ABC has remained agile and resilient in response to the ongoing challenges in the broader market, We have booked record amounts of new business, continued to develop innovations and technologies desirable to our customers, and have capitalized on market volatility through our acquisition activities. Though we expect ongoing supply chain issues for the next several quarters to remain, we see ample opportunities for growth and improved efficiencies in the future as supply chains allow for a rebound to more normal production levels. Management continues to believe that ongoing market volatility precludes the ability to provide meaningful financial guidance. However, as the market normalizes and fundamentals continue to strengthen, we hope to be able to provide clarity to the market for our upcoming fiscal year when we report next quarter's results. That concludes our prepared remarks. I'd like to thank you for listening and for your support.

David and I are now happy to take questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. The first question comes from Ryan Brinkman with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. You know, on last quarter's call, I think you were limited in what you could say about the then-pending acquisitions. I'm curious if now, post-closing, you might be able to help us a bit more granularly on what the margin profile is of the businesses acquired and, you know, what impact you expect them to have on the financials of the combined business going forward.

Hey, Ryan, thanks and good morning.

So I think what we've said is that you'll continue to see the performance from the acquisitions come through in our quarterly performance as we continue to go forward and have a full quarter coming up here. We just had one month right now. I think we've been, as we mentioned before, hesitant to go into too much detail just from a competitive nature's standpoint on the specifics of each one, as we also don't break out necessarily the individual performance of our plants. But we're very positive that these are very strong accretive acquisitions that we have, and that you'll start seeing that fundamentally come through very strong in the future quarters as well, you know, cash flow, EBITDA, and revenue. We've had great success to date on the integration We've – actually, it's been, I think, a faster integration, and we're seeing more synergies from a customer cross-sale opportunity than we expected this early. So, I think I would just say that there have been positive, remain positive, and you'll see that in the results coming through.

Okay. Thank you.

And we did – Yeah, we did discuss sales and income. Just throughout the MD&A, there is both sales and net income, but that's That's about as granular, I think, as we feel comfortable being at this time.

Okay. Sure thing. And then I wanted to check in on your commodity pass-through arrangements. In the case of the contracts that automatically adjust, is there anything to keep in mind going forward about the timing of any of these resets? For example, could the timing of a disproportionate amount of contracts resetting at higher prices, could that impact the cadence of your quarterly earnings going forward? Or do you expect them to sort of more or less reset gradably throughout the year. And then in the case of those contracts, which do not automatically adjust, but are instead more subject to, I guess, ad hoc negotiation, how would you rate the progress of those negotiations and the willingness of automaker customers to fully offset the material cost inflation that you might be seeing?

Todd, I can just jump in and maybe for the first part. Right. Yeah, the first part. Ryan, with respect to the indexing arrangements we have and the pass-through arrangements, nothing really has changed relative to timing or the way the contracts work. I'd still say, you know, we're roughly 50% hedged in the traditional ABC business, and about 25% of that sort of is just direct pass-through with no timing, and then the other parts have a bit of a lag to them, either three months or six months, based on the individual customer contracts. And then, Todd, do you want to just talk about where we are with customer negotiations?

Yeah, Ryan, I'd just say on the second half of that with the conversations, we certainly have had conversations with customers. They're at various stages. Some have progressed to some satisfactory conclusion on the negotiation side. Some we're still in the middle of, and others were at the beginning of the conversations. And as you can imagine, these are long, complex conversations. dialogues and conversations that we're having, and it's not something that we settle in a matter of hours or days. It's a long, lengthy conversation, but we feel confident in the ability to make progress in this area, and you'll see that flowing through over time as well. It's really hard to forecast the specifics of when they're going to hit, but just in general, the Tier 1s have been really the gathering point of a lot of these inflationary pressures in the marketplace, and, you know, we can't just eat those costs, and the OEMs certainly have had some ability to price adjust in the marketplace, and we can't just be the pinch point for all of the costs there. So we're certainly having those conversations, and we will continue to do so, and drive to resolution and agreements.

Okay, that's helpful. Thanks. Then just sort of last question, I guess similar question, but instead of the material cost, you know, maybe you could comment on some of the non-commodity supply chain costs you're seeing, such as electricity, natural gas, diesel, even labor, et cetera. Are automakers understanding that these costs are going to have to be reimbursed to suppliers over time also? because like you said, they've got that sort of release valve with consumer pricing. How are you intending to recover these higher costs over time and over what time frame do you think you could recover them?

Yeah, I think the answer to that, Ryan, is similar to the previous conversation. It's all part of the larger conversation. Those are all key inputs that we're seeing with significant rising costs. Everybody's aware of the the rise in transportation costs and the fuel associated with that, but just also there's shortages across the marketplace on transportation, whether it's availability of drivers, availability of ships through COVID lockdowns, or even the Russian-Ukraine conflict has put a pinch on European ship transportation, which has really then shorted airspace. So airspace is tight as well. So all of those costs are part of the conversation. They're all inflationary pressures and significant cost increases that we've seen. And we're bundling those up as part of the larger conversation we're seeing on rising input material costs.

Okay. Very helpful. Thank you.

The next question comes from Noman Sati with Borenstein Bank. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, everyone. So my first question is on the volumes for April and sort of half of May. I'm just wondering any help understanding if those volumes have improved sequentially. And I remember in last quarter or the one before that you had mentioned that some of the OEMs were give cancellation a week in advance or just a few days in advance. Has those things sort of changed? Has the production scheduling been improved when we look at things on a sequential basis and any color on how April and May are trending?

Good morning. I appreciate the question. I think I would say that we've had certainly increased visibility and I think the OEMs have increased visibility as well into where their ability to produce vehicles are at. It continued to get better, as you mentioned, sequentially on a month-over-month, quarter-over-quarter basis. We're certainly not seeing as much impact from just the pure chip problems that we had over the prior 12 months or more. But there are certainly other supply chain issues out there. The COVID lockdowns in Shanghai are one of them. Transportation is another one that has had impact. So we're probably seeing more on the the transportation side of the equation than we have in the past, and then lessening from a chip standpoint. But you've, I'm sure you've read in the press that there's, there's still several OEMs that are having cancellations, but it's certainly been at a lessening pace that we've seen in the past. And we continue to believe that that will continue to improve going forward. And so we're remain optimistic that the the sequential growth at a I think, slow, steady pace is really what we we anticipate is going to continue to happen. But there will be continued disruptions. You know, when, eventually, when Shanghai opens back up, there's going to be a mass mass rush to get parts out of there, which is going to really limit the open capacity on moving parts. And so that's going to be a difficult situation as production unwinds or shipping unwinds in the Shanghai area. But we're preparing for that. We're working with our supply base. We're working with the OEMs in constant contact with that. But I think we can all anticipate there will be spotty disruptions in the fourth quarter as those things unwind.

Thanks for that color. And just in your presentation on slide seven where you mentioned the largest quarter business win, which is about $1.5 billion, I'm wondering how much of business do you expect to fall off from traditional sort of ICE business that you do as EV business sort of comes up?

Yeah, I think I would say, Norman, that there's a transition going underway.

It's not necessarily a step function, and new business wins are always lumpy, and they can vary from quarter to quarter, and whether it's ICE or whether it's VED, I think we've seen in the past that, you know, we've had there was a rush of VED programs, then maybe just a little bit of a a downturn in that just slightly as timing happens over the OEMs. And this past quarter, we had both a mix of VED as well as a lot of ICE come through. And that's predominantly because of the just the nature of the awards. These are high volume programs that we were awarded on large truck and SUV platforms that have some of the highest volumes in the marketplace. Our content is high on several of these vehicles. And so when you do get an award in that space, even if it's an internal combustion engine, it can be a significant high volume. So I think I would say that going forward, we're going to continue to see and expect higher BEV sales going forward, but it will be spotty and lumpy, and it's not just a straight-line trajectory based on the timing of the OEMs electric vehicle programs and how they sequence those into their launch activities. They can't just launch 25 vehicles at one time, so every OEM has their own sequence. But we're going after those programs. We're in lots of discussions around the globe on those programs and some very exciting vehicles coming up, and we're right in the mix for a lot of those.

Okay, now that's very helpful and In your MD&A, where you've sort of given this contribution from the two acquisitions, one month contribution for DLH Vols, it appears it's relatively less than what they had in, I would assume, January and February. Is that just a seasonality element, or if something else has changed there?

Yeah, I think it's a little bit of seasonality there. Again, we only had one week of DLH or one month of the earnings. And I just think that there's maybe a little bit of input cost that they're experiencing as well, probably not as significantly as what we're exposed to just given the product lines and what their raw material indexes are and input costs are. So I just think it's more transitory in nature and we fully expect that going forward they will be able to continue to maintain those margins.

And I would just highlight that the March results were in line with our underwriting model, so very much in line with what we expected.

Okay, that's good to hear. And maybe just one last one from my end. You guys did these two acquisitions, but how is the pipeline looking? Are you guys still active, or do you want to wait and sort of absorb these two before you sort of go out and do another one?

I would say that the pipeline is very strong and active right now.

I would say that the three of us on this call plus several other of our leadership team are very busy working on numerous different opportunities. I think the difficulties in the market are opportunities for us given the relative strength that we have in the marketplace versus others and just relative position that we have. just allows us to be kind of a natural acquisition point for several of these companies that we're looking for. And so I would say that we're not just going to rest on our laurels of two acquisitions. Those are going very well, and we're going to continue our activity, and the pipeline is strong, and there's almost daily additional opportunities that we're evaluating and looking at. So we're very bullish about the ability to continue to look and see and evaluate opportunities in the acquisition space and think that they're very good logical synergies and add-ons into ABC. So we're very excited about the M&A activity for sure.

Okay. Thanks for taking my questions. I'll get back into the queue.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Andrew Lopez with TD Securities. Please go ahead. Thank you.

All right. Good morning. Actually, Brian already asked my question there, so I'll just say congratulations on the strong quarter, and I'll return to you if I have anything.

Thanks. Thanks, Andrew. Appreciate it.

Once again, if you have a question, please press star and 1. Our next question comes from Peter Sklar with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Good morning. So just looking at your North American revenues, which, you know, were quite strong, you know, whether you want to look at it year over year or quarter over quarter, in the write-up, you know, there were two factors, obviously the one month of the acquisitions, but obviously you indicated the, you know, the mix was strong. So, you know, obviously GM truck production was strong, but can you call out other platforms that, you know, ABC is exposed to in North America and

you know, where you had volumes above the industry?

Yeah, I would say, Peter, that we're, you know, we certainly have, you know, different vehicles within there that have higher ABC content than others. So we're not just a, you know, we have an average mix, but some of the ones that were at relatively higher volumes and came back from where they were lower in the prior quarters. So I would certainly say that with ship availability, You saw a lot more vehicles in the CUV space being produced than just trucks and high-end SUVs, which is really the story of some of the prior quarters. The CUVs have certainly a lot of volume associated with them. They're the bread and butter right now from a volume standpoint. The OEMs are eager to get more of those out into the marketplace, particularly given the dealer inventory situation. I think it was a volume thing, but it was also a content per vehicle that we have on those vehicles, and typically CUVs, we've got some good content levels, just given that there's more Typically spoilers on those, you see more interior content on those given the rear storage compartments and the back of the SUV. Just better opportunity for more content. You've got dual wash systems, you've got multi-zone HVAC systems. We just see typically higher dollar content on those and the volume is certainly higher. We just expect that to continue. I would say that there were several CUVs that had been down for long periods of time that went back to better volume production over this past quarter. And I think we'll see continued ups and downs as OEMs are continuing to focus their mix on available chips. But we're just happy to see that there were additional chips not just for pickup trucks and large SUVs, but it kind of came back into our sweet spot of some of the CUVs as well.

So, Todd, would you – Peter, I just added, again, more than GM, but on some of the other OEMs as well. You know, so across the ones in the D3 and some of the Asians that we're supplying, also good strong volumes.

Right. So, Todd and Dave, would you prepare to call out specifically, you know, some of the platforms that given your content and given the volume increases that contributed to this growth in revenue?

Yeah, I wouldn't say it was necessarily just one or two, Peter.

I think it was pretty strong across the board that we saw. So I don't, you know, as we've looked at the numbers, there's nothing that necessarily just jumps out and says it was just this one particular vehicle. I think it's just the continued strength that we've seen in the overall marketplace and that on a lot of these vehicles, we have above average content. So we're able to outpace and outgrow, you know, where the market is from IHS CAGR growth rate standpoint, and we're continuing to win more businesses, launch new businesses. And so it's just a combination of the new business that we've launched. And we went through several of those examples. that is additional content for us. So it's net sales increase regardless of what the volume of the marketplace is on a number of vehicles produced basis. So we just continue to expand our overall breadth in the marketplace across the OEMs being on more platforms and then our CPV we continue to drive up. So I would just say it was a combination of all those factors really. Okay.

And then the other question I have, I'm looking at page seven of the deck where you disclose your wins. And the way you express your wins is life of program revenues. And it's kind of hard to take that number and translate it into, like, into a growth rate. And then also, I mean, there's business falling off. You know, some of it's replacement business, some of it's new wins. So I wanted to know, like, for your North American business, say, over the next five years, do you have a view on what your growth rate will be, you know, above what the industry is doing? So, you know, Detroit 3 is growing 5%. Like, how much can ABC grow above that? Is it 2%, 3%, 5%? Like, you have the order book and all the details and the cadence, so I'm just wondering if you have a view on that.

Yeah, sure. So I would say that at a high level, we – have had and continue to have the ability to outgrow the marketplace on a CAGR basis. I think that still holds true. We're in the middle of our budget cycle right now, so we're putting all those details together. But I think, as we said during the roadshow and consistently on these calls, that we do have the ability to outgrow the market and we'll continue to do so and are confident in the ability to do that. Okay, thanks. Just one other piece of information, you know, just from a typical lifespan of these vehicles, we see somewhere in the neighborhood of, you know, six years on average for a lifetime revenue. Again, that can be lumpy depending on the specific vehicles that are in there. But I would just say for a macro number typical program life that we see in the industry across all of our platforms is about six years. But then with the slight caution, some go seven, some go five. So depending on the volume on those programs, but on a macro basis, I think six years is a pretty good number to use.

Okay. Thanks for your comments.

This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Todd Sheffelman for any closing remarks.

Well, first of all, I just appreciate the ongoing support of everybody that's on the line here. I would say overall, you know, very solid quarter. We were happy to see the volumes coming back and then ability to still flow through. But I believe that we've still got a lot more to do as the world gets back to normal and we get some of the inefficiencies out of the system. The visibility, as I've mentioned, with the OEMs is getting better, but it's still mixed with both COVID issues as well as non-chip supply-related issues are still out there, and we're certainly not in a friction-free system right now. Never will get totally friction-free, but there's just a lot more overall in the system right now than we typically would see. The integration of the two acquisitions that we've done is going extremely well. Those have been very, very positive for us, and I think have really helped us understand the ability to integrate fastly and to continue to move on going forward. And there's really more opportunities for us in the marketplace, and that opportunity set is growing almost on a daily basis that we're looking at and evaluating. So we're We're still very excited about the acquisition, but we're not just resting on that. We're still very focused also on our organic growth, which I think you saw come through again. And for the past several quarters, we've had extremely strong new business wins. And, you know, replacement wins are as important to maintain your base. But as we mentioned on the call, there was a good mix on new businesses added to the program as well. So we're very happy with the combination of organic along with the acquisition. And I'll just say in closing that we remain extremely positive as a management team on the ABC story. We're executing on what we said we were going to do when we did the IPO and the roadshow and the early calls with each of you. And we're continuing on that path. And I think we're all in and excited about where we're at.

Appreciate you participating on the call and we'll talk with several of you in the upcoming day.

This concludes today's conference call.

You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.