3. Garrett Motion Inc. (NASDAQ:GTX)
Oaktree Capital Management’s Q4 Stake: $398 million
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 32
Garrett Motion Inc. (NASDAQ:GTX) is an auto components company that develops, produces, and distributes turbocharging, air and fluid compression, and high-speed electric motor technologies to original equipment manufacturers.
On February 12, BWS Financial analyst Hamed Khorsand maintained a Buy rating on Garrett Motion Inc. (NASDAQ:GTX) shares, with a price objective of $12 per share. The analyst remains optimistic on GTX, citing the company’s financial health and future prospects.
Garrett Motion Inc.’s (NASDAQ:GTX) fourth-quarter 2024 earnings showed a notable success, with earnings per share of $0.47 beating the expected $0.31. However, the company’s revenues of $844 million was less than the expected $905.5 million. On the other hand, the firm had an adjusted EBITDA of $153 million, indicating an 18.1% margin, up from the previous year. Looking forward, Garrett Motion forecasts net sales of $3.4 billion and net profitability of $232 million in 2025.
McIntyre Partnerships stated the following regarding Garrett Motion Inc. (NASDAQ:GTX) in its Q4 2024 investor letter:
“Garrett Motion Inc. (NASDAQ:GTX) is a leading manufacturer in the moat-rich turbocharger (TB) market, with a global end-market and industry-leading margins. As TBs are not used in battery electric vehicles (BEVs), the market has concerns about GTX’s terminal value, which is suppressing its valuation. GTX trades ~5x my 2025 levered FCF with leverage at 2x EBITDA. Beyond its core business in TBs, GTX has a separate BEV growth story that is currently pre-revenue with high upfront costs, depressing GTX’s reported run-rate FCF. As a result, I believe GTX is even cheaper on owners’ earnings than the headline numbers suggest. Beyond its BEV investments, GTX has been using its FCF to buy back significant amounts of stock. Since 2022, GTX has retired almost one-third of its shares outstanding. If either BEV penetration is less bad than feared or GTX has success in its BEV investments, I believe GTX shares are significantly undervalued.
Before I dig into numbers, I want to revisit GTX’s TB business, which I believe has a deep moat and is highly predictable. TBs are a high-tech, mission-critical component of a car’s engine. The TB market is a duopoly between BWA and GTX. While there are also smaller Asian competitors, GTX and BWA enjoy significant engineering and R&D advantages over their peers, which creates a moat and allows GTX to earn among the highest margins and lowest annual price downs of any publicly traded auto supplier. TBs are essentially mini-jet engines that take the exhaust fumes and push that air back into the engine, increasing power and fuel efficiency. TBs are highly sophisticated devices – the TB’s turbine spins at up to 150,000 RPMs, yet the distance between the spinning turbine and the wall of the TB can be as small as a seventh the width of a human hair. GTX’s years of R&D allow them to deliver products that competitors cannot match. As a testament to this, Bosch and Mahle, two of the largest auto suppliers in the world, launched a TB joint venture in the late 2000s with the explicit blessing and support of GTX’s customers, the auto OEMs. A scaled competitor teaming up with your customers to break your duopoly is a business nightmare, yet after a decade, Bosch-Mahle gave up and exited the space. They could not match GTX’s products. Finally, the TB is a critical component of an engine, which is, in turn, the most important component of a car. Engines are designed years in advance, and once a product is designed into an engine, it is virtually impossible to design out. Once Mercedes designs a Garrett TB into an AMG engine, GTX has an almost guaranteed 100% renewal product with a multi-year life cycle. GTX’s backlog is exceptionally sticky and 90% booked 3+ years out. While BEV is a wild card, GTX has visibility on its core operations for years…” (Click here to read the full text)
