Commercial Vehicle Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CVGI) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

James Ray: It’s really going to — this is James and hi. Thank you for the question. It’s really going to depend on how this market recovery tracks. So in this construction ag segment of the market, our business is primarily with legacy long-term customers. They’re not like new startups. So we do need to be prepared for a recovery in the market. So we will continue to adjust both up and down depending on the signals we get from that customer segment and those market segments. In the fall last year, indications from — or outlooks from those customers led to a low single-digit year-over-year improvement in what they had communicated, but they’ve since communicated a flat to down 10% outlook for the year. So we had plans in place to comprehend a low single-digit increase in market, and now we’re in the pivot mode to scale things back for a flat to down 10 percent.

So it was a pretty significant swing. A number of macro items influenced that in different regions, both Europe and North America. But that is what we’re doing to flex to try and maintain as much margin, but also make sure we have the appropriate amount of capacity in place. When they do come back, we’re not left short of capacity and not able to fulfill the contracts we signed up for and lose market share. So it’s quite a delicate balance to do that, but our outlook remains very positive in these markets as they are somewhat cyclical in nature.

Gary Prestopino: Okay. And then in terms of your guidance, $60 million to $73 million for EBITDA, would it be more or less the electrical segment that would have to do an unexpected downturn for you to be at the — below that $60 million?

James Ray: It could be a number of providers. It could be deterioration back in Class A. So if you recall, the Class A forecast by ACT has been somewhat volatile over the last six months of up, down, up, down. Now we’re back up a little. And because the larger portion of our revenue stream is in the vehicle solutions segment tied to Class A truck, we saw a reversal of this positive trend back down to the minus 16% or more percent down. That could influence where we end up in the range. On the electrical segment, because we have more programs that are launching, and some of those launches have been delayed, which is some of the headwinds we see, but they will be coming, and a rebound in the construction ag market, I would say that, we still are confident that we’ll be in that range unless something very significant happens.

Andy Cheung: And Gary, if I may add to it, one thing that we see some uncertainties in volatility is really still the supply chain disruption that pop up here and there. You probably remember last quarter there was some labor disruption at our customers, and those labor issues are still happening from places to places at different customers. We saw this quarter also some of our suppliers of our customers also have supply issues impacting our customers. And of course, we all know that the Suez Canal issue affecting logistics. So those are the things probably I’ll see potentially a downside risk if something continues to happen throughout the year. So the last couple of quarters we’ve seen some of them happening.

Gary Prestopino: Okay. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We have our next question coming from the line of Joe Gomes from Noble Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Joshua Zoepfel: Hi, good morning. This is Joshua Zoepfel filling in for Joe.

Andy Cheung: Hi, Josh. Good morning.

Joshua Zoepfel: Hi, so just a quick question. Just on the electrical side of business, it kind of looked to have this kind of a bit of a slower revenue growth than kind of we expected just given the kind of recent contract wins there. Was there really something behind that like slower growth rate?

Andy Cheung: Yes. So, Joshua, so as James already mentioned, so the legacy customer is mostly construction and agriculture. So as we explained that does make up the majority of the end markets of the electrical segments. So that we are seeing a slight decline. So at the same time, if you look back into the last couple quarters, the growth of the segment, it comes from continual ramping our new wins over the years. As we described, this year we saw a slowdown of those ramps. So mostly because of customers seeing logistical and supply chain challenges. So they were not able to ramp up their production. So in turn, obviously, we don’t get the revenues to supply to them. So that’s the combination that impacting this quarter. Overall, the volume is still up. So meaning that we’re still seeing some level of new revenues, but not as fast as we would like. But we’re hopefully that our customer can overcome their challenges and continue to ramp their new businesses.

James Ray: Yes, Joshua, I’ll just add to that point. We are not seeing any lost business from new wins we’ve booked. So that gives us a leading indicator that the market will come back at some point. We don’t have any leakage of lost business. So we still feel confident that we’re going to have longer term tailwind from all these new business wins. And in addition to construction and ag, it’s also infrastructure customers, as well as in electrification applications within legacy and new OEM startups. So it’s a very diverse set of segments we serve into. But to Andy’s point, the largest two segments in the electrical business are Con Ag, both in North America and Europe.

Joshua Zoepfel: Okay. That’s helpful. And then just as for the Con Ag markets, is there really a big driver in that this deterioration of those industries that you guys noticed?

Andy Cheung: There are a few things that we heard from our OEM customers. One, as, China is in a bad spot right now. So the Asia Pacific activity is pretty low at this point. Europe, we also see some reduction in demand overall. Again, it’s the economy over there. And then I think the most recent development is here in North America. So compared to a few months ago, the market is low and our customers also publicly mentioned that in their own earnings calls that they’re seeing some reduced activities. So it’s mostly demand driven based on what we heard from our customers.

Joshua Zoepfel: Okay. Perfect. And last one from me, I’ll get back in queue. I guess with the first quarter over, is the new business wins of $45 million just in line with your goals for the quarter? Are we still really expecting $100 million range for the year?