Commercial Vehicle Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:CVGI) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Harold Bevis: Nope, we’re now ahead. Our price realizations ahead of our costs, and we fully recovered. And the negotiations that I alluded to that we did in the fourth quarter that took effect on January 1 were as we had expected and were fully benefiting from that additional price increase in this quarter.

Joe Gomes: Okay, great. And you also had talked about eliminating 50% of the ocean freight in early 2023. How do you stand there?

Harold Bevis: Yes, we’ve done that too. We’ve implemented that program and our in region production is fully underway and we’ve offset half of our ocean freight and we’re benefiting from that cost improvement as well in this quarter. So on the price and cost side, we’ve had a big improvement coming into this year, Joe, as we had expected, and in the Vehicle Systems business, the Industrial Automation business is still very low level and, we just rip the cost out of it and right sized it as we should, but our vehicle businesses are still doing quite well and further rebounding from where we were in the fourth quarter.

Joe Gomes: Excellent. And last quarter you talked about a $5 billion pipeline. And you didn’t put out the same slide in this presentation, just wondering, where’s that pipeline today?

Harold Bevis: Yes, so as we both €“ Andy and I both alluded to, we definitely stared at our startup costs that increased $6 million in 2022 versus 2021, and we could see a pattern that they were tied heavily into new bespoke seats. We stopped doing bespoke seat programs and we’re using a common platform that we have in-house called Unity. And that took a bunch of the pipeline out and we also further focused the Industrial Automation business and removed a big portion of our pipeline. So the pipeline now is very dominated by electrification, automation, electric vehicles.

Joe Gomes: Okay, thanks for that clarification there. And then one last one, and I’ll get back in queue. Kind of again, I’m looking at, the long-term roadmap that you put out today, and you talked about revenue of $1.5 billion 2027 and adjusted EBITDA margin of about 9%. And I compare that to the same roadmap that you put out last quarter. That roadmap showed revenue of $1.9 billion in an adjusted operating margin of 8.5%. And I just wondering, if you could kind of clarify where the changes come into two.

Andy Cheung: Yes, so let me take that one. So the key things between the last version of the $1.9 and the $1.5 right now here, clearly we fractured our strategy of focus growth. So as Harold alluded to by, we are not shining away from exiting our unprofitable business and we’re executing that and we are being a lot more selective in terms of winning business. So, we believe that that is a better approach for the overall value of the enterprise. So, we are now creating our new strategy plan, aligning to that new target, and definitely that will give us a more confidence and a more executable roadmap to get to the improvements of over 300 basis point in terms of our bottom line. So that’s the new thinking. It’s aligned with everything Harold just mentioned. I think this is a lot more focus and more execution of reentered, so that’s why we put it out there as our new financial targets.

Harold Bevis: And we’re hardwiring it too. So the areas, the non-electrical areas in our vehicle business where we’ve curtailed or modified our growth plans going forward. We have cut costs in those areas and their job in the portfolio is to deliver additional cash and EBITDA growth. So we’ve clarified the missions of each person in the portfolio and basically removed some of the growth aspirations in industrial automation and then non-electrical vehicle businesses. And it’s a tight plan and it will generate good free cash flow and improved operating margin and we’re underway with implementing it.

Joe Gomes: Great. Thanks guys.

Harold Bevis: Thank you, Joe.