Lear Corporation (NYSE:LEA) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Jason Cardew: Yes, so, James, the E-Systems growth over market, we would expect this year to continue at six points above market, consistent with the last what we’ve experienced over the last three or four years. Seating, we have grown at six points above market over the last four year time period 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022. We do see that moderating in 2023 to about two points of growth over market. And so the company growth over market would moderate to three points. Now the backlog in Seating is strong and that by itself contributes four points of growth over market, but the offset to that is our assumption around key platforms in North America in particular. So we have the North American market up 5%, we have a number of our top platforms down and on average, our top platforms in North America are down about 2%, so that’s the biggest factor driving that.

The GM full size pickup trucks and SUVs, for example, and we have that, we’ve assumed that that’s going to be flat year-over-year. That may turn out to be a conservative assumption, that’s what we’ve assumed coming off a really strong year last year for that platform. We’ve got the Audi Q5, Jeep Compass, Ford Explorer all down in a market that’s up. And so it’s really the mix of production and some of our existing platforms that’s driving that. As we look out to 2024, you look again at our backlog, I point out that we would expect growth over market could be as much as seven points If you just look at the value of the backlog at $1.5 billion well with Seating that’s six points above market and E-Systems at 10 points of growth above market just driven by the backlog.

Again it’s our core platforms are more closely aligned with market overall.

James Picariello: Okay, no, that’s super helpful. And then, just to size up the net commodities headwind impact entering 2023, could you maybe, my apologies if I missed this, but could you just confirm what is the expectation in terms of net commodity costs recovery for 2023. And then is this something where we should be thinking about the cumulative impact over the last couple of years and something that continually gets recovered or by the time we get to 2024, it’s a clean slate. And we really shouldn’t be thinking about the bridge in that regard. Thanks.

Jason Cardew: Yes, so James, I did talk about that a little bit earlier, but, so the two year impact in 2021 and 2022, we had previously said was $340 million. We ended up a little bit better than that at $335 million. We expect to see about $30 million of that unwind itself in in 2023, largely driven by lower steel costs in North America. As we fast-forward to 2024 and 2025, what I would encourage you to do and sort of look at that in conjunction with our ability to deliver margin improvement through net performance, our cost reduction programs, our commercial negotiations more broadly, and so, I would expect to see margin growth in both segments of around 50 basis points each year in 2024 and 2025 as a result of that. So it’s sort of indirect commodity recovery and other performance taken together.

Operator: Our next question comes from David Kelley from Jefferies. Please go ahead with your question.

David Kelley: Maybe a follow-up on the earlier EV discussion. With the electrification and sales ramping and you have the CAGR out there. Can you walk us through impact on E-Systems margins today? And maybe how you see that evolving as you continue to aggressively scale the business?

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