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

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The competitive position we put ourselves in through the acquisitions, as Ray mentioned, again, with Kongsberg and the thermal comfort capabilities on top of everything else we’ve got there, certainly supports continued market share gains, and you may have noticed the change in tone somewhat on the 28% market share goal. That’s a midterm goal. That’s not the final goal. We see more runway to grow market share beyond 28% in Seating, and that would also support that four points of growth over market. In E-Systems, if you look at the backlog over the next 3 years and 6 points of growth over market is probably — maybe a little bit light and maybe a little bit — we may end up a little bit higher than that. But I think long term, that’s a fair assumption to make as we continue to benefit from the shift to electrification and taking market share elsewhere in these systems.

Emmanuel Rosner: Okay. Great. And I guess then just drilling a little bit more on the factors in 2023. So I think you spoke about some of the key platforms in North America being down. I think the backlog itself for 2023 was — seems like it was pushed out maybe on the electric vehicle, the electric trucks from GM. Can you just sort of like over the various – summarize as headwinds to the mix this year?

Jason Cardew: Yes. I think you just described it. And some of the platforms that we’re expecting to be lower that are important platforms for us. Today, they’re still high volume Ford Explorer, we’re calling that down 4%. I think IHS has it up. But our guidance assumes it’s down 4%. The Jeep Compass, we’re assuming that, that’s going to be down about 24% and Audi, on the Q5, we’re expecting that to be down about 20%. So in a North American market that’s growing at 5%, that sort of weighs on the growth of the market in seating in particular. And then in terms of the backlog shift in 2023, you alluded to the GM program, but there’s also a change in Volvo’s manufacturing plants. So they had originally planned to build the XC90 in South Carolina when that program was awarded to us and then later made the decision to shift to the — only the electric vehicle to the EX90 and the Polestar 3.

And so the combined effect of that is lower revenue both in ’23 and over the three year time period associated with that award.

Emmanuel Rosner: Okay. That’s super helpful. And just a very quick one. The engineering launch being sort of a, I guess, an earnings and margin headwind in 2023 despite what is essentially comparable backlog versus last year. I guess, is this because of this program that’s coming in on a shorter time frame?

Jason Cardew: Yes, that is the driver. That’s — there’s a $25 million investment in engineering and launch associated with that, and it’s over a very compressed time period. And so that is the primary driver of the higher launch Engineering in Seating as we look out to next year. In addition to that, Engineering in general is up a bit more, and that’s tied to some of the other conquest awards that were received that we’ll launch in the ’25, ’26 time period in Europe in seating as well.

Ray Scott: Emmanuel, we’ll talk more about the launch. We’re working with our customer right now after the first quarter on this launch that will take place later this year about the specifics. We can’t talk about it on this particular call, but hopefully, after the first quarter, we can give a little bit more detail and clarity on specifically what program we’re talking about and where and volume and those type of things.

Operator: Our next question comes from Adam Jonas from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead with your question.

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