Magna International Inc. (NYSE:MGA) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Tamy Chen: Got it, okay. Thanks. Then my other question is it’s quite a strong performance in your Cosma business that I don’t think we’ve seen – you know, the 8% or above EBIT margin really since early 2021. I know you’ve called out through the call all the positive factors that have happened this quarter, but could you just specifically on the Cosma business talk a bit about what really drove quite a strong performance and the strong sequential as well? Can you also talk a little bit about within that business, there had been that underperforming plant–you touched on it a bit earlier in your comments, but a little bit more detail on that, are you largely through that headwind as well? Thank you.

Swamy Kotagiri: Tamy, from a Cosma perspective, like you said, we’ve seen those types of numbers before, and we discussed the production stability, having the volumes coming back up, ticking back up, and all the initiatives in combination, it’s really good execution on higher sales is one, and kind of operational improvement in a couple of facilities. You touched on the BES facility that we had issues with, and it’s tracking. The predominant factor, as I discussed previously, was the efficiency hit that we were having and therefore had to outsource capacity, and so I’m happy to say now that we improved our efficiency, so the capacity opens up and we are able to bring back work, which obviously helps. I would say it’s on track and continuing to make progress as we had discussed towards the end of 2024.

One other thing would be comparing to 2022 Q2, it would be Russia [indiscernible] which are not there, and some of it is also commercial resolutions in the quarter, including retro from–you know, that goes back into the previous part of the year, but also want to mention that there is some benefit going forward on a run rate perspective. I would say those are the combination of things that led to the expected strong performance, just in BES but specifically in Cosma.

Louis Tonelli: And Tamy, you mentioned Cosma, but yes, it’s all of BES. I think a chunk of it is Cosma, but we have our exteriors business in there as well.

Patrick McCann: And there was some commercial items. Tamy, when you think about where we’re pushing for recoveries, we’re pushing for commercial recoveries as well, and when we talk commercials, it’s cancellation claims, low volume claims, so some of that benefit did come through in the quarter, and part of it was retro, as Swamy mentioned.

Tamy Chen: Okay, got it. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris McNally with Evercore. Please proceed with your question.

Chris McNally: Thanks so much, team. Just wanted to follow up on the last set of questions on body. If we look at the implied second half versus Q2, where you put up the impressive margins, was there any particular price that was taken in Q2 that was retroactive? Some of the suppliers are talking about looking at first half margins, for example for divisions, because of the timing of some of these price recoveries, and then as a follow-up, how do we think about pros and cons or headwinds-tailwinds for body in second half?

Patrick McCann: Morning Chris – I guess afternoon to you. I think you’re correct, you’re absolutely correct. When you think about these commercial items and the inflation recoveries, a portion of them–as these are being negotiated throughout the year, a portion by default becomes retro, so there are some retro recoveries in the second quarter related to Q1 and a little bit from 2022, but it’s primarily a Q1 issue as we push forward. It’s fair to say that our margin at our BES segment is going to peak in Q2 and normalize to those guidance ranges in the second half of the year. But I don’t want to–like, there is a commercial portion but the real drive here is volumes and execution on that volume increase. That is–that’s really what’s driving the performance improvement.

Louis Tonelli: And keep in mind, H2 versus H1, we do see volumes down, so that’s just regular seasonality, that volumes and sales would be expected to be down.

Chris McNally: No, that makes sense. One of the things in the analyst community we’re dealing with is the suppliers are being appropriately conservative, but basically by your implied production, you have second half down versus first half, where the forecasters have slightly up, so that makes sense. If we stick on margins, seating, it looks like it’s starting to turn a corner, and seating has been this sort of persistent low margin–you had some of the BMW business that came on that had different margin characteristics. Are we turning a corner, and does the European volumes that are turning actually start to really help here, which has been a drag for several years?