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

Then obviously, the acquisition of Veoneer comes in, in the second half of the year with about a billion dollars of sales coming in, which does drag the margin, as we pointed out, by about 20 basis points, which goes the other way.

Colin Langan: Got it. Any color on the change in adjusted EBIT now excluding amortization? How big of a factor will that be, and then I wasn’t really sure – I think you didn’t include it as an adjustment in Q1/Q2, but for the rest of the year it will be an adjustment, so does Q1/Q2 eventually get restated to exclude amortization too, and will that be driving some of the comparisons we’re looking at?

Louis Tonelli: We’re still working through the impacts and it will take a little bit of time to refine that calculation, but our estimate on an annual basis is about $60 million, so about 30 in the back half of the year.

Patrick McCann: And Colin, that’s preliminary. That’s part of the reason we’re excluding it as well at this point. But just the basis for why we’ve done it, you’re correct – on a go-forward basis, we’re going to exclude it, and what we’re excluding specifically is acquired purchased intangibles, the amortization of such amounts. It’s not regular increments, and the reason we’re doing it is effectively we’re trying to improve how we manage our businesses. We have an existing electronics business roughly the same size as the acquired entity, and we want to manage–you know, evaluate them, their performance and their execution on an apples-to-apples basis, so that’s why we’ve made the decision to exclude it.

The other factor was, from an investors perspective, when we’re thinking–if I was sitting in your seat, is I want to be able to evaluate how Magna’s electronics business is performing versus our peers, and we did an analysis just to make sure we’re consistent with our peer group in that regard.

Colin Langan: Just one quick follow-up – the $60 million estimate, is that just Veoneer, because I think there’s about–the 10-K said there’d be around $90 million of amortization just going into the year, so does that also get pulled out, just so I’m comparing apples to apples?

Patrick McCann: We’re talking specifically amortization of acquired intangibles. I don’t know what the 90 you’re referring to is. There’s other–if you’re referring back to the cash flow statement, there’s other amounts in that 90.

Louis Tonelli: But the approximately 60 is Veoneer Active Safety.

Colin Langan: Okay, so that will be the full year charge going forward, $60 million will be pulled out of the special items, is kind of the–

Patrick McCann: Approximately, once we’ve finalized the purchase accounting.

Louis Tonelli: Yes, fine tune that.

Patrick McCann: Correct.

Colin Langan: Okay. All right, thanks for taking my questions.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Dan Levy with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Dan Levy: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. First, wanted to go back to this theme of first half to second half, and specifically wanted to focus on complete vehicles, where I think your guidance is implying the business to be almost breakeven, very slightly positive, a significant deceleration versus the first half. Maybe you can just talk about some of the puts and takes on what’s happening in the complete vehicles in the second half, and does this change the way we should think about the out year forecast for complete vehicles?