Magna International Inc. (NYSE:MGA) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Louis Tonelli: Morning Joe. On amortization, we’re trying to get an apples and apples comparison, so what we’ve done, when you look at our financial reporting that will come out today, it’s very clearly listed on our analyst report in our financials. But just specifically to the numbers, when we guided in August, we said $30 million for half a year for Veoneer, so Veoneer is about $60 million of an impact annually. When we did our final scrub of all the other acquisitions that we had out there, on an annual basis there’s approximately another 50 that is going to flow through, so on an annual basis for the next couple years, it’s going to ebb and flow as stuff rolls off, but you’re in that $110 million range.

Joseph Spak: Okay, so–

Patrick McCann: And last year would have been about 50.

Louis Tonelli: Fifty – thank you.

Joseph Spak: So it’s 50, and going forward it’s one-time?

Louis Tonelli: Correct, and this year would be 80.

Joseph Spak: Right, so then the–I know you said you sort of restated prior years, maybe this is in the document and I didn’t get a chance to look through, but as we’re thinking about fourth quarter, what’s the right jumping off point for the new measure of adjusted EBIT? Is it that same, like $11 million or so that we need to add back to the fourth quarter?

Louis Tonelli: Yes, $11 million relative to what we said last quarter, because we basically would have implied 15, so about 11 is what we would have, incremental to what we said last quarter.

Joseph Spak: Okay. The second question is if we look at BES margins implied in the fourth quarter and look at your full year guidance, there’s a step down. I know that segment has been performing better year to date, in part I think with some better performance at some of those underperforming facilities. But how much of that step down is strike related, because I know there’s some big customers there, and how much of it is maybe a little bit of a push-out from the battery enclosures business? I guess related to battery enclosures, I know you’ve made big capex investment, is there any thinking to sort of maybe slow or re-time some of that spend, or is this something you just need to invest through?

Louis Tonelli: I think there’s two parts to the question, so I’ll start with the first one. From Q3 into Q4, you’re correct – obviously the impact of the strike at the UAW is higher in the fourth quarter relative to the third, so that’s a drag on margins. The other issue–or not issue, just fact is we continue to launch business. We tend to launch business more in the fourth quarter relative to the third, so that’s dragging margins, but that would have been as expected. This isn’t really a change from guidance to guidance, and that’s reflected in our increased guidance range for BES for the full year. On the second part of the question related to battery trays, battery trays really aren’t dragging the margin in the sense that most of the spend in the battery tray space is related to capital, and it gets put onto the balance sheet.

As far as timing of spend, we’re sequencing our capital as required. Just to be clear, we’re not in a situation of building something and waiting for business to happen. We have facilities and we’re scaling the build related to the customers’ production plans, so we’re scaling our capital as needed. As Swamy said earlier, if those plans change, we’re going to adapt as well so that we can delay our spend to the amount needed, or as necessary. We have to push forward in this space, but it’s not really a margin impact related to this year, Joe.

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