Aptiv Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Presentation

[Operator]

Good day, and welcome to the Aptiv Q2 2024 Earnings Call. Today's conference is being recorded.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Jane Wu, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please go ahead.

[Jane Wu, Vice President, Investor Relations & Corporate Development at Aptiv]

Thank you, Jess. Good morning, and thank you for joining Aptiv's Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call.

The press release and related tables, along with the slide presentation can be found on the Investor Relations portion of our website at aptiv.com. Today's review of our financials exclude amortization, restructuring and other special items and will address the continuing operations of Aptiv. The reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP measures for our second quarter results as well as our 2024 outlook are included at the back of the slide presentation and the earnings press release.

During today's call, we will be providing certain forward-looking information that reflects Aptiv's current view of future financial performance and may be materially different for reasons that we cite in our Form 10-K and other SEC filings.

Joining us today will be Kevin Clark, Aptiv's Chairman and CEO; and Joe Massaro, Vice Chair and Chief Financial Officer. Kevin will provide a strategic update on the business, and Joe will cover the financial results in more detail before we open the call to Q&A.

With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Kevin Clark.

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

Thanks, Jane, and thanks everyone for joining us this morning.

Let's begin on Slide 3. By looking at the second quarter, we delivered record earnings and EPS, reflecting solid execution across the company as well as lower supply chain disruption costs, completion of the restructuring of the Motional joint venture and lower share count. The strong earnings, 180 basis points of operating margin expansion and 26% EPS growth was in spite of significant revenue headwinds from select customers, which Joe will provide more detail on later. These headwinds were partially offset by strong ADAS revenue growth in North America and Europe as well as double-digit revenue growth with the Chinese local OEMs.

Our cash flow performance continue to be strong, positioning us to repurchase over $400 million of stock during the quarter. Building on that momentum, this morning, we announced a new $5 billion share repurchase authorization, which includes an accelerated share repurchase plan, reflecting our view that our stock is undervalued and does not reflect our significant market opportunities. Joe and I will provide more detail on the announcement later in the presentation. And lastly, we released our annual sustainability report, which provides an update on Aptiv's commitment to not only achieving our sustainability goals, but assisting our customers in achieving their goals as well.

Moving to Slide 4. During the second quarter, we booked $4.3 billion in new business awards, bringing the year-to-date total to over $17 billion, putting us on track to achieve our full year target of $35 billion. Advanced Safety and User Experience bookings in the quarter totaled $900 million, driven by continued strong momentum in ADAS as well as awards across Wind River's product portfolio in the A&D, telco, industrial and automotive markets, bringing year-to-date bookings to nearly $3.5 billion.

Signal and Power Solutions new business bookings totaled $3.4 billion in the quarter and included an electrical architecture award with a leading Chinese local OEM on an export vehicle platform as well as a program extension with a global European-based commercial vehicle OEM, bringing year-to-date bookings to almost $14 billion. New business bookings in China across both segments continue to track to the changing customer landscape and market share gains made by the local OEMs. Year-to-date bookings with the Chinese local OEMs totaled over $1.8 billion, an increase of 27% over last year.

Turning to our Advanced Safety and User Experience segment on Slide 5. The segment achieved record revenues and earnings during the quarter, reflecting the strength of our product portfolio as well as the efficiency of our operations. We continue to broaden our customer mix by leveraging our industry-leading ADAS portfolio. We booked a new ADAS program with a Chinese local OEM that utilizes a local SOC solution, which customers in the China market are increasingly requiring, as well as a radar award with a global Japanese OEM, representing the fifth radar program we've been awarded by a Japanese customer over the last 12 months, bringing total radar bookings with this customer segment to almost $1.1 billion.

Revenue increased 2% to over $1.5 billion in the quarter as Aptiv's Safety revenues increased mid-teens, partially offset by user Experience revenues, which were impacted by significantly lower multinational OEM production in China. Operating income totaled a record $170 million, representing margins of 10.9%. As discussed during our last earnings call, supply chains have stabilized, which has led to a significant reduction in disruption costs.

And as I mentioned, our China semiconductor sourcing initiative continues to gain traction with Chinese local OEMs and more global OEMs are requesting that we present them with similar options for both, current and future programs, providing incremental savings opportunities for our customers while also reducing our material costs and improving our profitability. Engineering expense also declined during the quarter, almost $20 million versus the same period last year, bringing the ratio of engineering to sales down 20 basis points, a trend that we're confident will continue. This has been the result of several efficiency initiatives, including the adoption of Wind River Studio for software development on new OEM programs, the rotation of software engineering activities to our tech centers in best cost countries and a reduction in advanced development activities to reflect changing market conditions.

Moving to the next slide for an update on Wind River. As we discussed at our recent Wind River and Software Teach-In, the digital transformation that reshaped the consumer ecosystem is now driving change across other end markets. The strength of Wind River solutions to support that transformation is evident in our recent commercial awards across multiple end markets, totaling nearly $200 million year-to-date. This includes $90 million of aerospace and defense bookings where the need for certified mixed-criticality software is driving demand for solutions such as VxWorks and Wind River Helix. In telco, the adoption of vRAN and oRAN favors our open cloud-native solutions, resulting in $50 million in bookings year-to-date.

And industrial and automotive, the growth in connected software-defined devices, which are increasingly deploying AI at the edge, continues to present opportunities for Wind River's full portfolio, as reflected in over $55 million in bookings year-to-date. To support the development, deployment and operation of these intelligent edge solutions, we're gaining commercial traction with Wind River Studio Developer. During the quarter, we announced that three of the world's leading software engineering service providers are adopting Studio Developer.

And as I mentioned, Aptiv's own adoption has meaningfully improved our software quality and increased the efficiency of our software development process. Lastly, Wind River just announced it is the prime sponsor of the Elixir Project, an open-source Debian-based enterprise-grade Linux solution for the intelligent edge. AWS, Intel, Capgemini, Super Micro and SAIC have joined Wind River as project supporters, and we will share more regarding the commercial opportunities associated with this in coming months.

Turning to our Signal and Power Solutions segment on Slide 7. Revenues in the segment declined 3% during the quarter, principally the result of the reduction in production schedules by select customers, significantly impacting our Electrical Distribution Systems business, which had revenues declined high-single digits. Engineered components grew low-single digits in the quarter with solid revenue growth for traditional interconnect and specialty products in the automotive market and strong growth in the A&D and space markets, which is partially offset by a slowdown in orders from automotive Tier 1s. And as I mentioned previously, Signal and Power Solutions booked approximately $3.4 billion in customer awards.

We continue to diversify future revenues with conquest awards, including multiple engineered component awards for high-speed cable assemblies, high and low-voltage interconnects and power distribution units with a Korean OEM. A high voltage charging award with a Japanese OEM in North America, our fourth award to date that meets the North American charging standard. And lastly, our first grid energy storage award and although relatively small, we believe that this is just the start and that the energy storage systems represent an attractive end market for Signal and Power business.

Operating income totaled $436 million, representing margins of 12.4%, reflecting strong operating performance resulting from lower supply chain disruption costs as well as manufacturing and engineering performance. We're aligning our manufacturing capacity in this segment across all regions to the lower OEM vehicle production schedules and continue to work closely with our OEM customers to address the labor situation in Mexico.

Looking at Signal and Power in more detail, we wanted to provide an update on our engineered component product line on Slide 8. Aptiv is a market leader in providing highly engineered, ruggedized and mission-critical interconnect, cable management and fastening solutions for automotive and industrial end markets. These solutions have a low cost relative to the overall bill of materials, but a high cost of failure and are integral to the safe and efficient distribution of power and data. Breaking it down further, Aptiv's Connection Systems business, which will have over $4 billion in revenue this year is the number two global provider of automotive and commercial vehicle interconnect solutions.

HellermannTyton is the number one provider of cable management and fastening solutions globally and is now almost a $2 billion business. Half of their revenue is automotive and the other half of the business serves non-automotive end markets. Lastly, Winchester Interconnect provides highly specialized advanced interconnects and cable assemblies for A&D, commercial space and other industrial end markets. Both, HellermannTyton and Winchester, provide access to growing markets benefiting from the same industry megatrends and customer needs as automotive and they're key to both, our growth and diversification strategies, reducing our exposure to light vehicle production while strengthening through cycle resiliency.

Moving to Slide 9. The global trends that include the transition to electric power, edge-to-cloud connectivity and the path to higher levels of software and automation continue with some regions evolving faster than others. And these macro themes have been the tailwind for safe, green and connected trends that have shaped the automotive industry over the last decade. And we strongly believe Aptiv remains well positioned to benefit from these trends. While the pace of EV adoption may be slower than recently anticipated, the demand for electrified vehicles that generate lower CO2 emissions continues to grow.

Consumer demand for advanced safety solutions that meet global regulatory and rating agency standards remain strong and demand for edge-to-cloud connectivity that enables more intelligent solutions continues to grow. Despite some near-term challenges, our customers remain committed to making vehicles more safe, more green and more connected and require our expertise and assistance to develop optimized solutions that balance the trade-offs between performance and cost. And in cases where customers have or considering delaying their original next-gen technology adoption plans, we're being presented with several incremental near-term, near and mid-term opportunities to enhance existing solutions, so OEMs can remain competitive in the market by addressing consumer demand for new features and applications that are more efficient, cost effective and compliant with regulations.

Moving to Slide 10, as the world continues to become more electrified and software-defined, we're uniquely positioned to enable this transition for our customers and are confident in our ability to meaningfully grow earnings and cash flow and deliver significant value to our shareholders and strongly believe that Aptiv shares are an attractive investment opportunity. Accordingly, our Board has approved a $5 billion share repurchase authorization, including a $3 billion accelerated share repurchase program. The total authorization represents over 25% of our current market cap and is incremental to the almost $9 billion we've returned to shareholders since our IPO in 2011. We're very excited about Aptiv's long-term growth prospects and believe that repurchasing our stock is a great investment. And given the strength of our financial performance, we can execute this repurchase program while continuing to invest in our portfolio of advanced technologies.

With that, I'll now turn the call over to Joe.

[Joseph R. Massaro, Vice Chairman, Business Operations & Chief Financial Officer at Aptiv]

Thanks, Kevin, and good morning, everyone.

Starting with the second quarter on Slide 11. Aptiv delivered strong operating performance in the quarter, reflecting execution of our performance initiatives as well as our continued focus on costs, resulting in operating margin improvement of 180 basis points over the prior year. Revenue was $5.1 billion, down 2% or 1% below underlying global vehicle production, which was down 1% in the quarter. Revenue growth was primarily impacted by lower production volumes at select customers, including a European OEM with a large truck and SUV presence in North America, a global EV-only OEM and two multinational OEMs in China that are experiencing significantly lower production volumes. These customers represented the majority of the revenue shortfall in the second quarter.

And as I will discuss shortly, we are lowering our full year revenue outlook. Despite the top line pressure, adjusted EBITDA and operating income were both quarterly records at $788 million and $606 million, respectively. EBITDA margins expanded 220 basis points over prior year as our performance and cost actions helped reduce the decremental impact of lower revenues. FX and commodities were a $17 million headwind in the quarter. Earnings per share in the quarter was $1.58, an increase of 26% from the prior year, including the benefit of higher earnings, completion of the Motional JV transaction, a $0.12 benefit in the quarter, as well as the benefit of a lower share count, partially offset by higher taxes. Operating cash flow was strong, totaling $643 million, capital expenditures were $226 million and share repurchases totaled $434 million.

Moving to Slide 12. Revenue of $5.1 billion was down 2%. As mentioned, revenue was negatively impacted by vehicle production headwinds at select customers, primarily impacting our Electrical Distribution and User Experience product lines, including customer schedule reductions on both electrified and internal combustion vehicles. This was partially offset by growth in our active safety and engineered components product lines. Net price in commodities were a positive to the top line, offsetting the negative impact of foreign exchange. Moving to the right, our regional revenue performance in North America and Europe reflects the previously mentioned customer and product line dynamics. In China, we grew 16% in the quarter with local OEMs, effectively offsetting the negative impact from lower production at the multinational OEMs. As Kevin discussed, we continue to expand our business with local Chinese OEMs as we see strong double digit growth in both, new business bookings and revenues with this customer segment.

Moving to Slide 13. Our AS&UX segment achieved record quarterly revenue and earnings as strong growth in active safety more than offset the impact of lower user experience revenues. Active safety was up 15% in the quarter with continued strength across North America and Europe. User experience, which is impacted by the slowdown in multinational OEMs in China, was down 10% in the quarter. Segment adjusted operating income in the quarter was $170 million or 10.9%, driven by strong flow-through and active safety volumes as well as the ongoing initiatives to improve manufacturing and engineering efficiency.

Turning to Signal and Power on Slide 14. Revenue in the second quarter was just over $3.5 billion, a decrease of 3% or 2% below vehicle production, reflecting growth in the engineered components product line, excluding high voltage of 3%, offset by declines in the electrical distribution product line, primarily driven by the lower volumes at select customers. And high voltage revenues were down 19% in the quarter. Segment adjusted operating income was $436 million or 12.4%, driven by operating performance initiatives and cost reduction actions. Net price in commodities were a positive, offsetting the negative impact of foreign exchange.

Moving to Slide 15 and our updated macro outlook. Based on changes in customer schedules, we now assume global vehicle production will be down 3% in 2024 from our prior outlook of down 1%. Expected production volume is down across all regions with North America now expected to be down 1%, Europe down 5% and China flat on a year-over-year basis, driven by lower production at multinational OEMs in China. In addition to vehicle production reductions across regions, we are also seeing reductions across powertrains, including both BEV and internal combustion platforms. For FX and commodity rates, our outlook assumes copper at $4.25, Mexican peso at MXN17.40 and the Chinese RMB at RMB7.15.

Slide 16 has our full year outlook. As we look out at the balance of the year, we do expect continued pressure on vehicle production, particularly from the select customers we noted. However, we remain confident that the actions we have taken to improve performance and reduce costs will continue to drive strong operating performance. Our outlook includes revenues in the range of $20.1 billion to $20.4 billion, down from the prior midpoint of $21.2 billion, representing adjusted revenue growth of 1%. I would note that we've incorporated both, customer schedule reductions as well as an additional judgmental reduction in revenues in our updated outlook. We assume global vehicle production is down 3%, resulting in growth over market of 4%. At the segment level, AS&UX growth over market remains strong at 10% with SPS at 1%.

Operating income of $2.4 billion, which is an increase in operating margin to 12%, reflecting continued strong operating performance that partially offsets the decremental impact of the lower revenues. We are also increasing our EPS estimate to $6.30 at the midpoint, an increase of $0.25 from prior guide, resulting from the early completion of the Motional JV transaction as well as lower share count, which offsets the impact from lower earnings. Operating cash is expected to be $2.15 billion, up 13% from the prior year. The outlook also reflects the impact of the $3 billion accelerated share repurchase plan, which we'll cover in more detail on the next slide.

As Kevin stated, we are announcing a $5 billion share repurchase authorization, which will include an accelerated share repurchase plan or ASR totaling $3 billion that will commence tomorrow. Our confidence in the long-term megatrends combined with our operating performance and the strength of our balance sheet afford us the opportunity to acquire a significant amount of Aptiv's common stock. The ASR will be funded through a combination of available liquidity and debt. We believe the ASR continues our longstanding practice of balanced capital allocation and our strong financial position allows us to continue to invest in the business while accelerating capital return to shareholders. The remaining authorization will be available for future purposes once the ASR is completed.

Moving to my final slide on 18. Our consistent focus on improving and maintaining Aptiv's strong financial position has provided us the ability to accelerate the return of capital to shareholders while maintaining our financial policy and balanced track record of capital deployment. Performance improvement initiatives across the business and the elimination of the significant disruption costs experienced over the last few years have returned margins to pre-COVID levels. And the completion of the Motional transaction provides additional funds for capital deployment within Aptiv. Our capital allocation plans, including the acceleration of capital return to shareholders fits within our financial policy as we maintain the ability to invest in the business and delever over the coming year.

With that, I'll turn the call back to Kevin for his closing remarks.

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

Thank you, Joe.

I'll make some final remarks on Slide 20 before opening the line up for questions. We executed well in the second quarter despite the revenue headwinds with record earnings and strong cash flow, and we're well positioned to continue our solid operating performance through the remainder of the year. We believe our revised financial outlook is prudent, reflecting the lower OEM production schedules plus an overlay of incremental management conservatism that Joe mentioned and we're confident that our strong operating performance will translate into increased operating margins as reflected in our updated outlook. As the automotive industry navigates the near-term headwinds, we remain confident that the trends towards greater levels of electrification, connectivity and digitization will continue.

And Aptiv's portfolio is well positioned to help our customers both transition to and benefit from a more electrified, connected and software-defined world, which we're confident will result in strong earnings and cash flow growth that will translate into significant value creation for our shareholders. Our conviction around the medium to long-term trends and our strong operating performance has positioned us to take advantage of the market dislocation in our stock price and allows us to increase our capital return to shareholders. Our management team remains focused on flawless execution and creating shareholder value and we will continue to drive the business forward, focused on developing our portfolio of advanced technologies, strong operating execution, returning cash to shareholders and maximizing the value of our portfolio of businesses.

Operator, let's now open the line up for questions.

Questions and Answers

[Operator]

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We will now move first to Joe Spak with UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Joe Spak, Analyst at UBS Group]

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Kevin, just to start on the buyback. Clearly, a strong signal from you and the management team. I know you as a leadership team have been very focused on shareholder value. So can you just talk a little bit more about how you came to this decision to sort of lever up versus maybe some other options. And then on the debt, you've historically also been pretty conservative. So is this just confidence in the next few years cash flow to sort of bring this down or are there other some potential ways to maybe get some cash out of the business by like looking at some slower growth assets or something like that?

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

Yeah. Thanks, Joe. Well, listen, I think I'd start with, our general view from a management standpoint is we remain conservative. Our outlook for the business is and quite frankly, has been very strong over the last couple of years. Clearly, as it relates to the transition from COVID to supply chain disruption and some of the costs and inefficiencies that we had to absorb and had to work through over a period of time. That took a little time and we've gotten through it. The reality is we've gotten through that and is reflected in our results last quarter from an operating performance standpoint, this quarter from an operating performance standpoint. And then as we look at the balance of the year, we have really strong, strong confidence in our ability to continue to execute and deliver margin expansion.

Now setting that aside, we look at the opportunities that are in front of us, where whether it's electrification, which clearly had slowed a bit, whether it's areas in and around active safety or user experience or our engineered components portfolio, we're very optimistic. We have significant opportunities in front of us in the automotive and non-automotive space. And relative to those opportunities relative to how we're executing and the operating performance that we're delivering our share price is clearly -- it's clearly undervalued.

And as we look at trade-offs, various investments, it's the most attractive investment that we have in front of us. And given the performance of our business and our view, our outlook for the future, we feel as though we can do this while at the same time continuing to invest in the business. And as it relates to other opportunities to increase value. That's something that we, as we always do, we'll continue to look at, we'll continue to evaluate. And to the extent we need to adjust our portfolio to certain market trends or market dynamics, those are things we'll consider.

[Joe Spak, Analyst at UBS Group]

Okay.

[Joseph R. Massaro, Vice Chairman, Business Operations & Chief Financial Officer at Aptiv]

Joe, it's Joe. Just to follow up, from a delever perspective, not assuming any cash from sort of one-off sources. We've built a plan here that allow us to delever over the course of '25 and maintain the same view on financial policy that we've had before.

[Joe Spak, Analyst at UBS Group]

Okay. Thank you. And just the second question on China. Obviously, sort of this has been an area of a lot of focus for investors, not just for Aptiv, but the entire industry. And you have the growth under market now of 4% for the year. It doesn't seem like the dynamics of some of those foreign players are changing anytime soon. I know you showed some decent metrics with some of the domestic players. But I think in the past, you've said your backlog is moving to 50/50. But if you look, the domestics are already 60%, maybe 65% share in some of the more recent months. So I know you don't recast your past bookings, but like how much of that should investors think is at risk? Because, clearly some -- it would seem that some business that has been awarded is just not going to materialize in the volumes.

[Joseph R. Massaro, Vice Chairman, Business Operations & Chief Financial Officer at Aptiv]

Yeah. Joe, it's Joe. Let me start. I mean, our revenues are over 50% at this point, local Chinese OEM and growing quickly. We're clearly growing into that market share shift. Bookings are 60-plus-percent and have been for the last couple of years on the Chinese locals. So it's something, I don't have the exact sort of bookings headwind number for you, but it's clearly something we're watching closely and it's something the team has been on for a while now. This isn't something we just started doing in the last couple of quarters. And at one point that business, as you know, was 70% global, 30% local. So we continue to see good transition. I think the challenge at the moment is just how quickly a couple of these multinationals are actually dropping off more than a concern about how well we're growing with the locals. And it's something we're working with those customers on and obviously watching closely.

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

Yeah. If I can add, Joe, I think important, in the China market with the local OEMs, the period between award and actual launch tends to be 9 to 12 months. So the ability to gain traction and deliver revenue growth and it's reflected in the growth numbers that Joe talked about with the China local OEMs, it's rapid. I would say the challenge that we have in China right now is really from a multinational standpoint, is unique to two customers. And this past quarter, we saw a significant reduction in their volumes, in their schedules. And a part of the judgment that Joe is referring to or Joe referred to from a schedule standpoint is that continues during the balance of this year. So as Joe said, changing our mix has been a priority for the last three years. We have made traction. We'll continue to make traction and we think we're addressing the challenge there and the market changes.

[Joe Spak, Analyst at UBS Group]

Thank you, guys.

[Joseph R. Massaro, Vice Chairman, Business Operations & Chief Financial Officer at Aptiv]

Thanks, Joe.

[Operator]

We'll move next to John Murphy with Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[John Murphy, Analyst at Bank of America]

Good morning, guys. Yeah. Kevin, just maybe, and Joe, and maybe just kind of in sort of a strategy and philosophical follow-up to sort of this cap reallocation as you think about the step up in buybacks, kind of you're kind of alluding to the shares being very undervalued, which I certainly agree with and a good ROI, which I also agree with. But it does suggest that you may be shifting capital away from R&D, product development and growth going forward. Is that the suggestion here that there's kind of a potential little bit of a slowdown here in some product development?

You guys are often way out -- way ahead of the curve, often SVA and stuff like that is really advanced stuff that is taking time to come to fruition that you might be able to sort of structurally slow down your R&D and product development and then lean back on some of the ICE and other core products and generate more cash and we might be looking at an even better return of value to shareholders over time. Just curious how this balances out sort of back into the core business.

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

Yeah. So agree with your first comment, stock price, share price is significantly undervalued. With respect to priorities, listen, it's important we position ourselves for the trends in our industry and the challenges that our customers are dealing with. Obviously, some of those have slowed a bit. And as we look at some of those slowdowns, we have scaled back investment in certain areas, in areas like high voltage electrification, some aspects of that, in areas like smart vehicle architecture, we've scaled back. We haven't completely stopped, but slowed and that's freed up additional engineering dollars.

At the same time, John, our engineering factory both, in the AS&UX segment and the SVS segment is really executing extremely well. A number of the efficiency initiatives that we've put in place from an operational standpoint, as well as the rotation our footprint to best cost countries has certainly generated benefits. And from an outlook standpoint, we'll reduce engineering spend year-over-year by $75 million to $100 million this year. So significant level of productivity.

[John Murphy, Analyst at Bank of America]

Got it. And then just a follow-up. I mean, you mentioned HellermannTyton was about $2 billion in revenue right now. I think you acquired it in 2015, it was about $500 million roughly give or take back then. So that's a 15% CAGR. So that's been a, not a double or triple, I argue maybe a home run. Are there other acquisitions that could create even greater expansion in adjacencies for your core business that might make sense that you guys are looking at right now. I mean, because that -- I mean that's a great example of an add-on.

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

Well, I'm not sure I fully understand your question. So when we bought HellermannTyton, it was just under $1 billion of revenue. So it's effectively doubled.

[John Murphy, Analyst at Bank of America]

Okay.

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

Over the timeframe, from an M&A standpoint, it's been an absolute home run. It's a great business, it's global. Margins have expanded significantly. We've seen similar sort of our growth rates over an extended period of time in the Winchester business from an engineered component standpoint. And the reality is when you look at our Connection Systems business over the decade-plus I've been here, John, those revenues have increased roughly fourfold. Now some of that's acquisition-related, some of that's organic. And clearly, they're strategically important businesses.

As you know, they have high-margin profiles, which make them very attractive. And those are areas that we're really focused on investing in, taking those businesses and those products if they're in the automotive market into the non-automotive markets. And for those that are in the non-automotive markets, if it makes sense, leveraging our automotive business so that we kind of cross-pollinate product portfolio. So it's certainly a big area of focus for us.

[John Murphy, Analyst at Bank of America]

Okay. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

We'll move next to Itay Michaeli with Citi. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Itay Michaeli, Analyst at Smith Barney Citigroup]

Great. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Just the first question, just given the volatility in top line this year and of course, the resilient margin, just curious how we should be thinking kind of more broadly in the medium-term around the company's organic growth or growth of the market as well as just the incremental margin path from here. And then just secondly on the bookings, I know it can be very lumpy quarter into quarter, but just curious how Q2 compared with internal expectations. I think in the past, you may have suggest that there was maybe upside to the $35 billion for the full year. Curious if that still is potential for the year. Thank you.

[Joseph R. Massaro, Vice Chairman, Business Operations & Chief Financial Officer at Aptiv]

Yeah. Itay, let me start with the bookings question. It is lumpy. We're on track for the $35 billion. And again, we just said, and if you look at the chart in the deck, right, you'll see the quarters just tend to move around based on size of awards and we've had a couple of large awards in sort of given quarters. So nothing more than that normal lumpiness there and remain, I'd be confident in the $35 billion at this point. As it relates to revenue, listen, very early, obviously, days to be going into next year. As we think about early planning assumptions, we're certainly targeting mid-single digit growth, really assuming no help from the market at this point. So flat vehicle production, but a lot to work through, particularly just given the mix and platforms, the mix in powertrains, those types of things and obviously China.

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

Hey, if I can augment that, listen, Joe. So Joe, I think it's important because Joe articulated this in his prepared comments. Really when you look at the second quarter, it was four customers that impacted our revenue in a negative way significantly. So that dynamic had a big impact on us for Q2. We believe they'll have consistent impacts in for the balance of the year, but we'll see how that play out. When you look at the broader mix of OEMs, listen, some are up, some are down, but the net is with those four. And I think it's important to keep that in context.

[Itay Michaeli, Analyst at Smith Barney Citigroup]

Absolutely. That's all very helpful. Thank you.

[Operator]

We'll move next to Adam Jonas with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[William Tackett, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Hi, this is William Tackett on for Adam Jonas. I'm curious maybe expanding on Itay's question ago. With how fast the trends are shifting in the industry, do you reiterate that long-term growth over market assumption of 6% to 8%, I guess, even with the new aggressive capital return strategy? Thanks.

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

Listen, we'll look at customer mix, market dynamics and evaluate it. I think as Joe said, next year, we're looking at kind of mid-single digit sort of growth on flat market. We needed to do more work on that to determine whether that's the longer term outlook or it translates to what we're seeing more near-term.

[William Tackett, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Got it. That makes a lot of sense. I guess next question, do you expect to see your OEM customers fit the more advanced L2+ systems on non-software-defined vehicles and non-EV architectures with any material volume? And I guess if so, is this something that's relatively easy for the customers to do? Thanks.

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

Yeah. I think we get asked questions about the impact of some of the delays of technology adoption, whether it be the transition to EVs or possible transition to smart vehicle architecture. And what you need to keep in mind is OEMs need to be constantly upgrading enhancing vehicles to meet consumer demands regardless of whether they're adopting SCA or they're launching EV platforms. So we would tell you during this calendar year, we've seen incremental, what I'd call bridge programs that relate to legacy ADAS or user experience solutions that are in the billions of dollars. So significant opportunities to enhance and upgrade existing solutions that we feel like we're very well positioned for. Some are with existing customers, some are with new customers. So that progress, those opportunities, the OEMs desire to continue to enhance the technology, put more technology in the car will continue.

[William Tackett, Analyst at Morgan Stanley]

Got it. Thank you guys.

[Operator]

We'll move next to Dan Levy with Barclays. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Dan Levy, Analyst at Barclays]

Hi, good morning. Thank you for answering the questions. I wanted to just unpack the margins a bit more and maybe you can just talk to the trajectory. And how much is inflation dissipation playing a role here, getting more pricing and really just reversing some of the headwinds that we saw in past years versus other things like engineering or footprint reduction? So just trying to disaggregate sort of the margin strength from here.

[Joseph R. Massaro, Vice Chairman, Business Operations & Chief Financial Officer at Aptiv]

Yeah. Dan, it's Joe. I mean it's actually pretty balanced. I mean, I'd go back to sort of some of that discussion we had at Investor Day of just how we thought margins would improve over the next coming years, right? You obviously had the COVID and supply chain disruption costs coming out, those were $160 million last year with the majority of them in the first half. So we're seeing those come out. That's been helpful. But then to Kevin's prepared remarks, if you look at where engineering is as a percent of sales, very much in line with those targets as it comes back down to sort of that 6% to 7% range. So it's fairly balanced really across those initiatives. That price in commodities continues to be a contributor, but it's not -- it's by no means is large as it was a couple of years ago.

[Dan Levy, Analyst at Barclays]

And the price recoveries from customers, is that is that continuing to play a role here?

[Joseph R. Massaro, Vice Chairman, Business Operations & Chief Financial Officer at Aptiv]

That's in that price comment. Yeah. That's in that net price comment. That's obviously come down, right? We've seen the direct material inflation come down. And as a result, we've seen less recoveries. And at this point, the vast majority has been included over the past four-plus quarters been included in piece price.

[Dan Levy, Analyst at Barclays]

Great. Thank you. Second question is just on SVA and your presence with customers. Obviously, I think we're hoping for just some sort of an update on where the SVA discussions are with your customers, you had mentioned over the quarter that there was a $2 billion cancellation. Maybe you could just talk about the line-of-sight on the remaining $8 billion, I think coming through, market share, anything you've talked about, and then even if you're getting -- if some of these programs are going away, can you just talk about the other content that you still have that shows that even if that -- you've lost that content, there is still some offset on be it high voltage or other pieces of the architecture.

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

Yeah. Let me take a shot at it. So listen, pretty good line of sight as it relates to smart vehicle architecture. To start with just the underlying trend, more and more OEMs are headed in this direction. So I would say the recognition to get to where they want to get from a hardware architecture, software architecture to be more software-defined, they need to rearchitect both, the hardware as well as the software. So I would say global recognition that that needs to be done. Executing that can be difficult. You're seeing that, right, with certain with certain OEMs and that's impacting timing. To put it in perspective, two years ago at this point in time, we had a pipeline for smart vehicle architecture that included four OEMs.

And today we have a pipeline for smart vehicle architecture that includes over 20 OEMs across the globe. So the pipeline is actually larger and the number of OEMs headed in this direction is actually larger. To the extent, our approach to smart vehicle architecture is, obviously, we've talked about it. We've developed a system solution, but we sell components that go into that system solution. So customers don't have to buy our complete, our complete solution. They can buy parts of it, which puts us in a, in a great, a great position to serve either demand from the customer.

As it relates to any delays or push off of programs, they have existing platforms that, as I mentioned, they need to be upgraded and enhanced and they can't be static and that's especially in areas like ADAS or user experience. And this year alone, we have in our pipeline and hey, we won't win all of these and some of these, quite frankly, we're probably less interested in. But we have opportunities that are over $10 billion, right? So there is significant opportunity out there for us to help OEMs bridge the gap. And those opportunities are on both ICE as well as EV platforms or electrified platforms. So in areas like active safety or user experience, it's very agnostic as it relates to what the, what the power plant architecture is.

So I hope that answers your question.

[Dan Levy, Analyst at Barclays]

Okay. And maybe you could just anything on the share dynamics or just competitively how you think you're stacking up versus others on SVA?

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

Yeah. Listen, again, we started down the SVA path in what, 2017-2018. So our solutions are very strong. We're doing some work with select OEMs. We're very selective in terms of the business we pursue. There are at times desires for OEMs to have fairly customized solutions. We've productized our system and components that go into smart vehicle architecture. So we're not -- we're looking for standardization and technologies that we can bring across multiple OEMs versus develop customized solutions for a given OEM. So I'm not sure share is the right way to look at it at this point in time, but we sit -- we're very well positioned just given our portfolio of products and our experience in this area.

[Dan Levy, Analyst at Barclays]

Great. Thank you. That's helpful.

[Operator]

We'll move next to Mark Delaney with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Mark Delaney, Analyst at The Goldman Sachs Group]

Yes, good morning. Thanks very much for taking my questions. The company had several launches that were supposed to occur in the second half of 2024 that allowed for an acceleration in growth over market. With your now 4% growth over our market assumption for '24, that still does require a meaningful step up relative to what you reported for the first half. So maybe you can help investors better understand your confidence and visibility into those launches occurring and to what extent that's been a piece of the conservatism you mentioned compared to the schedules.

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

Yeah. I would say from a launch standpoint, it partly depends on mix. So I'd be careful on first half, second half as it relates to revenue because the reality is you need to start the launch and there's a ramp up and it takes a period of time to come to full revenue. So I would say, as you look at 2024 calendar, you prefer to have a heavier weighting in the back half of Q3, which we had and then the first half of -- the back half of 2023, I'm sorry. And then the first half of 2024, right? That would be your preference so that you're hitting the revenue inflection point in the back half of 2024. And that's how our launches are timed. We watch this by region, by business unit, by product line. And that's what's reflected in our guidance for the back half of the year from the revenue standpoint and it takes into account what Joe shared our outlook from a vehicle production standpoint with the overlay of incremental management conservatism.

[Joseph R. Massaro, Vice Chairman, Business Operations & Chief Financial Officer at Aptiv]

Yeah. Mark, I'd say it's the launches themselves, I mean, we haven't seen any cancellations. To Kevin's point, a lot of these had started at lower volumes earlier in the year. And so they're impacted maybe by vehicle production total schedules from customers. But generally from a launch perspective, remain on track. I'll go back to Kevin's earlier comment. I mean the select customers that we called out, they're roughly 70% of the revenue reduction in the back half of the year, right, and then we have the conservatism overlay on sort of top of that. So this really is a very acute situation with those four customers. And we're really, there's some schedules moving up and down a bit with other customers but for us, it's really those four customers that we called out that where we're seeing. They were the vast majority of the shortfall in Q2 and well over 70% of the full year takedown.

[Mark Delaney, Analyst at The Goldman Sachs Group]

Okay. That's helpful. Thanks. My other question was on Wind River. I believe you assumed mid-teens growth for Wind River revenue this year. Can you give an update on where that's tracking. And maybe as you think about Wind River longer term, can you talk about the momentum with customers, especially in the automotive space and the prospect for any additional wins? Thanks.

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

Yeah. Yeah. So on second half weighted from a overall growth rate, just given revenues last year were timed stronger in the first half of the year. So when you look at it from a year-over-year standpoint, strong opportunities and launches in aerospace and defense and telecommunications and industrial and automotive. Our growth opportunities in automotive, we've had significant success in the China market just given the nature of the new platform introduction. So it's easier to introduce a solution like the Wind River VxWorks solutions or ' on a platform that you are launching a new platform versus an existing platform. So largely on track from an automotive standpoint.

We would say the opportunities remain solid gaining traction on Wind River studio developer, especially in the automotive space. And I would say that's across regions, just given the challenges that OEM customers are having with software development, the productivity that they're looking for, the fact that for the last, the last few quarters, we've been using Studio Developer on our new program launches, so that integrates into the engineering organization. Organizations of both SOWs as well as our OEMs, so they're seeing the benefits from a quality and efficiency standpoint. So the growth profile remains intact. And to date, most of our progress in the automotive space has really been in China.

[Operator]

We'll move next to Shreyas Patil with Wolfe Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Shreyas Patil, Analyst at Wolfe Research]

Hey, thanks a lot for taking my question. Wondering if you could just provide more details on some of the cost tailwinds in the quarter. I think you mentioned the elimination of supply chain and COVID costs that might have been maybe $40 million to $50 million. But on my math, you were probably achieving something closer to $175 million in net performance and productivity, you mentioned I think engineering was a tailwind as well. And just big picture, you've talked before about incremental margins in the 18% to 22% range. With these cost actions, do you see that trending higher as we look out?

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

Yeah. Listen, I think we're continuing to make progress. I'm going to stay away from long-term sort of margin projections. We've obviously talked about where we thought 2025 looks and I think we're on -- that's at 12.5%. I think we continue to track towards that if you look at where we'll be in the back half of the year. And as I mentioned earlier Shreyas, it's really a balance, right, where we're seeing really strong manufacturing performance, agree with your COVID supply cost chain numbers coming out of -- disruption costs coming out, engineering coming back in line and we're seeing really strong performance coming out of the operations of the business as well.

So it's really if you go back to sort of how we thought about margin enhancement over -- back at Investor Day, we had that $1.7 billion of what we thought was going to be in performance over three years. About $300 million of that was the supply chain disruption coming out. The remainder, we talked about being sort of equal improvements over the course of the three years across manufacturing, logistics, engineering and SG&A. And that's really what we're seeing. So it's fairly balanced.

There's no big one-off items in there. It's really the business operating well. As we talked about at the end of last year, we made a decision on what I'll call overhead costs and took out a significant amount of overhead costs. We talked about a $50 million number. We're seeing that come in as well. So it's fairly well balanced and I think it puts us if you look at where run rate margin or sort of back half H2 EBIT margins will be in sort of those mid-12s, that sets us up, I think, pretty well for the 12.5% we were talking about 2025.

[Shreyas Patil, Analyst at Wolfe Research]

Okay, great. And just one last one. Following up on Dan's question earlier on SVA, just trying to think about the trade-off here between reduction that you would -- that you see in SVA architectures in terms of wiring content. I know that's lower margin business for you. But in a situation where you may not be winning as much in specific SVA products, whether it's zonal controllers or CDCs or anything like that, just how to think about the, what are the, what are the positives that are still there besides those architectures, whether it's in engineered components or high voltage connectors? Just trying to think about those architectures as we look ahead.

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

Yeah. Well, the math we used to do, make sure I understand your question as it relates to SVA versus traditional architecture in our product portfolio is effectively, if we add a full system, right, $3 would go in and roughly $1, $1.50 would go out like that was the net. And most of that would be in and around the wire harness, right? That's where you would see the net change. As it relates to incremental opportunities, again, our customers don't remain static. So to the extent there they are pausing on something, delaying or stopping.

There are certain things that they need to do with that vehicle and vehicle line-up and that can translate into incremental vehicle architecture or let's call it a step change in vehicle architecture, not all the way to SVA where the wire harness is changed, mass is taking out and it's replaced with things like high-speed cable assemblies and other items like that reduce weight and mass, improve performance and translate into more content for Aptiv. To the extent they're delaying a particular architecture like a zonal controller or a CVC, they are going to have to enhance and upgrade their ADAS, their user experience and other solutions. That's what I was referencing in the $10 billion opportunity that I talked about in this particular calendar year. So there are opportunities in and around those spaces that didn't exist previously, right, that weren't there for ourselves. So that's an incremental revenue opportunity as well.

[Shreyas Patil, Analyst at Wolfe Research]

Okay, thanks.

[Operator]

We will take our final question from Tom Narayan with RBC. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

[Tom Narayan, Analyst at RBC]

Hey, thanks for taking the questions. Just only I could do this as a follow-up if necessary, but just getting this question. The leverage that you guys are at, I guess, when you do the ASR and kind of what level of cash do you need just for operation. Just love any kind of numbers associated with that.

[Joseph R. Massaro, Vice Chairman, Business Operations & Chief Financial Officer at Aptiv]

Yeah. Hey Tom, it's Joe. Cash from operations is, call it, $600 million to $800 million. We finished the quarter with $1.4 billion of cash, and we have another EUR700 million actually of marketable equitable securities. So we're in a good position. As we ended the quarter, adjusted debt-to-EBITDA, call it right around 2 times, net debt obviously lower. So we're in a really good position. I mean, we've really kept that balance sheet in really good shape over the last few years, right? We managed it well through COVID in my view.

We're generating a lot of cash. So we're in a really good position to do this from an ASR and from a -- putting on the debt to repurchase the stock. And we've talked to the rating agency's intent is to maintain investment grade and work over the course of next year to -- when we do the final debt offering to support the ASR, we're going to include some prepayable debt that will allow us, in our view, to get back to effectively where we are today by the end of next year or certainly very early 2026.

[Tom Narayan, Analyst at RBC]

Got it. And then a quick follow-up on SVA. I know we've talked a lot about that, but one thing we've been hearing from some of the OEMs, mostly on the premium side is what appears to be at least their public statements, their desire to do as much as possible kind of on their own or -- and maybe utilize the Tier 1s less. Is it a dynamic where there's a differentiation between maybe premium OEMs wanting to differentiate for their own brand, whereas maybe mass market OEMs where that's not necessarily the case or -- because you mentioned you have the optionality to sell components, if not the whole system, how do you think the market is turning out in this context? Is it like a mass market versus premium thing or is it just kind of scattered? Yeah.

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

Yeah. So we would say it's really OEM by OEM. When a comment like that, the question is want to do more on their own, not quite sure what that means. It might mean kind of a design of the particular smart vehicle architecture. That maybe touches on the point where I talked about. We don't view this as particularly differentiating for a unique OEM. Our focus just given our years of history in and around power and data distribution is just how do you do it effectively, efficiently at lowest cost, how do you reduce weight and mass. So we feel like obviously our solution is the best solution if a particular OEM wants to go down the path that you talked about, they certainly can.

We're focused on avoiding customized solutions for OEMs. So that's not business we have pursued or we would pursue. So I'm not sure, I'm not sure really at the end of the day, it's that differentiating or important for an OEM to own, but if they elect to do it and if we have a product that meets their needs that we can sell profitably, that's certainly something we'll do. If not, it's something we'll do -- we won't do and we'll move on to the next OEM. As I mentioned, our pipeline today includes programs with 20 different OEMs versus two years ago, four. So there's plenty of opportunity that's out there.

[Tom Narayan, Analyst at RBC]

Got it. Thank you.

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

Thanks, Tom.

[Operator]

I will now turn the conference back to Kevin Clark for any additional or closing remarks.

[Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer at Aptiv]

All right. Thank you, everybody for joining our call today. We really appreciate your time. Thank you.

[Operator]

[Operator Closing Remarks]

Participants

Corporate Executives

• Jane Wu, Vice President, Investor Relations & Corporate Development
• Kevin P. Clark, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
• Joseph R. Massaro, Vice Chairman, Business Operations & Chief Financial Officer

Analysts

• Joe Spak, UBS Group AG
• John Murphy, Bank of America Co.
• Itay Michaeli, Smith Barney Citigroup
• William Tackett, Morgan Stanley
• Dan Levy, Barclays PLC
• Mark Delaney, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
• Shreyas Patil, Wolfe Research
• Tom Narayan, RBC