Frederic Lissalde
Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Thanks, Pat, and good morning, everyone. We're very pleased to share our results from Q1 2019 today and provide an overall company update. Before we begin, I'd like to welcome Kevin Nowlan to his first earnings call with BorgWarner as our new CFO. Kevin's impressive background speaks for itself. But suffice it to say, his experience will be invaluable as we continue our long legacy of strong financial discipline. He hit the ground running during his first few weeks, and you will be hearing more from him in the coming months. I also like to thank Tom McGill for his excellent financial leadership, and I'm very pleased that he is now our Controller with responsibilities for all our accounting, tax and enterprise risk management operations. Now I'll start by sharing a few thoughts on the industry shown on Slide 5, starting with Q1. The global light vehicle production came down about 5.2%, which is more than 100 basis points better than the midpoint of our expectation going into the quarter. In addition, I'm very proud to say that our outgrowth in Q1 was also stronger than expected, driven by higher volume of new programs, especially in Europe and North America. European light vehicle production was down about 5.5% as customers worked through the final stages of the WLTP certification. China light vehicle production was down mid-teens year-over-year as our customers reacted to lower demand and reduced their inventories. North American light vehicle industry production declined about 2.5% year-over-year. Now looking to the remainder of 2019. We expect that the challenging conditions in China and Europe will continue for the remainder of the year. Even with these challenging conditions, we expect to be able to deliver on our full year earnings and cash flow guidance. On a full year basis, we continue to expect a market decline in the minus 2% to minus 5% range. At the midpoint of our guide, we're factoring in China down high single digits, Europe down more than 3% and North America down more than 2%. The key is that we expect to continue to outgrow the market in 2019 based on continuous strong demand for our products. Let me now move to Slide 6. First, a brief summary of our Q1 results. Overall, I'm very pleased. Organic growth was above our guidance. And while we fell short of our typical 20% decremental margin, the performance was in line with our Q1 guide. With $2.6 billion in sales, we were down 3.3% organically. This compares to our market being down approximately 5.2%, so our outgrowth was approximately 200 basis points in the quarter, which was ahead of our expectations. Regionally, our China revenue declined high teens as ramp-up schedules of new programs were impacted by inventory reduction at our customers. Our European light vehicle revenue was down about 1%, outperforming the industry decline. Our North American light vehicle revenue was flattish year-over-year, and our commercial vehicle off-road and aftermarket business was also flat year-over-year. Adjusted earnings per share came at $1, which was ahead of our guidance, driven by revenue outperformance. Now for the full year 2019. Whilst we are encouraged by the stronger Q1 performance, we're maintaining our full year guidance. We continue to expect revenue to be down 2.5% to up 2% organically, and this represents an outgrowth of 250 basis points to 400 basis points over our expected market decline. We continue to expect our adjusted earnings per share to be at $4 to $4.35. I would also like to briefly touch on our planned margin and R&D cadence for 2019. As Tom will explain later, our guidance for Q2 implies a shortfall compared to our typical decremental margin. In addition to the costs related to tariffs and supply bankruptcies, we're also supporting elevated R&D spending in Q2. This is mostly related to the recently awarded programs. The prototype spending for this program is a bit lumpy throughout 2019, with some of the largest impacts in Q2. For example, during this quarter, we will experience a $10 million year-over-year impact from prototype spending related to recent complete module awards for P2 hybrids. However, at the high level, our R&D spending expectations for 2019 remain unchanged. We continue to deliver strong outgrowth in 2019, and we must continuously look at ways to adjust our cost structure without compromising our long-term aspiration. The cost restructuring plan that we announced in our press release this morning is consistent with this long-term commitment. We've taken a company-wide view of areas to reduce our current cost structure. Based on our analysis, we believe that we can achieve a $40 million to $50 million annual improvement in our current structural cost over the next 2 years. These cost actions will range from capacity realignment, efficiency improvement in SG&A expenses within our businesses and cost reduction opportunities within our corporate overhead. We expect these actions will result in restructuring expenses in the $80 million to $100 million range through the end of 2020. Our plan is to really deploy these savings into spending to support future growth in hybrid and electric propulsion. Specifically, we expect to use savings to increase our R&D spending as a percentage of sales without negatively impacting our overall operating margins. We continue to see a strong pool for our products from our customers. And we expect the return on this higher spending will not only drive stronger growth, but generate returns in line with our historic levels. Now I'd like to discuss some of our recent product successes, which are on Slide 7. For the second year in a row, BorgWarner has been recognized as an Automotive News PACE Awards winner. This year, we won for our revolutionary dual volute turbocharger for gasoline engines. General Motors is the first OEM to put this innovative technology in its full-size pickups with its 4-cylinder turbocharge engine. This is a great example of technology that will help support our above-market growth in the combustion propulsion. In hybrid, we also announced that a major European commercial vehicle manufacturer has chosen our HVH410 electric motor for plug-in hybrid electric truck to be announced in 2019. I'm also strongly encouraged by our year-to-date wins across multiple hybrid architectures and electric products. Before I turn it over to Tom, let me summarize my opening remarks. Q1 was a strong start of the year, and we feel very confident in our full year outlook. Our cost restructuring plan will help support our future profitable growth while sustaining margin performance. And the year-to-date new business wins that we've achieved across combustion, hybrid and electric vehicle will position us strongly for the future. Now let me turn it over to Tom.