Kevin Nowlan
Analyst · Evercore ISI
Thank you Fred and good morning everyone. Before I review the financials in detail, I'd like to provide a quick overview of the two key takeaways from our first quarter results. First, our revenue came in stronger than we were expecting going into the year. This was driven by the fact that we delivered solid outgrowth with both the legacy BorgWarner and former Delphi Technologies businesses performing better than expected. Second, our margin and cash flow performance in the quarter were strong, driven by the topline results as well as our cost saving measures. So let's turn to Slide 10. As we look at our year-over-year revenue walk for Q1, we begin with pro forma 2020 revenue of $3.2 billion, which includes $945 million of revenue from Delphi Technologies. You can see the foreign currencies increased revenue by about 6% from a year ago, then our organic growth year-over-year was over 18%, compared to a less than 13% increase in weighted average market production. That translates to 570 basis points of outgrowth in the quarter, which breaks down as follows; in Europe, we outperformed by mid to high single digits, driven by growth in small gasoline turbochargers and strong performance in multiple former Delfi Technologies businesses, most notably fuel injection. In North America we outperformed the market by high single-digits as we saw a nice benefit from the ramp up of the new Ford F-150 and other new business launches. In China, we underperformed the market by mid-single-digits against very strong outperformance in the first quarter of 2020. Also keep in mind, Q1 was a very unusual quarter last year in the face of COVID-19 primarily in China. The sum of all this was just over $4 billion of revenue in Q1, which was a new quarterly record for the company. Now, we do believe that some of the strong outgrowth we delivered in Q1 was a result of the production of build and hold vehicles by our customers in multiple regions of the world. That means it's likely that some level of our reported outgrowth in Q1 is inflated due to a pull forward of production into the quarter. This will have an offsetting impact on our expected out growth later in the year. However, our outgrowth for the full year is still expected to be above our prior guidance as I will discuss further in a moment. With all that background in mind, we're pleased with the strong start to 2021. Now, let's look at our earnings and cash flow performance on Slide 11. Our first quarter adjusted operating income was $444 million compared to the pro forma 274 million in the first quarter of 2020. This yielded an adjusted operating margin of 11.1%, which was up compared to the 10.3% margin for BorgWarner only in the first quarter of 2020. On a comparable basis, excluding the impact of foreign exchange, adjusted operating income increased $145 million on 591 million of higher sales. That translates to an incremental margin of roughly 25%. This solid performance was driven by conversion on higher volumes, restructuring savings, and Delphi Technologies synergies in excess of purchase price amortization. We were particularly pleased with this performance given elevated supplier costs that we experienced during the quarter. Moving on to free cash flow, we're proud of the fact that we generated $147 million of positive free cash flow during the first quarter, which was roughly flat year-over-year despite increased investment in working capital. Let's now turn to Slide 12, where you can see our perspectives of global industry production for 2021. As a reminder, our market assumptions incorporate our view of both the light vehicle and on highway commercial vehicle markets. As you can see, we expect our global weighted light vehicle and commercial vehicle markets to increase in the range of 9% to 12%, which is down from our previous assumption of an 11% to 14% increase. This reduction to our prior market outlook reflects the ongoing impact of the semiconductor shortage on industry production. Looking at this by region, we're planning for North America to be up 17% to 20%. We see the largest incremental impact of the semiconductor shortage in North America, with our market expectations down approximately 500 basis points from our initial assumptions. In Europe, we expect a blended market increase of 9% to 12%, with that range being down approximately 200 basis points from our earlier planning assumption. And in China, we expect the overall market to be roughly flat year-over-year, similar to our previous estimate. Now, let's talk about our full year financial outlook on Slide 13. Starting with our pro forma 2020 sales, which includes $2.6 billion of revenue from the first three quarters of Delphi Technologies in 2020. As you know, those revenues were not part of our P&L last year, but to provide year-over-year comparability we thought this pro forma revenue approach for the 2020 baseline would be useful. You can see that our end market assumptions from the prior slide are expected to drive an increase in revenue of roughly $0.9 billion to $1.3 billion. Next, we expect to drive market outgrowth for the full year of approximately 300 to 500 basis points, which is a meaningful step up from our previous guidance of 100 to 300 basis points. Our higher outgrowth guidance is based on the stronger than expected outgrowth in the first quarter and outgrowth for the balance of the year being higher than our previous guidance based on better than previously expected revenue trends in a number of former Delphi Technologies product lines. Based on these assumptions, we expect our 2021 organic revenue to increase about 12% to 17% relative to 2020 pro forma revenue. Then adding a $400 million benefit from stronger foreign currencies, we're projecting total 2021 revenue to be in the range of $14.8 billion to $15.4 billion. That's up from our prior guidance by about $100 million at both ends of the revenue range. Even with weaker end market outlook, our stronger revenue outgrowth is driving an overall increase in our revenue guidance from the guidance we gave last quarter. Also, you should note that we're maintaining a wider than typical revenue range at this point of the year due to the wide range of potential production scenarios that I discussed on the previous slide, which stems from the volatility and uncertainty in end markets arising from the industrywide semiconductor issues. From a margin perspective, we expect our full year adjusted operating margin to be in the range of 10.1% to 10.5%, compared to a pro forma 2020 adjusted operating margin of 8.3%. This contemplates the business delivering full year incrementals in the low 20% range before the impact of Delphi related cost synergies and purchase price accounting. From a cost synergy perspective, our margin guidance includes $70 million to $80 million of incremental benefit in 2021. That puts us right on track to achieve 50% of our total expected cost synergies in 2021 and based on our year-to-date performance, we believe that we're tracking at the high end of this range. Based on this revenue and margin outlook, we're expecting full year adjusted EPS of $4 to $4.35 per diluted share, which is an increase from our prior guidance of $3.85 to $4.25 per diluted share. I would point out that this guidance now assumes a 31% tax rate versus our prior guidance of 32% as a result of the successful execution of certain international tax planning initiatives. And finally, we continue to expect that we'll deliver free cash flow in the $800 million to $900 million range for the full year. This is flat with our prior guidance as we expect the higher sales outlook to drive an increase in working capital that largely offset higher adjusted operating income. This would still represent a record annual free cash flow generation for the company. That's our 2021 outlook. Let's turn to Slide 14 for an update on the near-term actions related to Project Charging Forward. On the acquisition front, we believe we remain on track to complete the AKASOL acquisition in the second quarter. We've now received regulatory approvals in all required jurisdictions. The tender offer is in progress, with the final acceptance period expected to be completed later this month and then with a closing shortly thereafter. AKASOL represents an important part of Project Charging Forward as it represents approximately 20% to 25% of the estimated 2025 revenue from acquisitions underlying our plan. And it significantly increases our exposure to the eCV space. As it relates to portfolio optimization, we continue to target combustion related dispositions with annual revenue of approximately $1 billion to be executed over the next 12 to 18 months. The process for these dispositions is underway. We would expect to update you on our progress there as we get closer to executing those transactions. So let me summarize my financial remarks. Overall we had a really solid start to the year despite the industry supply headwinds. We delivered 570 basis points of market outgrowth and 11.1% adjusted operating margin and $147 million of free cash flow. And we increased our full year revenue and earnings guidance despite moderating our industry production assumptions. Looking beyond our near-term results, we're taking the necessary steps to accelerate the company's progression towards electrification. The AKASOL acquisition and today's iDM announcement are great examples of our progression. And importantly, we're executing our strategy from a position of financial strength. Ultimately, we expect that the successful execution of our strategy will drive value creation for our shareholders. With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Pat.