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Dana Incorporated (DAN)

Q4 2025 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 18, 2026

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to Dana Incorporated's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Financial Webcast and Conference Call. My name is Regina, and I will be your conference facilitator. Please be advised that our meeting today, both the speakers' remarks and Q&A session will be recorded for replay purposes. For those participants who would like to access the call from the webcast, please reference the URL on our website and sign in as a guest. There will be a question-and-answer period after the speakers' remarks, and we will take questions from the telephone only. [Operator Instructions]. At this time, I'd like to begin the presentation by turning the call over to Dana's Senior Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications, Craig Barber. Please go ahead, Mr. Barber.

Craig Barber

Analyst

Thank you, Regina. Good morning, and welcome, everyone. Today's presentation includes forward-looking statements about our expectations for Dana's future performance. Actual results could differ from what we discuss today. For more details about the factors that may affect future results, please refer to our safe harbor statement found in our public filings and in our reports with the SEC. I encourage you to visit our investor website, where you'll find this morning's press release and presentation. As stated, today's call is being recorded and the supporting materials are the property of Dana Incorporated. They may not be recorded, copied or rebroadcast without our written consent. With us this morning is Bruce McDonald, Dana's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Byron Foster, Senior Vice President and President of Light Vehicle Systems Group; and Timothy Kraus, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Bruce, I'll now turn the call over to you.

R. McDonald

Analyst

Thanks, Craig. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us on our Q4 earnings call. With us today, in addition to the usual cast of characters, we have Byron Foster, our incoming CEO with us. I've known Byron and worked with him for many years. He and the rest of the management team here at Dana have been instrumental in our cost reduction activities and our transformation plans as well as the development of our Dana 2030 strategy. And so I think the Board and myself have the utmost confidence in the team under Byron's leadership and I'm very confident in the team's ability to deliver on the financial objectives that we're going to share with you today. Turning to the business overview. Our final results for the fourth quarter came in higher than our preliminary estimates. So you can see here for the fourth quarter, our margins at 11.% were $10 million -- 40 basis points higher, $10 million higher than the announced -- preannouncement numbers. In terms of full year cash flow, we came in at $331 million, which is $16 million higher. And I'd point out that, that cash flow is the highest the company has delivered since 2013. We completed the sale of the Off-Highway business on January 1 and used the most of the proceeds to repay down debt and Tim will take you through what our new debt profile looks like later on in the pack. In terms of cost reduction, a great job by the team. We had originally committed to a $200 million run rate. We upped that to $300 million, and we delivered $248 million in the year and a run rate of $325 million going into 2026. We've talked before about our stranded costs post the sale of off-highway being…

Byron Foster

Analyst

Okay. Thanks, Bruce, and good morning, everybody. So just to cover on Page 6, a little bit on the market outlook as we look at the 2026 plan. So on the light truck side, we continue to see the light truck market holding steady, and our plan is built around really kind of flat volume year-over-year from 2025 levels. And I would say we're seeing a consistent operating environment and volume from our customers, which is allowing us to run at a good steady clip. On the commercial vehicle side, as well, we've built the plan around flat volumes to 2025 levels. However, I would say there is some optimism that towards the back half of the year, perhaps we'll see some improved volumes on the commercial vehicle side. And as Bruce mentioned, you can see on the right-hand side of this page, our 3-year net backlog of $750 million, of which $200 million is built into our 2026 plan, and you can see kind of how that matures through 2028. If we go to Page 7, I thought it might be interesting to give you a bit of a view of how our new business pursuit activities have kind of evolved here over the last 7 or 8 years. You can see a really dramatic increase in business pursuit activity kind of in the early 2000s, really dominated by increasing EV activity. And then you can see here more recently how that trend has really pivoted and reversed itself from kind of 80% EV level activity to now really heavy mix towards our more traditional or ICE powertrain types of vehicles. And we really expect that trend to continue as our customers are revisiting their product plans to adjust to consumer demand for more traditional ICE-type vehicles as well as hybrids and some full BEVs will still exist, but obviously, at a at lower rate than kind of what we saw a few years back. So we're encouraged by that. And as we talk about growth going forward, we expect that's really going to play into our ability to capitalize on that opportunity. So with that, I'll hand it over to Tim, and he'll take us through the numbers.

Timothy Kraus

Analyst

Thanks, Byron, and good morning to everyone. Please turn with me now to Slide 9 for a review of our fourth quarter and full year results for 2025. All results discussed this morning reflect continuing operations, except for adjusted free cash flow. Starting on the left side of the fourth quarter, sales were $1.867 billion, an increase of $93 million compared with last year. Improvement was driven primarily by customer recoveries and currency translation. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $208 million, resulting in an 11.1% margin. That's a 640 basis points improvement over the prior year's fourth quarter, reflecting better mix and continued benefit of the company-wide cost improvement actions. EBIT from continuing operations was $61 million compared with a loss of $117 million in last year's fourth quarter. Interest expense was $49 million, an increase of about $12 million from last year due to higher average borrowing costs tied to our accelerated capital return initiatives that we did last year. Operating cash flow was $406 million for the quarter, an increase of $104 million, driven by higher earnings and disciplined working capital management. Turning now to the full year results on the right side of the slide. Sales for 2025 were $7.5 billion, down $234 million from 2024. As we noted earlier, this reflects weakening market demand across both light vehicle and commercial vehicle seculars, partially offset by customer recoveries. Full year adjusted EBITDA was $610 million, an improvement of $215 million from the prior year, resulting in an 8.1% margin, up 300 basis points. The year-over-year improvement was driven by accelerated cost savings, higher production efficiency and improved execution across the entire Dana organization. EBIT from continuing operations was $138 million compared with a loss of $176 million last year. Interest expense was $171 million, up $26…

Byron Foster

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thank you, Tim. And hey, before I get into the targets here, I do want to take the opportunity to thank Bruce for his leadership through Dana's transformation here over the last 1.5 years or so. And as he mentioned, we will have a very seamless transition here through the end of Q2. And myself and the management team, we couldn't be more excited for the opportunities ahead for Dana. So let's take a look at our long-term targets and our plans to continue to drive performance of the company to new levels. So if you look at the 2030 financial targets, starting with revenue, we're targeting close to $10 billion of sales, which would be 33% higher than the midpoint of the '26 guide that Tim just took us through. We expect margins to increase by close to 400 basis points to 14% to 15% at the EBITDA line and adjusted free cash flow at 6%, which would be about a 200 basis point improvement from our '26 guide. In terms of returning capital to our shareholders, you can see that we plan to return $2 billion vis-a-vis stock buybacks and of which $650 million has been completed in 2025 with the remaining plan for '26 through '30. And specifically in 2026, we're targeting $300 million of buybacks. And that's on top of the 20% dividend increase that was previously announced. In terms of our road map of how we plan to deliver that level of performance, it's really all under our strategy that we've called Dana 2030. And you can see the 5 pillars of that plan, 3 related to growth in our aftermarket business, our traditional light vehicle and commercial vehicle business as well as our EV and Applied Technologies, which basically takes Dana's know-how and technology and explores opportunities for growth in new and adjacent markets. In addition to those growth pillars, there's 2 pillars around efficiency and execution in everything we do, both at the manufacturing level as well as our structural cost and support of the business. We look forward to sharing more details of our 2030 plan with you during our Capital Markets Day, which is planned for March 25, in New York at 9:00 a.m., and we're hoping to see you guys all there. So we can talk more about the future ahead for Dana. So with that, I'll hand it back to Regina for Q&A.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Colin Langan with Wells Fargo.

Colin Langan

Analyst

I just want to follow up on the target for sales of $10 billion by 2030. That's faster than we've seen growth historically from Dana. And particularly, you just gave a backlog, I think it's $550 million from coming. So where is the other almost $2 billion? Is that market factors? Is there M&A assumed in there?

R. McDonald

Analyst

I'll take that, Colin. So here's kind of the way you should think about it is of the $2.5 billion that we're committing to grow over the next 5 years, our backlog, as you said, for '27 and '28 is $550 million. We anticipate that a normalization in the North American CV market is worth another $200 million, $300 million. So that's kind of 1/3 of it. Then we've got 5 growth strategies. One is the slide that Byron covered off around our quoting activity, really around -- ICE is going to be here for longer. Our customers are changing their product plans to reflect more SUVs and CUVs. So the market -- we do expect to continue to win new business on new programs that our customers are introducing. Secondly is in CV. We -- that business is very North American-centric. We have a very strong position in the market right now. We have a brand-new world-class, low-cost manufacturing facility, greenfield sites that we opened up in Mexico. That plant is performing for us at a very high level. And as a result of our delivery performance, our quality and our cost base, I think we're well positioned to gain share of wallet at our main North American customers. Third, aftermarket. It's an area that we haven't really focused on in the past. So we have several growth strategies within aftermarket. But the one I would sort of point to as being front and center here is our North America sealing and gasket opportunity. So this is a market where we've got 30%, 35% share in Europe, and we're just looking to enter North America. We see that as being a $250 million opportunity that we're just starting to get our foot in the door this year. Fourth, I…

Colin Langan

Analyst

No, I appreciate all the color. And just as a second question would just be any help from -- we've seen pretty much all the Detroit 3 have these big recovery programs for EV cancellations. Was any of that helping 25? Is that any of that baked into the guidance? And any help actually in cash flow as well?

Timothy Kraus

Analyst

Colin, this is Tim. As we mentioned in Q3, we took some charges that -- due to some of this. So we did get a little bit of recovery in the fourth quarter. But in terms of the recoveries, a lot of what we're seeing is really adjustments to ongoing sales prices because many of our programs haven't completely canceled. Many of them are just volume down. But in terms of the other recoveries, it's really a net coverage of the cost that we've incurred and what we owe in terms of suppliers and other development costs. So it's largely not a big tailwind in terms of profit drivers for us in the short term. But it obviously avoids our necessity to continue to write amounts off like we had to do in the third quarter.

R. McDonald

Analyst

I would just add, if you look at -- Tim showed the volume mix slide and how it's a little bit strange that top line negative, bottom line is positive. Some of the benefit of repricing EV programs is in that bar.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from the line of Tom Narayan with RBC Capital Markets.

Thomas Ito

Analyst

This is Thomas Ito on for Tom. So you guys are guiding to this 14% to 15% EBITDA margins by 2030, which is about 400 basis points higher than your '26 guide. This might have to wait for the Capital Markets Day, but could you give us any sort of rough breakdown of the contributions you're expecting from those items listed to the right of Slide 17?

R. McDonald

Analyst

No. I don't really want to get into a lot of the detail. I mean what I would tell you is if you think about margin enhancement, how do we get that 400 basis points, it's in 2 places. One, structural cost reduction. We cut $325 million out of our cost base this year. And if we look at the opportunities that we have that are longer term or require systems investments, we think there's like $100 million there. And just a couple as an example of that would be putting our shared service -- expanding our shared service center and a lot of ERP and other system standardization.

Timothy Kraus

Analyst

I think the -- like we encourage you to come see us in New York. We're going to lay out the walk and how we get there and why we're so confident. And so come to the Capital Markets Day, we'll lay it all out for you. But look, we're highly, highly confident. I think what you've seen from Bruce and the management team here over the last 14, 15 months is we're very bullish on what we can deliver and what we tell you we're going to deliver or we do. And I think we have that same confidence as we start looking forward to the strategy to deliver the $10 billion and the 15% to 16% margins in 2030. So I encourage you guys to come down and we'll take you through it in March.

Thomas Ito

Analyst

Okay. Got it. As a quick follow-up, it looks like your commercial vehicle margins expanded pretty significantly in Q4, even though sales are down year-over-year. It sounds like this is mostly a mix and a cost reduction story, but I was wondering if this is -- if you guys think that margin level is sustainable going into 2026 or whether there were any one-offs in the Q4 results?

Timothy Kraus

Analyst

Yes, not a lot of one-offs. I mean, obviously, this has been a part of the business over the last few years that we've focused quite a bit on improving our operating efficiency, and you're starting to see some of that. Bruce mentioned, we did, over the last few years, build a new plant, state-of-the-art. And as we continue to ramp that plant up and have more production in there, we are getting the benefits of that into the efficiency and the margins in that product. So we don't -- we're not done yet. We think we've got more opportunity to continue to improve margins in the CV business because they're not where we think they should be. So stay tuned. I think there's more good things to come when you think about our CV segment.

R. McDonald

Analyst

Yes. Maybe just to add to that is we the team in CV has done a great job this year, great job, but we've been fighting volumes falling against us all year long. And as we get into this year, we're going to start to see that flip around and have volume as a tailwind instead of chasing the year-over-year declines.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Edison Yu with Deutsche Bank.

James Mulholland

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

This is James Mulholland on for Edison. A quick question on our part. So if we do just a bit of math, even with the share buyback and the increased dividend that you've outlined with your sort of longer-term free cash flow guide, it looks like you're looking at a materially higher cash position than what you've historically maintained or even guiding to. So do you have any thoughts on to where you're going to put that to work? Would you consider further inorganic investments, shareholder returns? Just any thoughts you might have there?

Timothy Kraus

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

Yes. I think, look, we've obviously laid out a pretty significant increase in the amount of capital that we would return to shareholders. As we move out, and we'll talk a little bit about this in March as well. As we move out beyond '26, and we think about our growth strategy, there certainly could be opportunities for some acquisitions or other investments that are inorganic in order to fill in the parts of the portfolio that we think can help accelerate the growth. So I think -- but we're really focused right now in continuing to execute on the plan. But again, we do think that the business that we own and the management team that we have is going to be able to continue to drive the business forward and deliver superior returns for the shareholder.

James Mulholland

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

Got it. That's helpful. And I guess on the flip side of my prior question, in the presentation, it sounds like you're thinking about other noncore operations that could either be sold or perhaps shuttered. Are there other parts of your business that can be as cleanly separated as the off-highway business? Or is there something that specifically you're thinking about that you can share with us now?

Timothy Kraus

Analyst · Deutsche Bank.

Yes. Nothing, obviously, we can share with you now. But like we're talking about some of the smaller things that we only have a number of different smaller businesses, but nothing on the scale or size of off-highway. But to answer your question, yes, we believe that those are imminently separate. We did a few of them. We had a few of these last year where we sold a couple of interest we had in some joint ventures. So we'll continue to look at the portfolio, whether that be individual JVs, plants or just product lines in some of the businesses. So I think as we continue to think through the portfolio, I think there's a number of opportunities where maybe we're not the best owner or they aren't the most profitable of product lines or part numbers, and we'll continue to sort of cull through that and make those adjustments. So -- but we do think that there's some opportunities there for us on the portfolio side. Again, these are smaller type things.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of James Picariello with BNP Paribas.

James Picariello

Analyst · BNP Paribas.

Sorry, just to clarify, what was the last answer regarding -- is there possibility for M&A within this revenue target or that would be in excess of the $10 billion?

Timothy Kraus

Analyst · BNP Paribas.

There's no M&A in the $10 billion.

James Picariello

Analyst · BNP Paribas.

Okay. All right. That's what I thought. So Yes. When I think about the capital deployment out to 2030, right, if there is no M&A embedded in the target, which I think is a great thing, right, free cash flow is slated to double over 2026 and 2030. If I just assume a linear annualized step-up, right, off the $300 million this year to the $600 million targeted for 2030, right, that cumulative free cash flow generation looks something like $2.2 billion to $2.3 billion, right, in that ZIP code. Why would the -- we're looking at $250 million in dividends, right, $50 million a year over 5 years and you've got the $1.35 billion in buybacks, which leaves about $650 million left over in excess capital. Just curious how you're thinking about that, where you disagree or agree on how I laid that out. And just, yes, what are we doing with that additional $650 million or so?

Timothy Kraus

Analyst · BNP Paribas.

Yes. I mean, look, I think I won't get into the specifics. Obviously, it leaves us some flexibility in what we use the cash flow for. Obviously, we have maturities coming due. So we can use it to reduce leverage on the business if we want. And if we're in -- depending on where we are in the cycle, that may be something we do. Otherwise, we have more opportunities to return capital to shareholders if that seems to be the best use of that capital. I mean 2, 3, 4, 5 years from now is a long time and a lot of things can happen. But I think what we're planning for is having an exceedingly strong operating performance through the business cycle with a capital structure that allows us to continue to be exceedingly nimble in our ability to continue to invest in the business regardless of where the markets are. And I think that's really, really important to think about, given where we were in the high 2 turns leverage and what we're going to be able to do through the business cycle regardless of where the end markets are going forward. So we're just leaving ourselves some flexibility. I think what we've said is, hey, we're going to continue to drive really high shareholder returns, and that's our intention.

James Picariello

Analyst · BNP Paribas.

Okay. Yes. That makes a lot of sense. My follow-up is a quick one. What's the assumed effective tax rate for this year to inform the adjusted EPS range of 2% to 3%?

Timothy Kraus

Analyst · BNP Paribas.

Yes, it's somewhere -- it's -- we've had some pretty strange ones. It's somewhere between 20% and 30%. It really depends on some of the jurisdictional mix, but that's kind of where we're targeting somewhere. That's a wide range. But given the balances that we have and how the income mix can change, it moves around. It happens to be a pretty reasonable rate this year just based on the jurisdictional mix and where the balances are.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Joe Spak with UBS.

Joseph Spak

Analyst · UBS.

Good morning, everyone. Maybe just a question on CapEx, but with 2 flavors, if you all. So it looks like you're low 3s, '25, guidance calls for low 4s this year. I'm assuming that's just a step up to support some of these growth initiatives, but maybe you could add some color there. And then how should we think -- I know you gave the free cash margin guidance for the 2030 plan, but should we think about any material change in CapEx to sales to support that growth opportunity? Is 4% the new you like right go-forward rate we should be thinking about?

Timothy Kraus

Analyst · UBS.

Yes. I think 4% is probably a good number to kind of pencil in as you go forward. I think -- look, we're -- we will have to spend both on growth initiatives and on the initiatives to drive margin expansion. Bruce mentioned our plant-level operational efficiency. We've taken a lot of costs out at a relatively modest investment. The next step is we'll have to have a higher level of investment, which is largely CapEx in order to drive that next lockstep change in our margin profile, especially at the plant level. So -- but that's built into our targets, both the 2030 target that we're giving you and the target that we have for CapEx in 2026. So we've committed significant amounts of CapEx to help drive both growth and the efficiencies in the business.

Joseph Spak

Analyst · UBS.

Okay. You alluded to this a little bit earlier, but I was wondering if you could just sort of get a little bit more color. You're guiding 250 basis points of margin expansion this year. It sounds like we should be maybe above that level in CV, given some of your comments, so maybe slightly a little bit below that in light vehicle to get to the number. But I was wondering if you could just sort of help us understand some of the profit drivers or margin drivers by segment for '26?

Timothy Kraus

Analyst · UBS.

Yes. I mean I think you have it right. I mean, obviously, we're going to have a continued flow through on the cost savings, and then we will continue to get performance improvements, which is fairly -- I mean, it's fairly consistent on a relative basis in the segments, probably a little bit more in CV because we got a little more opportunity there, but generally, pretty balanced between the segments. But I think the important thing to note here is that we continue to focus on our ability to expand margins through actions that are completely within our control and that are low risk and have high returns. So you think about some of the things we're doing with automation, with efficiencies within the plants. I mean, largely, those are implants that are on ICE programs. We know what the volumes are going to be, and we know what the investment and the returns look like. So we're highly confident in our ability to both make those investments and deliver the expanded margins that they will deliver. So...

Joseph Spak

Analyst · UBS.

Okay. Great. And I should go on with this, but congrats to both Byron and Bruce and looking forward to learning more at the upcoming investor event.

R. McDonald

Analyst · UBS.

We plan to put Byron out there so you guys can go right after mid-March, okay?

Joseph Spak

Analyst · UBS.

Look forward to it.

Operator

Operator

Our final question comes from the line of Emmanuel Rosner with Wolfe Research.

Emmanuel Rosner

Analyst

First question is on the -- I appreciate the sneak peek on the 2030 financial targets. So I wanted to ask you about the high-level drivers of the 400 bps in margin expansion. How much of it is growth driven versus cost savings? I think, Bruce, you mentioned maybe $100 million opportunity from the systems enhancement. I don't know if there was anything else you'd call out on the cost side. And what implication does it have in terms of potential cadence? 400 bps obviously averages out to about 100 bps a year. But I would assume that the cost savings are maybe more front-end loaded, whereas like some of the growth initiatives may take a little bit longer. So anything you could share on that?

Timothy Kraus

Analyst

Yes. I think we're -- come see us in March, I think, is the line of the day. I think you -- some of what you said makes some sense. But look, we're able -- given where we're at today, we're going to be able to invest in both the growth and the margin expansion initiatives and deliver them over time. But we'll lay it out in detail in a few weeks. So come down and see us.

R. McDonald

Analyst

Yes. I would say, though, that the margin and getting to the 15% is not because we're growing. In other words, we will expand our margin based on investments that we're making in cost actions. The growth will help out, but the main driver is the investments that we're making in our manufacturing operations and automation, things like that.

Timothy Kraus

Analyst

Yes. I mean I wouldn't say the growth is coming through at super high rates. Like we still operate in the mobility business for goodness sake. So like we -- and like I said before, a lot of what we're thinking about is things that are completely within our control and tied to programs that are tried and true. So high return, low-risk type things to drive margin improvement.

Emmanuel Rosner

Analyst

I appreciate the color. If I could just follow up on this based on what's disclosed in today's slides, obviously, revenues target of $10 billion, up from $7.5 billion, I guess, this year. So if you just said like -- I guess, what is the right incremental margin on that kind of revenue increase? Because if you just apply that to $2 billion, $2.5 billion in revenue, you'd already have probably like $500 million of uplift in EBITDA. So just curious if there's -- how do you think about that piece just based on the numbers that you already shared with us?

Timothy Kraus

Analyst

Yes. I mean I think there's -- you also have to realize that there are some costs associated with some of that growth. So it's not like we just go out and sell it and put it in the same plant like it isn't that simple. But I think the -- again, we'll give you a front row seat, Emmanuel, in March, and we'll take you all through it, and we'll answer all your questions.

Emmanuel Rosner

Analyst

I look forward to that. And then maybe just on 2025, the -- on Slide 14, the walk to the '26 EBITDA by factor. Can you just remind us what goes inside the performance and the cost savings bucket in terms of...

Timothy Kraus

Analyst

Yes. So cost -- yes, think of cost savings as our $325 million that's all above the plants, okay? That's what's in that number. And that's the last piece of that $325 million, right? So -- and then if you think about performance, that is all the improvements that are going on at the -- really at the plant level. So this is material cost savings, engineering cost savings that's coming through as a result of design and whatnot updates, conversion cost savings. And then we've also included in here about $40 million of the stranded cost avoidance that we're taking out this year. So that's one of the reason why that number looks pretty large. There's 40% of it, $40 million is related to the structural cost takeout related to stranded cost from the deal.

R. McDonald

Analyst

Okay. That's the last of the questions. So thanks, everybody, for joining us here this morning. Clearly, I want to have a big shout out to the Dana team. I know a lot of them are listening on this call. An incredible 2025, and I thank each and every one of our team members for help making it happen. Coming into 2025, we made some very bold commitments, and the teams delivered on all fronts. I'm very proud of them. Looking ahead, the team is laser-focused on performance and delivering on our financial commitments. As I said earlier, right now, Dana is exceptionally well positioned. We have a strong balance sheet, a top -- best in sector balance sheet. We have a strong top line growth story. We have a very clear plan and actions to deliver significant margin expansion. Our free cash flow is accelerating to the point where we can first grow our investment in our business. Second, return a significant amount of capital to our shareholders via dividend. Third, grow our buyback. And right now, we can comfortably buy 8% to 9% of our shares per year, all while deleveraging. I love how Dana is positioned right now in the auto space, I wouldn't change places with anybody else. Thanks for joining us this morning.

Operator

Operator

This will conclude our call today. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.