Don Walker
Analyst · Dan Galves from Credit Suisse. Please proceed
Thank you. Hello everybody and welcome to our fourth quarter and year-end 2014 conference call. Joining me today is Vince Galifi, Chief Financial Officer and Louis Tonelli, Vice President of Investor Relations. Yesterday our Board of Directors met and approved our financial results for the fourth quarter and the year ended December 31, 2014. We issued a press release this morning for the quarter. And you can find the press release, today's conference call webcast, our updated quarterly financial review and the slide presentation to go along with the call all in the Investor Relations section of our Web site at www.magna.com. Before we get started just a reminder the discussion today may contain forward-looking information or forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Such statements involve certain risks, assumptions and uncertainties which may cause the Company's actual or future results and performance to be materially different from those expressed or implied in these statements. Please refer to today's press release for a complete description of our Safe Harbor disclaimer. Q4 was another very strong quarter for Magna, our best quarter of 2014 in terms of adjusted earnings and a strong finish to a record year. In North America, our operations continue to perform well overall, adjusted EBIT percentage was 10.6% for Q4 and for the full-year we posted 10.1%. In Europe, we made further strides in improving our footprint and operating results. We reported adjusted EBIT of $99 million in Q4, and for the full-year of 2014 adjusted EBIT in Europe increased for the third consecutive year to $434 million. This represents an adjusted EBIT of 3% for 2014. In Asia, we continue to invest in our business to support future growth. Despite this investment, we reported improved adjusted EBIT of $52 million U.S for the fourth quarter and for 2014 we reached $162 million, an increase of 91% over 2013 to a margin of 8.2% for the year. Lastly, in rest of the world, which is essentially South America, through a combination of productivity and efficiency improvements together with some restructuring and downsizing, we reduced losses by more than half during 2014 to $35 million loss, including only a $5 million loss in the fourth quarter. All in all, a very strong 2014 for Magna. Looking forward, the recent strengthening of the U.S dollar is expected to continue to impact our reported results. However, we are very excited about the significant amount of new business we’re launching over the next three years, new programs and new facilities around the world. This new business should contribute meaningfully to consolidated sales and earnings in the future. Lastly, on Monday of this week we signed an agreement to sell our battery pack business to Samsung. This transaction reflects further fine-tuning of our product portfolio to focus on businesses where we’ve strong or growing market positions. With that, I’ll pass the call over to Vince.