Timothy D. Leuliette
Analyst · Ryan Brinkman with JPMorgan
Thank you, Scott, and again good morning, everyone, and yes, we do appreciate you joining us this morning. We did have a good quarter. We ended the year with some good momentum as we enter into 2013, and let me hit some of the highlights, and Jeff will expand on the detail here as we get through the call. We ended the year with sales of about $6.9 billion, $628 million of EBITDA and an adjusted EPS of $4 a share, which was net income of $213 million. A positive cash flow of $102 million, free cash flow of $10 million, and we did end the year with solid liquidity. Cash of $845 million, up almost $100 million from prior year, and that is, by the way, after we paid back $50 million -- or retired $50 million of bonds and bought back $50 million of stock. Debt is $569 million, down $30 million from the prior year, and our debt to adjusted EBITDA is less than 1. We will spend a little time today, obviously, on updating 2013 guidance. We're not really changing at this stage our forecast for sales EBITDA or free cash flow. But because of changes in the share count and some tax issues, we have raised the earnings per share number, and Jeff will expand upon that a little later. We also, as we look back to the year, are very pleased with some of the value creation actions that we took and some of those now proceeding into 2013. I'll go through those in a moment. Moving on, if you will, to the next slide, Page 3. We put this here for a couple of reasons. One, I think as we look at the value metrics for what drives and should drive your mindset as to why to invest in Visteon and how we differentiate ourselves, I think we need to, first of all, go look at where vehicles are built. And there's a couple of points here. One, half of -- this is the 2012 look back at the production around the world. Over half the vehicles today are produced in Asia. North America accounts for 19%, the U.S. about 12% of all vehicles produced. So as we look at the global vehicle industry, we have to sometimes disconnect ourselves from the impacts of sequester or Bernanke comments or political upheaval here in the States, and understand its balance and its impact on the global production of vehicles. When we look at this bar chart on the left as to where vehicles are built, and the question is where does Visteon do business? And here again, I think, is one of the value metrics that we tried to share with you in the past and that is, we do participate significantly in Asia. This includes the current footprint of Visteon, including our Interiors business, of being though principally an Asian business especially when you consider our nonconsolidated entries. So we do participate in that high-growth Asian market, which by the way, the China component that's embedded in that 52% that's Asia, that component over the next 10 years will grow at the same size as the current size of the U.S. market. So significant opportunities here for us to participate in those growth markets, and we want to share that with you. Moving on to the next page, Page 4. We tried to highlight some of the major activities that we have gotten into this year to generate value. And it got, from a calendarization perspective, quite intense obviously towards the end of the year. And what I'd like to do is just leave that page as sort of a summary but move on to the next page, Page 5, where we start taking those pieces and applying to where they are within the corporate level and where they impact the different business groups. First of all, going back and looking at Visteon specifically on the strategic plan side. As you know, we did outline last year on September 19 a strategic template for the company -- that's in your appendix -- that's still the strategic plan for this company. We also began to attack the SG&A and fixed cost. We attacked the pension issue and reduced the PBO there by 25%. And again, I've mentioned earlier, we did a $50 million share buyback and a $50 million bond retirement. As we look at the pieces of the company, looking back, obviously, the Halla Visteon, which we internally refer to as Project Talk, putting together and consolidating our climate business has been a significant success. The response from the customers have been very strong. The recent awards have been very encouraging. That's a $410 million transaction back to the parent. 80% of that will be completed by the end of this quarter. The only pieces that are not are just because they're in the queue for some regulatory process, typically China, at this stage, and those will all be completed, if not by -- in the first quarter into the second quarter and clearly within the first half. On an adjusted gross margin basis, I think the other thing that we should look at from a value story is the margin improvement that really occurred across the board. As we look at the second half of Halla Visteon versus the first, you saw a 1.5% increase, 150 basis points in gross margin and, again, a solid $550 million in new business win. As we look at the Electronics piece, which is one where we're going to focus on this call, as we have historically done over the last few calls focusing on a specific business. This is now the turn to focus on Electronics, unlock value there. But also there, the gross margin during the year versus the second half versus the first half, up 80 basis points, and $515 million in new business wins in '12. On the Interiors piece, again, we tend to -- we're continuing to explore alternatives there. It's not core. We'll talk a bit more about that the next page. But even there we saw some margin improvement in the second half and won some new business. We focused on Yanfeng Visteon the last time we were together on January 15 at the Deutsche conference, for those of you who were there. And again, the focus of that business is continuing its growth and relating to the fact that there's 26 facilities there, 8 all new and 18 being expanded significantly at this point. Now that's kind of what we did in 2012. Let's now look at creating value for 2013 on the next page. These are the things that we're looking at internally. These are the kinds of metrics that we are looking at to measure our own selves with. And that's, first of all, on the SG&A and fixed cost side. Another 5% reduction in SG&A in '13, which should bring about a 30 basis point improvement in overall margins to the company. We will execute a portion, obviously, of the $250 million outstanding share buyback program, that will be a component of that this year. On Interiors, I think the simple term and simple word for Interiors and what our goals are this year are very simple, divest. And when it comes to the Dongfeng sale, which I think we've probably talked about in the past, we're going to complete the sale of our 20% direct interest in the Dongfeng Visteon piece. As we look at the pieces, Halla Visteon, this year we're going to complete that transaction that we started. We're looking now at launching $700 million of this backlog as we grow this business at a 7% CAGR over the next few years. And I think, quite honestly, given some of the momentum we've seen recently as the year has started here that we can probably increase that CAGR as we look out over the longer term. And we're also looking at 100 to 150 basis points of margin improvement there over the next few years and beginning the components of that process. These margin improvement programs are driven by just factory floor improvement, by optimizing assets and by discipline. On the Electronics side, we have a positive backlog there starting from over the last few years, I'll expand upon that in a moment. 14% CAGR growth in the cockpit electronics piece, which is our core business there, and again, focusing there on some margin improvement. And on Yanfeng Visteon, we're launching $1 billion in business this year and $1 billion -- over $1 billion next year, looking at increasing our dividends there and increasing the transparency. As we committed to you on January 15, we'll be using this year to roll out more information on Yanfeng. Some of the financials will be included in a K that will be done by the end of June. That's sort of the template of 2013. I would like now to turn to Page 7 quickly to look at the share repurchase program. Just to remind you that we have $250 million outstanding on that program. The first $50 million that we purchased back in the fourth quarter, we purchased at an average price of $49.72 a share, and we'll obviously be up -- we'll update you on this on a quarterly basis. Moving on to the next section here. It says -- as I said, it's been customary for us to focus on a specific segment. This time, it's Electronics. I want to sort of give you a view of what we see as we analyze our options here, understand the business as we do. And the first piece here is on Page 9, is looking at the business -- it really is in 2 components. We have a consolidated Electronics business, which is $1.3 billion in 8 facilities, Asia, Europe, North America, South America. And then we have the nonconsolidated piece. The largest component of that is our Yanfeng piece, but we also have a motorcycle 2-wheel drive operation in Indonesia. But that is about $800 million of revenue and 8 manufacturing sites. Together, when we eliminate the intercompany, we're looking at an Electronics business that's about $1.9 billion with 16 manufacturing facilities around the world. As we go to the next page, on Page 10, you see that the cockpit electronics piece, which is really the core of this business that we're building for the future here, that's a 14% CAGR. And that is, again, a fairly strong component of growth and something that we need to make sure we understand from a value perspective. And I will be honest with you, I don't think in our share price today, this understanding of the value proposition here is there. This is a business that is currently at an 8% EBITDA margin, 9% of revenue is engineering. That's a net number. This is an engineering-intensive business. We spend approximately 12% of sales on engineering, of which 1/4 of that is typically now covered by customers as part of a joint co-development. And it's CapEx -- from a CapEx perspective, it's not a capital-intensive business, it's only about 3%. We're in the top 3 in information and controls and a top 5 player in the overall cockpit, market leader in many respects, and I'll take you through some reaction from customers on a couple of slides back. And there's some key opportunities for growth -- or key opportunities here for value as we understand our options in this business. Again, on the right side of this chart, we'll focus on a couple of terms and that is, we'd look at the information and controls business and we look at the audio and infotainment piece as the area that we participate in. Moving to the next slide, when you look at our Electronics business, it's 11,000 people in 31 sites in 15 countries. We have technical support and sales activities in all the major regions and we do have joint ventures in China, Indonesia and Russia. We're almost half Asia Pacific in this business, 1/4 each in North America and Europe, a small sliver in South America. Our customer base is typically Ford, right today, Renault-Nissan, the Chinese OEMs growing, Mazda, Volkswagen and others. But I will say this, significant expansion is now occurring with some of the order book with Renault-Nissan and the Japanese OEMs and some significant awards with Jaguar Land Rover and Volkswagen. As we go to the next page, this is the cockpit electronics market on the left side. It's a $35 billion piece of the over $100 billion automotive electronics, $35 billion of it is in this cockpit area and is growing quite rapidly. If we look at information and controls, we are the third-place position behind Conti and Denso. When we look at the overall cockpit, we're in the fifth position behind Alpine, Harman, Denso and Conti. This is an industry and a segment that is ripe, we believe, for consolidation. There hasn't been a major consolidation in this area since the Siemens VDO activity in 2007. So this is where we play and this is the strengths we bring to the market. Going to the next page, in why we see the growth and, from our perspective, in value is looking at the business from a couple of perspectives. First of all, separating out the vehicle electronics business, which has been the business that the company has -- is phasing out, which is in many respects a build-to-print low-margin business. And focusing on the cockpit side, cockpit both in the consolidated and nonconsolidated pieces. And you can see over the last few years, the decline of the build-to-print cockpit electronics -- excuse me, vehicle electronics business, has been offset by the growth of the others. But on a top line basis, it doesn't look like there's a lot of activity. But underneath that has been some fairly strong dynamics. And as we look forward, we see some significant growth. As we look to the next page, that growth is -- on Page 14 -- is fueled by a history of strong new business wins over the last few years. You can see from 2009 to 2012 a steady stream of new business wins, fueling what is the cockpit electronic growth for us on the right side of the page. As we look out over 2015, '16 and the new awards that are coming in, we're fairly comfortable with this forecast and outlook. As we go to the next page, Page 15, you see the kinds of products that we are in, the heads-up display, the infotainment pieces, the -- some of the cluster work, I will tell you we have about 700 software engineers in India. Jeff and I and others were there last -- 2 weeks ago going through the next generation. Many of these people came out of the gaming industry. So some of the graphics and some of the excitement in the cluster is very, very real. On the infotainment side, the ability to walk in the vehicle and have that display mimic the iPhone or the Droid or whatever -- Android -- whatever you have in your pocket, immediately pick you up and reflect the same icons on the page. A lot of dynamics going on in this market. We have shown, on the right-hand side, a concept vehicle that I'll talk about shortly, the Visteon e-Bee, which kind of reflects the next generation of where we see this market going. The HABIT cockpit concept and the smart screen concept, all of these technologies now rippling through the industry and representing the kind of technology base the company has. Going on to the next page, we did show at the Electronica in Munich and in the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas the e-Bee vehicle. And the e-Bee vehicle will be with us at the Shanghai show for those who want to come with us. We are going to be out there in April. The e-Bee vehicle reaction has been very strong. Customer feedback has been, "It's the best concept vehicle we've ever seen from a Tier 1." You see the reaction here from some of the other OEMs. It creates a platform of technology. It creates a platform of value, now what do we with it? So going forward, to summarize the electronics positioning, a 14% CAGR growth business for us now. We are embedded in what is now the largest mobile device in the world, the automobile. And we have substantial opportunities here, and our optionality, as been the key to our strategy, is still in place here as to what we do with these assets. And with that, let me turn it over to Jeff now to go through a deeper detail of the financials.