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Visteon Corporation (VC)

Q2 2025 Earnings Call· Fri, Jul 25, 2025

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Thank you for standing by. My name is Greg, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Visteon's Second Quarter 2025 Results Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Kris Doyle, Vice President of Investor Relations and FP&A. Kris?

Kristopher Doyle

Analyst

Good morning. I'm Kris Doyle, Vice President of Investor Relations and FP&A. Welcome to our earnings call for the second quarter of 2025. Before we begin this morning's call, I'd like to remind you that today's presentation contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to various risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed. Please refer to the page titled Forward-Looking Information in our earnings material for more detail. Presentation materials for today's call were posted this morning on the Investors section of Visteon's website. You can download them at investors.visteon.com if you haven't already done so. Joining us today are Sachin Lawande, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Jerome Rouquet, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We scheduled the call for one hour, and we'll open the lines for questions after Sachin's and Jerome's prepared remarks. Please limit your participation to one question and one follow-up. Thank you again for joining us. Now I'll turn the call over to Sachin.

Sachin S. Lawande

Analyst

Thank you, Kris, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our second quarter 2025 earnings call. Visteon delivered another quarter of strong operating and financial performance demonstrating the strength of our business while continuing to execute on our long-term strategy. Net sales of $969 million came in higher than we had anticipated at the beginning of the quarter, driven by strong demand for our digital cockpit products, particularly in North America and Europe. Despite the robust sales performance, lower BMS sales in the U.S. and the ongoing market dynamics in China resulted in sales slightly underperforming customer vehicle production. This trend is expected to reverse in Q3 and for the second half, driven by new product launches and improving comps. Adjusted EBITDA was $134 million, representing a margin of 13.8% and adjusted free cash flow was $67 million for the quarter. As a result of our strong first half and outlook for the remainder of the year, we are reinstating and increasing guidance for the full year. Operationally, the company performed very well, launching 21 new products, expanding profit margins through various productivity measures and winning $2 billion in new business in the quarter. We continue to invest in the business, both organically and inorganically, while returning capital to shareholders. We closed another bolt-on engineering services acquisition, our second in the past 12 months. In addition, we are initiating a quarterly dividend starting in Q3, highlighting our confidence in generating free cash flow and our commitment to returning capital to shareholders. Turning to Page 3. Our Q2 sales came in better than we had anticipated at the time of our first quarter earnings call earlier this year despite the tariffs that went into effect in April and May of this year. To recap the tariff situation in early April,…

Jerome J. Rouquet

Analyst

Thank you, Sachin, and good morning, everyone. Similar to quarter 1, our second quarter was another strong quarter, both operationally and financially, allowing us to post excellent key metrics. Sales were $969 million, reflecting a 4% sequential improvement from Q1. It was better than anticipated and driven by robust demand for our digital cockpit products. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $134 million, reflecting continued operational execution and cost discipline. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was a solid 13.8%, matching the record margin percentage that we set last quarter. We did benefit from some nonrecurring items and when normalizing for these items, our margins were in the mid-12% range, in line with our expectations. Adjusted free cash flow was $67 million, driven by a robust EBITDA performance as well as an inflow from working capital. In the quarter, we completed another bolt-on acquisition with a purchase price of $50 million, net of cash acquired. We ended the quarter with $361 million of net cash on the balance sheet, and we are well positioned to continue executing on our balanced capital allocation strategy. Overall, we delivered another strong quarter, driven by our ongoing focus on commercial and operational discipline as well as capital efficiency. Turning to Page 10. Sales were $969 million for the quarter, a decrease of $45 million compared to prior year. Customer production volumes were slightly negative year-over-year, declining in the low single digits in both the Americas and Europe, while production increased in Asia. Growth versus market was negative 1% in the quarter. Recently launched programs with Ford, VW, Renault and Nissan were positive contributors, while sales declines in BMS and China offset this growth. As a reminder, BMS sales peaked in Q2 last year as our U.S. customers ramped up production of batteries in anticipation…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] It looks like our first question today comes from the line of Itay Michaeli with TD Cowen.

Itay Michaeli

Analyst

Congrats on the quarter. Just first, maybe for Sachin. Another quarter of very strong bookings. It looks like you're gaining market share. I was hoping you could talk about, a, the drivers behind Visteon's recent market share gains and b, what these strong bookings do to kind of your longer-term growth expectations beyond the 5% previously guided for from 2025 through 2027?

Sachin S. Lawande

Analyst

Yes, in fact, we're very happy about how the new business bookings have performed. And if you look at our Q2 performance, it was very similar to Q1, driven mostly by displays and also clusters. And what it does is really reflects the transformation that's ongoing in the industry with the revised outlook for EVs outside of China. In China, as you know, EVs continue to grow and more importantly for us, our interest in AI-driven infotainment and autonomous driving is growing, which is our focus in that region. So what this transformation is doing, however, in the regions outside of China, it's causing OEMs to shift their focus to extend existing platforms and refresh them and displays are a great way to enable them to offer more value-added and innovative experiences inside the vehicles. And as we have also mentioned earlier, the investments we have been making in displays is really setting us apart from our competitors in terms of the depth and the scale of our capabilities, which I won't repeat here. But I would like to also say that we should look at our new business win performance over a multiyear period. I think it's actually quite useful to think about how it has evolved. If you go back a couple of years to 2023, they were actually driven by SmartCore and CDC and infotainment wins. Now that ratio at the time -- I should say, at the time in 2023, displays were actually a small portion of our new business wins. That ratio became a little more even in 2024. And we are still in the process of implementing the infotainment and CDC programs that we won then. And this year, our displays is taking the lead. But we fully expect as we go forward to…

Itay Michaeli

Analyst

Terrific. Maybe a quick follow-up for Jerome. With today's capital allocation announcement, can you just remind us how you're thinking about targeted net cash and future leverage, particularly with the business outlook improving?

Jerome J. Rouquet

Analyst

Yes. No, thanks, Itay. Generally, we have given a $100 million net cash position as kind of our minimum target for net cash. And as you know, today, we are well in excess of this. So that is not the only reason, but one of the reasons why we feel very confident with initiating a dividend. We've been constantly generating good EBITDA as well as strong cash flows in the last few quarters and years, in fact, and we expect this to continue. So that's really a testament of the strong cash flow generation. We have still $125 million authorized on our $20 million share repurchase authorization, and we'll be reactivating this quarter on top of initiating the dividends.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Mark Delaney with Goldman Sachs.

Mark Trevor Delaney

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Visteon has talked about the success it's had with Toyota, and you mentioned at a recent conference that Toyota could account for about 10% of your total revenue in 2028. Given how big and important Toyota is as a global OEM, I am hoping to better understand if you think there's the opportunity to further penetrate that customer beyond what you've done so far? And if success with Toyota could also position Visteon to get additional wins with other Japanese auto OEMs?

Sachin S. Lawande

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Yes. Mark, that's a good question, and let me take that first. So if you look at the progress that we have made with Toyota, it has really been on a few of their, I would say, very high-profile vehicles such as Global Camry, Land Cruiser. We also won content on the Tundra, Sequoia for North America and Corolla for China. And our wins have been mostly for digital clusters and to a smaller extent, displays. I should also mention we have won displays for the Nexus brand as well. So of the various products that we offer, it's still relatively, I would say, modest portion of the total opportunity that we see at Toyota. So we believe that this year, okay, we have done well with them so far. Last year, it was a very strong year in terms of new business wins, and we expect to continue to win business with Toyota as we go forward. At this stage, really what we need to be focused on is the execution of the many programs that we have won and the successful launch and introduction into the market. So far, so good. So we're very happy with where the relationship is standing today. And I'm looking forward to continuing this relationship and establishing even a stronger bond and a relationship here in the coming quarters. So I think everything so far is going as per we would have liked it to go and nothing more to comment on that, and we continue to remain very optimistic about the future.

Mark Trevor Delaney

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

My other question was on EBITDA margins. I believe EBITDA margin guidance is now about 13% at the midpoint compared to guidance in the mid-12% range that have been provided back in February. Jerome, you mentioned 1Q had some onetime benefits, but the full year is also tracking stronger. So can you help us better understand the different drivers of the improved EBITDA margin outlook? And also how much is coming from some of the M&A that you spoke about?

Jerome J. Rouquet

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Yes, absolutely, yes. So we've raised EBITDA to your point, and we're now at $490 million or 13% at the midpoint. So an improvement of $25 million or about 60 basis points. So what we're doing in the guidance, we're integrating the very strong H1 performance that we had so far. And we had a very good operational run rate, in fact, in H1. So we are keeping that going. We also are adding, obviously, the nonrecurring items that we had in H1. I didn't give a specific number in my prepared remarks, but we're talking about $10 million in Q2 of nonrecurring items on top of the $15 million that we had in Q1. So about a $25 million of nonrecurring item. However, some of that was contemplated, I would say, in our original full year guidance, maybe $5 million to $10 million. So if you think about H1 and H2, we have also included the small benefit of the acquisition. It's not very material in the scheme of things. We are adding a little bit of exchange and also contemplating a little bit more engineering and SG&A, largely to account to -- for specific investments we're doing in AI, for example, in engineering. So if you step back and look at our -- what we call our normalized margins, which are essentially excluding the nonrecurring items, we're running at 12.5% in the first half of the year. And adjusting portfolio, that will be slightly lower in the second half. We'll be running at 12%. So that gives you the overall 13%, including the nonrecurring items that we've guided to for 2025.

Mark Trevor Delaney

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

And sorry, Jerome, can you just clarify what the nonrecurring items are?

Jerome J. Rouquet

Analyst · Goldman Sachs.

Yes. So nonrecurring items are very similar to what we had in Q1. I would say about 2/3 of them are commercial items for items or costs that we have incurred on specific programs in prior years when the program didn't really materialize or go as planned. So we're negotiating recoveries with customers, and these are kind of claims, if you want. They are not large individually, but they add up, and we've been quite successful in Q1 and Q2, negotiating these items. We -- It's quite unusual to have such a large number of claims or commercial items, negotiating -- negotiated in Q1 and Q2. And therefore, we don't anticipate having much in Q3 and Q4 on this front.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Emmanuel Rosner with Wolfe Research.

Emmanuel Rosner

Analyst · Wolfe Research.

Just maybe just a quick clarification on your last point, Jerome, just to make sure I understand. So you named essentially about $25 million worth of onetimes in the first half, but the guidance is basically on the EBITDA level raised by the same sort of amount. So were these mostly like timing where it was unusual that it was all in the first half, but you would have had them in the full year? Or are those incremental? And then basically, the onetimes are most of what's driving this improvement in guidance?

Jerome J. Rouquet

Analyst · Wolfe Research.

Yes. So as I just said, there's about $5 million to $10 million that was contemplated already in our guidance. So you cannot really add the $25 million on the full year. You can add probably $15 million to $20 million. The rest is essentially a little bit of higher volume, partially offset by a little bit more cost on SG&A and engineering, but nothing material there.

Emmanuel Rosner

Analyst · Wolfe Research.

The second question I was hoping to double click a little bit on BMS. So I understand the challenging comparison in the second quarter. Can you maybe talk a little bit about how to think about cadence of comparisons on a go-forward basis for the rest of the year, but also a little bit longer term as well in the context of some of these new U.S. regulations that could squeeze EV demand. So I think you have that as, I guess, potential headwind for EV volumes, but then you also, I guess, still launching the program. So how do you think about the overall trajectory of BMS from here?

Sachin S. Lawande

Analyst · Wolfe Research.

Yes. Yes. Let me take that, Emmanuel. This is Sachin. So yes, so first of all, I would like to share with you how this first half has performed relative to last year with BAMS. So last year, both our customers in North America, GM and Stellantis were in ramp- up mode in their battery manufacturing and the supply chain for battery tends to be pretty long, especially when it's in the ramp-up phase. So the level of demand that we had from these customers last year didn't necessarily reflect their vehicle production last year. Now what we are seeing this year with the inventory being built up and completed, is that our demand and our production of BMS, therefore, is reflecting what the vehicles or what these two OEMs are building this year as vehicles. So one thing I would say is, although it's lower on account of the reason I just mentioned with the buildup of inventory last year, Q2, sequentially, was higher than Q1, and it's very much in line with what we see as the demand that's driven from the sell-through of the vehicles at our customers. And we will have to see to your point about the go-forward basis what happens. We will have to see how these OEMs respond to these credits being -- this incentive being taken away by end of September. You probably know that the manufacturer credits still apply the 4 to 5x, and that remains. And we do anticipate that carmakers will continue to improve affordability of their vehicles. And as those investments that they are making in driving better affordability with the demand that we continue to see, especially in younger demographic, I do believe that EVs will continue to be part of the mix of powertrains that our customers will offer. And ultimately, consumers will have a choice to pick the powertrain that best meets their lifestyle. So I think we may have a short-term uncertainty, but longer term, I think it will stabilize. If you look at other parts of the world, Europe, of course, China, even emerging markets, demand for EVs has grown -- has not gone with the other way, incentives tend to be short term. At some point, this momentum picks steam and you hit critical mass. I do believe we have achieved that even here, especially with infrastructure improving and the understanding of the lower operating cost of EVs starting to become a little more widespread, I think we will see ongoing demand for it. Can't really quantify at this stage exactly what that's going to be, but we'll be in a better position as we go forward to make a better estimate of that.

Jerome J. Rouquet

Analyst · Wolfe Research.

And in terms of assumptions as well in our outlook and guidance, we have assumed that our BMS sales would be for Q3 and Q4, similar to what we've seen in Q2. And as Sachin said, it was a slight improvement from Q1. I think the good news these days is that there's more of a parity between production and demand. So that's very encouraging.

Operator

Operator

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

Joseph Robert Spak

Analyst · UBS.

Actually I wanted to pick up a little bit there just on the BMS and EV discussion. I mean, if we think of Sachin about what you sort of just said, right, is whatever you're sort of implying for like a 4Q run rate on that business like bottom and we can be stable from there? And like how should we think and annualize that as sort of a go-forward rate unless we see some sort of recovery? Like -- and if so, like how should we think about how big that number is? And I guess just given this business didn't really maybe pan out as many thought a few years ago, I mean, it sounds like maybe you're getting some -- you mentioned you're getting recoveries for prior programs. I'm not sure it relates to this. But I guess I'm just wondering, are you rightsizing or restructuring your footprint for that business.

Sachin S. Lawande

Analyst · UBS.

Yes, yes. Let me answer that second part of the question first. So in terms of how we think about go forward, for our electrification business, given the fact that the volumes are not going to be at the levels that we had originally expected. What we are doing is to expand our offering in that vehicle category to go beyond BMS into more power electronics as well. And so we expect to have greater content on those vehicles, where today, we may just have BMS to add other products to the mix and therefore, have greater content per vehicle. So we are well on our way in terms of executing on that strategy, both in Europe as well as in the U.S. And so that should help us in terms of offsetting some of the loss that we will see in pure BMS sales as we go forward. However, there is a window in time because those wins have to be launched in terms of power electronics and converted into revenue. In the meantime, we're still largely dependent on BMS. So for that portion, for the rest of the year, we do expect, as Jerome mentioned that Q1, Q2 run rate will essentially be at the same levels, at least for the rest of the year. Now going forward, beyond that, if you think about where this level is in terms of the overall share of the vehicle sales, that's less than 5% of the customers' sales in the region. And look at the overall market, we are still tracking at a penetration of 7%, 8% as a portion of the total sales. So we think that, that is probably a reasonable expectation for us so that it should be able to either hold or slightly improve from these levels. What's interesting is we have seen really good traction in the more affordable vehicle models that have been launched. And still there are very few that's available as a choice for consumers. So as they expand their vehicle models and especially in the case of GM, that is the new Bolt, for example, that's coming into production. We think that we will have more options and consumers will be able to pick from a wide variety of choice of better range performance and other things that we think that it may be a good thing to look at this level as kind of the floor.

Joseph Robert Spak

Analyst · UBS.

Okay. That's helpful. The second question is just on sort of your broadening of the customer base, penetration with new customers that you've historically been underexposed to. You mentioned Toyota, you mentioned some others. And I want to marry that thought with the more recent news that it seems like a lot of these players might be making further investments into the US. And does that perhaps make your opportunity with them even larger or maybe even a little bit more accelerated given that you may already have some footprint here that existing suppliers may not?

Sachin S. Lawande

Analyst · UBS.

Yes, yes. Overall, this trend towards having more of the supply be based in the region where you are building vehicles has been a big benefit for us, not just for the U.S., but also in other parts of the world, including Europe. So we have seen recently, for example, Chinese OEMs wanting to get suppliers in Europe supply components. We see the same thing here in the U.S. And with this recent news that you are alluding to, it definitely is a positive for us as well, especially given the investments we have made in vertical integration in many areas that we have mentioned on this call and previously as well. This is all very helpful for us in terms of future demand.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Colin Langan with Wells Fargo.

Colin M. Langan

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Maybe just to understand the sales guidance versus initial expectations. What are the major puts and takes just in terms of the market expectations, sounded pretty similar. FX, I think, was a negative 1% or something like that. Now that's flat and then recoveries are unchanged and growth over market is slightly worse. So the main factors in the change here is better FX and M&A offset a little bit by the growth over market? Or is there other things that we're missing in terms of the puts and takes?

Jerome J. Rouquet

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Colin, it's Jerome. You've essentially summarized it pretty well. We have a $25 million improvement at the midpoint of the guidance. We've got favorable currency going into the second half, and that will represent versus our previous guidance, about 1% improvement. The acquisition is fairly minor in the scheme of things. And all this is partially offset by a growth over market being slightly lower, mostly on the BMS side. We were -- and we are slightly more conservative than what IHS has given just for BMS. So that's -- yes, these are essentially kind of the puts and takes.

Colin M. Langan

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Got it. And there's obviously headwinds in China, headwinds from sort of BMS demand. But could you frame the percent of sales that these issues are? Because I think China last year was only 11% of sales. So it feels like it's kind of shrunk to the point that maybe the impact of declines there is mitigating. And then BMS isn't that still a fairly small business, like maybe less than 3% of sales or something like that? Or any framing of the size of these businesses?

Sachin S. Lawande

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Yes. BMS is very small in the China context for us. So I would say for us, in China, it has been mainly the cockpit domain controller as our main product. And we have seen also a sort of a bottoming out of the demand, and we're expecting going forward here, additional launches. I mentioned this more powerful system that we are introducing with our largest customer. There are other launches as well. We did get some small benefit in terms of BMS in China this quarter. There were some vehicles that were launched by GM that uses our BMS that did well in Q2, and we'll have to see how it does in the second half of the year. So I would say things are -- after a few quarters of a decline -- sequential decline, things are flattening and then starting to turn the corner for us in China. So we are cautiously optimistic.

Jerome J. Rouquet

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

And I think that's the key. The year-over-year comparisons are pretty tough with China and BMS as well globally. But we are -- as Sachin said, we are seeing, in fact, for both China and as well BMS a slight improvement in Q2. We are planning to be fairly flat on the BMS side going forward, but we do see some minor increases in China for Q3 and Q4. Overall, China as Sachin said, 9% and BMS mid- to high single digit globally. Obviously, the business being mostly with our U.S. customers, which are GM, Stellantis and Honda as well. We do supply ultimately through Honda, through GM.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Luke Junk with Baird.

Luke L. Junk

Analyst · Baird.

Maybe just one question for me. We've covered a lot already. Sachin, I would just be interested in getting your updated perspective on moving at China speed incrementally. And just generally, playing some offense in China as the cyclical and mix headwinds start to bottom out here. I guess I'm thinking about both the software side where I know you've made a lot of investments in modularity, but maybe if we could talk about hardware in parallel as well.

Sachin S. Lawande

Analyst · Baird.

Yes. No, I think both are very good questions, Luke. And I will talk about the progress that we're making, especially with what you referred to as China speed. I'm giving you a couple of examples. One is the recent display win that we had with Geely that we talked about in the previous quarter. We won it last quarter, and we will launch it essentially next year, right? So at a speed, which I think very few people even in China can match. The second one is we are working on cockpit domain controllers in China that are designed, developed and launched under 2 years, which we can do largely because we have adapted ourselves to operating at China speed in China. And we have a platform approach, as you know, that goes now a few years and continues to get stronger. Today, we are at a point, especially for cockpit domain controllers that we can using our platform get to about 70% of the customers' requirements right out of the gate. So the very first release that we typically have, which is within 3 months of winning a business, we are able to meet a large number of the requirements. A great example is one that we are currently developing with another one of these targeted growth OEMs in Japan, Mitsubishi, where we have won for the very first time, an infotainment system business with them, which, by the way, I think will have many additional opportunities on the backs of as we go forward, including CDC opportunities with them. This program, just to give you some context, when we won it in Q1, already in this quarter, we are able to showcase to them a running system on a hardware, with all of the design choices that…

Jerome J. Rouquet

Analyst · Baird.

And I think in these cases as well, it was not only innovation, cost, quality that differentiated us, but as well speed to market for all these customers. So I think that highly speaks to what we've been able to achieve.

Operator

Operator

And that does conclude the question-and-answer portion of today's call. I will now turn it back over to Kris Doyle. Kris?

Kristopher Doyle

Analyst

Thanks. Thanks for participating in today's call. I'd like to quickly point your attention to Slide 26 in which we highlight several Investor Relations activities for the third quarter. If you are interested in learning more, please contact the Investor Relations team. This now concludes our earnings call for the second quarter of 2025. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thanks, Kris. And again, as Kris mentioned, this concludes Visteon's Second Quarter 2025 Results Earnings Call. You may now disconnect.