Lear reports $5.7 billion revenue in Q3 2025, raises cash flow outlook amid cybersecurity challenges

OPERATOR - (00:01:12)

Good morning everyone and welcome to the Lear Corporation's third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. All participants will be in a listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note that today's event is being recorded at this time. I'd like to turn the conference call over to Tim Brumbaugh, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Tim Brumbaugh - Vice President, Investor Relations - (00:01:44)

Thanks, Jamie. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us for Lear Corporation's third quarter 2025 earnings call. Presenting today are Ray Scott, Lear, President and CEO and Jason Cardew, Senior Vice President and CFO. Other members of Lear's senior management team have also joined us on the call. Following prepared remarks, we will open the call for Q&A. You can find a copy of the presentation that accompanies these remarks@ir.lear.com Before Ray begins, I'd like to take this opportunity to remind you that as we conduct this call, we will be making forward looking statements to assist you in understanding Lear's expectations for the future as detailed in our Safe harbor statement on Slide 2. Our actual results could differ materially from these forward looking statements due to many factors discussed in our latest 10K and other periodic reports. I also want to remind you that during today's presentation we will refer to non GAAP financial metrics. You are directed to the slides in the appendix of our presentation for the reconciliation of non GAAP items to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. The agenda for today's call is on Slide 3. First, Ray will review highlights from the third quarter and provide a business update. Jason will then review our financial results and provide an update on our full year guidance. Finally, Ray will offer some concluding remarks following the formal presentation. We would be happy to take your questions now. I'd like to invite Ray to begin.

Ray Scott - President and CEO - (00:03:23)

Thanks Tim. Now please turn to slide 5 which highlights key financial metrics for the third quarter. 2025, Lear delivered $5.7 billion of revenue in the third quarter, an increase of 2% from the third quarter of 2024. Core operating earnings were $241 million and our total company operating margin was 4.2%. Adjusted earnings per share was $2.79 and our operating cash flow was $444 million in the quarter, one of our strongest operating cash flows in our history. Our third quarter financial performance was at the higher end of our expectations despite the significant impact of a cybersecurity incident that disrupted production for one of our key customers Jaguar Land Rover for the entire month of September excluding the impact of Jaguar Land Rover disruption, total Lear's third quarter core operating earnings and operating margins would have been higher than than the prior year. Jason will provide the additional details on the impact of this disruption to our third quarter results and our full year outlook. Slide 6 summarizes key financial and business highlights from the quarter. As a reminder, our strategic priorities continue to be extending our global leadership position in seating, expanding margins in each systems, growing our competitive advantage and operational excellence through IDEA by Lear and supporting sustainable value creation with disciplined capital allocation. The momentum of positive net performance we delivered in the first half of the year continued through the third quarter contributing 50 basis points to ceding and 95 basis points to each systems margins. This performance was remarkable considering the third quarter of 2024 was also a very strong, making it very tough comparison for the year. It is a testament to our commitment to operational excellence and the benefits we are capturing from our investments in digital tools, automation and restructuring. Through the third quarter of the year we delivered 70 basis points of net performance in seating and 105 basis points in these systems. Our operating cash flow of $444 million was one of the highest third quarters in Lear's history, second only to the third quarter of 2020 which was skewed by working capital fluctuations resulting from the impact of COVID Our strong cash flow generation allowed us to accelerate our share repurchases which totaled $100 million for the quarter while maintaining our dividend of $0.77 per share. The solid momentum we experienced in the quarter enabled us to raise the midpoint of our full year free cash flow outlook. Had it not been for the impact of the Jaguar Land Rover disruption, we would have further increased the midpoint of our revenue and free cash flow and increased our operating income outlook. We continue to extend our leadership and operational excellence through IDEA by Lear initiatives. To advance our employees understanding and applications of digital and AI technologies, we have launched the IDEA by Lear Fellowship Program with Palantir. This 12 week intensive training will engage 90 Lear team members from across functions including IT, engineering, finance and purchasing empowering them to harness AI capabilities to address real business challenges. This is the first such company focused fellowship program for Palantir. They are excited to work with Lear because our company wide commitment to use digital and AI tools to rapidly improve our business and manufacturing process and further improve our cost structure. I couldn't be more excited about the potential of this program and I will be directly involved to gain the firsthand view into the transformative possibilities of these tools that they offer. We continue to win new business in both segments in these systems. We have been awarded approximately $1.1 billion of business year to date. This is the fourth year of the last five years where Leary Systems has generated over $1 billion of business awards in seating we won new business with several automakers including awards with BMW, Ford Motor Company, Nissan, Hyundai and Jag Land Rover as well as awards with key Chinese domestic automakers. Our modularity strategy continues to drive new business in the quarter. We won four Comfort Flex Awards including a Conquest Award with Hyundai and awards with BMW, Leap Motor and Ceres during the quarter. We took operational control of our second joint venture in China this year. The joint venture supplies key programs for series consolidating. This joint venture is expected to add approximately $75 million to our reported revenue for 2025 and a significant growth in 2026 in each system's key business. Wins include eight wearer awards, among which are conquest awards for Stalinist and four awards with Chinese automakers. We also received two new electronic awards for Power Distribution Boxes on Ford Motor Company's F Series trucks. For the third straight year, Lear led the J.D. Power U.S. Seat Quality and Satisfaction Study with seven top three finishes and our customers continue to recognize us for our dedication to quality and performance. Ferrari honored Lear with their highly coveted Fearless Organization Award, recognizing us as a trusted supplier due to our commitment to transparency and reliability and dedication to quality. Nissan also recognized Lear for our industry leading quality by granting us their 2025 Global Quality Award as well as their 2025 Global Quality Award in North America. During the quarter, we published our 2024 sustainability report providing an update on our commitments to sustainability and governance. Slide 7 provides an update on the key metrics to track our progress on expanding margins and generating long term revenue growth in seating. We won conquest awards for complete seats in Asia and South America as well as for seat components with several automakers across multiple regions in each systems. We won two Conquest Wire Awards with Stellanis in North America and a third Conquest Award with a key Chinese automaker. Awards for our innovative modular seat products continue to grow. We received four additional awards during the third quarter including a Conquest Award combining Lumbar and seat suspension for Hyundai. Our other solutions combine Heat and our Foam comfort layer for BMW and Heat with seat belt reminder functionality for both Series and Leap Motor. These additional wins bring our total to 28 programs for comfort Flex, Comfort Max Seat and Flex Air products. Our strong relationships with Chinese domestic automakers continue to to deliver new business wins in seeding. We won five complete seed awards with baic, Ceres, Dongfeng, Leap Motor and saic. Four of our wiring awards in these systems were with Chinese domestic customers. IDEA by Lear and our investments in automation generated $20 million of savings in the third quarter, keeping us on track to deliver a approximately $70 million of savings for the full year. Restructuring investments contributed approximately $25 million in savings in the third quarter, positioning us to achieve $85 million of savings in the full year. As a result of our strong operating performance, we are increasing our full year net performance outlook from $150 million to $170 million. This reflects the positive momentum in the benefits of both IDEA by Lear investments and restructuring actions. Our global hourly headcount reduction is 3,400 through the third quarter. Despite an increase in headcount due to the consolidation of our second joint venture in China. We anticipate the fourth quarter restructuring actions will allow us to approach our target by the end of the year. We continue to outperform our scorecard metrics. These strong results are key enablers to improve margins and drive long term growth in both segments. On slide 8, I'll highlight the strategic opportunities emerging as automakers accelerate their U.S. production plans. We are currently in advanced discussions with a North American automaker who is looking to increase volume on one of their signature platforms here in the United States. We believe the award is imminent and we will provide an update when it's appropriate. We view this as the first of several incremental opportunities. While estimates vary, the total addressable market for increased US Production is significant. Automakers continue to announce commitments to increase their production footprints in the United States. We are currently in active discussions with multiple OEMs including a luxury European automaker leveraging their existing US facility, several Asia based manufacturers expanding their footprint, and North American automakers adjusting their portfolio to supply both seating and E systems content. Lear is well positioned to maintain or increase our market share due to this shift. Our strong customer relationships, proven execution and extensive US Manufacturing footprint gives us a distinct competitive advantage by investing in the automation and designing capital specifically optimized for our manufacturing processes rather than relying on the off the shelf solutions. We enhance operational efficiencies and we reduce our costs and we accelerate our speed to market. We remain the only supplier to have launched a full seat assembly plant in under nine months in the U.S. a testament to our agility and operational excellence. We see the onshoring trend as a multi year growth catalyst and a compelling opportunity to drive incremental revenue and margin expansion while supporting the administration's goal of increasing US manufacturing. Slide 9 provides an update on two of our key pillars of our Idea by Layer strategy. Our Process Innovation Leveraging digital tools and automation is transforming our operations, enhancing our competitiveness and delivering meaningful value creation. Lear's relentless focus on being the industry leader in technology driven operational excellence is accelerated by our partnership with Palantir. The Lear Fellowship program is a strong endorsement of our culture to embrace operational excellence. Today we have over 14,000 users fully embedded on the foundry platform, driving performance across more than 10 global centers of excellence. We've deployed over 250 digital tools and AI use cases across product engineering, material purchasing, manufacturing testing and inventory management, each contributing to smarter, faster and more efficient decision making. Over the past seven years we've acquired eight companies, each focused on advancing product and process innovation. Our global automation and digital team now includes more than 700 specialists. We've developed proprietary AI tools like Figora, Roboscan and Learview. Figora's Roboscan uses exclusive algorithms and automation to optimize the cutting patterns for our leather hides. Learview is a vision system that enhances our defect detection capabilities and ensures proper color and motion of our seats amongst other end of line function tests. And we built the industry's first automated automated assembly of our Flex, Air, Comfort, Flex and ComfortMax systems to demonstrate our innovative manufacturing capabilities to our customers and eventually to our investors in a production setting. By integrating approximately 80% of the of our capital, which is designed specifically for our manufacturing processes, into our complete seat operations at a 20 to 30% cost advantage, we have a significant competitive advantage in both efficiency and scalability. These efforts are already delivering results. We expect approximately $70 million in cost savings this year, with an additional 65 to $75 million of savings annually in 20, 26 and 27. In addition to the cost benefits, these initiatives improve working capital and free cash flow. Our product and process innovations improve our underlying cost structure resulting in stronger financial returns for new business quotes. These tools also enhance the safety, quality and ergonomics of our world class operations and improve employee retention. Our digital and automation strategy is not just about operational excellence is a key driver of our long term value creation. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Jason for a financial review.

Jason Cardew - Senior Vice President and CFO - (00:17:18)

Thanks Ray. Slide 11 shows vehicle production, and key exchange rates for the third quarter.. Global production increased 4% compared to the same period last year, driven primarily by higher year over year production in North America and China. Production volumes increased by 5% in North America, 1% in Europe and 10% in China. The US dollar weakened against the euro and was flat against the RMB. Turning to Slide 12, I will highlight our financial results for the third quarter 2025. Our sales increased 2% year over year to $5.7 billion excluding the impact of foreign exchange, commodities tariff recoveries, acquisitions and divestitures. Sales were down 1% reflecting the impact. Of the JLR production disruption and lower volumes. On other lair platforms and the wind down of discontinued product lines in these systems, partially offset by the addition of new business in both of our business segments. The JLR disruption reduced our revenue by $111 million in the quarter. Core operating earnings were $241 million compared to 257 million last year, driven by the impact of the JLR production disruption and lower volumes on other Lear platforms, partially offset by positive net performance in our margin accretive backlog. The JLR disruption, including the impact of trapped labor, reduced our core operating earnings by $31 million in the quarter. Adjusted earnings per share were $2.79 as compared to $2.89 a year ago, reflecting lower adjusted net income partially offset by the benefit of our share repurchase program. Third quarter operating cash flow was $444 million, a significant increase to the $183 million generated last year due to improvement in working capital, partially offset by lower core operating earnings. Slide 13 explains the variance in sales and adjusted operating margins for the third quarter. In the seating segment, sales for the third quarter were $4.2 billion, an increase of 138 million or 3% from 2024. Without the JLR disruption, sales would have increased 5% year over year excluding the impact of foreign exchange, commodities tariff recoveries, acquisitions and divestitures. Sales were up 2% due to higher volumes on Lear platforms including the Ford Explorer and Aviator as well as the GM full size trucks and SUVs in North America, the Hyundai Palisade and Xiaomi SU7 in Asia and the addition of new business such as the BYD Tide 3 in the Series M7 in China and the Citroen C3 Aircross in Europe, partially offset by the impact of the disruption to JLR's production. Adjusted earnings were $261 million flat compared to 2024 with adjusted operating margins of 6.1%. Operating margins were lower compared to last year primarily due to lower volumes and the mix of production by program including the disruption to JLR, partially offset by strong net performance.