Commercial Vehicle Group Inc (CVGI) 2022 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to CVG's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Andy Cheung, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and welcome, everyone, to our conference call. Joining me on the call today is Harold Bevis, President and CEO of CVG. This morning, we will provide a brief company update as well as commentary regarding our fourth quarter and full year 2022 results, after which we will open the call for questions.

As a reminder, this conference call is being webcast and the supplementary earnings presentation is available on our website. Both may contain forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, expectations for future periods regarding market trends, cost saving initiatives and new product initiatives, among others. Actual results may differ from anticipated results because of certain risks and uncertainties.

These risks and uncertainties may include, but not limited to, economic conditions in the markets in which CVG operates, fluctuations in the production volumes of vehicles for which CVG is a supplier, financial covenant compliance and liquidity, risks associated with conducting business in foreign countries and currencies and other risks as detailed in our SEC filings.

I will now turn the call over to Harold to provide a company update.

Thank you, Andy, and good morning, everyone. As is our usual presentation format, we will be referring to an earnings presentation, which is found on our website. And if you could locate that, I'd appreciate it. I'm going to have my presentation aligned to that document. And while you've find that document, I wanted to say a few overview comments in three areas. One area is additional efforts that we've implemented to increase short-term performance. Second is additional efforts to improve the economics of our long-term revenue and product mix transformation.

And the third is GAAP accounting versus our operating results. Regarding the first point on short-term performance or quarterly performance, you'll see in our earnings release report here today that our Vehicle businesses performed very well, and overall, they were up 17% in sales and 32% in profits. And it's the same story for the full year. Our Vehicle businesses were up in sales and up in operating income. In fact, although CVG's revenues were up about $10 million for the full year, our Vehicle businesses offset a $100 million decline in Industrial Automation.

This weakness in Industrial Automation offset this year-over-year improvement for the quarter and the year. We now expect the weakness in industrial automation to continue, and we have taken additional actions to show higher short-term profit improvement at the same time as we go about our business of changing our revenue and business mix away from Class 8 and customer concentration towards the wider spectrum of commercial vehicles, electrification and automation, especially in the electric vehicle industry. For those of you who have been following CVG in the last few years, you know that we've been focused on combating spike cost inflation and new business start-up costs with logical price increases in a cost-out program.

While this has worked as evidenced by the performance of our Vehicle businesses, it was not enough to advance profits as much as we wanted and it offset the industrial automation demand slowdown. So we've added a few new angles to increase our improved -- to increase and improve our quarterly performance. First, we've upsized and implemented a bigger cost-out cost reduction program. We announced that we are targeting $30 million of cost-out during 2023 with 350-plus programs. This program is underway already, and we began it in Q4 with targeted headcount cuts in both SG&A and COGS.

We expect to show results beginning in this quarter. We have a multifaceted program that includes plant consolidations, headcount cuts, process automation and procurement savings. Secondly, we are curtailing our exposure to high start-up costs in the Vehicle businesses, especially the Seating business. When you peel back the onion a layer, you would see that by far the most start-up cost per dollar of growth is in the Seating business. Seating growth is hard to implement. And furthermore, we have one main new growth customer in the Seating business as the focal point of our start-up cost overruns.

This has been a problematic growth program for CVG, and it's an electric delivery van with a start-up vehicle company. Staying true to our word of fixing or exiting business, whether new or old, we have mutually agreed with this customer to exit their Seating business. This is the right and easy decision for us. We are exiting the passenger seat right now as we speak, and we'll exit the driver seat by the end of this year. Their production problems have been widely published in the press, and I will not elaborate except to say we are exiting this particular customer and this program, and we're in the beginning stages of transitioning to other suppliers for them.

Conversely, we're continuing on with growing in other areas where the pain-gain ratio makes better sense. And this is primarily in electrical systems and electric vehicle growth programs. And we do have some secret sauce here and its working and I'm going to cover it in our investor deck. And by the way, we've already backfilled the exiting seat program with the newly won Electrical Systems growth program with a new customer and well-established delivery van OE. We'll also cover that win in our investor deck. It's one of our larger wins and is even bigger than the business we're exiting.

We designed a prototype to that electrical architecture during 2020 that begins production this year and will run for approximately 8 years, and we believe this program will generate around $53 million a year of accretive margins at full ramp-up. It's with a traditional delivery van company, not a start-up company. Thirdly, we expect the softness in industrial automation business to persist and is well evidenced by comments made by industry bellwether, Amazon. The business is just much smaller now, and we face this reality and restricted our business. We closed a plant, we rightsized our team. We rightsized our inventory profile.

This work was completed in Q4, and we believe that we have rightsized the business now in Q1. We don't need much out of this business segment in 2023 to hit our enterprise improvement plans, and it has moved to our upside category. Now you might be asking yourself, what do I do with this announcement of $30 million of cost-out? When will it happen? Where does it go? Where is it going to be in the P&L? Those are logical questions. For now, we're doing this to underpin steady and improving quarterly profit performance and offset industrial automation. So don't add this to your models on CVG just yet. We will be accountable for this cost-out program.

We've deepened our team, and we intend to report on our progress against our goals. This program is successfully underway right now, and we intend to take actions during '23 for additional long lead time items for the '24 cost-out program. You might also ask yourself, I wonder how '23 is starting out for CVG. Another good, logical question. It's going quite well. The year started out with truck builds at a high rate, which is additive to the performance of our Vehicle businesses above external forecast and above our annual run rate expectations. The North American industry built trucks so far this year at the [350,000] pace.

As stated before, the industry's backlog due to a couple of years of underproduction and if the industry can get parts, they need to be clear to build trucks. So right now, we have higher vehicle production than expected, corrected prices, a larger cost-out program that's already underway, and we believe -- we expect it to offset the industrial automation weakness, and wins -- new business wins program focused on lower cost start-up programs tied to vehicle electrification and automation. We are specifically moderating and narrowing our new seating growth programs given the high start-up cost exposure.

This will blend down over the next few quarters as we finish what we have in-house and culminate with CVG exiting the problematic seating customer that I mentioned already. To increase focus on making money in the Vehicle Solutions business, we've also hired an industry veteran named Russell Ketteringham from BOS Automotive, and he's our new leader of this business unit for North America and Europe and he's on board right now and an announcement will come out this week. We believe that '23 will be significantly better than '22 in the Vehicle Solutions segment and for CVG overall, and we've added firm actions and industry veterans to lead the way.

We're not expecting a big come out -- come back in the Industrial Automation segment, but instead, we expect continued modest contribution at a low level. My last prologue topic is with regards to GAAP accounting versus operating results. For those of you that are a fan of reading Oren Buffett's annual letter like I am, Berkshire Hathaway posted a week ago, and he took his usual stance that underlying operating results and cash flow are better to follow than GAAP accounting. He would be chucked-in right now if he saw the same dynamic alive and well in CVG's year-end results.

And of course, CVG follows GAAP precisely and always will, but it led to a few big year-end GAAP accounting provisions and tax pension closure and inventory profile that deserves some explanation and Andy will do that. But to be clear, none of these GAAP items impacted our business plans, our short-term performance, our long-term performance nor our free cash flow. Further, we believe that the U.S. tax provision freshly set up at year-end '22 will likely reverse itself at year-end '23. And regarding the inventory provision, we're in active inventory recovery negotiations with this customer and have certain legal and commercial rights.

And Andy will elaborate later. So I wanted to say those things upfront and give you a little bit of an overview to the deck and Andy and my presentations, and I want to turn your attention to the investor presentation right now on page 3. Turning to the quarter; our team delivered good operating performance during the quarter, hitting our target volume levels, driving operating margins in line with expectations and making significant progress in our transformation strategy. We delivered net sales of $235 million, up 2.6% year-over-year, again driven by target volume levels and increased price realization during the quarter.

We delivered adjusted EBITDA of $13.3 million, adjusted operating income of $8.4 million, and free cash flow of $28 million, all with no contribution from our Industrial Automation segment. Our fourth quarter results included the previously mentioned seating program start-up costs, which were expensed in the quarter in the Vehicle Solutions segment. We had a busy future growth quarter as well and achieved additional multiple new program awards in our selected areas, especially electrical and electrification. Furthermore, we negotiated meaningful additional price corrections during fourth quarter, which have begun already on January 1, 2023, and we launched an expanded cost-out program, as mentioned earlier, to more than offset continued modest performance in industrial automation.

Looking at the full year of '22, while inflation seems to have peaked and cooling off in certain areas, it temporarily suppressed our quarterly results in our vehicle businesses during the year, and we negotiated price recovery and cut costs to offset these areas. Our team's negotiating and cut costs almost continuously during '22 and achieved meaningful profit recovery in the Vehicle businesses throughout the year all the way up to including year-end '22.

At the same time, we're very focused on improving our long-term revenue mix and profit profile and continued executing our long-term growth strategy of attaining new business, which is primarily focused on long-term agreements to produce electrical systems on electric and autonomous commercial vehicles, primarily in the middle mile and last mile markets. A secondary mix change focus is on the aftermarket business. We had a great year accomplishing improvements against these objectives.

And our team secured an additional set of new growth programs during the full year valued at approximately $150 million of new revenue when vehicle production is in full ramp. Regarding cash flow, we were able to fund all of our activities internally and also pay down debt. For the full year, we paid down $43 million of debt, which exceeded the $25 million to $40 million range that we communicated during '22. Our net debt was reduced to $121 million by year-end '22 and maintaining a low debt level remains a key focus area for CVG in '23.

Turning to page 4 for a few more comments on '22; while we did face several significant hurdles during the year, including a war-induced stoppage at our 1,600 employee Ukraine plant, a temporary COVID-based shutdown at one of our most profitable facilities in China, a high level of inflation and a rapid ramp down in industrial automation, we overcame these issues, and we were able to execute, hold our own and make progress on short-term results and business transformation. Along the way, we delivered record annual revenue results of $982 million and with a growing proportion of revenue tied to financially accretive end markets such as electric vehicles.

As I've already alluded to, we delivered strong new business wins during the year on a multitude of product platforms, and we've institutionalized this with a 5-year goal of securing approximately $100 million per year in new wins going forward. We won business -- we have won business on 300 new programs across 115 new and existing customers and vehicle platforms and 2023 has started out well also, and we have multiple new wins this year already. Additionally, as part of our transformation, we continue to improve or exit underperforming segments of our business. We rightsized the Industrial Automation business. We were able to offset lower profits in this segment with increases in the vehicle businesses.

During the year, we also made significant progress in setting up our new e-commerce aftermarket business, which is nearing launch. We now have a dedicated plan focused on the aftermarket product lines in place and a software platform ready to support the electronics storefront for this new business for us as we gear up for growth and expansion in '23. Turning to page 5; our demand outlook is very promising and is supported by forecasts across our key end vehicle markets and commentary from our large public customers. For North America, Class 8 truck builds, both ACT and FTR are predicting a full year, there will be a slight increase year-over-year and ACT Research has also focused -- forecasting slight year-over-year improvements for North American medium-duty trucks that is a new focus area for us, especially in electrification.

The backlog-to-build ratio in this area is sitting at 8 months and 3x historical average. Commercial vehicle aftermarket is continuing to grow at a modest 4% growth in '23 and beyond. And we are growing and investing in our electric wire harness business and the global commercial and automotive wire harness business is growing at around 4.5% CAGR through 2030. With regard to specific selected segments within that, the global electric truck market is expected to grow at approximately 30% CAGR from '23 to 2030 and CVG is currently winning new business in this very attractive market segment.

The earthmoving and agricultural vehicle market is also expected to grow around 4% from 2023 and beyond. And the market is expected to continue growing, and we expect our legacy growth rates in this area to be in line with long-term outlook. So collectively, across our markets, we expect to see strong growth across electrical systems, earthmoving and the aftermarket business with relatively stable truck markets in '23. Turning to page 6; our top publicly traded customers are seeing higher demand across key end markets and many have already issued positive market outlooks for the year and in line with what the third parties are predicting.

These trends are expected to deliver a third consecutive record -- third consecutive record revenue year for CVG in '23, and we're well positioned to participate in the growing demand with our customers and the industry as well as ramping up a record level of new business wins from new and existing customers. Of our new wins, 50% are concentrated in electrical systems, and they're approaching a healthy balance between ICE and EV power-trains and diversified across multiple end product platforms. Additionally, and most importantly, profitability measured by EBITDA margins on the new wins is accretive at full production rates.

Turning to page 7; we continue to take advantage of secular growth trends in electrification, automation and increased vehicle connectivity. Our success as a new participant in this market has allowed us to self-fund new designs as well as an accretive revenue mix shift towards Electrical Systems. Our combination of fast and accurate product engineering coupled with plans that are fast and accurate is our secret sauce. We're selectively targeting our participation on to low to medium volumes, which is a sweet spot for our targeting and is good margin.

We have full connectivity solutions for both high voltage and low voltage. And as previously mentioned, we're adding a new plant in Europe right now, and it's located in Morocco. CVG targets customers with large total available market or TAM and it covers both electric vehicles and ICE propulsion systems in a variety of markets focused on commercial vehicles. An example of our strategy in action is on page 8. This is an example of one of our 300-plus wins, albeit one of our larger wins and is our most recent. CVG began targeting the electric delivery van market in about 2020.

We began designing low- and high-voltage product lines for these vehicles in 2021. At the same year, we equipped our factories to achieve necessary certifications and make these products, and we became an approved bidder and supplier of many customers. In this example, we won the electric design and development program. We were awarded it. We designed the architecture for the vehicle and the physical connectivity layouts. We then participated in the bidding for the production and won a portion of the program here in early '23. With this new business, it is targeted to be produced in our new plant in Mexico. We believe this business has a lifetime value of over $300 million, and we've added a new well-established customer in this very attractive market to drive future growth.

This is a good example of the type of business wins that we're winning along the way. Highlighted on page 9, and based on our current outlook and the momentum of our new growth programs we secured from our new business, we believe our sales within the Electrical Systems segment will continue to grow to nearly 40% of our revenues in 2027 and significantly outpaced the growth in the overall commercial vehicle market. This would make electric systems the largest business segment within CVG. Electrification and automation not only supports strong growth outlook for years to come, but they bring accretive margins for CVG, which we expect will positively impact our operating margins and return on invested capital.

Furthermore, as we grow electric systems, we expect to see the weighting of Class 8 truck exposure within our revenue mix decline in half from its current 30% to approximately 15% by 2027. We expect this reduction will be driven in part by new wins in electric systems, modest new wins in other areas and is part of a focused effort to shift our mix towards less cyclical and more profitable business. Turning to slide 10; CVG is fully committed to increasing shareholder value short term and long term, and we're committed to improving the profitability of our ongoing business and exiting unprofitable or risky business.

Despite a difficult demand backdrop, we believe our Industrial Automation segment performance has bottomed out. As I mentioned earlier, we have renamed Warehouse Automation segment to Industrial Automation as we look to win business in new areas of automation outside of warehousing. Our approach in Industrial Automation where we've rightsized our rooftops, our people and our inventory while broadening our markets to wider industrial market shows our commitment to improving or exiting unprofitable or nonstrategic business.

We will control our cost structure here tightly and allocate our capital and resources to support focused growth opportunities. We continue to position ourselves to capture the secular trend in electrification and automation and attaching ourselves to strong growth curves, diversifying our customer base and reducing the cyclicality of our business. The resulting cash flow is expected to fund our growth, drive debt paydown and allow for strategic acquisitions, especially in the connectivity space for electrification and automation. And before I turn the call over to Andy, I just want to highlight our road map again on page 11.

We exited '22 in a strong position in our Vehicle businesses and a revamped and downsized industrial automation business. We believe that we're set up to win and make money in '23 and deliver a year of record revenue, higher EBITDA, continued free cash flow and debt paydown. We will continue to target at least $100 million of annual accretive business concentrated with electrical systems, which will diversify our product portfolio, our customer base and improve our growth and profitability exposure.

The resulting cash flow, combined with our disciplined approach to working capital will be prioritized for additional debt paydown and potentially fund bolt-on M&A. We believe we're on track with our growth transformation and in a solid position to deliver $1.5 billion in revenue at a 9% adjusted EBITDA margin in 2027. We are convicted to cut costs in the noncore areas and improve our cost position at the same time.

Now I'd like to turn the call back over to Andy for a more detailed review of our financial results. Andy?

Thank you, Harold, and good morning, everyone. If you are following along the presentation, please turn to slide 13. Fourth quarter 2022 revenues was $234.9 million as compared to $228.9 million from the prior year period. The year-over-year growth was primarily attributable to increased pricing to offset material cost increases. Foreign currency translation unfavorably impacted fourth quarter 2022 revenues by $6.3 million or by 2.7%. The company reported consolidated operating loss of $4 million for the fourth quarter of 2022 compared to income of $6.5 million in the prior year period.

This was primarily due to special items, which includes restructuring costs and an inventory write-down due to the decreased demand in the Industrial Automation segment. Additionally, foreign currency translation unfavorably impacted operating loss by $0.9 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $13.3 million for the fourth quarter, up year-over-year compared to $12.9 million in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA margins were 5.7% as compared to adjusted EBITDA margins of 5.6% in the fourth quarter of 2021. Interest expense was $2.9 million as compared to $1.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2021.

The increase in interest expense was primarily related to higher base interest rates and a higher average debt balance during the fourth quarter of 2022 compared to the fourth quarter of 2021. Net loss for the quarter was $32 million or negative $0.98 per diluted shares as compared to net income of $2.6 million or $0.08 per diluted shares in the prior year period. Despite solid operating performance during the quarter, our reported financial results were negatively impacted by some headwinds. This included continued inflationary pressures, particularly steel pricing, although as Harold already mentioned, we have taken pricing actions to offset these high costs and expect some alleviation in the near term.

Turning to business segment results; our Vehicle Solutions segment, fourth quarter revenues increased 13% to $142.8 million compared to the year ago quarter, primarily due to material cost pass-through and higher volume. Operating income for the fourth quarter decreased to $3.7 million compared to operating income of $5 million in the prior year period, primarily due to a lag in price recovery process, cost inflation and higher than planned start-up costs. Fourth quarter 2022 adjusted operating income, which excludes special costs, decreased 24% to $4.2 million.

Our Electrical Systems segment achieved revenues of $47.1 million, an increase of 23% as compared to the year ago fourth quarter, resulting from material cost pass-through and contributions from new business wins. Operating income was $5.4 million, an increase of $3.7 million compared to the fourth quarter of 2021 due to the previously mentioned material cost pass-through and favorable volume and mix. Adjusted operating income was $5.5 million, an increase of 104% from the year ago fourth quarter. Our Aftermarket and Accessory segment, revenues increased 28% to $34.1 million compared to the year ago quarter, primarily resulting from the increased sales volume and increased pricing to offset material cost.

Operating income was $3.2 million, an increase compared to operating income of $1.9 million in the prior year period. The increase is primarily attributable to the increase in pricing. Adjusted operating income was $3.7 million, an increase of 95% compared to $1.9 million in the year ago fourth quarter. As shown on slide 13, you can see the performance of our three vehicle-related segments on a combined basis. The combined revenues increased 17% to $224 million compared to $191 million in the year ago quarter. Combined adjusted operating income was $13.3 million, an increase of 32% compared to $10.1 million in the prior year period.

The growth in adjusted operating profit demonstrates the powerful impact of the growth in the Electrical Systems and Aftermarket segments as on our bottom line. Our Industrial Automation segment produced fourth quarter revenues of $11 million, a decrease of over 70% as compared to $37.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 due to lower demand levels. Operating loss was $11.9 million, a decrease compared to the operating income of $3.1 million in the year ago quarter, primarily attributable to the previously mentioned lower sales volumes and an inventory charge of $10.4 million. Adjusted operating loss was $0.5 million compared to income of $3.6 million in the prior year period.

Following along in the presentation, slide 14 highlights some key financial trends for the quarter. Fourth quarter revenues came in at $235 million, slightly below the previous quarter on fewer production days. The quarterly adjusted EBITDA margin came in at 5.7%, in line with previous quarter despite the lower revenues in the quarter. Additionally, the quarterly free cash flow has shown improvements during the last few quarters and was $28 million for the fourth quarter, which aided our debt paydown. Turning to slide 15; I would like to highlight a few items on the adjusted EPS [fee], which includes some special items.

First, as a result of evaluating our global deferred tax assets, we took a net non-cash charge of $14.7 million or $0.45 per share. Second, we completed the restructuring of the Industrial Automation business and recognized a non-cash inventory write-down of $10.4 million or $0.29 per share after tax. Finally, we recorded a charge of $8.1 million or $0.24 per share after tax related to the termination of the company's U.S. legacy pension plan. In addition, we also incurred higher start-up expenses in the quarter to support our new business wins. Foreign exchange was also a headwind as the U.S. dollar strengthened against several currencies. Adjusting for these items as well as restructuring our EPS would have been $0.14 per share.

Thank you. I will now turn the call back to Harold for final remarks.

Thank you, Andy, and I'd like to conclude my comments by reiterating that we've had a resilient year in 2022. We've had good recovery efforts, although some of them have lagged on a profit basis and the pace of the progress we've been able to achieve in our strategic plan has been better than we thought and fueled by a strong focus on our transformation strategy and a clear prioritization of our initiatives and our large and vibrant and growing customer base, we're a much stronger company in '23, and we're ready to capitalize on secular growth and higher profits and the trend towards electrification. And we look forward to sharing these successes with you in future calls.

I'll now turn the call over to our operator to open up the line for questions. Thank you.

(Operator Instructions) First question comes from John Franzreb of Sidoti & Company.

Harold, it sounds like you're getting modestly, I'll phrase it more positive about the commercial truck market, be it 5 to 7 or 8. Are you starting to see order bookings into the second half that gives you maybe some sort of improved confidence that you might not have had, say, three months ago?

Yes. We definitely have an improved outlook, and we have basically confirmation from our top customers making public remarks and the year had started out stronger than expectations, and we can -- we have good visibility. Our visibility extends into the second half. And yes, we are seeing a stronger outlook for our core business that we have, and we're seeing attempts for start-ups on our new business as well. So there's strong demand for the vehicles that we have and that we're headed on to.

Good. That's good news. And on the new Industrial Automation business, it sounds like you want to extend into new end markets. But what's the pathway to get access to those markets and generate revenues there?

Right. So we're mainly leveraging our smaller positions that, that business had. We are not investing a lot of time or effort of distractions into brand new areas per se. We had legacy businesses that we're leveraging. We put a new leader into that business last year, Minja Zahirovic and he came with a broader industry background than Warehouse Automation. The whole Warehouse Automation thing was a spike event in retrospect now.

It helped us a little bit while it went through more almost like a crazy brother. But it's back to the business that it was, and we bought it. And so we have a smaller Warehouse Automation business. We still have it, it's just small. And our outlook is that it will stay small for a period of time and just following GAAP accounting that would suggest the provision that we took. And so it's really on the small end of system builds and contract manufacturing, John.

Okay. And just on your aftermarket initiative, can you bring us up to speed on how that's proceeding? That would be helpful.

Yes. We are virtually completed with our inventory profiles. Now we're going to shift from stock aftermarket seats and windshield wipers. And we are -- we put in place our Shopify software, and it's primarily a profit -- it's a profit grab primarily, John. The business is not a high-growth business. It's 4% or 5%. And we are going to be shipping from stock versus building to order with a 8-week lead time.

And we have an experienced leader we brought in there that understands daily pricing and demand-based pricing from his experience as an Amazon shipper, and we will be monitoring our -- we won't run out of inventory because we'll raise our prices before that happens. So we're going to be running an e-commerce business. It's called aftermarkettruckparts.com, and it's going to launch here in a couple of weeks.

Next question comes from Joe Gomes at NOBLE Capital.

Pardon me. So last quarter, we -- you talked about you were in negotiations for about 20% of the revenue to improve the contracts there. You talked about some price increase beginning of this year. Kind of where do you stand on those and the price increases that you've made in January? Are they sufficient to offset all these remaining inflationary pressures or do you think there's going to be more necessary?

Nope, we're now ahead. Our price realization is ahead of our costs, and we fully recovered. And the negotiations that I alluded to that we did in the fourth quarter that took effect on January 1 were as we had expected, and we're fully benefiting from that additional price increase in this quarter.

Okay, great. And you also had talked about eliminating 50% of the ocean freight in early 2023. How do you stand there?

Yes, we've done that, too. We've implemented that program and our in-region production is fully underway, and we have offset half of our ocean freight, and we're benefiting from that cost improvement as well in this quarter. So on the price and cost side, we've had a big improvement coming into this year, Joe, as we had expected in the Vehicle Systems business. Industrial Automation business is still very low level, and we just rip the cost out of it and rightsized it as we should. But our Vehicle businesses are still doing quite well and further rebounding from where we were in the fourth quarter.

Excellent. And last quarter, you talked about a $5 billion pipeline and you didn't put out the same slide in this presentation. Just wondering where is that pipeline today?

Yes. So as we -- both Andy and I both alluded to, we definitely stared at our start-up costs that increased $6 million in '22 versus '21, and we could see a pattern that they were tied heavily into new bespoke seats. We stopped doing bespoke seat programs, and we're using a common platform that we have in-house called Unity. And that took a bunch of the pipeline out. And we also further focus the Industrial Automation business and removed a big portion of our pipeline. So the pipeline now is very dominated by electrification, automation, electric vehicles.

Okay. Thanks for that clarification. And then one last one, and I'll get back in queue kind of again -- looking at the long-term road map that you put out today and you talked about revenue of $1.5 billion 2027 and adjusted EBITDA margin of about 9%. And I compare that to the same road map that you put out last quarter, that road map showed revenue of $1.9 billion in an adjusted operating margin of 8.5%. And I just wonder if you could kind of clarify where the changes come in the two?

Yeah. So let me take that one. So the key thing between the last version of the 1.9 and $1.5 million right now here, clearly reflected our strategy of focused growth. So as Harold alluded to, we are not shining away from exiting our unprofitable business, and we are executing that and we are being a lot more selective in terms of winning business. So we believe that there is a better approach for the overall value of the enterprise.

So we are now creating our new strategy plan, aligning to the new target. And definitely, that will give us more confidence and a more executable roadmap to get to the improvements of over 300 basis points in terms of our bottom line. So that's the new thinking. It's aligned with everything Harold just mentioned. I think this is a lot more focused and more execution of (inaudible). So that's why we put it out there as our new financial targets.

And we're hardwiring it too. So the areas -- the nonelectrical areas in our Vehicle business, where we've curtailed or modified our growth plans going forward, we have cut costs in those areas. And their job in the portfolio is to deliver additional cash and EBITDA growth. So we've clarified the missions of each person in the portfolio and basically removed some of the growth aspirations in Industrial Automation and in Nonelectrical Vehicle businesses. And it's a tight plan and it will generate good free cash flow and improved operating margin, and we're underway with implementing it.

Next question is a follow-up from John Franzreb at Sidoti & Company.

I might have missed this in the presentation, Harold, but what are your thoughts about debt repayment in 2023?

Yeah. It's probably not going to be as strong as last year. We had some low hanging fruit coming out of COVID in all the ocean freight stuff. But we do have a free cash flow plan. You should target it modestly right now. $20 million to $25 million is what we're aiming. We do have upside plans. But right now, the growth that we're incurring. We do -- we are contemplating a growth year here and we do -- we do consume more capital. So we're going to have a use of cash here back into working capital somewhat.

But net-net, we will be generating cash. Similar to last year, the first quarter, we used cash because of the truck building starts out hot and heavy and it's doing that this year too. So our AR goes up. And if you look at the source of our cash last year, and the components of it, it was AR. It was AR. So we got really good about managing accounts receivable going after customers that were overdue. And we had a big customer in Industrial Automation that had extended terms plus didn't pay on time, and they blended out of the profile as well. We're having an explicit improvement plan this year. And Andy, I think it's going to be in that range.

That's why, John that we'll be looking at a more steady paydown over the next couple of years. I think we are approaching a debt level that we're starting to feel comfortable with. So that's where we are right now. And as Harold mentioned so the company will grow for the next couple of years, and we'll be funding all this growth with our own cash. So that's what we are thinking at this point.

Got it. And the cost takeouts of $30 million this year, how much cash is going to be required in the cost takeout? And if I heard you correctly, you're calling it a neutral impact to operating income. Why is that the case?

I'm just suggesting, let's not add to the EBITDA outlook for the year. We're trying to underpin our steady growth that's out there with expectations of us. And we want to increase our ability to deliver. And the plans are underway now. And in first quarter, we're on track. We initiated a pretty significant headcount cuts in Europe that's underway. With regards to the cash use of the program for severance, our severance and salary continuation so there's no additional use of cash. We don't pay (inaudible). They're on the payroll today.

They're on severance tomorrow and they blend off. We do have some CapEx associated with the cost-out programs and our CapEx this year will be similar to last year so no net incremental use of cash, John, to accomplish that. It's more of a business focus, where we're not going to try to grow everything with the same (inaudible). We're going to be very focused where we grow and in other areas where we're cutting the cost down and optimizing our ongoing profits. Andy, would you add to that?

Yeah. So short answer is, well, it will be net cash positive for us the amount of CapEx required to execute the cost reduction is not high. And back to the cost reduction and the EBIT margin comment, John, you can look at this year as a year that we'll continue to optimize our costs with our existing business. That's what Harold was talking about. At the same time, we are building two new factories, right? So there's a little bit of a ramp-up curve there with productivity with the new businesses. So net-net, I think right now, we're looking at pretty stable, slightly positive. But I think as we ramp through those new factories, we'll see a benefit down the road.

We'll modify our comments, John, as we get through a couple of quarters of performance. But for now, we just wanted to break the ice and let everyone know that we're going after our cost structure with gusto in the areas that we're not going to be growing as much.

Okay, got it. And just two quickies, I guess, on the pension settlement, is there any impact from that on the P&L? And regarding to the tax, what does the tax rate kind of look like for the year? And you -- I think you said you expect a reversal again at the end of the year. Can you just easily walk me through those?

Yeah. So a couple of things here. One is we completely finished the settlement of the pension. So now in the U.S., we no longer have a pension liability, which is really a good thing for the company. So you can see in our filing, if we call it the settlement charge for the quarter, as you can see also the filing, the tax implication on that. And the other topic that you mentioned here is the tax rate. I think right now, we have put forth a lot of the large adjustments at year-end, the special items so the biggest one is we evaluated our deferred tax assets on the book.

And based on the valuation we made the determination that is the right thing to do to provide a valuation allowance is in the size of about $14 million, $15 million. We believe that as we are going to the future, the profitability, that allowance may not be necessary in the near future. And then you asked about the tax rate, I think at this point, our effective tax rate will be in the high 20s. That's what we are looking at. But I know that there's a few big items here, but these are all items are all noncash. And as Harold mentioned, there's no impact on operating results short-term or long-term. So we feel comfortable with those.

Next question comes from Steve Emerson of Emerson Investment Group.

Congratulations on an excellent quarter in a tough environment. What proportion in terms of your goal year '27 and '22 were EV-related?

Well, are you saying what portion of our new wins were EV related in '22?

No. Your $1.5 billion objective in '27, how much of that is EV-related?

It's going to be good question. Good question. I'm going to say it's going to be around the electric system is going to be 40%. The electric vehicle portion of that is going to be around half, 20%.

So 20% of the business. And do you have a similar number for '22 or '23?

It's very small. The big picture on what we started in 2020, we had only ever been on off-road ICE vehicles and electrical systems. We jump-started an on-road vehicle program. And with straight after electric vehicle start-ups, it has -- and ICE, but primarily focused on electric vehicles and the majority of our new business wins have been on electric commercial vehicles and secondarily on on-road and secondarily, ICE on-road vehicles, and we are continuing in that manner with no modification. So we have a program that's working and we're kind of (inaudible) always set up so far to continue growing in that area.

The example that we put in the deck with the electric vehicle, electric van example is exactly the type of programs we're pursuing. We're pursuing multiple delivery vans and multiple work trucks. And when we get in there and we get to be an approved supplier and we win an electric vehicle program, we're immediately an approved supplier to bid on the ICE vehicles that are in there as well. So if you look at FedEx, Amazon, UPS, Bimbo Bakery, any of the delivery vans are out there, they're ICE and they all have ambitions to switch to EV, and we're right in there as approved supplier. Our electric systems on the low-voltage side don't care what type of the powertrain it is. There's only a high-voltage opportunity when it's an electric vehicle. So we have solution for both, and we're going for both of them, Steve, equally hard.

Excellent. And I assume by your comments that this year is going to be quite back-end loaded in terms of EBITDA. You've got the two plants starting up and start up, let's say, on the EV van program.

Steve, I would say, this year, I think we're looking at a pretty even quarter throughout the year because we see continued Q1, Q2, very strong production, as Harold already mentioned. Clearly, there is a little bit of a [trough] risk on the market for the second half. But we have improvement program in place, I would say, it's pretty even -- it's not very extreme.

There are no further questions in queue. You may proceed.

Very good. Thank you, everyone, for listening in, and we look forward to performing this year short term and long term and reporting out on our results in our next conference call. With that, Joanna will end the call.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating, and we ask that you please disconnect your lines.