Dana Inc (DAN) 2025 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good morning, and welcome to Dana Incorporated's fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 financial webcast and conference call. My name is Regina, and I will be your conference facilitator. Please be advised that our meeting today, both the speakers' remarks and Q&A session, will be recorded for replay purposes. For those participants who would like to access the call from the webcast, please reference the URL on our website and sign in as a guest.

There will be a question-and-answer period after the speakers' remarks, and we will take questions from the telephone only. (Operator Instructions)

At this time, I'd like to begin the presentation by turning the call over to Dana's Senior Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications, Craig Barber. Please go ahead, Mr. Barber.

Thank you, Regina. Good morning, and welcome, everyone. Today's presentation includes forward-looking statements about our expectations for Dana's future performance. Actual results could differ from what we discuss today. For more details about the factors that may affect future results, please refer to our Safe Harbor statement found in our public filings and in our reports with the SEC.

I encourage you to visit our investor website, where you'll find this morning's press release and presentation. As stated, today's call is being recorded and the supporting materials are the property of Dana Incorporated. They may not be recorded, copied, or rebroadcast without our written consent.

With us this morning is Bruce McDonald, Dana's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Byron Foster, Senior Vice President and President of Light Vehicle Systems Group; and Timothy Kraus, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Bruce, I'll now turn the call over to you.

Thanks, Craig. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us on our Q4 earnings call. With us today, in addition to the usual cast of characters, we have Byron Foster, our incoming CEO with us. I've known Byron and worked with him for many years. He and the rest of the management team here at Dana have been instrumental in our cost reduction activities and our transformation plans, as well as the development of our Dana 2030 strategy.

And so I think the Board and myself have the utmost confidence in the team under Byron's leadership and I'm very confident in the team's ability to deliver on the financial objectives that we're going to share with you today.

Turning to the business overview. Our final results for the fourth quarter came in higher than our preliminary estimates. So you can see here for the fourth quarter, our margins at 11.1% or $10 million -- 40 basis points higher, $10 million higher than the announced -- preannouncement numbers. In terms of full year cash flow, we came in at $331 million, which is $16 million higher. And I'd point out that, that cash flow is the highest the company has delivered since 2013.

We completed the sale of the Off-Highway business on January 1 and used the most of the proceeds to repay down debt and Tim will take you through what our new debt profile looks like later on in the pack.

In terms of cost reduction, a great job by the team. We had originally committed to a $200 million run rate. We upped that to $300 million, and we delivered $248 million in the year and a run rate of $325 million going into 2026.

We've talked before about our stranded costs post the sale of Off-Highway being about $40 million. We're very confident in our guidance. We're assuming that we're going to be able to substantially eliminate those in next year.

In terms of new business, we shared our backlog a couple of weeks ago at $750 million. So despite, I'd say, the turmoil in the EV side of our business, the teams secured a higher backlog than we had last year, of which $200 million is going to flow through in 2026.

And then I think if you look at our capital return, we returned just under -- just over $700 million for our shareholders last year, and we've grown our dividend. So I think where Dana sits exiting 2025, I think we're extremely well positioned. We have strong momentum, and I think we've got a strong plan going forward here.

Just a little bit more on the capital return plan, which we upped to $2 billion of share repurchase through 2030. And that really reflects our confidence in the delivery of the longer-term financial targets that we're going to share on the call later today.

For 2025, we bought back just a shade over 34 million share, which on an average cost of $18.96 and paid $54 million in dividends. In the first quarter here, we've already bought back $100 million worth of share at a little bit over $27 a share. In the balance of the year, we forecast buying back another couple of hundred million, which at current price is $5 million, $6 million, something like that.

Lastly, on the dividend, we upped our dividend by 20% to $0.12 a quarter. And the way we're thinking about this is we're going to grow our dividend as our share count declined. So we've got a lot of confidence in the value that we're creating. I think if you look at the company right now, we -- while we're able to accelerate growth investments and margin enhancement substance in our business, we're also deleveraging, growing our dividend, and comfortably buying back a significant amount of stock every year.

So with that, Byron, I'll turn it over to you.

Okay. Thanks, Bruce, and good morning, everybody. So just to cover on page 6, a little bit on the market outlook as we look at the 2026 plan. So on the light truck side, we continue to see the light truck market holding steady, and our plan is built around really flat volume year over year from 2025 levels. And I would say we're seeing a consistent operating environment and volume from our customers, which is allowing us to run at a good steady clip.

On the commercial vehicle side, as well, we've built the plan around flat volumes to 2025 levels. However, I would say there is some optimism that towards the back half of the year, perhaps we'll see some improved volumes on the commercial vehicle side.

And as Bruce mentioned, you can see on the right-hand side of this page, our three-year net backlog of $750 million, of which is built into our 2026 plan, and you can see how that matures through 2028.

If we go to page 7, I thought it might be interesting to give you a bit of a view of how our new business pursuit activities have evolve here over the last seven or eight years. You can see a really dramatic increase in business pursuit activity in the early 2000s, really dominated by increasing EV activity.

And then you can see here more recently how that trend has really pivoted and reversed itself from 80% EV level activity to now really heavy mix towards our more traditional or ICE powertrain types of vehicles. And we really expect that trend to continue as our customers are revisiting their product plans to adjust to consumer demand for more traditional ICE-type vehicles as well as hybrid and some whole BEVs will still exist, but obviously, at a at lower rate than what we saw a few years back.

So we're encouraged by that. And as we talked about growth going forward, we expect that that's really going to play into our ability to capitalize on that opportunity.

So with that, I'll hand it over to Tim, and he'll take us through the numbers.

Thanks, Byron, and good morning to everyone. Please turn with me now to slide 9 for a review of our fourth quarter and full year results for 2025. All results discussed this morning reflect continuing operations, except for adjusted free cash flow. Starting on the left side of the fourth quarter, sales were $1.87 billion an increase of $93 million compared with last year. Improvement was driven primarily by customer recoveries and currency translation.

Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $208 million, resulting in an 11.1% margin. That's a 640 basis points improvement over the prior year's fourth quarter, reflecting better mix and continued benefit of the company-wide cost improvement actions.

EBIT from continuing operations was $61 million compared with a loss of $117 million in last year's fourth quarter. Interest expense was $49 million, an increase of about $12 million from last year due to higher average borrowing costs tied to our accelerated capital return initiatives that we did last year. Operating cash flow was $406 million for the quarter, an increase of $104 million, driven by higher earnings and disciplined working capital management.

Turning now to the full year results on the right side of the slide, sales for 2025 were $7.5 billion, down $234 million from 2024. As we noted earlier, this reflects weakening market demand across both light vehicle and commercial vehicle sectors, partially offset by customer recoveries.

Full year adjusted EBITDA was $610 million, an improvement of $215 million from the prior year, resulting in an 8.1% margin, up 300 basis points. The year-over-year improvement was driven by accelerated cost savings higher production efficiency and improved execution across the entire Dana organization.

EBIT from continuing operations was $138 million compared with a loss of $176 million last year. Interest expense was $171 million, up $26 million from last year. Note that we closed the Off-Highway divestiture on January 1 and began our delevering program in 2026. So this is not yet reflected in our 2025 results.

And finally, operating cash flow was $512 million, a $62 million increase compared with last year, supported by improved earnings and continued working capital discipline.

Overall, 2025 delivered meaningful margin expansion and stronger free cash flow generation despite a challenging demand environment, underscoring the effectiveness of our cost action programs and operational execution.

Please turn with me now to slide 10 for the drivers of the sales and profit change for the fourth quarter of 2025. As a reminder, results are presented excluding the Off-Highway business, which is classified as discontinuing operations. The removal of $561 million in sales and $102 million of profit from 2024 provides a comparable baseline for our continuing operations.

Starting with sales. Our fourth quarter 2024 continuing operations for the quarter was $1.774 billion. Year-over-year volume and mix increased sales modestly by $2 million with light vehicle growth largely offset by weaker demand in certain commercial vehicle markets.

Performance action contributed an additional $17 million driven by commercial recoveries and pricing initiatives implemented earlier in the year. Tariff recoveries were $27 million and currency translation added $31 million, largely due to the benefit of the euro against the US dollars. Commodities provided a further $16 million benefit for the quarter. Altogether, these items resulted in Q4 2025 sales of $1.867 billion.

Moving to adjusted EBITDA. Starting from $84 million in Q4 of 2024, representing a 4.7% margin, volume and mix contributed $33 million of incremental profit in the quarter. This was driven primarily by a richer mix in light vehicle systems. Performance added $6 million, reflecting pricing and commercial actions, mostly offset by higher conversion costs.

Cost savings contributed $74 million, tariffs provided an $8 million benefit, while currency added $3 million. Commodity impacts were neutral year over year. Bringing these together, adjusted EBITDA for our continuing operations was $208 million, representing an 11.1% margin, a significant expansion from last year. This improvement reflects strong performance execution and the structural benefits realized from our cost action programs.

Next, I will turn to slide 11 for the drivers of sales and profit change for the full year 2025. This slide shows full year sales and profit changes for 2025 on the same basis as the previous quarterly slide. Starting with sales, our 2024 continuing operations baseline is $7.734 billion.

For 2025, year-over-year volume and mix reduced sales by $464 million, primarily due to lower demand across both our end markets with commercial vehicle and light vehicle largely equal contributor to the lower sales.

Performance, which includes pricing and commercial action, add $81 million of sales. Tariff recoveries were $102 million, representing the majority of our tariffs in the year. Currency translation provided a $28 million benefit, largely driven by strengthening euro against the US dollar. Commodities added an additional $19 million supported by market stability and our structured recovery mechanisms with our customers.

Taken together, these drivers result in 2025 sales of $8.4 billion for our continuing -- or $7.5 billion for our continuing operations.

Moving to adjusted EBITDA, starting from $395 million in 2024 and a 5.1% margin. Volume and mix reduces profit by $112 million, consistent with the reduced sales level and some unfavorable mix early in the year. Performance action added $90 million, reflecting both pricing and ongoing efficiency improvements across our manufacturing footprint.

Cost savings remain a meaningful contributor, adding $248 million in 2025. These benefits more than offset the margin pressure created by lower volumes and continue to demonstrate the momentum behind our cost-saving programs as we enter 2026. Tariffs represented a $14 million headwind due to timing of recoveries.

Together, adjusted EBITDA for our continuing operations was $610 million, representing an 8.1% margin. a 300 basis points improvement over last year. This improvement is driven primarily by operational efficiencies and our accelerated cost action program, which more than offset both the volume declines and the modest tariff impacts for the year.

Next, I will turn to slide 12 in the detail of our fourth quarter -- our full year cash flows. Accounting for cash flow includes both continued and discontinued operations to align with the transaction structure. For 2025, we delivered adjusted free cash flow of $331 million, which represents a $250 million improvement over 2024. This significant step-up reflects higher profitability, disciplined working capital management, and a meaningful reduction in capital spending.

Starting at the top of the walk, adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations drove $215 million of improvement, betting from stronger operational performance and structural cost actions executed over the past two years. This was partially offset by lower profit of $86 million from discontinued operations.

One-time costs largely related to restructuring and ongoing strategic initiatives were $30 million higher year over year. Net interest expense increased by $16 million driven primarily by higher borrowing costs associated with funding our capital return initiatives, ahead of the planned deleveraging in early 2026.

Taxes were a modest headwind with $3 million with no material changes to our underlying tax structure. Working capital and other items contributed $57 million of improvement, reflecting disciplined inventory management and favorable timing across payables and receivables.

Finally, capital spending decreased $113 million, supported by lower program launch requirements as significant investments made over the last several years begin to taper.

Please turn with me now to slide 13 for an update on our full year guidance. As we look ahead to this year, our outlook remains unchanged from our January call and reflect continued operational execution, accretive new business, and ongoing benefit of our cost reduction initiatives.

Overall, we expect results to be broadly consistent with 2025 on the top line with meaningful profit expansion, driven by improved mix and sustained cost management. Starting with sales, we expect 2026 revenue to be approximately $7.5 billion, consistent with this year.

Increased backlog and the benefit of higher margin new business are expected to largely offset a modestly softer market environment and changes in product mix. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be around $800 million, an increase of roughly $200 million compared with 2025.

This improvement is driven by full year run rate of our cost savings program, continued operational improvements, and incremental margin from business that carries higher profitability. At the midpoint of the range, this represents an adjusted EBITDA margin of roughly 10% to 11%, an expansion of approximately 250 basis points year over year.

We are reinstating our diluted adjusted EPS guidance for 2026. We expect diluted adjusted EPS this year to be $2.50 a share at the midpoint of the range. For this calculation, we are using a share count of about 109 million shares and are not including future share repurchases in this target estimate. Adjustments for EPS are similar in nature to those made for adjusted EBITDA.

Adjusted free cash flow is expected to be around $300 million, in line with our 2025 performance. Adjusted free cash flow stability reflects disciplined working capital management, improved earnings, and the normalization of capital spending as major investments over the past years began to table.

Our 2026 outlook demonstrates continued profit improvement drivers by new business, operational efficiencies, and the structural benefit of cost actions, all while maintaining a consistent cash flow profile positioning us well as we launch new Dana.

Please turn with me now to slide 14 for the driver of sales and profit for our full year guidance. Beginning with sales, volume and mix is expected to reduce revenue by approximately $95 million as lower demand in traditional commercial vehicle markets as well as ongoing softness in electric vehicle -- light vehicle platforms impacts our battery and electronics cooling business.

Performance is expected to be modestly lower, reducing sales by about $30 million, reflecting a more normalized pricing environment as we lap last year's commercial actions. Tariffs are expected to improve sales by roughly $50 million, largely due to the timing of recoveries and the impact of a full year's worth of tariff environment.

Foreign currency translation adds approximately $60 million, primarily driven by the strengthening euro compared to the US dollar. And commodities are expected to add about $15 million in sales due to the continuing effectiveness of our recovery mechanisms, with which we recover approximately 75% of our commodity price changes. Together, these drivers result in 2026 sales of approximately $7.5 billion, in line with 2025 levels.

Let's turn now to adjusted EBITDA. Starting from the $610 million we generated in 2025, representing an 8.1% margin, volume and mix is expected to add approximately $20 million. Favorable mix within will drive higher profit on slightly lower sales. Performance is expected to increase EBITDA by roughly $100 million, largely from continued operational efficiency.

Please note that we are expecting to eliminate about $40 million of postage divestiture stranded cost, which is included in the performance line of our walk. Cost savings in addition to the stranded cost reduction will remain a meaningful contributor, adding $65 million of profit for the year.

Tariffs are expected to be a $10 million tailwind due to the timing of recoveries. Commodity cost recovery is expected to represent a $15 million headwind driven by timing of recoveries and expected material cost changes.

All combined, adjusted EBITDA for 2026 is expected to be approximately $800 million at the midpoint of our range, or a 10.6% margin, representing an improvement of roughly 250 basis points over 2025. This step change in profitability is driven by our ongoing performance improvements and cost savings initiatives.

Next, I will turn to slide 15 for details of adjusted free cash flow outlook for 2026. You will note on this slide that 2025 includes profit and free cash flow from discontinued operations that will not be included in 2026.

Even without the discontinued operations contribution, we expect full year 2026 adjusted free cash flow to be about $300 million at the midpoint of the guidance range. One-time costs will be about $30 million lower than last year due to lower expected levels of restructuring as our cost-saving programs wind down.

Net interest will be about $70 million in 2026, about $95 million lower than last year due to our aggressive debt reduction that we executed earlier this year. Taxes will be about $100 million, about $75 million lower than 2025 due to lower taxable income and jurisdictional distribution of profits for new Dana. Working capital will be a source of about $25 million in 2026, a $40 million improvement over last year.

And finally, net capital spending is expected to be about $325 million this year, which is about $70 million higher than last year as we invest in efficiency improvements at our operations and support the new business backlog.

Please turn to slide 16 for a review of our balance sheet and debt reduction actions that we executed earlier this year. As a reminder, the Off-Highway divestiture closed on January 1, and we will be reporting at year-end without the benefit of the sale and subsequent deleveraging. So I thought it would be helpful to show our balance sheet post divestiture and after the debt reduction.

If you look on the left side of the page, we ended January of 2026 with $659 million of cash and a total liquidity of about $1.8 billion, including the revolver capacity of just over $1.1 billion. As we progress through the year, we expect our average cash balance to be approximately $400 million, consistent with our operating needs and lower liquidity requirements.

We are continuing to evaluate opportunities to optimize the balance sheet, including rightsizing of our revolver capacity and the examination of our real estate lease portfolio. while we also pursue additional divestitures of noncore operations where appropriate.

We also continue to see positive response from our delevering actions from the rating agencies with upgrades from both Fitch and Standard & Poor's. This reflects the strength of our improved balance sheet and expanded margin and free cash flow profile.

Now, turning to the right side of the page, you can see the impact of the meaningful deleveraging associated with the Off-Highway sale. Relative to our starting position, we have reduced total debt by approximately $1.9 billion, highlighted by the red boxes shown across the maturity ladder. This leaves us in an extremely strong capital structure position.

Importantly, we now have no near-term maturities. Our first maturity is in 2029 at just over $200 million, the remaining debt on our balance sheet carries an average interest rate of around 6%, providing both predictability and flexibility as we continue to strengthen the business.

On the bottom right side, you can see that the deleveraging results in less than 1 times net leverage through 2026. This enhanced financial strength positions us well to navigate a dynamic market environment while we continue to invest in growth and deliver value for our shareholders.

Overall, our balance sheet is now significantly stronger with ample liquidity, reduced debt, and a long-dated maturity profile that supports our strategic priorities moving forward.

I will now turn the call over to Byron for a sneak peek at our targets for the Dana 2030 on page 17.

Okay. Great. Thank you, Tim. And hey, before I get into the targets here, I do want to take the opportunity to thank Bruce for his leadership through Dana's transformation here over the last 1.5 years or so. And as he mentioned, we will have a very seamless transition here through the end of Q2. And myself and the management team, we couldn't be more excited for the opportunities ahead for Dana.

So let's take a look at our long-term targets and our plans to continue to drive performance of the company to new levels. So if you look at the 2030 financial targets, starting with revenue, we're targeting close to $10 billion of sales, which would be 33% higher than the midpoint of the '26 guide that Tim just took us through. We expect margins to increase by close to 400 basis points to 14% to 15% at the EBITDA line and adjusted free cash flow at 6%, which would be about a 200-basis point improvement from our '26 guide.

In terms of returning capital to our shareholders, you can see that we plan to return $2 billion vis-a-vis stock buybacks, of which $650 million has been completed in 2025 with the remaining plan for '26 through '30. And specifically in 2026, we're targeting $300 million of buybacks. And that's on top of the 20% dividend increase that was previously announced.

In terms of our road map of how we plan to deliver that level of performance, it's really all under our strategy that we've called Dana 2030. And you can see the five pillars of that plan, three related to growth in our aftermarket business, our traditional light vehicle and commercial vehicle business, as well as our EV and Applied Technologies, which basically takes Dana's know-how and technology and explores opportunities for growth in new and adjacent markets.

In addition to those growth pillars, there's two pillars around efficiency and execution in everything we do, both at the manufacturing level as well as our structural cost and support of the business.

We look forward to sharing more details of our 2030 plan with you during our Capital Markets Day, which is planned for March 25, in New York at 9:00 AM, and we're hoping to see you guys all there so we can talk more about the future ahead for Dana.

So with that, I'll hand it back to Regina for Q&A. Thank you.

(Operator Instructions) Colin Langan, Wells Fargo.

Great. Thanks for taking my question. I just want to follow up on the target for sales of $10 billion by 2030. That's faster than we've seen growth historically from Dana. And particularly, you just gave a backlog, I think it's $550 million from '27, '28 coming. So where is the other almost $2 billion? Is that market factors? Is there M&A assumed in there? How should we think about it?

I'll take that, Colin. So here's the way you should think about it is, of the $2.5 billion that we're committing to grow over the next five years, our backlog, as you said, for '27 and '28 is $550 million. We anticipate that a normalization in the North American CV markets worth another $200 million, $300 million. So that's one-third of it.

Then, we've got five growth strategies. One is the slide that Byron covered off around our quoting activity really around ICE is going to be here for longer. Our customers are changing their product plans to reflect more SUVs and CUVs. So the market, we do expect to continue to win new business on new programs that our customers are introducing.

Secondly is in CV. We -- that business is very North American-centric. We have a very strong position in the market right now. We have a brand-new, world-class, low-cost manufacturing in greenfield sites that we opened up in Mexico. That plant is performing for us at a very high level. And as a result of our delivery performance, our quality and our cost base, I think we're well positioned to gain share of wallet at our main North American customers.

Third, after market. It's an area that we haven't really focused on in the past. So we have several growth strategies within aftermarket, but one I would point to as being front and center here is our North America ceiling and gasket opportunity.

So this is a market where we've got 30%, 35% share in Europe, and we're just looking to enter North America, we see that as being a $250 million opportunity that we're just starting to get our foot in the door this year.

Fourth, I would point to EV. We have adopted more rigid and commercially sensible, I'd say, quoting disciplines and there's still opportunities there. It's particularly as what we're seeing on the range extended products from our customers.

And then lastly, Byron touched on Applied Technologies, where we're looking to get into adjacent markets or areas that we've historically under-invested. And we've got four or five of those opportunities, but just a couple of examples I'd point to one power sports. So this is the off-roading quad vehicles.

Those vehicles are becoming larger and larger. The supply chain in terms of our products for those is largely Chinese and old technology. So we think we have a big opportunity to enter into that market. And we have several hundred million dollars of RFQs as we put some resources into that business. So that's a good example of an adjacent opportunity.

And then if I thought about something that I'll say, we've neglected I'd point to defense. We got a very highly profitable, and we just have -- we haven't put the sales and technical resources into capturing growth in that market. So those applied technologies as a bucket, we think, are another $400 million, $500 million.

So that's the path to the $2.5 billion, kind of a long answer. I apologize for that.

No, I appreciate all the color. And just as a second question would just be any help from -- we've seen pretty much all that the trade three have these big recovery programs for EV cancellations. Was any of that helping '25? Is that any of that baked into the guidance? And any help actually in cash flow as well?

Hey, Colin. This is Tim. As we mentioned in Q3, we took some charges that due to some of this. So we did get a little bit of recovery in the fourth quarter, but in terms of the recoveries, a lot of what we're seeing is really adjustments to ongoing sales prices because many of our programs haven't completely canceled. Many of them are just volume down.

But in terms of the other recoveries, it's really a net coverage of the cost that we've incurred, and what we owe in terms of suppliers and other development costs. So it's largely not a big tailwind in terms of profit drivers for us in the short term. But it obviously avoids our necessity to continue to write amounts off like we had to do in the third quarter.

Got it. All right. Thanks for taking my question.

Yes. I would just add, if you look at -- Tim showed the volume mix slide and how it's a little bit strange that top-line negative and bottom-line positive. Some of the benefit of repricing EV programs is in that bar.

Got it. Okay. Thank you. That's helpful color.

Tom Narayan, RBC Capital Markets.

Hi. This is Thomas Ito on for Tom. Thanks for taking the question. So you guys are guiding to this 14% to 15% EBITDA margins by 2030, which is about 400 basis points higher than your 26% guide. This might have to wait for the Capital Markets Day, but can you give us any rough breakdown of the contributions you're expecting from those items listed to the right of slide 17?

We don't -- I don't really want to get into a lot of the detail. I mean, what I would tell you is if you think about margin enhancement, how do we get that 400 basis points, it's in two places. One, structural cost reduction. We cut $325 million out of our cost base this year. And if we look at the opportunities that we have that are longer term, or require systems investments, we think there's like $100 million there.

And just a couple as an example, that would be putting our shared service, expanding our shared service center and a lot of ERP and other system standardization.

I think the -- like we encourage you to come see us in New York. We're going to lay out the walk in how we get there and why we're so confident. And so come to the Capital Markets Day, we'll lay it all out for you. But look, we're highly, highly confident.

I think what you've seen from Bruce and the management team here over the last 14, 15 months is we're very bullish on what we can deliver and what we tell you we're going to deliver or we do. And I think we have that same confidence as we start looking forward to the strategy to deliver the $10 billion and the 15% to 16% margins in 2030. So I encourage you guys to come down and we'll take you through it in March.

Okay. Got it. Thank you. As a quick follow-up, it looks like your commercial vehicle margins expanded pretty significantly in Q4, those sales are down year over year. It sounds like this is mostly a mix and a cost reduction story, but I was wondering if this is -- if you guys think that margin level is sustainable going into 2026 or whether there were any one-offs in the Q4 results?

Yeah. Not a lot of one-offs. I mean, obviously, this has been a part of the business over the last few years that we focused quite a bit on improving our operating efficiency, and you're starting to see some of that. Bruce mentioned, we did over the last few years, build a new plant, state-of-the-art and as we continue to ramp that plant up and have more production in there, we are getting the benefits of that into the efficiency and the margins in that product.

So we don't -- we're not done yet. We think we've got more opportunity to continue to improve margins in the CV business because they're not where we think they should be. So stay tuned. I think there's more good things to come when you think about our CV segment.

Yeah. Maybe just to add to that, we the team in CV has done a great job this year, great job. But we've been fighting volumes falling against us all year long. And as we get into this year, we're going to start to see that flip around and how volume as a tailwind instead of chasing the year-over-year decline.

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Edison Yu, Deutsche Bank.

Good morning. This is James Mulholland on for Edison. A quick question on our part. So if we do just a bit of math, even with the share buyback and increased dividend that you've outlined with your longer-term free cash flow guide, it looks like you're looking at a materially higher cash position than what you've historically maintained or even guiding to.

So do you have any thoughts on to where you're going to put that to work? Would you consider further inorganic investments, shareholder returns? Just any thoughts you might have there?

Yeah. I think, look, we've obviously laid out a pretty significant increase in the amount of capital that we would return to shareholders. As we move out, and we'll talk a little bit about this in March as well -- as we move out beyond '26, and we think about our growth strategy, there certainly could be opportunities for some acquisitions or other investments that are inorganic in order to fill in the parts of the portfolio that we think can help accelerate the growth.

So I think -- but we're really focused right now in continuing to execute on the plan. But again, we do think that the business that we own and the management team that we have is going to be able to continue to drive the business forward and deliver superior returns for the shareholder.

Got it. That's helpful. And I guess on the flip side of my prior question, in the presentation, it sounds like you're thinking about other noncore operations that could either be sold or perhaps shuttered. Are there other parts of your business that can be as cleanly separated as the Off-Highway business? Or is there something that specifically you're thinking about that you can share with us now?

Yeah. Nothing, actually, we can share with you now. But like we're talking about some of the smaller things. I mean, we have a number of different smaller businesses, but nothing on the scale or size of Off-Highway. But to answer your question, yes, we believe that those are imminently separable.

We did a few of them. We had a few of these last year where we sold a couple of interest we had in some joint ventures. So we'll continue to look at the portfolio, whether that be individual JVs, plants, or just product lines in some of the businesses.

So I think as we continue to think through the portfolio, I think there's a number of opportunities where maybe we're not the best owner or they aren't the most profitable of product lines or part numbers, and we'll continue to call through that and make those adjustments. So -- but we do think that there's some opportunities there for us on the portfolio side. Again, these are smaller type things.

Great. Thank you, guys.

James Picariello, BNP Paribas.

Hey. Sorry, just to clarify, what was the last answer regarding -- is there possibility for M&A within this revenue target? Or that would be in excess of the $10 billion?

There's no M&A in the $10 billion.

Okay. All right. That's what I thought. So yeah, when I think about the capital deployment out to 2030, right, if there is no M&A embedded in the target, which I think is a great thing, right?

Free cash flow is slated to double over 2026, 2030. If I just assume a linear annualized step-up, right, off the $300 million this year to the $600 million targeted for 2030, right? That cumulative free cash flow generation looks something like $2.2 billion to $2.3 billion, right, in that ZIP code?

Why would the -- we're looking at $250 million in dividends, right, $50 million a year over five years and you've got the $1.35 billion in buybacks, which leaves about $650 million left over in excess capital. Just curious how you're thinking about that, where you disagree or agree on how I laid that out? And just, yeah, what are we doing with that additional $650 million or so?

Yeah. I mean, look, I think I won't get into the specifics, obviously, leaves us some flexibility in what we use the cash flow for. Obviously, we have maturities coming due. So we can use it to reduce leverage on the business if we want and if we're in -- depending on where we are in the cycle, that may be something we do. Otherwise, we have more opportunities to return capital to shareholders if that seems to be the best use of that capital.

I mean, two, three, four, five years from now is a long time and a lot of things can happen. But I think what we're planning for is having an exceedingly strong operating performance through the business cycle with a capital structure that allows us to continue to be exceedingly nimble in our ability to continue to invest in the business regardless of where the markets are.

And I think that's really, really important to think about, given where we were in the high two turns leverage and what we're going to be able to do through the business cycle regardless of where the end markets are going forward. So we're just leaving ourselves some flexibility. I think what we've said is, hey, we're going to continue to drive really high shareholder returns, and that's our intention.

Okay. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. My follow-up is a quick one. What's the assumed effective tax rate for this year to inform the adjusted EPS range of --

Yeah. it's somewhere -- we've had some pretty strange ones. It's somewhere between 20% and 30%. It really depends on some of the jurisdictional mix, but that's where we're targeting somewhere. That's a wide range. But given the balances that we have and how the income mix can change, it moves around. It happens to be a pretty reasonable rate this year just based on the jurisdictional mix and where the balances are.

Understood. Thank you.

Yes.

Joe Spak, UBS.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Maybe just a question on CapEx, but with two flavors of you all. So looks like you're low [3%s to 25%], guidance calls for low [4%s] this year. I'm assuming that's just a step up to support some of these growth initiatives, but maybe you could add some color there.

And then how should we think -- I know you gave the free cash margin guidance for the 2030 plan. But should we think about any material change in CapEx to sales to support that growth opportunity is 4% than you like right go-forward rate we should be thinking about?

Yeah. I think 4% is probably a good number to pencil in as you go forward. I think, look, we're -- we will have to spend both on growth initiatives and on the initiatives to drive margin expansion. Bruce mentioned our plant-level operational efficiency. We've taken a lot of costs out at a relatively modest investment.

The next step is we'll have to have a higher level of investment, which is largely CapEx in order to drive that next lock step change in our margin profile, especially at the plant level. So -- but that's built into our targets, both the 2030 target that we're giving you and the target that we have for CapEx in in 2026. So we've committed significant amounts of CapEx to help drive both growth and the efficiencies in the business.

Okay. Thank you. You alluded to this a little bit earlier, but I was wondering if you could just get a little bit more color. You're guiding 250 basis points of margin expansion this year. It sounds like we should be maybe above that level in CV given some of your comments, so maybe slightly a little bit below that in light vehicle to get to the number. But I was wondering if you could just help us understand some of the profit drivers or margin drivers by segment for '26?

Yeah. I mean, I think you have it right. I mean, obviously, we're going to have a continued flow through on the cost savings, and then we will continue to get performance improvements, which is fairly -- I mean, it's fairly consistent on a relative basis in the segments, probably a little bit more in CV because we got a little more opportunity there. But generally, pretty balanced between the segments.

But I think the important thing to note here is that we continue to focus on our ability to expand margins through actions that are completely within our control and that are low risk and have high returns. So you think about some of the things we're doing with automation, with efficiencies within the plants.

I mean, largely, those are implants that are on ICE programs. We know what the volumes are going to be, and we know what the investment and the returns look like. So we're highly confident in our ability to both make those investments and deliver the expanded margins that they will deliver.

Okay. Great. And I'm sure you get a lot of this, but congrats Byron and Bruce and looking forward to learning more at the upcoming investor event. So thanks very much.

We plan to put Byron out there so you guys can go right after mid-March, okay?

Look forward to it. Thank you.

Thanks, Joe.

Emmanuel Rosner, Wolfe Research.

Great. Thanks so much. First question is on the -- I appreciate the sneak peek on the 2030 financial targets. So I wanted to ask you about the high-level drivers of the 400 bps in margin expansion. How much of it is growth driven versus cost savings. I think, Bruce, you mentioned maybe $100 million opportunity from the systems enhancement. I don't know if there was anything else you'd call out on the cost side.

And what implication does it have in terms of potential cadence? 400 bps obviously averages at about 100 bps a year. But I would assume that the cost savings are maybe more front-end loaded or is like some of the growth initiatives may take a little bit longer. So anything you could share on that?

Yeah. I think we -- come see us in March, I think, is the line of the day. I think you saw what you said makes some sense. But look, we're able -- given where we're at today, we're going to be able to invest in both the growth and the margin expansion initiatives and deliver them over time. But we'll lay it out in detail in a few weeks. So come down and see us.

Yeah. I wouldn't say though that the margin and getting to the 15% is not because it grow. In other words, we will expand our margin based on investments that we're making in cost actions, the growth will help out. But the main driver is the investments they're making in our manufacturing operations and automation, things like that.

Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say the growth is coming through at super high rate like we still operate in the mobility business for goodness sake. So like -- and like I said before, a lot of what we're thinking about is things that are completely within our control and tied to programs that are tried and true. So high return, low risk-type things to drive margin improvement.

I appreciate the color. If I could just follow up on this up on this based on what's disclosed in today's slides, obviously, revenues target of $10 billion, up from $7.5 billion, I guess, this year. So if you just have a I guess what is the right incremental margin on that revenue increase?

Because if you just apply that to $2.5 billion in revenue, you'd already have probably like $500 million of uplift in EBITDA. So -- just curious if there's -- how do you think about that piece just based on the numbers that you already shared with us?

Yeah. I mean, I think there's -- you also have to realize that there are some costs associated with with some of that growth. So it's not like we just go out and sell it and put it in the same plant like -- it isn't that simple. But I think the -- again, we'll give you a front row seat Emmanuel in March, and we'll take you all through it and answer all your questions.

I look forward to that. And then maybe just on 2026, the -- on slide 14, the walk to the 26% EBITDA by factor. Can you just remind us what goes inside the performance and the cost savings bucket in terms of --

Yeah. Think of cost savings as our $325 million that's all above the plants, okay? That's what's in that number. And that's the last piece of that $325 million, right? So -- and then if you think about performance, that is all the improvements that are going on at the -- really at the plant level.

So this is material cost savings, engineering cost savings that's coming through as a result of design and whatnot updates, conversion cost savings, and then we've also included in here about $40 million of the stranded cost avoidance that we're taking out this year.

So that's one of the reason why that number looks pretty large. There's 40% of it $40 million is related to the structural cost takeout related to the stranded cost from the deal.

Understood. All right. Thank you.

Yeah.

Okay. That's the last of the questions. So thanks, everybody, for joining us here this morning. Clearly, I want to have a big shout out to the Dana team. I know a lot of them are listening on this call.

An incredible 2025, and I thank each and every one of our team members for how making it happen. Coming into 2025, we made some very bold commitments, and the teams delivered on all fronts. I'm very proud of them.

Looking ahead, the team is laser-focused on performance and delivering on our financial commitments. As I said earlier, right now, Dana is exceptionally well positioned. We have a strong balance sheet, I thought [best-in-sector] balance sheet.

We have a strong top-line growth story. We have a very clear plan and actions to deliver significant margin expansion. Our free cash flow is accelerating to the point what we can first grow our investment in our business.

Second, we turn a significant amount of capital to our shareholders via dividend. Third, grow our buyback. And right now, we can comfortably buy 8% to 9% of our shares per year, all while deleveraging. I love how Dana is positioned right now in the auto space, I wouldn't change places with anybody else. Thanks for joining us this morning.

This will conclude our call today. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.