NYSE:DCH American Axle & Manufacturing Q2 2026 Earnings Report $6.69 +0.13 (+1.98%) Closing price 09/3/2026 03:58 PM EasternExtended Trading$6.64 -0.06 (-0.82%) As of 04:33 AM Eastern Extended trading is trading that happens on electronic markets outside of regular trading hours. This is a fair market value extended hours price provided by Massive. Learn more. ProfileEarnings HistoryForecast American Axle & Manufacturing EPS ResultsActual EPS$0.32Consensus EPS $0.14Beat/MissBeat by +$0.18One Year Ago EPSN/AAmerican Axle & Manufacturing Revenue ResultsActual Revenue$2.96 billionExpected RevenueN/ABeat/MissN/AYoY Revenue GrowthN/AAmerican Axle & Manufacturing Announcement DetailsQuarterQ2 2026Date8/7/2026TimeBefore Market OpensConference Call DateFriday, August 7, 2026Conference Call Time10:00AM ETConference Call ResourcesConference Call AudioConference Call TranscriptSlide DeckPress Release (8-K)Quarterly Report (10-Q)SEC FilingEarnings HistoryCompany ProfileSlide DeckFull Screen Slide DeckPowered by American Axle & Manufacturing Q2 2026 Earnings Call TranscriptProvided by QuartrAugust 7, 2026ShareShareShare This ReportLink copied to clipboard.Key Takeaways Positive Sentiment: Second-quarter sales reached $2.96 billion and adjusted EBITDA was $389.6 million, with a 13.2% margin. Adjusted free cash flow rose to $148.4 million from $48.7 million a year earlier, supported by favorable mix, operational improvements, and the Dowlais contribution. Positive Sentiment: Integration is progressing ahead of schedule, with approximately $70 million of run-rate synergies achieved after five months and more than $100 million targeted by year-end. Management reaffirmed its longer-term goals of $180 million by the end of year two and $300 million by the end of year three. Positive Sentiment: The company raised the low end of its 2026 guidance, now targeting sales of $10.6 billion-$10.8 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $1.36 billion-$1.425 billion, and adjusted free cash flow of $260 million-$325 million. Management cited strong first-half execution, productivity gains, and continued integration progress. Positive Sentiment: Dauch is actively quoting more than $2 billion of new and incremental business, with roughly 85% focused on ICE and hybrid programs rather than EVs. Management expects cross-selling between the legacy Dauch and Dowlais businesses, as well as potential benefits from regional localization and reshoring demand. Negative Sentiment: Second-half results face seasonal production declines in North America and Europe, temporary downtime associated with GM’s next-generation full-size pickup launch, and elevated energy costs. Net interest expense increased to $82.6 million year over year, while net debt remained approximately $4.1 billion; debt reduction will take priority over shareholder returns until leverage reaches roughly 2.5 times or lower. AI Generated. May Contain Errors.Conference Call Audio Live Call not available Earnings Conference CallAmerican Axle & Manufacturing Q2 202600:00 / 00:00Speed:1x1.25x1.5x2xTranscript SectionsPresentationParticipantsPresentationSkip to Participants Operator00:00:00Good morning. My name is Rocco, I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Dauch Corporation's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer period. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press the star key, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the star key, then the number two. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. David Lim, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Lim. David LimHead of Investor Relations at Dauch Corporation00:00:40Thank you, Rocco, good morning, everyone. I'd like to welcome everyone who is joining us on Dauch Corporation's second quarter earnings call. Earlier this morning, we released our second quarter of 2026 earnings announcement. You can access this announcement on the investor relations page of our website, www.dauch.com, and through the PR Newswire services. You can also find supplemental slides for this conference call on the investor page of our website. A replay of this call will be available through August 14th. Replay details are in today's press release. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that the matters discussed in this call may contain comments and forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, which cannot be predicted or quantified and which may cause future activities and results of operations to differ materially from those discussed. David LimHead of Investor Relations at Dauch Corporation00:01:32For additional information, please reference slide two of our investor presentation or the press release that was issued today. During this call, we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Information regarding these non-GAAP measures, as well as a reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures to GAAP financial information, is available in the presentation. Let me turn things over to our Chairman and CEO, David Dauch. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:01:58Thank you, David, good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Dauch's financial results for the second quarter of 2026. Joining me on the call today is Chris May, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The company's strong second quarter results highlight the continued positive acceleration for the new Dauch Corporation. We are focused on unlocking the full strategic potential of the transformational acquisition as we continue to successfully implement our integration plan to drive value creation and leverage our enhanced size and scale. So far, I'm very pleased with the robust start. As for today's agenda, I'll review the highlights of our second quarter financial performance. Next, I'll touch on our synergy progress, some business updates, commentary about the industry, and our guidance. I'll then turn the call over to Chris to cover the details of our financial results. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:02:53After which, we will field any questions that you may have. Let's begin with some of the details. The company's second quarter of 2026 sales were approximately $3 billion. Adjusted earnings per share was $0.32, and adjusted free cash flow was approximately $148 million. In the second quarter, North American production was flat year-over-year. Europe was down approximately 1%, and global production was also flat. Our quarterly performance reflects continued strength across a number of important customer programs, including BMW's CLAR platform that underpins the brand's X5 and X7 models, Volvo's SPA crossover utility vehicle platform, and GM's large truck program. From a profitability perspective, our adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter was $390 million, or 13.2% of sales, driven by mix, business performance, synergies, and a solid Dowlais contribution. Chris will provide more details about our overall financial performance during his prepared remarks. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:04:03On slide four, I'd like to share an update on our synergy and value capture progress. We have now been operating for five months as a combined company, and we have already realized approximately $70 million of run rate savings to date. We remain on target to deliver more than $100 million in run rate savings by year-end. We have made excellent progress in eliminating duplicative corporate costs, optimizing SG&A, and capturing global engineering efficiencies. At the same time, we're advancing initiatives across procurement and operations, which naturally take longer to realize. While significant opportunities remain ahead, I'm proud of the strong progress our team continues to make. As we have previously communicated, we expect to deliver approximately $180 million in run rate savings by the end of year two and the full $300 million in run rate savings by the end of year three. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:05:02Let me talk about some business updates, which you can see on slide five. We want to highlight that our company was named a Ford Supplier of the Year Award recipient in the quality category for our outstanding performance, dedication, and collaboration during the 2025 fiscal year. The recognition reflects a collective effort across our organization to deliver excellence to our customers as they are the center of everything that we do. We are incredibly proud to receive this award. In addition, in the second quarter, we won numerous awards with major European, Asian, and North American customers, supporting not only mainstream vehicle segments but also high-end sports cars and lifestyle off-road capable vehicles. We are now seeing the strength and the comprehensiveness of our product portfolio. Lastly, we continue to build a strong pipeline of future growth opportunities. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:05:56Today, we are actively quoting more than $2 billion of new and incremental business, including capacity uplifts on high-demand programs. Additionally, we are also working to secure next-generation platforms and program extensions. We remain disciplined in pursuing opportunities that align with our strategy and support our long-term profitable growth. Now let's talk about the industry. There are two topics I wanted to discuss with you specifically. First, on the macro environment. In the second quarter, we experienced some incremental costs related to the elevated energy prices, but we did not see any noteworthy impact on our operations, nor on our customer schedules. From a high level, we did not experience significant mix change, possibly pointing to consumer resiliency, especially here in the U.S. In general, overall production has been stable, and we continue to experience the strength of the North American truck segment. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:06:58Second, we are actively monitoring the USMCA trade discussions and will react accordingly once discussions are finalized. We understand that the parties are moving into a period of annual review and are currently in active negotiations. This trade relationship is critical to the success of the auto industry and specifically to the North American region. As we have shared in the past, our strategy is to buy and build local in the regions that we serve, and we have benefited from this approach and will continue to do so. Now let's talk about our updated full-year guidance. We have lifted the low end of our guidance range to take into account our performance through the first half of this year. Additionally, we are managing meaningful launches in the second half of the year. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:07:42The company now targets sales of $10.6 billion-$10.8 billion, adjusted EBITDA range of approximately $1.36 billion-$1.425 billion, adjusted free cash flow of approximately $260 million-$325 million. Our guidance ranges are underpinned by the following production assumptions: North America production at 15.1 million units, Europe at 16.9 million units, China at 31.6 million units, and global production at approximately 91.1 million units. As we have shared before, our outlook is based on not only industry production, but also on certain programs that we have meaningful content on. We note that GM is transitioning to its next-generation full-size truck program. We expect the model changeover to begin during the second half of this year. The new truck is very exciting and an important product both for GM as well as for us, and we look forward to successfully supporting our largest customer. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:08:45Before transitioning to Chris, I want to share with the investment community that we will be hosting a Capital Markets Day on November 17th in New York City. We will provide additional details about the event in the coming months, so please mark your calendars. In summary, we had an excellent second quarter. The integration of Dowlais continues to progress favorably. Our synergy achievement is on track, and we are excited about our future, and we are built to perform. Now let me turn the call over to our Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Chris May, for the financial results and details. Thanks. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:09:23Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. I will cover the financial details of our second quarter 2026 results and our updated guidance with you today. I will also refer to the earnings slide seven as part of my prepared comments. In the second quarter of 2026, our sales were $2.96 billion as compared to $1.54 billion in the second quarter of 2025. Slide seven shows a walk of second quarter 2025 sales to second quarter 2026 sales. Overall, our sales were flat year-over-year and in line with changes in overall North American production levels. The divestiture of our India commercial vehicle axle business also had a $34 million sales impact in the quarter. This was offset by metal market passthroughs and FX, which increased sales by approximately $35 million. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:10:14About a third of this amount was related to FX and was driven by the strengthening of the Brazilian real and the EUR. Dauch contributed $1.45 billion in gross sales for the second quarter. Versus the second quarter of last year, volume, mix, and other was favorable by $42 million, driven by positive demand for our products that supply BMW and Volvo, which was partially offset by $31 million of lower sales due to the sale of certain businesses. Let's move on to adjusted EBITDA. For the second quarter of 2026, adjusted EBITDA was $389.6 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 13.2% versus $202 million and 13.2% last year. You can see a year-over-year walk down of adjusted EBITDA on slide eight. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:11:02In the quarter, adjusted EBITDA for legacy Dauch was lower, primarily reflecting lower volume and mix, the divestiture of our India commercial vehicle axle business, and approximately $8 million of EBITDA impact stemming from costs that we incurred during the UAW work stoppage at our Three Rivers, Michigan facility. These headwinds were partially offset by approximately $8 million of continued favorable performance, reflecting our focus on improving our legacy metal forming performance and managing overall costs. Dauch contributed approximately $180 million of adjusted EBITDA during the quarter, or 12.4% of sales. EBITDA benefited from approximately $9 million of volume, mix, and other, as well as $9 million of favorable operational performance. These benefits were partially offset by the sale of businesses that I discussed earlier in my sales commentary. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:11:55In the second quarter, we realized $15 million in synergy benefits as we eliminated duplicative corporate and SG&A costs and have begun realizing engineering and purchasing efficiencies. As David highlighted, we achieved a $70 million run rate as of today, and we expect this to continue to grow. We have a nice market basket of potential savings that we continue to drive to completion as we target the $100 million+ of run rate savings by year-end. We are making great progress on our synergy objectives. Let's move on to interest and taxes. Net interest expense was $82.6 million in the second quarter of 2026, compared to $37.5 million in the second quarter of 2025. The year-over-year increase in interest expense primarily reflects the issuance of new and assumed debt in connection with the acquisition. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:12:46The weighted average interest rate of our outstanding long-term debt was approximately 7.1% at the end of the quarter. In the second quarter of 2026, we recorded an income tax expense of $16 million compared to $28 million in the second quarter of 2025. As we described last quarter, due to the acquisition-related activity this year, our tax rate and impacts remain quite involved in 2026. We expect our adjusted effective tax rate to be approximately 25%-30% this year. As you may recall, this is somewhat elevated due to the valuation allowances and partial interest deduction limitations in the U.S. We continue to expect approximately $160 million-$170 million this year. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:13:33Taking all these sales and cost drivers into account, our GAAP net income was $1 million, a slight positive earnings per share in the second quarter of 2026, compared to $39.3 million or $0.32 per share in the second quarter of 2025. Adjusted earnings per share, which excludes the impact of items noted in our earnings press release, was $0.32 per share in the second quarter of 2026, compared to adjusted earnings per share of $0.34 for the second quarter of 2025. Let's now move to cash flow and the balance sheet. Net cash provided by operating activities for the second quarter of 2026 was $107.5 million, compared to net cash provided by operating activities of $91.9 million in the second quarter of 2025. Capital expenditures that have proceeds from the sale of property, plant, and equipment in the second quarter of 2026 were $91.7 million. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:14:26Reflecting the impact of these activities, our adjusted free cash flow was $148.4 million in the second quarter of 2026 as compared to $48.7 million in the second quarter of 2025. From a debt leverage perspective, we ended the quarter with net debt of approximately $4.1 billion and a net leverage ratio of 2.6x at June 30th, 2026. In the near term, we will continue to focus on reducing our outstanding debt and strengthening our balance sheet. During the second quarter, we voluntarily redeemed $125 million of our 6 7/8 notes due in 2028. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, in August, we voluntarily redeemed all of the remaining 6 7/8 notes due in 2028. This also resulted in a principal payment of $125 million. We now have no major debt maturities until 2029. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:15:21We ended the quarter with total available liquidity of approximately $2.5 billion, consisting of available cash and borrowing capacity on our global credit facilities. Let's talk about our updated financial guidance on slide six. Our updated targets are as follows. For sales, we tightened our full-year guidance range to $10.6 billion-$10.8 billion versus $10.3 billion-$10.8 billion previously, reflecting our solid performance through the first half of 2026 and our expectations for the remainder of the year. This sales target is based on current global production assumptions and certain assumptions for our key programs. For example, we now anticipate GM's full-size pickup truck and SUV production in the range of 1.35 billion-1.4 billion units this year. From an EBITDA perspective, we anticipate a range of $1.36 billion-$1.425 billion versus $1.3 billion-$1.425 billion previously. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:16:20We brought the low end of our range up to reflect the strength of our first half results, operational performance, and continued integration execution. We note included in our adjusted EBITDA is the proportionate share of income from our joint venture in China with HASCO, called SDS. We expect our JV share, which is already included in adjusted EBITDA guidance, to be in the range of $70 million-$80 million versus $65 million-$75 million previously. We anticipate adjusted free cash flow in the range of $260 million-$325 million from $235 million-$325 million previously. While we do not provide quarterly guidance, we can offer some perspective on the cadence of the remainder of the year. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:17:03Relative to the first half, in part due to normal seasonality, North American vehicle production is expected to decline approximately 4% sequentially in the second half, while European production is expected to decline approximately 8%, which is often weighted towards the month of August. In addition, GM is scheduled to begin the phase launch of its next generation full-size pickup trucks in the second half of this year. As is typical with major product transitions, we expect customer production downtime and related volume impacts during the launch period. Currently, we are expecting this temporary impact to our production for this program to begin in September. Our CapEx assumption is unchanged at 4.5%-5% of sales as we ready the organization for important upcoming launches, including the GM large truck program that I just mentioned. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:17:51From a share count perspective, please continue to use approximately 245 million shares for the remainder quarters of 2026 for modeling purposes. In conclusion, the company delivered solid first half results, we have benefited from supplying product to some of the strongest vehicle platforms in the industry, plus the strength of our diversified portfolio and a disciplined operating approach. Our operations delivered performance improvements in the areas of metal forming and in the areas that have received restructuring investments. As we move through the second half of the year, our priorities remain clear: continue executing our integration plan, delivering our synergy commitments, strengthening the balance sheet. We believe these efforts will further enhance our financial profile and position us to deliver sustainable value creation. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:18:42As we progress into 2027, we are excited about the potential momentum we are gaining with new program launches, such as GM's new full-size pickup, synergy growth, and stronger net cash flow performance. Thank you for your time and participation on the call today. I'm going to stop here and turn the call back over to David so we can start the Q&A. David? David LimHead of Investor Relations at Dauch Corporation00:19:01Thank you, Chris and David. We have reserved some time to take questions. I would ask that you please limit your questions to no more than two. At this time, please feel free to proceed with any questions you may have. Operator00:19:13Thank you. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Today's first question comes from Tom Narayan with RBC. Please go ahead. Tom NarayanAnalyst at RBC00:19:32Yeah. Thanks for taking the question. Hi, David and Chris. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:19:34Morning. Tom NarayanAnalyst at RBC00:19:36Hi. On the free cash flow bridge for H2 2026, I'm seeing $56 million for cash restructuring in H2, based on my math. I think it was $76 million in H1. Good to see that coming down. I know we'll be getting more details in November, but any color on what we could expect to see in that in 2027 on cash restructuring? I think it was mostly Dowlais legacy moving plants, things like that. Can we expect that to come down a lot next year? Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:20:14Yeah. Tom, this is Chris. I'll take that question. Yeah, I would expect continued restructuring cash costs this year, as you indicated, and that was of course at the midpoint of our current guidance range for that. Those investments that we've been making are a continuation of some of the Dowlais restructuring that has began over the last year or two, as well as some, I would call legacy Dauch facilities inside of Europe as well. Those will substantially be complete this year as well. We would expect going into 2027 that that number will reduce meaningfully from its current run rate levels we have here today. We haven't provided a specific number for 2027, but we do expect those to drop significantly. Tom NarayanAnalyst at RBC00:20:52Got it. Thanks. For my second question, I don't know if this is apples to apples, but I see equity income of $28 million for H1, and the China JV was raised to $75 million for the full year. Just taking that math, it could imply that China JV income is higher in H2 versus H1. I know we're hearing some caution from suppliers this earning season in China and H2. Maybe I'm just doing the wrong math, but just curious what you're seeing from your China JV implications for H2. Thanks. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:21:31Yeah, no, great question. I would give you a couple of perspectives on that. Number one, keep in mind also, you only have five months of that number included in the first half of the year because they were not included as part of our January results. They are going through some, I would call, new program launches in the back half of 2026 for some programs that they have with some customers, so they'll have a little bit of an uptick there. Big picture-wise, think of it, you have five months versus six months. Tom NarayanAnalyst at RBC00:21:56Yeah. Got it. Thank you. Operator00:22:01Thank you. Our next question today comes from Joseph Spak at UBS. Please go ahead. Alejandro NuñoAnalyst at UBS00:22:07Good morning. It's Alejandro Nuño on for Joseph Spak. You're making good progress on the synergies target. Can you maybe help us better understand the buckets of the synergies you've achieved thus far? Are most of the synergies to date SG&A, or have you started to achieve some of these synergies on the purchasing and operations front as well? Maybe given how fast you found upside to this year's target, would it be too early for us to expect an update on the potential upside to synergies targets, primarily the operational bucket at the Analyst Day in November? David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:22:34This is David Dauch. The three buckets that we had outlined before were SG&A, procurement, and operations. 30% roughly in the SG&A, 50% in the procurement, 20% in the operations was the base that we were operating from. As I've had in my prepared comments, we're making great progress across the board, but especially in the SG&A and E. That's to be expected. It's the lower hanging fruit, earlier things that we can get after. We're making meaningful progress there, but we're also making progress on the procurement and the operations. As we said, we're highly confident we can deliver the $300 million over the three-year period of time that we identified. We're confident we can deliver and hit the run rate of over $100 million this year. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:23:22At the same time, we're obviously looking to see what we can do to potentially increase that in the future, but we're not commenting at this point in time. Alejandro NuñoAnalyst at UBS00:23:31Got it. Maybe as a follow-up, can you maybe just provide an update as to what is embedded in the guide on for higher labor? How many more facilities do you have for UAW negotiations for this year? If the remainder of those facilities that go up for renegotiation sign similar contracts to what was signed at Three Rivers, is that labor inflation embedded in the guide? Any update you can provide there would be helpful. Thank you. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:23:54Yeah. In terms of cost perspective, our best estimates of our current labor arrangements are already embedded in our guide at this point in time. Alejandro NuñoAnalyst at UBS00:24:05Okay, great. Thank you. I'll pass it on. Operator00:24:09Thank you. Our next question today comes from Alex Perry at Bank of America. Please go ahead. Alex PerryAnalyst at Bank of America00:24:15All right. Thanks for taking our questions here, congrats on a strong quarter. I guess just first, you took the guidance up despite your global productions coming down a little bit. What are you seeing that allowed you to do that? Any thoughts on the type of growth versus market you may see next year based on current schedules? Thanks. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:24:38This is Chris. I'll take that. When we reflected upon our guidance update for this call here today, the strength in the second quarter, we benefited from very strong sales. We benefited from good operating performance. Those are one of the main drivers of our support and adjustment for our guidance going forward. The second half I talked about in some of my prepared remarks, we do have some reductions in overall production, primarily due to seasonality, but also, of course, for the exciting new GM pickup truck that's going to launch. That actually correlates a little bit to your second part of your question. We think about next year, what's coming at us. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:25:14Many parts of our business move with just overall production, but some of these new critical vehicle programs that are launching, such as GM's full size truck, generally we see capture share early stages of those new platforms when they're out in the market. We're certainly very excited and watching that element very closely. Key new programs will be a driver for some of that growth. Alex PerryAnalyst at Bank of America00:25:37Perfect. Really helpful. I know you had some initial thoughts on USMCA in your prepared remarks, but I'd love to just hear about the impact and the scenario analysis that you guys are thinking about internally in regards to USMCA. Thanks. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:25:59This is David, Alex. As I said in my prepared remarks, it's something that we're monitoring closely. We understand the status of where things are at this point in time. Until we get clarity, it's really hard to forecast what that impact will be on the overall business. Our policy, as I said, is always to buy and build local, we try to minimize the impact as much as we can. With the USMCA set up, we'd have to rebalance or reshuffle some things between the U.S. and Mexico if things go a different direction. We've got the flexibility to do that and an expanded flexibility, especially taking over some U.S. facilities from Dowlais as well as some Mexican facilities from Dowlais. Too early and too premature, I guess, really to comment on the cost implications. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:26:50At the same time, we will adjust our footprint and be flexible based on the regional footprint that we have in place. Alex PerryAnalyst at Bank of America00:27:00Perfect. That's really helpful. Best of luck going forward. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:27:03Yeah, thanks. Alex PerryAnalyst at Bank of America00:27:05Thank you. Operator00:27:06Thank you. Our next question today comes from James Mulholland with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. James MulhollandAnalyst at Deutsche Bank00:27:11Great. Thanks. Good morning, guys. Maybe just to piggyback on Alex's question for this year's guide. Nice to see it was raised on the low end, what would it take realistically for you to reach the high end? Do you need LVP to remain steady where it currently is or Q1 retooling to go a bit faster, maybe Ram Heavy Duty comes out a bit stronger the back half? Just some thoughts about the drivers for the rest of the year, how you would get to that high level. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:27:35Yeah, this is Chris. I'll take that. Look, there's obviously many moving pieces to the back half of the year or the full year, as you would know. First and foremost, clearly production is one of the top drivers within some of those ranges, high or low end. To the extent production is as strong as we expect or stronger for certain platforms that we would supply, that would obviously push you towards the higher end. We do provide ranges, for example, on our JV equity income, ranges on our synergy achievement. Those clearly, as you're within those ranges, if you're performing at the higher end of those, drive you to the higher end of the range. Some of the things we look at in terms of puts and takes, overall productivity is critical to our success as well. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:28:17You have a lot of activity in the back half of the year associated with that, you also have a little bit of, I would say, macro pressure on, I'll use inflation for things like oil and freight costs. We're sort of counterbalancing some of that productivity to support and work towards mitigate some of those impacts. Those are some of the moving pieces we think about when we're inside of that range. James MulhollandAnalyst at Deutsche Bank00:28:37Great. Thank you. I guess on the $2 billion of active quoting for new and incremental business, can you give us a sense of whether or not the breakdown of quoting there is for new platforms that you're already on or conquest awards? Are these products really being quoted more aligned with the legacy Dauch business or is it more related to the acquired GKN businesses? David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:29:02This is David. The good news is it's balanced between the two companies, that being legacy AAM and legacy Dowlais GKN. That's good news. That's the comprehensive portfolio that we wanted to have in place. That's critical there. In regards to the makeup, probably 85% of the business we're quoting today now is ICE and hybrid related, where several years ago it was flipped the other way with electrification. It plays right in the sweet spot of our portfolio. We're pleased with that. At the same time, the $2 billion that we identified is just new and incremental business. It includes a little bit of capacity uplifts on the existing platforms, but all the replacement or extension programs are outside of that. James MulhollandAnalyst at Deutsche Bank00:29:50Great. Thank you very much, guys. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:29:52Thank you. Operator00:29:54Thank you. Our next question today comes from Nathan Jones at Stifel. Please go ahead. Nathan JonesAnalyst at Stifel00:30:00Good morning, everyone. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:30:01Morning, Nathan. Nathan JonesAnalyst at Stifel00:30:02I guess I'll start with a question on the energy and steel price or steel cost increases that we've seen out there. Some related to tariffs, some related to the war. Is that something that impacted the second quarter for you just in terms of EBITDA generation? Maybe it's delayed a little bit getting through inventory? Nathan JonesAnalyst at Stifel00:30:27Can you talk about the customer recoveries that you get from that and the timing on those, please? Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:30:33Sure. This is Chris, I'll take that. From an energy cost perspective, we had, I would say, a relatively minor impact in the second quarter, maybe to the tune of a few million dollars. Right now, I would expect that to continue into the second half of the year based on current environment. You indicated sort of a second part of that question related to steel costs. We typically do not buy steel or those type of commodities on a spot purchase, so we're under long-term contracts. In many cases, we see no variability in the short term for that. To the extent it's driving commodity costs that go into the components we buy, we generally pass those up to our customers mechanically and contractually. Those get passed up every 30, 60, 90 days, depending on the customer. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:31:15That would be all various inputs that you would see into the products that we buy. In terms of energy cost recoveries from the customers, those would be separate discussions, and we do not have automatic passages for those, in most cases. Some in Europe, overall, generally not. Nathan JonesAnalyst at Stifel00:31:33Fair enough. The new GM pickup truck, is there a difference in content for you guys on that platform versus the one that it's replacing? Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:31:44Yeah, it's relatively similar to the one we're replacing. Generally, same features. There's some little small plus and minuses that they have engineering changes on to support the characteristics of the vehicle. But big picture, you should think it's principally the same. Nathan JonesAnalyst at Stifel00:31:57Fair enough. Thanks for taking the questions. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:31:59Yep. Operator00:32:01Thank you. Our next question today comes from Mojab Koopa with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Mojab KoopaAnalyst at JPMorgan00:32:08Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions, and congrats on the strong execution. I just want to follow up on the $2 billion quoting activity comments. Obviously pretty strong progress there. I'm curious, any progress you're seeing on just the cross-sell opportunities between legacy Dauch and Dowlais that you're starting to see? Just curious how those conversations might be going with customers, and should we expect to see any new awards in the near term, or wait to hear more in November? I have a quick follow-up. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:32:41Yeah, that was one of the things we're very excited about as far as the cross-selling opportunity here. Again, Dauch and GKN had some very strong relationships with, obviously, the Europeans, but especially the Asians. We're obviously very strong with the trade through here, but both companies had active relations with all the global OEMs. It's just a matter who had a stronger relationship. Collectively, we're much stronger across the global OEMs. What we're doing is we're having strategic meetings and reviews with those OEMs so that they understand the comprehensiveness of our portfolio, and then trying to identify opportunities where we could help them, not only initially right now, but more importantly, mid- and long-term as they look at their long-range product plans going forward. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:33:32Part of it is just an educational process with the customers, we are seeing an uptick in regards to the market basket and new and incremental opportunities because of the relationships that the combined business has, and we hope to convert on those as we go forward, and we'll announce it appropriately at the right time. Mojab KoopaAnalyst at JPMorgan00:33:53Got it. That's helpful. Just want to follow up on CapEx. Is the first half to second half uplift pretty significant? Less than $200 million to greater than $200 million implied in the second half. Is that all tied to GM? I'm just curious about the second half weighted nature of that, or is that just a conservative number out there? Thanks. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:34:20Yes. Based on the midpoint of our guidance for that range, we are second half weighted in terms of CapEx. We do have program launches. GM, of course, is one of them. Some of that has already been spent, we'll continue to have some more investments associated with that program, also getting ready for some launches into next year as well. Look, we look to optimize our spend. We look to optimize timing associated with that the best we can. We'll continue to push on that, it is second half weighted at this point in time, driven primarily by launch activity. Mojab KoopaAnalyst at JPMorgan00:34:49Understood. Great. Thanks for all the color, good luck. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:34:52Thank you. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:34:53Thank you. Operator00:34:54Thank you. Our next question today comes from Dan Levy at Barclays. Please go ahead. Dan LevyAnalyst at Barclays00:35:00Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Wanted to first start with a question on Metal Forming. Best margin you've had in quite some time. Maybe you could just talk to what happened in Metal Forming that the margin recovered as much as it did. Broadly, is the form of Metal Forming structurally where you need it to be, or is there stuff that needs to be done within the portfolio to further clean it up? Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:35:30Yeah, Dan, this is Chris. I'll take the first half of that question, talk a little bit about the margin profile. You can see it is actually over the last couple of quarters, legacy Dauch and then transitioning to the combined company has been on a nice steady cadence of improvement. You really had two things happening here. Number one, with the combination what Dowlais brought in, of course, the powdered metal portion of Dowlais into our Metal Forming operations. They had a slightly higher margin, you are getting some uplift associated with that when we combine that up, and of course, you pick up an extra month in the second quarter versus the first quarter associated with that. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:36:05I think maybe more importantly and twice as exciting, certainly as it relates to operational wise, we're seeing improvements that we've been discussing over the last, well, quite frankly, three or four quarters in our core Metal Forming operations continue to take hold. We're not where we need to be yet, we are seeing continued positive performance also giving uplift in that margin. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:36:28Yes. Dan, this is David. Again, thank you for acknowledging the margin improvement in the Metal Forming. We've been working really hard both on the legacy AAM as well as taking over the legacy GKN type business there. As part of your question, you talked about the structure and the optimization of the business. We clearly are looking to drive capacity utilization up to certain levels on a global basis. We've got opportunity there. One of the other big opportunities that we have is insourcing of product, which is a positive because of what they do already on the powder side of the business, but what we also do, meaning legacy AAM, on the forging side of the business. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:37:13Clearly with all the tariff discussions that are ongoing right now, there's a tremendous inquiry from a lot of global OEMs as well as other tiered for reshoring or localization to the individual continents around the world. We see tremendous upside opportunity here. At the same time, we'll look to optimize the portfolio appropriately where it makes business sense. We do that with all of our business, and we always maintain optionality on that business going forward. Dan LevyAnalyst at Barclays00:37:46Okay, thank you. Second is sort of similar question, but on Dowlais. You've now had it for six months, and so you've had a deeper look at the business, and presumably you've now been through the facilities, have a better sense of the resource usage and allocation. How much more work or what type of work needs to be done on optimization, rationalization, whether it's footprint, whether it's resources? How close is that to the business that you expected versus what further items need to be done that maybe are different from what you originally expected? David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:38:27Yeah. On the positive side of things, Dowlais was already actively involved on the auto side of the business with some major restructuring that they had done in the U.S. as well as ongoing in Europe, and that you were seeing some of those restructuring costs coming through in the financial performance. Again, as we said, hopefully we're in the lower end of that as we go forward here based on the hard work that was done before we acquired it, but the work that we continue to do to execute those plans. As Chris said, we have some of our own legacy AAM plans that we're optimizing that's coming through that as well. Overall, their facilities are in decent shape. They need some upgrading to the legacy AAM standards or Dauch standards. We'll deal with that appropriately. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:39:17Clearly, we're managing very closely installed capacity and capability on that capacity and evaluating the capability of the machines and the workforce and the availability of labor in the given areas. Probably the biggest area of improvement that we still see is the implementation of the Dauch Operating System. They will benefit greatly from that from a discipline, from a structure standpoint. That will take some time to get implemented over the next couple of years, but also will result in productivity savings and synergy savings as we go forward. Overall, Dowlais had and has a very strong innovation background. They have a solid manufacturing background. They just need to be optimized from a capacity utilization, facility utilization, and most importantly, the implementation of the operating system. We see upside potential there. Dan LevyAnalyst at Barclays00:40:17That productivity could be incremental to the synergy targets that you've laid out? David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:40:21Well, right now, it's kind of a mixed bag because we got the base Dowlais productivity commitments, we got the legacy AAM productivity commitments, and we got synergies on top of it. They all come out of the same productivity bucket. We're hopeful that we can see some upside in the future, but right now, we're not adjusting our commitment from a synergistic standpoint. Dan LevyAnalyst at Barclays00:40:44Okay, thank you. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:40:45Yep. Operator00:40:46Thank you. Our next question comes from Hamed Khorsand with BWS. Please go ahead. Hamed KhorsandAnalyst at BWS00:40:52Hey, good morning. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:40:53Good morning. Hamed KhorsandAnalyst at BWS00:40:53I want to ask you if you're seeing this stable production from industry and also from your end, how are you able to manage the business to maximize contribution margin? David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:41:10Well, first of all, as it relates to contribution margin, one of the first best ways to support that is stable production environment. You may recall the industry over the last maybe two or three years ago that had unstable production schedules, unstable macro, there were semiconductor challenges, et cetera, caused us to be highly inefficient. Once the production environment stabilizes like we've been experiencing this year, for example, really allows you then to hone in on maximizing throughput, maximizing efficiency, maximizing productivity, and that is single most best environment we could ask for to maximize our contribution margin on the products that we build. Hamed KhorsandAnalyst at BWS00:41:55Are you able to do that now? David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:41:58Yes, we're doing it right now. Overall, production environment has been relatively stable, correct. Hamed KhorsandAnalyst at BWS00:42:05Okay. Great. Thank you. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:42:05The combined company has a relatively consistent variable profit or contribution margin anywhere between 25%-35%, depending on the product, and we've been able to maintain that on an ongoing basis here. Hamed KhorsandAnalyst at BWS00:42:19Okay. Thank you. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:42:21Thank you. Operator00:42:23Thank you. Our next question today comes from Vanessa Jeffriess at Jefferies. Please go ahead. Vanessa JeffriessAnalyst at Jefferies00:42:29Hello, congratulations on the results. You've made excellent progress in the synergies, but you know you've spoken about the purchasing piece maybe being a little bit more difficult given the backdrop, which we're clearly seeing persist. Is there any risk the purchasing synergies get pushed out a bit more, or do you have a buffer there, either from SG&A or how conservative you've been on the targets? Secondly, you know you've done plenty of travel this year, maybe if you could give us an update on how you're thinking about consolidating the Dowlais' footprint. We definitely continue to see European names talk more and more about what they can move to Hungary, and obviously Dowlais made a significant investment there. Maybe any thoughts on what you can consolidate there to improve profitability in Europe? David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:43:08Okay, this is David. Again, as we said earlier, we're making tremendous progress in regards to synergies and we're already delivering run rate synergy of $70 million for owning it for two quarters. We're on track to deliver the $100 million heavily weighted towards the SG&A, but like I said, purchasing and operations are contributing to that. We fully expected that we would need the three years to achieve all of our purchasing objectives as well as our operational objectives, largely because of the market that we're in today, especially on the direct side, is going to take some time. I'd see some of the direct being more back-weighted, more 2027, 2028 type things. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:43:51We can offset some of that with stronger performance on some of the indirect and freight and logistics and insourcing opportunities, as well as some of the SG&A things, as I already mentioned to you. From an operational standpoint, yes GKN had built a plant in Hungary, had moved some work to Hungary. We're evaluating the footprint across Europe on a combined portfolio now. We're looking to optimize, as I said, facility equipment and people utilization. Certainly Hungary will come into play as we evaluate that going forward here. There is clearly an effort by GKN to move from some of the Western countries to some of the Eastern countries. We're just assessing what that is, while at the same time balancing appropriate labor agreements that we have in place with the unions in those given areas. It's not just limited to Europe. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:44:47We're doing that globally around the world. Our job is to make sure we're driving full utilization of our resources. That takes some time to get that done, but we're heavily focused on that right now. We'll continue to be. Vanessa JeffriessAnalyst at Jefferies00:45:01Thank you. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:45:03Yep. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:45:03Thank you, guys. Operator00:45:05Thank you. Our next question today comes from Itay Michaeli with TD Cowen. Please go ahead. Itay MichaeliAnalyst at TD Cowen00:45:12Great. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:45:14Morning. Itay MichaeliAnalyst at TD Cowen00:45:15Just wanted to go back to the $2 billion of quoting. Two questions there. One, any way to think about potential win rates there? I think in the past, we typically talked about 30% for legacy Dow. As you look at these opportunities, is that broadly consistent with just how you're thinking about CapEx intensity for the company going forward as these opportunities emerge? David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:45:38Yeah, I'd say, Itay, this is David. From a win rate standpoint, you should continue to focus around that 30% level. Obviously Dauch has a leading market share position with respect to sideshaft, so it might be a little bit higher with respect to that side of things, but the balance of things should be right around that 30% side. On the CapEx side, we've guided 4.5%-5.5% of sales, and we can manage our business within that, not only today, but also going forward in the future. I don't know, Chris, anything else you might want to add? Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:46:11Yeah, as it relates to capital intensity, as you know, Itay, bigger programs require bigger capital. Generally speaking, we price for those accordingly. We have business case hurdles that we need to meet to do that. Our goal, I think as we've shared over the last couple of years, is to try to maintain that CapEx at 5% or lower, even acknowledging some of these new business opportunities. That said, we'll look at each one as it comes our way and do the appropriate financial analytics on those cases and go from there. Itay MichaeliAnalyst at TD Cowen00:46:40Terrific. Maybe a quick kind of housekeeping question. Any kind of high level sense of just kind of regional revenue performance for the combined company in the quarter now that you have a little bit more diversification? Just kind of curious how the regional revenue performed. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:46:55Yeah, I would say the regional revenue has performed very consistent with what you see at the macro level for each of the regions that we support. Primarily, as you know, the bulk of our business comes out of North America, about 60%, and Europe of 25%. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, overall, North America was down, I think, 0.1% inside the quarter versus the prior year. We've seen very similar in terms of our regional performance there. Same with Europe as well. Itay MichaeliAnalyst at TD Cowen00:47:25Got it. Very helpful. Thank you. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:47:26Yep. Yeah. Thanks, Itay. Operator00:47:29Thank you. Our next question today comes from Jake Schoel with BNP. Please go ahead. Jake SchoelAnalyst at BNP00:47:36Hey, guys. Could you just give us an idea of what launch costs and any other one-timers look like in the second half? Just so we can bridge a more normalized run rate to use as a jumping off point for 2027. Thank you. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:47:54Jake, this is Chris. I would say while we do have a meaningful launch, especially with the General Motors light duty pickup truck. We've been in a series of launches here last year, this year. I would expect into next year. I don't see at this point in time any period that has overweight launch costs versus the other. While we're incurring them, we'll continue to incur them. We did last year. We will continue to incur them next year as we're launching a wide variety of programs. You may recall we, at least from outsized programs as Legacy Dowlais, we launched the Ram about two years ago. That was a big program. You had some heavy duty truck activity here earlier this year. You have light duty back half of this year. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:48:35You have a whole host of other programs now with the Dauch products that we have inside the company which is great. A lot of activity from that perspective. I would just think of it, at this point in time, relative, consistent. I wouldn't spike one quarter out or one year out versus the other at this point in time. Jake SchoelAnalyst at BNP00:48:53Thanks, Chris. That's helpful. You guys are generating strong cash flow this year. It looks like it should step up pretty meaningfully next year. How should we think about when you guys will be able to start returning some of that to shareholders? Thanks, guys. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:49:09Yeah. We've been very public about our capital allocation approach especially as it relates to when we made the acquisition announcement earlier this year. Clearly, as you know, we took on some debt to do this acquisition but maintain still a healthy leverage profile. Our objective was to continue to strengthen our balance sheet as we go forward. Our primary use of capital allocation in the near term would be to continue to reduce our debt until we're around 2.5x levered or lower. Once we sort of cross that threshold on a stable basis, we will then look to open up the playbook to, I would say, additional capital allocation across the spectrum, including shareholder-friendly activity. Jake SchoelAnalyst at BNP00:49:55Thank you. Operator00:49:58Thank you. Our next question today comes from Doug Carson at Bank of America. Please go ahead. Doug CarsonAnalyst at Bank of America00:50:04Hey, guys good morning, thanks for taking a question from the credit guy. I appreciate that. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:50:09You bet, Doug. Doug CarsonAnalyst at Bank of America00:50:14First, great job on taking out the 2028. If my math serves me right you took out, what, $250 million in May and August combined- Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:50:27Yes Doug CarsonAnalyst at Bank of America00:50:28Then started in October. $400 million of debt came out just in the last year or so, which is great. Have you had a chance to circle up with the agencies? I will myself, but there's some kind of stale negative outlook out there at S&P, have the rating agencies kind of absorbed the debt reduction yet? Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:50:50Yeah, of course. Obviously, they watch us very closely, as you know, We are in contact with them periodically to provide them updates. That is one of their top items that they monitor, Also our cash flow performance as well as our ability to generate synergies on a go-forward basis is also critical to, at least through their eyes, how we continue to, I'll say, move up the ratings chain, if you will. We continue to keep them well up to speed on our position and all the activity we're doing. Meeting that commitment of paying down debt that we said we would do, and you see us doing it, is a key piece of the success with that relationship and their view of us. Doug CarsonAnalyst at Bank of America00:51:26Yeah, I will reinforce that on my side. The Silverado and Sierra, they're going to hit showrooms, I think, in December. I think Fort Wayne and Flint have already planned a bunch of retooling already. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:51:40Yes. Doug CarsonAnalyst at Bank of America00:51:41How do you see the production cadence from GM? Is that on target? I'm looking at IHS production. It's right in front of me right now. It definitely wobbles a little bit at the beginning of 2027. Are you prepared to navigate the changes in production need from GM? Are you already set up for it? Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:52:03Well yeah. Of course, we're absolutely prepared to accommodate their schedules as well as supporting them through their launches. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we expect some of that downtime, especially on the light duty side, to begin with impacting us here in September, which we're prepared. It's part of our thought process here from that standpoint. They'll go into some rolling launches in the future years. We'll of course, support them as needed. No issue. Doug CarsonAnalyst at Bank of America00:52:29Right. Those are great products. My final last one is the $2 billion of business you're trying to win, do you have a sense of how much of that is EV business versus ICE business? It may not even matter, but I'm just kind of curious of the next generation of what you're looking at in that $2 billion, if you could just maybe share that. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:52:52Doug, this is David. It's really swung over the last 18 months from what was 85% electrification to is now 85% ICE and hybrid with a smaller level of electrification. It's right in the core sweet spot of both the legacy AAM and legacy Dowlais product portfolio. At the same time, we still continue to see some electrification opportunities, especially outside of North America. This is right in our core wheelhouse, and we expect to convert. Doug CarsonAnalyst at Bank of America00:53:25That's great. Last final comment from me. Thanks for sticking to your guns on getting the balance sheet right and then sharing the wealth with equity when you're stable. Despite paying down $400 million of debt, I mean, your stock's up 18% today, both sides could win. I think a strong balance sheet is going to be really helpful in the future. That's it for me. Thanks. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:53:47Thanks for your comments, Doug. Appreciate it. Operator00:53:51Our next question is a follow-up from Tom Narayan with RBC. Please go ahead. Tom NarayanAnalyst at RBC00:53:56Hey, thanks for letting me back in. Yeah, David, I just want to follow up on something you were talking about earlier with the USMCA. I know there's talk about this 50% U.S. contenting and the stuff you guys could do now with some of the Dowlais assets in the U.S. Just trying to understand the scale of this. Maybe this would never happen, but if the Ram Heavy Duty were to be onshored, let's say. Is that something at that scale you could potentially support where, is there a risk that they would insource axles, let's say, there? What is the scale of the onshoring you guys would do, and would this be something that the OEMs would just compensate you guys for? David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:54:47Yeah, I was going to say, right now, it would all be speculation on everyone's behalf. Clearly, there's a lot of dialogue about increasing the U.S. content from the level that it's at today to what they want it to be in the future. The Trump administration clearly has put a lot of pressure, not only on the Detroit three but also on the global OEMs to do more here in the U.S., and you're seeing the sizable level of investment that's being committed here to the U.S. market. Like I said, that bodes well for us in regards to new and incremental business opportunities for us. To your question about potential moving work, let's say, from Mexico to the U.S., that's going to be on a case-by-case basis with customers. We'll have to discuss that with them on a case-by-case basis. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:55:35Highly unlikely that you'll move something like the Ram, in my opinion, with the level of investment that's been sunk and where things are at. It doesn't mean that they couldn't build a certain capacity in the U.S. if they wanted to, but they've got a sizable investment, as does GM, and as does other OEMs in Mexico. Those OEMs are going to want to leverage that installed capacity as much as they can. It's dollars billions to pick up and move an assembly plant. We just have to take this, like I said, on a case-by-case basis, run business cases, and then share the impact with the customers, and then they'll have to make a bigger decision as to what they want to do to address the bigger issue between the OEMs and the government and the expectations that way. Tom NarayanAnalyst at RBC00:56:23Got it. Thanks so much. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:56:24Yeah. Thank you. David LimHead of Investor Relations at Dauch Corporation00:56:26Thanks, Tom. Okay, thanks, Tom. We thank all of you who have participated on this call and appreciate your interest in Dauch. We certainly look forward to talking with you in the future. Thank you. Operator00:56:37Thank you. That does conclude today's conference call. We thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.Read moreParticipantsAnalystsDavid LimHead of Investor Relations at Dauch CorporationDavid DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch CorporationChris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch CorporationTom NarayanAnalyst at RBCAlejandro NuñoAnalyst at UBSAlex PerryAnalyst at Bank of AmericaJames MulhollandAnalyst at Deutsche BankNathan JonesAnalyst at StifelMojab KoopaAnalyst at JPMorganDan LevyAnalyst at BarclaysHamed KhorsandAnalyst at BWSVanessa JeffriessAnalyst at JefferiesItay MichaeliAnalyst at TD CowenJake SchoelAnalyst at BNPDoug CarsonAnalyst at Bank of AmericaPowered by Earnings DocumentsSlide DeckPress Release(8-K)Quarterly report(10-Q) American Axle & Manufacturing Earnings HeadlinesDauch Corporation (DCH) Presents at J.P. Morgan Automotive Conference TranscriptAugust 12, 2026 | seekingalpha.comDauch to Present at the J.P. Morgan 2026 Auto Conference on August 12August 10, 2026 | prnewswire.comMILLIONAIRE MASTERCLASS INVITE: AltucherJames Altucher says Elon Musk is preparing an unprecedented project set to surface on September 25. Altucher is hosting a free masterclass revealing what he says is locked inside a sealed briefcase detailing Musk's plans. Attendees who join early can also access a $1,000 bonus offer included with the presentation. | Paradigm Press (Ad)Dauch Corporation rises 13% after Q2 beatAugust 7, 2026 | msn.comDauch Corporation (DCH) Q2 2026 Earnings Call TranscriptAugust 7, 2026 | seekingalpha.comDauch Corporation 2026 Q2 - Results - Earnings Call PresentationAugust 7, 2026 | seekingalpha.comSee More American Axle & Manufacturing Headlines Get Earnings Announcements in your inboxWant to stay updated on the latest earnings announcements and upcoming reports for companies like American Axle & Manufacturing? Sign up for Earnings360's daily newsletter to receive timely earnings updates on American Axle & Manufacturing and other key companies, straight to your email. Email Address About American Axle & ManufacturingAmerican Axle & Manufacturing (NYSE:DCH) is a U.S.-based designer, engineer and manufacturer of driveline and drivetrain systems and components for the automotive and light- and heavy-vehicle markets. The company produces a range of mechanical and electromechanical products including axles, driveshafts, differential systems, halfshafts, transmission components, and related sealing and suspension parts. Its product portfolio serves passenger cars, light trucks, commercial vehicles and off-highway applications. Beyond component manufacturing, the company provides integrated engineering services such as product development, testing and system integration to help vehicle manufacturers meet performance, weight and fuel-economy targets. Manufacturing capabilities commonly include metal casting, forging, machining and final assembly, and the company has been developing solutions for hybrid and electric drivetrains alongside conventional internal-combustion driveline technologies. American Axle & Manufacturing supplies its products to global vehicle manufacturers and operates a network of production and engineering facilities across multiple regions to support original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). The company’s operations emphasize collaboration with automakers on application-specific design and quality assurance, positioning it as a tier-one supplier in the global automotive supply chain. 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PresentationSkip to Participants Operator00:00:00Good morning. My name is Rocco, I will be your conference facilitator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Dauch Corporation's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All lines have been placed on to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer period. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press the star key, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press the star key, then the number two. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. David Lim, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Mr. Lim. David LimHead of Investor Relations at Dauch Corporation00:00:40Thank you, Rocco, good morning, everyone. I'd like to welcome everyone who is joining us on Dauch Corporation's second quarter earnings call. Earlier this morning, we released our second quarter of 2026 earnings announcement. You can access this announcement on the investor relations page of our website, www.dauch.com, and through the PR Newswire services. You can also find supplemental slides for this conference call on the investor page of our website. A replay of this call will be available through August 14th. Replay details are in today's press release. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that the matters discussed in this call may contain comments and forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties, which cannot be predicted or quantified and which may cause future activities and results of operations to differ materially from those discussed. David LimHead of Investor Relations at Dauch Corporation00:01:32For additional information, please reference slide two of our investor presentation or the press release that was issued today. During this call, we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Information regarding these non-GAAP measures, as well as a reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures to GAAP financial information, is available in the presentation. Let me turn things over to our Chairman and CEO, David Dauch. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:01:58Thank you, David, good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Dauch's financial results for the second quarter of 2026. Joining me on the call today is Chris May, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. The company's strong second quarter results highlight the continued positive acceleration for the new Dauch Corporation. We are focused on unlocking the full strategic potential of the transformational acquisition as we continue to successfully implement our integration plan to drive value creation and leverage our enhanced size and scale. So far, I'm very pleased with the robust start. As for today's agenda, I'll review the highlights of our second quarter financial performance. Next, I'll touch on our synergy progress, some business updates, commentary about the industry, and our guidance. I'll then turn the call over to Chris to cover the details of our financial results. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:02:53After which, we will field any questions that you may have. Let's begin with some of the details. The company's second quarter of 2026 sales were approximately $3 billion. Adjusted earnings per share was $0.32, and adjusted free cash flow was approximately $148 million. In the second quarter, North American production was flat year-over-year. Europe was down approximately 1%, and global production was also flat. Our quarterly performance reflects continued strength across a number of important customer programs, including BMW's CLAR platform that underpins the brand's X5 and X7 models, Volvo's SPA crossover utility vehicle platform, and GM's large truck program. From a profitability perspective, our adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter was $390 million, or 13.2% of sales, driven by mix, business performance, synergies, and a solid Dowlais contribution. Chris will provide more details about our overall financial performance during his prepared remarks. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:04:03On slide four, I'd like to share an update on our synergy and value capture progress. We have now been operating for five months as a combined company, and we have already realized approximately $70 million of run rate savings to date. We remain on target to deliver more than $100 million in run rate savings by year-end. We have made excellent progress in eliminating duplicative corporate costs, optimizing SG&A, and capturing global engineering efficiencies. At the same time, we're advancing initiatives across procurement and operations, which naturally take longer to realize. While significant opportunities remain ahead, I'm proud of the strong progress our team continues to make. As we have previously communicated, we expect to deliver approximately $180 million in run rate savings by the end of year two and the full $300 million in run rate savings by the end of year three. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:05:02Let me talk about some business updates, which you can see on slide five. We want to highlight that our company was named a Ford Supplier of the Year Award recipient in the quality category for our outstanding performance, dedication, and collaboration during the 2025 fiscal year. The recognition reflects a collective effort across our organization to deliver excellence to our customers as they are the center of everything that we do. We are incredibly proud to receive this award. In addition, in the second quarter, we won numerous awards with major European, Asian, and North American customers, supporting not only mainstream vehicle segments but also high-end sports cars and lifestyle off-road capable vehicles. We are now seeing the strength and the comprehensiveness of our product portfolio. Lastly, we continue to build a strong pipeline of future growth opportunities. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:05:56Today, we are actively quoting more than $2 billion of new and incremental business, including capacity uplifts on high-demand programs. Additionally, we are also working to secure next-generation platforms and program extensions. We remain disciplined in pursuing opportunities that align with our strategy and support our long-term profitable growth. Now let's talk about the industry. There are two topics I wanted to discuss with you specifically. First, on the macro environment. In the second quarter, we experienced some incremental costs related to the elevated energy prices, but we did not see any noteworthy impact on our operations, nor on our customer schedules. From a high level, we did not experience significant mix change, possibly pointing to consumer resiliency, especially here in the U.S. In general, overall production has been stable, and we continue to experience the strength of the North American truck segment. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:06:58Second, we are actively monitoring the USMCA trade discussions and will react accordingly once discussions are finalized. We understand that the parties are moving into a period of annual review and are currently in active negotiations. This trade relationship is critical to the success of the auto industry and specifically to the North American region. As we have shared in the past, our strategy is to buy and build local in the regions that we serve, and we have benefited from this approach and will continue to do so. Now let's talk about our updated full-year guidance. We have lifted the low end of our guidance range to take into account our performance through the first half of this year. Additionally, we are managing meaningful launches in the second half of the year. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:07:42The company now targets sales of $10.6 billion-$10.8 billion, adjusted EBITDA range of approximately $1.36 billion-$1.425 billion, adjusted free cash flow of approximately $260 million-$325 million. Our guidance ranges are underpinned by the following production assumptions: North America production at 15.1 million units, Europe at 16.9 million units, China at 31.6 million units, and global production at approximately 91.1 million units. As we have shared before, our outlook is based on not only industry production, but also on certain programs that we have meaningful content on. We note that GM is transitioning to its next-generation full-size truck program. We expect the model changeover to begin during the second half of this year. The new truck is very exciting and an important product both for GM as well as for us, and we look forward to successfully supporting our largest customer. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:08:45Before transitioning to Chris, I want to share with the investment community that we will be hosting a Capital Markets Day on November 17th in New York City. We will provide additional details about the event in the coming months, so please mark your calendars. In summary, we had an excellent second quarter. The integration of Dowlais continues to progress favorably. Our synergy achievement is on track, and we are excited about our future, and we are built to perform. Now let me turn the call over to our Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Chris May, for the financial results and details. Thanks. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:09:23Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. I will cover the financial details of our second quarter 2026 results and our updated guidance with you today. I will also refer to the earnings slide seven as part of my prepared comments. In the second quarter of 2026, our sales were $2.96 billion as compared to $1.54 billion in the second quarter of 2025. Slide seven shows a walk of second quarter 2025 sales to second quarter 2026 sales. Overall, our sales were flat year-over-year and in line with changes in overall North American production levels. The divestiture of our India commercial vehicle axle business also had a $34 million sales impact in the quarter. This was offset by metal market passthroughs and FX, which increased sales by approximately $35 million. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:10:14About a third of this amount was related to FX and was driven by the strengthening of the Brazilian real and the EUR. Dauch contributed $1.45 billion in gross sales for the second quarter. Versus the second quarter of last year, volume, mix, and other was favorable by $42 million, driven by positive demand for our products that supply BMW and Volvo, which was partially offset by $31 million of lower sales due to the sale of certain businesses. Let's move on to adjusted EBITDA. For the second quarter of 2026, adjusted EBITDA was $389.6 million, and adjusted EBITDA margin was 13.2% versus $202 million and 13.2% last year. You can see a year-over-year walk down of adjusted EBITDA on slide eight. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:11:02In the quarter, adjusted EBITDA for legacy Dauch was lower, primarily reflecting lower volume and mix, the divestiture of our India commercial vehicle axle business, and approximately $8 million of EBITDA impact stemming from costs that we incurred during the UAW work stoppage at our Three Rivers, Michigan facility. These headwinds were partially offset by approximately $8 million of continued favorable performance, reflecting our focus on improving our legacy metal forming performance and managing overall costs. Dauch contributed approximately $180 million of adjusted EBITDA during the quarter, or 12.4% of sales. EBITDA benefited from approximately $9 million of volume, mix, and other, as well as $9 million of favorable operational performance. These benefits were partially offset by the sale of businesses that I discussed earlier in my sales commentary. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:11:55In the second quarter, we realized $15 million in synergy benefits as we eliminated duplicative corporate and SG&A costs and have begun realizing engineering and purchasing efficiencies. As David highlighted, we achieved a $70 million run rate as of today, and we expect this to continue to grow. We have a nice market basket of potential savings that we continue to drive to completion as we target the $100 million+ of run rate savings by year-end. We are making great progress on our synergy objectives. Let's move on to interest and taxes. Net interest expense was $82.6 million in the second quarter of 2026, compared to $37.5 million in the second quarter of 2025. The year-over-year increase in interest expense primarily reflects the issuance of new and assumed debt in connection with the acquisition. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:12:46The weighted average interest rate of our outstanding long-term debt was approximately 7.1% at the end of the quarter. In the second quarter of 2026, we recorded an income tax expense of $16 million compared to $28 million in the second quarter of 2025. As we described last quarter, due to the acquisition-related activity this year, our tax rate and impacts remain quite involved in 2026. We expect our adjusted effective tax rate to be approximately 25%-30% this year. As you may recall, this is somewhat elevated due to the valuation allowances and partial interest deduction limitations in the U.S. We continue to expect approximately $160 million-$170 million this year. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:13:33Taking all these sales and cost drivers into account, our GAAP net income was $1 million, a slight positive earnings per share in the second quarter of 2026, compared to $39.3 million or $0.32 per share in the second quarter of 2025. Adjusted earnings per share, which excludes the impact of items noted in our earnings press release, was $0.32 per share in the second quarter of 2026, compared to adjusted earnings per share of $0.34 for the second quarter of 2025. Let's now move to cash flow and the balance sheet. Net cash provided by operating activities for the second quarter of 2026 was $107.5 million, compared to net cash provided by operating activities of $91.9 million in the second quarter of 2025. Capital expenditures that have proceeds from the sale of property, plant, and equipment in the second quarter of 2026 were $91.7 million. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:14:26Reflecting the impact of these activities, our adjusted free cash flow was $148.4 million in the second quarter of 2026 as compared to $48.7 million in the second quarter of 2025. From a debt leverage perspective, we ended the quarter with net debt of approximately $4.1 billion and a net leverage ratio of 2.6x at June 30th, 2026. In the near term, we will continue to focus on reducing our outstanding debt and strengthening our balance sheet. During the second quarter, we voluntarily redeemed $125 million of our 6 7/8 notes due in 2028. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, in August, we voluntarily redeemed all of the remaining 6 7/8 notes due in 2028. This also resulted in a principal payment of $125 million. We now have no major debt maturities until 2029. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:15:21We ended the quarter with total available liquidity of approximately $2.5 billion, consisting of available cash and borrowing capacity on our global credit facilities. Let's talk about our updated financial guidance on slide six. Our updated targets are as follows. For sales, we tightened our full-year guidance range to $10.6 billion-$10.8 billion versus $10.3 billion-$10.8 billion previously, reflecting our solid performance through the first half of 2026 and our expectations for the remainder of the year. This sales target is based on current global production assumptions and certain assumptions for our key programs. For example, we now anticipate GM's full-size pickup truck and SUV production in the range of 1.35 billion-1.4 billion units this year. From an EBITDA perspective, we anticipate a range of $1.36 billion-$1.425 billion versus $1.3 billion-$1.425 billion previously. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:16:20We brought the low end of our range up to reflect the strength of our first half results, operational performance, and continued integration execution. We note included in our adjusted EBITDA is the proportionate share of income from our joint venture in China with HASCO, called SDS. We expect our JV share, which is already included in adjusted EBITDA guidance, to be in the range of $70 million-$80 million versus $65 million-$75 million previously. We anticipate adjusted free cash flow in the range of $260 million-$325 million from $235 million-$325 million previously. While we do not provide quarterly guidance, we can offer some perspective on the cadence of the remainder of the year. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:17:03Relative to the first half, in part due to normal seasonality, North American vehicle production is expected to decline approximately 4% sequentially in the second half, while European production is expected to decline approximately 8%, which is often weighted towards the month of August. In addition, GM is scheduled to begin the phase launch of its next generation full-size pickup trucks in the second half of this year. As is typical with major product transitions, we expect customer production downtime and related volume impacts during the launch period. Currently, we are expecting this temporary impact to our production for this program to begin in September. Our CapEx assumption is unchanged at 4.5%-5% of sales as we ready the organization for important upcoming launches, including the GM large truck program that I just mentioned. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:17:51From a share count perspective, please continue to use approximately 245 million shares for the remainder quarters of 2026 for modeling purposes. In conclusion, the company delivered solid first half results, we have benefited from supplying product to some of the strongest vehicle platforms in the industry, plus the strength of our diversified portfolio and a disciplined operating approach. Our operations delivered performance improvements in the areas of metal forming and in the areas that have received restructuring investments. As we move through the second half of the year, our priorities remain clear: continue executing our integration plan, delivering our synergy commitments, strengthening the balance sheet. We believe these efforts will further enhance our financial profile and position us to deliver sustainable value creation. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:18:42As we progress into 2027, we are excited about the potential momentum we are gaining with new program launches, such as GM's new full-size pickup, synergy growth, and stronger net cash flow performance. Thank you for your time and participation on the call today. I'm going to stop here and turn the call back over to David so we can start the Q&A. David? David LimHead of Investor Relations at Dauch Corporation00:19:01Thank you, Chris and David. We have reserved some time to take questions. I would ask that you please limit your questions to no more than two. At this time, please feel free to proceed with any questions you may have. Operator00:19:13Thank you. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Today's first question comes from Tom Narayan with RBC. Please go ahead. Tom NarayanAnalyst at RBC00:19:32Yeah. Thanks for taking the question. Hi, David and Chris. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:19:34Morning. Tom NarayanAnalyst at RBC00:19:36Hi. On the free cash flow bridge for H2 2026, I'm seeing $56 million for cash restructuring in H2, based on my math. I think it was $76 million in H1. Good to see that coming down. I know we'll be getting more details in November, but any color on what we could expect to see in that in 2027 on cash restructuring? I think it was mostly Dowlais legacy moving plants, things like that. Can we expect that to come down a lot next year? Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:20:14Yeah. Tom, this is Chris. I'll take that question. Yeah, I would expect continued restructuring cash costs this year, as you indicated, and that was of course at the midpoint of our current guidance range for that. Those investments that we've been making are a continuation of some of the Dowlais restructuring that has began over the last year or two, as well as some, I would call legacy Dauch facilities inside of Europe as well. Those will substantially be complete this year as well. We would expect going into 2027 that that number will reduce meaningfully from its current run rate levels we have here today. We haven't provided a specific number for 2027, but we do expect those to drop significantly. Tom NarayanAnalyst at RBC00:20:52Got it. Thanks. For my second question, I don't know if this is apples to apples, but I see equity income of $28 million for H1, and the China JV was raised to $75 million for the full year. Just taking that math, it could imply that China JV income is higher in H2 versus H1. I know we're hearing some caution from suppliers this earning season in China and H2. Maybe I'm just doing the wrong math, but just curious what you're seeing from your China JV implications for H2. Thanks. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:21:31Yeah, no, great question. I would give you a couple of perspectives on that. Number one, keep in mind also, you only have five months of that number included in the first half of the year because they were not included as part of our January results. They are going through some, I would call, new program launches in the back half of 2026 for some programs that they have with some customers, so they'll have a little bit of an uptick there. Big picture-wise, think of it, you have five months versus six months. Tom NarayanAnalyst at RBC00:21:56Yeah. Got it. Thank you. Operator00:22:01Thank you. Our next question today comes from Joseph Spak at UBS. Please go ahead. Alejandro NuñoAnalyst at UBS00:22:07Good morning. It's Alejandro Nuño on for Joseph Spak. You're making good progress on the synergies target. Can you maybe help us better understand the buckets of the synergies you've achieved thus far? Are most of the synergies to date SG&A, or have you started to achieve some of these synergies on the purchasing and operations front as well? Maybe given how fast you found upside to this year's target, would it be too early for us to expect an update on the potential upside to synergies targets, primarily the operational bucket at the Analyst Day in November? David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:22:34This is David Dauch. The three buckets that we had outlined before were SG&A, procurement, and operations. 30% roughly in the SG&A, 50% in the procurement, 20% in the operations was the base that we were operating from. As I've had in my prepared comments, we're making great progress across the board, but especially in the SG&A and E. That's to be expected. It's the lower hanging fruit, earlier things that we can get after. We're making meaningful progress there, but we're also making progress on the procurement and the operations. As we said, we're highly confident we can deliver the $300 million over the three-year period of time that we identified. We're confident we can deliver and hit the run rate of over $100 million this year. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:23:22At the same time, we're obviously looking to see what we can do to potentially increase that in the future, but we're not commenting at this point in time. Alejandro NuñoAnalyst at UBS00:23:31Got it. Maybe as a follow-up, can you maybe just provide an update as to what is embedded in the guide on for higher labor? How many more facilities do you have for UAW negotiations for this year? If the remainder of those facilities that go up for renegotiation sign similar contracts to what was signed at Three Rivers, is that labor inflation embedded in the guide? Any update you can provide there would be helpful. Thank you. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:23:54Yeah. In terms of cost perspective, our best estimates of our current labor arrangements are already embedded in our guide at this point in time. Alejandro NuñoAnalyst at UBS00:24:05Okay, great. Thank you. I'll pass it on. Operator00:24:09Thank you. Our next question today comes from Alex Perry at Bank of America. Please go ahead. Alex PerryAnalyst at Bank of America00:24:15All right. Thanks for taking our questions here, congrats on a strong quarter. I guess just first, you took the guidance up despite your global productions coming down a little bit. What are you seeing that allowed you to do that? Any thoughts on the type of growth versus market you may see next year based on current schedules? Thanks. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:24:38This is Chris. I'll take that. When we reflected upon our guidance update for this call here today, the strength in the second quarter, we benefited from very strong sales. We benefited from good operating performance. Those are one of the main drivers of our support and adjustment for our guidance going forward. The second half I talked about in some of my prepared remarks, we do have some reductions in overall production, primarily due to seasonality, but also, of course, for the exciting new GM pickup truck that's going to launch. That actually correlates a little bit to your second part of your question. We think about next year, what's coming at us. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:25:14Many parts of our business move with just overall production, but some of these new critical vehicle programs that are launching, such as GM's full size truck, generally we see capture share early stages of those new platforms when they're out in the market. We're certainly very excited and watching that element very closely. Key new programs will be a driver for some of that growth. Alex PerryAnalyst at Bank of America00:25:37Perfect. Really helpful. I know you had some initial thoughts on USMCA in your prepared remarks, but I'd love to just hear about the impact and the scenario analysis that you guys are thinking about internally in regards to USMCA. Thanks. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:25:59This is David, Alex. As I said in my prepared remarks, it's something that we're monitoring closely. We understand the status of where things are at this point in time. Until we get clarity, it's really hard to forecast what that impact will be on the overall business. Our policy, as I said, is always to buy and build local, we try to minimize the impact as much as we can. With the USMCA set up, we'd have to rebalance or reshuffle some things between the U.S. and Mexico if things go a different direction. We've got the flexibility to do that and an expanded flexibility, especially taking over some U.S. facilities from Dowlais as well as some Mexican facilities from Dowlais. Too early and too premature, I guess, really to comment on the cost implications. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:26:50At the same time, we will adjust our footprint and be flexible based on the regional footprint that we have in place. Alex PerryAnalyst at Bank of America00:27:00Perfect. That's really helpful. Best of luck going forward. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:27:03Yeah, thanks. Alex PerryAnalyst at Bank of America00:27:05Thank you. Operator00:27:06Thank you. Our next question today comes from James Mulholland with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. James MulhollandAnalyst at Deutsche Bank00:27:11Great. Thanks. Good morning, guys. Maybe just to piggyback on Alex's question for this year's guide. Nice to see it was raised on the low end, what would it take realistically for you to reach the high end? Do you need LVP to remain steady where it currently is or Q1 retooling to go a bit faster, maybe Ram Heavy Duty comes out a bit stronger the back half? Just some thoughts about the drivers for the rest of the year, how you would get to that high level. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:27:35Yeah, this is Chris. I'll take that. Look, there's obviously many moving pieces to the back half of the year or the full year, as you would know. First and foremost, clearly production is one of the top drivers within some of those ranges, high or low end. To the extent production is as strong as we expect or stronger for certain platforms that we would supply, that would obviously push you towards the higher end. We do provide ranges, for example, on our JV equity income, ranges on our synergy achievement. Those clearly, as you're within those ranges, if you're performing at the higher end of those, drive you to the higher end of the range. Some of the things we look at in terms of puts and takes, overall productivity is critical to our success as well. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:28:17You have a lot of activity in the back half of the year associated with that, you also have a little bit of, I would say, macro pressure on, I'll use inflation for things like oil and freight costs. We're sort of counterbalancing some of that productivity to support and work towards mitigate some of those impacts. Those are some of the moving pieces we think about when we're inside of that range. James MulhollandAnalyst at Deutsche Bank00:28:37Great. Thank you. I guess on the $2 billion of active quoting for new and incremental business, can you give us a sense of whether or not the breakdown of quoting there is for new platforms that you're already on or conquest awards? Are these products really being quoted more aligned with the legacy Dauch business or is it more related to the acquired GKN businesses? David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:29:02This is David. The good news is it's balanced between the two companies, that being legacy AAM and legacy Dowlais GKN. That's good news. That's the comprehensive portfolio that we wanted to have in place. That's critical there. In regards to the makeup, probably 85% of the business we're quoting today now is ICE and hybrid related, where several years ago it was flipped the other way with electrification. It plays right in the sweet spot of our portfolio. We're pleased with that. At the same time, the $2 billion that we identified is just new and incremental business. It includes a little bit of capacity uplifts on the existing platforms, but all the replacement or extension programs are outside of that. James MulhollandAnalyst at Deutsche Bank00:29:50Great. Thank you very much, guys. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:29:52Thank you. Operator00:29:54Thank you. Our next question today comes from Nathan Jones at Stifel. Please go ahead. Nathan JonesAnalyst at Stifel00:30:00Good morning, everyone. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:30:01Morning, Nathan. Nathan JonesAnalyst at Stifel00:30:02I guess I'll start with a question on the energy and steel price or steel cost increases that we've seen out there. Some related to tariffs, some related to the war. Is that something that impacted the second quarter for you just in terms of EBITDA generation? Maybe it's delayed a little bit getting through inventory? Nathan JonesAnalyst at Stifel00:30:27Can you talk about the customer recoveries that you get from that and the timing on those, please? Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:30:33Sure. This is Chris, I'll take that. From an energy cost perspective, we had, I would say, a relatively minor impact in the second quarter, maybe to the tune of a few million dollars. Right now, I would expect that to continue into the second half of the year based on current environment. You indicated sort of a second part of that question related to steel costs. We typically do not buy steel or those type of commodities on a spot purchase, so we're under long-term contracts. In many cases, we see no variability in the short term for that. To the extent it's driving commodity costs that go into the components we buy, we generally pass those up to our customers mechanically and contractually. Those get passed up every 30, 60, 90 days, depending on the customer. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:31:15That would be all various inputs that you would see into the products that we buy. In terms of energy cost recoveries from the customers, those would be separate discussions, and we do not have automatic passages for those, in most cases. Some in Europe, overall, generally not. Nathan JonesAnalyst at Stifel00:31:33Fair enough. The new GM pickup truck, is there a difference in content for you guys on that platform versus the one that it's replacing? Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:31:44Yeah, it's relatively similar to the one we're replacing. Generally, same features. There's some little small plus and minuses that they have engineering changes on to support the characteristics of the vehicle. But big picture, you should think it's principally the same. Nathan JonesAnalyst at Stifel00:31:57Fair enough. Thanks for taking the questions. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:31:59Yep. Operator00:32:01Thank you. Our next question today comes from Mojab Koopa with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Mojab KoopaAnalyst at JPMorgan00:32:08Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions, and congrats on the strong execution. I just want to follow up on the $2 billion quoting activity comments. Obviously pretty strong progress there. I'm curious, any progress you're seeing on just the cross-sell opportunities between legacy Dauch and Dowlais that you're starting to see? Just curious how those conversations might be going with customers, and should we expect to see any new awards in the near term, or wait to hear more in November? I have a quick follow-up. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:32:41Yeah, that was one of the things we're very excited about as far as the cross-selling opportunity here. Again, Dauch and GKN had some very strong relationships with, obviously, the Europeans, but especially the Asians. We're obviously very strong with the trade through here, but both companies had active relations with all the global OEMs. It's just a matter who had a stronger relationship. Collectively, we're much stronger across the global OEMs. What we're doing is we're having strategic meetings and reviews with those OEMs so that they understand the comprehensiveness of our portfolio, and then trying to identify opportunities where we could help them, not only initially right now, but more importantly, mid- and long-term as they look at their long-range product plans going forward. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:33:32Part of it is just an educational process with the customers, we are seeing an uptick in regards to the market basket and new and incremental opportunities because of the relationships that the combined business has, and we hope to convert on those as we go forward, and we'll announce it appropriately at the right time. Mojab KoopaAnalyst at JPMorgan00:33:53Got it. That's helpful. Just want to follow up on CapEx. Is the first half to second half uplift pretty significant? Less than $200 million to greater than $200 million implied in the second half. Is that all tied to GM? I'm just curious about the second half weighted nature of that, or is that just a conservative number out there? Thanks. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:34:20Yes. Based on the midpoint of our guidance for that range, we are second half weighted in terms of CapEx. We do have program launches. GM, of course, is one of them. Some of that has already been spent, we'll continue to have some more investments associated with that program, also getting ready for some launches into next year as well. Look, we look to optimize our spend. We look to optimize timing associated with that the best we can. We'll continue to push on that, it is second half weighted at this point in time, driven primarily by launch activity. Mojab KoopaAnalyst at JPMorgan00:34:49Understood. Great. Thanks for all the color, good luck. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:34:52Thank you. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:34:53Thank you. Operator00:34:54Thank you. Our next question today comes from Dan Levy at Barclays. Please go ahead. Dan LevyAnalyst at Barclays00:35:00Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. Wanted to first start with a question on Metal Forming. Best margin you've had in quite some time. Maybe you could just talk to what happened in Metal Forming that the margin recovered as much as it did. Broadly, is the form of Metal Forming structurally where you need it to be, or is there stuff that needs to be done within the portfolio to further clean it up? Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:35:30Yeah, Dan, this is Chris. I'll take the first half of that question, talk a little bit about the margin profile. You can see it is actually over the last couple of quarters, legacy Dauch and then transitioning to the combined company has been on a nice steady cadence of improvement. You really had two things happening here. Number one, with the combination what Dowlais brought in, of course, the powdered metal portion of Dowlais into our Metal Forming operations. They had a slightly higher margin, you are getting some uplift associated with that when we combine that up, and of course, you pick up an extra month in the second quarter versus the first quarter associated with that. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:36:05I think maybe more importantly and twice as exciting, certainly as it relates to operational wise, we're seeing improvements that we've been discussing over the last, well, quite frankly, three or four quarters in our core Metal Forming operations continue to take hold. We're not where we need to be yet, we are seeing continued positive performance also giving uplift in that margin. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:36:28Yes. Dan, this is David. Again, thank you for acknowledging the margin improvement in the Metal Forming. We've been working really hard both on the legacy AAM as well as taking over the legacy GKN type business there. As part of your question, you talked about the structure and the optimization of the business. We clearly are looking to drive capacity utilization up to certain levels on a global basis. We've got opportunity there. One of the other big opportunities that we have is insourcing of product, which is a positive because of what they do already on the powder side of the business, but what we also do, meaning legacy AAM, on the forging side of the business. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:37:13Clearly with all the tariff discussions that are ongoing right now, there's a tremendous inquiry from a lot of global OEMs as well as other tiered for reshoring or localization to the individual continents around the world. We see tremendous upside opportunity here. At the same time, we'll look to optimize the portfolio appropriately where it makes business sense. We do that with all of our business, and we always maintain optionality on that business going forward. Dan LevyAnalyst at Barclays00:37:46Okay, thank you. Second is sort of similar question, but on Dowlais. You've now had it for six months, and so you've had a deeper look at the business, and presumably you've now been through the facilities, have a better sense of the resource usage and allocation. How much more work or what type of work needs to be done on optimization, rationalization, whether it's footprint, whether it's resources? How close is that to the business that you expected versus what further items need to be done that maybe are different from what you originally expected? David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:38:27Yeah. On the positive side of things, Dowlais was already actively involved on the auto side of the business with some major restructuring that they had done in the U.S. as well as ongoing in Europe, and that you were seeing some of those restructuring costs coming through in the financial performance. Again, as we said, hopefully we're in the lower end of that as we go forward here based on the hard work that was done before we acquired it, but the work that we continue to do to execute those plans. As Chris said, we have some of our own legacy AAM plans that we're optimizing that's coming through that as well. Overall, their facilities are in decent shape. They need some upgrading to the legacy AAM standards or Dauch standards. We'll deal with that appropriately. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:39:17Clearly, we're managing very closely installed capacity and capability on that capacity and evaluating the capability of the machines and the workforce and the availability of labor in the given areas. Probably the biggest area of improvement that we still see is the implementation of the Dauch Operating System. They will benefit greatly from that from a discipline, from a structure standpoint. That will take some time to get implemented over the next couple of years, but also will result in productivity savings and synergy savings as we go forward. Overall, Dowlais had and has a very strong innovation background. They have a solid manufacturing background. They just need to be optimized from a capacity utilization, facility utilization, and most importantly, the implementation of the operating system. We see upside potential there. Dan LevyAnalyst at Barclays00:40:17That productivity could be incremental to the synergy targets that you've laid out? David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:40:21Well, right now, it's kind of a mixed bag because we got the base Dowlais productivity commitments, we got the legacy AAM productivity commitments, and we got synergies on top of it. They all come out of the same productivity bucket. We're hopeful that we can see some upside in the future, but right now, we're not adjusting our commitment from a synergistic standpoint. Dan LevyAnalyst at Barclays00:40:44Okay, thank you. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:40:45Yep. Operator00:40:46Thank you. Our next question comes from Hamed Khorsand with BWS. Please go ahead. Hamed KhorsandAnalyst at BWS00:40:52Hey, good morning. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:40:53Good morning. Hamed KhorsandAnalyst at BWS00:40:53I want to ask you if you're seeing this stable production from industry and also from your end, how are you able to manage the business to maximize contribution margin? David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:41:10Well, first of all, as it relates to contribution margin, one of the first best ways to support that is stable production environment. You may recall the industry over the last maybe two or three years ago that had unstable production schedules, unstable macro, there were semiconductor challenges, et cetera, caused us to be highly inefficient. Once the production environment stabilizes like we've been experiencing this year, for example, really allows you then to hone in on maximizing throughput, maximizing efficiency, maximizing productivity, and that is single most best environment we could ask for to maximize our contribution margin on the products that we build. Hamed KhorsandAnalyst at BWS00:41:55Are you able to do that now? David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:41:58Yes, we're doing it right now. Overall, production environment has been relatively stable, correct. Hamed KhorsandAnalyst at BWS00:42:05Okay. Great. Thank you. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:42:05The combined company has a relatively consistent variable profit or contribution margin anywhere between 25%-35%, depending on the product, and we've been able to maintain that on an ongoing basis here. Hamed KhorsandAnalyst at BWS00:42:19Okay. Thank you. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:42:21Thank you. Operator00:42:23Thank you. Our next question today comes from Vanessa Jeffriess at Jefferies. Please go ahead. Vanessa JeffriessAnalyst at Jefferies00:42:29Hello, congratulations on the results. You've made excellent progress in the synergies, but you know you've spoken about the purchasing piece maybe being a little bit more difficult given the backdrop, which we're clearly seeing persist. Is there any risk the purchasing synergies get pushed out a bit more, or do you have a buffer there, either from SG&A or how conservative you've been on the targets? Secondly, you know you've done plenty of travel this year, maybe if you could give us an update on how you're thinking about consolidating the Dowlais' footprint. We definitely continue to see European names talk more and more about what they can move to Hungary, and obviously Dowlais made a significant investment there. Maybe any thoughts on what you can consolidate there to improve profitability in Europe? David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:43:08Okay, this is David. Again, as we said earlier, we're making tremendous progress in regards to synergies and we're already delivering run rate synergy of $70 million for owning it for two quarters. We're on track to deliver the $100 million heavily weighted towards the SG&A, but like I said, purchasing and operations are contributing to that. We fully expected that we would need the three years to achieve all of our purchasing objectives as well as our operational objectives, largely because of the market that we're in today, especially on the direct side, is going to take some time. I'd see some of the direct being more back-weighted, more 2027, 2028 type things. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:43:51We can offset some of that with stronger performance on some of the indirect and freight and logistics and insourcing opportunities, as well as some of the SG&A things, as I already mentioned to you. From an operational standpoint, yes GKN had built a plant in Hungary, had moved some work to Hungary. We're evaluating the footprint across Europe on a combined portfolio now. We're looking to optimize, as I said, facility equipment and people utilization. Certainly Hungary will come into play as we evaluate that going forward here. There is clearly an effort by GKN to move from some of the Western countries to some of the Eastern countries. We're just assessing what that is, while at the same time balancing appropriate labor agreements that we have in place with the unions in those given areas. It's not just limited to Europe. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:44:47We're doing that globally around the world. Our job is to make sure we're driving full utilization of our resources. That takes some time to get that done, but we're heavily focused on that right now. We'll continue to be. Vanessa JeffriessAnalyst at Jefferies00:45:01Thank you. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:45:03Yep. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:45:03Thank you, guys. Operator00:45:05Thank you. Our next question today comes from Itay Michaeli with TD Cowen. Please go ahead. Itay MichaeliAnalyst at TD Cowen00:45:12Great. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:45:14Morning. Itay MichaeliAnalyst at TD Cowen00:45:15Just wanted to go back to the $2 billion of quoting. Two questions there. One, any way to think about potential win rates there? I think in the past, we typically talked about 30% for legacy Dow. As you look at these opportunities, is that broadly consistent with just how you're thinking about CapEx intensity for the company going forward as these opportunities emerge? David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:45:38Yeah, I'd say, Itay, this is David. From a win rate standpoint, you should continue to focus around that 30% level. Obviously Dauch has a leading market share position with respect to sideshaft, so it might be a little bit higher with respect to that side of things, but the balance of things should be right around that 30% side. On the CapEx side, we've guided 4.5%-5.5% of sales, and we can manage our business within that, not only today, but also going forward in the future. I don't know, Chris, anything else you might want to add? Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:46:11Yeah, as it relates to capital intensity, as you know, Itay, bigger programs require bigger capital. Generally speaking, we price for those accordingly. We have business case hurdles that we need to meet to do that. Our goal, I think as we've shared over the last couple of years, is to try to maintain that CapEx at 5% or lower, even acknowledging some of these new business opportunities. That said, we'll look at each one as it comes our way and do the appropriate financial analytics on those cases and go from there. Itay MichaeliAnalyst at TD Cowen00:46:40Terrific. Maybe a quick kind of housekeeping question. Any kind of high level sense of just kind of regional revenue performance for the combined company in the quarter now that you have a little bit more diversification? Just kind of curious how the regional revenue performed. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:46:55Yeah, I would say the regional revenue has performed very consistent with what you see at the macro level for each of the regions that we support. Primarily, as you know, the bulk of our business comes out of North America, about 60%, and Europe of 25%. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, overall, North America was down, I think, 0.1% inside the quarter versus the prior year. We've seen very similar in terms of our regional performance there. Same with Europe as well. Itay MichaeliAnalyst at TD Cowen00:47:25Got it. Very helpful. Thank you. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:47:26Yep. Yeah. Thanks, Itay. Operator00:47:29Thank you. Our next question today comes from Jake Schoel with BNP. Please go ahead. Jake SchoelAnalyst at BNP00:47:36Hey, guys. Could you just give us an idea of what launch costs and any other one-timers look like in the second half? Just so we can bridge a more normalized run rate to use as a jumping off point for 2027. Thank you. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:47:54Jake, this is Chris. I would say while we do have a meaningful launch, especially with the General Motors light duty pickup truck. We've been in a series of launches here last year, this year. I would expect into next year. I don't see at this point in time any period that has overweight launch costs versus the other. While we're incurring them, we'll continue to incur them. We did last year. We will continue to incur them next year as we're launching a wide variety of programs. You may recall we, at least from outsized programs as Legacy Dowlais, we launched the Ram about two years ago. That was a big program. You had some heavy duty truck activity here earlier this year. You have light duty back half of this year. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:48:35You have a whole host of other programs now with the Dauch products that we have inside the company which is great. A lot of activity from that perspective. I would just think of it, at this point in time, relative, consistent. I wouldn't spike one quarter out or one year out versus the other at this point in time. Jake SchoelAnalyst at BNP00:48:53Thanks, Chris. That's helpful. You guys are generating strong cash flow this year. It looks like it should step up pretty meaningfully next year. How should we think about when you guys will be able to start returning some of that to shareholders? Thanks, guys. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:49:09Yeah. We've been very public about our capital allocation approach especially as it relates to when we made the acquisition announcement earlier this year. Clearly, as you know, we took on some debt to do this acquisition but maintain still a healthy leverage profile. Our objective was to continue to strengthen our balance sheet as we go forward. Our primary use of capital allocation in the near term would be to continue to reduce our debt until we're around 2.5x levered or lower. Once we sort of cross that threshold on a stable basis, we will then look to open up the playbook to, I would say, additional capital allocation across the spectrum, including shareholder-friendly activity. Jake SchoelAnalyst at BNP00:49:55Thank you. Operator00:49:58Thank you. Our next question today comes from Doug Carson at Bank of America. Please go ahead. Doug CarsonAnalyst at Bank of America00:50:04Hey, guys good morning, thanks for taking a question from the credit guy. I appreciate that. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:50:09You bet, Doug. Doug CarsonAnalyst at Bank of America00:50:14First, great job on taking out the 2028. If my math serves me right you took out, what, $250 million in May and August combined- Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:50:27Yes Doug CarsonAnalyst at Bank of America00:50:28Then started in October. $400 million of debt came out just in the last year or so, which is great. Have you had a chance to circle up with the agencies? I will myself, but there's some kind of stale negative outlook out there at S&P, have the rating agencies kind of absorbed the debt reduction yet? Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:50:50Yeah, of course. Obviously, they watch us very closely, as you know, We are in contact with them periodically to provide them updates. That is one of their top items that they monitor, Also our cash flow performance as well as our ability to generate synergies on a go-forward basis is also critical to, at least through their eyes, how we continue to, I'll say, move up the ratings chain, if you will. We continue to keep them well up to speed on our position and all the activity we're doing. Meeting that commitment of paying down debt that we said we would do, and you see us doing it, is a key piece of the success with that relationship and their view of us. Doug CarsonAnalyst at Bank of America00:51:26Yeah, I will reinforce that on my side. The Silverado and Sierra, they're going to hit showrooms, I think, in December. I think Fort Wayne and Flint have already planned a bunch of retooling already. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:51:40Yes. Doug CarsonAnalyst at Bank of America00:51:41How do you see the production cadence from GM? Is that on target? I'm looking at IHS production. It's right in front of me right now. It definitely wobbles a little bit at the beginning of 2027. Are you prepared to navigate the changes in production need from GM? Are you already set up for it? Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:52:03Well yeah. Of course, we're absolutely prepared to accommodate their schedules as well as supporting them through their launches. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we expect some of that downtime, especially on the light duty side, to begin with impacting us here in September, which we're prepared. It's part of our thought process here from that standpoint. They'll go into some rolling launches in the future years. We'll of course, support them as needed. No issue. Doug CarsonAnalyst at Bank of America00:52:29Right. Those are great products. My final last one is the $2 billion of business you're trying to win, do you have a sense of how much of that is EV business versus ICE business? It may not even matter, but I'm just kind of curious of the next generation of what you're looking at in that $2 billion, if you could just maybe share that. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:52:52Doug, this is David. It's really swung over the last 18 months from what was 85% electrification to is now 85% ICE and hybrid with a smaller level of electrification. It's right in the core sweet spot of both the legacy AAM and legacy Dowlais product portfolio. At the same time, we still continue to see some electrification opportunities, especially outside of North America. This is right in our core wheelhouse, and we expect to convert. Doug CarsonAnalyst at Bank of America00:53:25That's great. Last final comment from me. Thanks for sticking to your guns on getting the balance sheet right and then sharing the wealth with equity when you're stable. Despite paying down $400 million of debt, I mean, your stock's up 18% today, both sides could win. I think a strong balance sheet is going to be really helpful in the future. That's it for me. Thanks. Chris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch Corporation00:53:47Thanks for your comments, Doug. Appreciate it. Operator00:53:51Our next question is a follow-up from Tom Narayan with RBC. Please go ahead. Tom NarayanAnalyst at RBC00:53:56Hey, thanks for letting me back in. Yeah, David, I just want to follow up on something you were talking about earlier with the USMCA. I know there's talk about this 50% U.S. contenting and the stuff you guys could do now with some of the Dowlais assets in the U.S. Just trying to understand the scale of this. Maybe this would never happen, but if the Ram Heavy Duty were to be onshored, let's say. Is that something at that scale you could potentially support where, is there a risk that they would insource axles, let's say, there? What is the scale of the onshoring you guys would do, and would this be something that the OEMs would just compensate you guys for? David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:54:47Yeah, I was going to say, right now, it would all be speculation on everyone's behalf. Clearly, there's a lot of dialogue about increasing the U.S. content from the level that it's at today to what they want it to be in the future. The Trump administration clearly has put a lot of pressure, not only on the Detroit three but also on the global OEMs to do more here in the U.S., and you're seeing the sizable level of investment that's being committed here to the U.S. market. Like I said, that bodes well for us in regards to new and incremental business opportunities for us. To your question about potential moving work, let's say, from Mexico to the U.S., that's going to be on a case-by-case basis with customers. We'll have to discuss that with them on a case-by-case basis. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:55:35Highly unlikely that you'll move something like the Ram, in my opinion, with the level of investment that's been sunk and where things are at. It doesn't mean that they couldn't build a certain capacity in the U.S. if they wanted to, but they've got a sizable investment, as does GM, and as does other OEMs in Mexico. Those OEMs are going to want to leverage that installed capacity as much as they can. It's dollars billions to pick up and move an assembly plant. We just have to take this, like I said, on a case-by-case basis, run business cases, and then share the impact with the customers, and then they'll have to make a bigger decision as to what they want to do to address the bigger issue between the OEMs and the government and the expectations that way. Tom NarayanAnalyst at RBC00:56:23Got it. Thanks so much. David DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch Corporation00:56:24Yeah. Thank you. David LimHead of Investor Relations at Dauch Corporation00:56:26Thanks, Tom. Okay, thanks, Tom. We thank all of you who have participated on this call and appreciate your interest in Dauch. We certainly look forward to talking with you in the future. Thank you. Operator00:56:37Thank you. That does conclude today's conference call. We thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.Read moreParticipantsAnalystsDavid LimHead of Investor Relations at Dauch CorporationDavid DauchChairman and CEO at Dauch CorporationChris MayEVP and CFO at Dauch CorporationTom NarayanAnalyst at RBCAlejandro NuñoAnalyst at UBSAlex PerryAnalyst at Bank of AmericaJames MulhollandAnalyst at Deutsche BankNathan JonesAnalyst at StifelMojab KoopaAnalyst at JPMorganDan LevyAnalyst at BarclaysHamed KhorsandAnalyst at BWSVanessa JeffriessAnalyst at JefferiesItay MichaeliAnalyst at TD CowenJake SchoelAnalyst at BNPDoug CarsonAnalyst at Bank of AmericaPowered by