Gentherm Incorporated (NASDAQ:THRM) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Phil Eyler: I wouldn’t call it a material revenue driver for us. It is very high margin. But it’s more about what it enables than the specific driver of revenue growth for the software. It does open up more opportunity for us on ECUs. And we called out, I think one or two quarters ago, the win on a multifunction ECU for General Motors, so that we think – this helps us to drive content on our electronics as well. But we’ve specifically made our software really a software product that can be used on any hardware. Our goal is to find ways to get ClimateSense embedded to show the value that ClimateSense generates as thus driving much higher content and penetration. And we believe ClimateSense has the power to do that. So that’s kind of what’s behind it, I would look at this as really firming up our longstanding strategy of driving software-enabled hardware through our portfolio.

Luke Junk: Appreciate you might be able to give us too much here because it’s pretty recent, but just curious any feedback following CES on WellSense, specifically, just in terms of customer engagement, maybe any kind of preliminary engineering engagements or just other indicators of interest in the platform?

Phil Eyler: I would say tremendous interest by our customers. It matches exactly what many of our customers have as their vision for differentiating their offerings. And I really want to highlight the impact this product could have on the software defined vehicle architectures. We believe this provides a feature that consumers will continually pay for after the purchase of the vehicle. And I think if you look at a lot of the announced software defined vehicle features that folks have talked about to help them drive revenue, you won’t find any that are more compelling than the one we’re offering. So I think it really is gaining a lot of traction. Obviously, it’ll take us some time to gather some awards and build that in, but I’m really encouraged by the response.

Luke Junk: My last question probably for Matteo. Just hoping you could bridge the midpoint of the EBITDA range of 13% versus where 2023 shook out? And really hoping to unpack just the big buckets in terms of what you expect incrementally from fit for growth. You mentioned some supplier cost reductions in the back half of the year. And then just underlying leverage in productivity, just how should we look at those at a high level.

Matteo Anversa: The volume is driving about 160 basis points of margin expansion. The fit for growth actions, primarily supplier cost reductions, value engineering, so taking cost out of our bill of material is driving about 130 basis points of margin expansion. Productivity at the factory gross is about 90 bps. So these are the positives. On the negative side, we’re not expecting to have the same amount of price recoveries from the customers in 2024 as we did in 2023. Actually, the environment on the front is getting more and more challenging, so we are expecting a drag of about 160 basis points on price. And then wage inflation, we continue to see elevated labor inflation, in particular in Mexico and in Eastern Europe. So that’s about almost 100 basis points. And then the investment in the new clients that I mentioned earlier in the R&D to fulfill the awards that we won. It’s another 50 basis points drag. So that’s, a high level, the walk for the year.

Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our Q&A session. And this concludes our call today. We thank you for your interest and participation. You may now disconnect your lines.

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