Superior Industries International, Inc. (NYSE:SUP) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Gary Prestopino: Okay. No, I’m just – let me backtrack here. I’m just looking at some – what I wrote when you announced this you said that expects to incur cash charges of €15 million to €18 million. The benefit on a full run rate is expected to be a payback of approximately one year. So what I was saying is if you take the $10 million on to what you’re going to get – you say you’re going to get from Europe, on an annual run rate basis by the end of 2024 would be $26 million to $30 million combined with the $10 million that you’re doing in the United States. I think that’s what I was alluding to.

Tim Trenary: I missed the few more than they’re combined. I missed that. Sorry.

Gary Prestopino: Okay.

Tim Trenary: The only other thing I would to make sure there’s no misunderstanding about – on August 31, when we announced the activities in Germany, and I spoke to the cash cost that expected at that time to actually the initiative. That’s I think it’s €15 million to €18 million and the similar payback, we thought at that time that, that payback would be resident in the entire year 2024. That is to say that the activities in Germany might be complete by year-end. In fact, as Majdi and I have both alluded to as much as we are building some safety stock the movement of those wheels is going to not be done by the end of the year, but some of those wheels will shift into 2024. So some of that annual return will not find its way all into 2024, so 2024 will have some impact on the step change, a little bit less than that, call it, €20 million.

Gary Prestopino: Okay, that’s fine. I’ll let somebody else go and then I’ll jump back in the queue.

Operator: Thank you. Pardon the interruption. I’m so sorry. We’ll now take our next question from Michael Ward at Benchmark. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Michael Ward: Thanks very much. I just want to confirm, on the aluminum costs, you can see that it’s down 30% to 40% year-over-year. That’s all passed through. There’s no benefit to you, correct?

Majdi Abulaban: That’s correct.

Michael Ward: Okay. The second thing, in the release, you mentioned that you’ve seen a pickup in the aftermarket sales in Europe. I wonder if you could talk about that a little bit and what you’re seeing?

Majdi Abulaban: Yes. I mean, listen, recall, we had a lot of factors going on in the first three quarters of the year, ending the year with high inventories because of the warm winter, because the wholesalers decided to go on destocking. And now we’re seeing what I would call it, 12% uptick in that business. I think, Mike, there’s still more room for improvement, we have actually shifted our strategies to distributors outside of Germany, and we see a lot more opportunity. But it’s a good start, but we need to do a lot more to get to what we were and that to capture an opportunity that I think is on the table.

Michael Ward: Well, that’s certainly good news. The third thing, you mentioned in the slides, the Silao plant at General Motors, it looked like September was back to a more normalized rate. Am I looking at the right data? Or have you – is there something that I’m not seeing? Did it tick back down in October?

Majdi Abulaban: Yes. I mean, GM has been – I mean there’s a lot of noise in the quarter and a lot of it is GM because the balances are all 4%. But I tell you, if you look at the Silao plant, it’s just taggering how many days Michael we lost. In fact, you know what, I have my President here who runs all of North America and has done a magnificent job. I’d like to turn it over to him for a second to tell you about what’s happening in Silao.

Michael Ward: That’d be great.

Michael Dorah: Good morning, everyone. So Silao took two months out in one in Q2 and another one in Q3. They are back now running full, especially since the strike. They’ve been building above their normal build rates. So Silao is running extremely well right now, but prior quarters, we suffered with them for unexpected downtime probably because of other suppliers.