Dana Inc at 49th Annual Automotive Symposium: Strategic Transformation Unveiled

On Monday, 03 November 2025, Dana Inc (NYSE:DAN) presented a strategic transformation at the 49th Annual Automotive Symposium. The focus was on the sale of its off-highway business, aimed at reinvesting in electrification and streamlining operations. While the sale promises a net debt neutral position, it also highlights Dana's commitment to cost reduction and future growth despite current market challenges.

Key Takeaways

• Dana is selling its off-highway business to Allison Transmission for $2.7 billion, expected to close this quarter.
• A $310 million cost reduction program is underway, with $235 million expected this fiscal year.
• Dana plans to use $600 million from the sale for stock buybacks, having already repurchased over 30 million shares.
• The company is focusing on electrification and restructuring operations to gain market share despite a weak commercial vehicle market.
• CEO Bruce McDonald plans to phase out, with a successor starting mid-next year.

Financial Results

• Off-Highway Business Sale: The sale to Allison Transmission is valued at $2.7 billion, aiming to close this quarter.
• Net Debt Neutrality: Post-sale, Dana expects to maintain a net debt neutral position with approximately $100 million in net debt.
• Cost Reduction Program: A $310 million cost reduction is targeted, with $235 million expected this year, including $75 million in the last quarter.
• Margin Target: The company aims for margins between 10-10.5% by 2026.
• Stock Buyback: $600 million from the sale will fund stock buybacks, with over 30 million shares already repurchased.

Operational Updates

• Business Segmentation: Dana will consolidate from three to two segments post-sale.
• EV Investment: Investments are refocused on partnerships with existing ICE customers.
• North American Operations: Restructuring includes a new operation in Mexico to enhance competitiveness.
• Manufacturing Rationalization: Plans to streamline its manufacturing footprint and enhance factory automation.
• Aftermarket and Defense: Growth opportunities are emphasized in the aftermarket and defense sectors.

Future Outlook

• Growth Beyond 2026: Dana sees significant growth potential beyond 2026, with plans for further cost reductions.
• Analyst Day: A potential analyst day post-year-end to discuss long-term financial metrics.
• CEO Succession: Bruce McDonald plans a gradual phase-out, with a successor expected by mid-next year.

Q&A Highlights

• Off-Highway Sale Rationale: The sale is to fund electrification opportunities and reflect the business's value in Dana's stock price.
• EV Strategy: Focus on lower-risk, existing customer programs rather than high-risk investments.
• Market Positioning: Despite a weak commercial vehicle market, Dana is gaining share through restructuring.
• Capital Allocation: Stock buybacks are prioritized, with potential M&A opportunities considered.

For a detailed account, please refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - 49th Annual Automotive Symposium:

Brian, Interviewer: It's always, always makes for a more pleasant Q&A session when you can introduce the CEO of a company whose stock is up 80% in a year, and more since November, and the person that's probably most responsible for that transformation. We have Dana Incorporated, Maumee-based manufacturer of driveline systems and power conveyance and sealing and thermal systems for a variety of significant financial engineering and the $2.7 billion and $2.4 billion net sale of their off-highway business, Allison Transmission, which is set to close very shortly. The company has just about 130 million shares, trades around $21, about a $2.8 billion equity cap. Pro forma for this transaction, the company will essentially be net debt neutral, about $100 million of net debt or so, so about a $2.8 billion total enterprise value.

I first met Bruce McDonald, who is the company's Chairman and CEO, when he was Chief Financial Officer at Johnson Controls back when I started in 2008. We're delighted to have Bruce here. Also joining him, as well as Craig Barber, who has presented at this conference as well for really the better part of the last 18 years as well. Yeah. Thanks for being here, Bruce and Craig, and we'll get right into some Q&A.

Bruce McDonald, Chairman and CEO, Dana Incorporated: Thanks for having us.

Brian, Interviewer: Bruce, while I would say Dana has been here, I believe in some form since the beginning, maybe take just a few minutes for those that may not be as familiar with the company in the audience to just speak about the company and then we'll go to the next question.

Bruce McDonald, Chairman and CEO, Dana Incorporated: Sure. Sure. So right now we're about $10 billion, just a little bit over that in terms of sales. We have four. We used to have—I'll sort of talk to how it was—we had four business segments. We had a light vehicle driveline business, so axles, drive shafts, things like that. That's our biggest division, primarily North American centric and exposed on sort of very few platforms. It'd be things like Super Duty, Jeep, Wrangler, Gladiator, Bronco. There's probably six or seven programs that make up the bulk of that segment. We have a commercial vehicle segment that makes similar products for class 6 and above trucks. We had a power technology segment that does sort of sealing and gaskets and thermal management. That business we've sort of folded into light vehicle last year as part of our cost-saving initiative. Last, we have an off-highway axle business, a driveline business.

That's the business that you were referring to that we sold to Allison. Post that, we'll be three segments down to two and combine the aftermarket operations of both of the segments under commercial vehicle as well.

Brian, Interviewer: Thank you very much. Can you go back to the decision to sell off-highway? I think it was a surprise at the time for the marketplace, which maybe didn't understand the business as you did because it was the highest margin business that you had. As it turns out, you had great plans for the rest of the organization.

Bruce McDonald, Chairman and CEO, Dana Incorporated: Right. Right. Right. I think what ended up, it's kind of a couple-year discussion at the board level. By the way, I've been on the board at Dana for about 11 years, and I've just stepped in as CEO and Chairman the last, say, almost a year ago now. At the board level, back in sort of 2024 type timeframe, we saw a pretty substantial opportunity for us in terms of electrification. Think about our products. They sell for X. An e-axle full. We had $4 billion-$5 billion of business opportunity, but we couldn't afford to fund that. That really teed up the discussion around our portfolio. When we looked at our off-highway business and worked with a few financial advisors, that's a good business, very creative, highest margin business, mid-teens. It wasn't getting reflected in our stock price.

It really came down to very straightforward, some of the parts analysis. We're trading at sort of four or five times. Our beta was high because of our debt leverage being in a cyclical part of the industry, especially on the CV side. Our comps on the off-highway business were in the seven or eight times. We took the decision that we were going to sell that business. We had a lot of interest in it. We announced a year ago that we were going to go through a formal sale process. Took a bit of time because of the tariff situation, but we got it done and we're in the red zone right now, just waiting for the final regulatory approval and some IT separation stuff. We anticipate that business will sell. It'll close here in this quarter.

Net net, the decision when we announced we're going to sell that, our stock reacted very favorably. When we announced the deal, it reacted favorably as well. I think it's just their commitment to shareholder.

Brian, Interviewer: Speak about this process. Is that simultaneously and in parallel? You've effectively announced a track to significantly increase the profitability of the core Dana light vehicle and commercial vehicle businesses. Maybe talk about that opportunity.

Bruce McDonald, Chairman and CEO, Dana Incorporated: Yeah. Yeah. So obviously, if we looked at our company, if we sell our highest profitability segment, what's the business going to look like on a go-forward basis? It really gave us the opportunity to re-look at everything that we do, especially with me coming in with a fresh set of eyes. You could say an insider, but an outsider. We basically set ourselves an objective, like how much do we have to cut our cost base to get our margins back to double-digit? The guidance that we sort of set when we announced our transformation a year ago was we said we're going to get our margins in 2026 into the 10-10.5% range, which was, I'd say, skeptically received at the time. That comes off of a year where we're going to have about 10% margins with our on-highway business this year. A couple of things.

One is we were able to pivot fairly significantly on the EV side. I mean, the market had substantially changed in terms of the—I talked about we have some $4 billion-$5 billion of opportunity. That drastically reduced itself. We were able to really dial back the amount of investment they were putting on the EV side. We became much more of a simpler, North American centric organization. Like I said, we took out a business segment, we streamlined the management team, and I just, with the management team, went through a line-by-line-by-line process. We originally started off with a couple hundred million dollar target that we announced, even though we were internally working on $300 million. After having been there at Dana for a couple of months, we formally upped that target to $300 million.

We've, on a sequential quarterly basis, made fantastic improvement and been able to realize it quicker than we expected. Of that $300 million target, which is now $310 million, we anticipate delivering $235 million of that in this fiscal year, of which we delivered $75 million in our most recent quarter. The team's done a great job, and we're excited about the opportunities that we have going forward here.

Brian, Interviewer: Yeah. I think it's remarkable as well, particularly given some of the difficulties in the commercial vehicle market, which has been a traditionally higher margin business for you. Just spend some time in that market right now. Obviously, a very weak time period for it, and orders continue to point to another weak year in 2026.

Bruce McDonald, Chairman and CEO, Dana Incorporated: Yeah. I think. I saw something where there's a forecast next year about the market this year being around 225 for North American CV and maybe getting down to the 200 type level for next year. I mean, if you look at the Q3 run rate that we're at, it's probably in the 50,000 for the quarter. We see ongoing fitness here with some of our customers taking either shifts. It's very strong. I wouldn't see any signs of any green shoots. There is an emissions change overcoming in 2027. Typically, there's been a prebuy associated with those in the past. Again, we're not planning on that for next year. I mean, hopefully, it'll happen, but we're not going into 2026 planning on that. The guidance that we've provided is with the CV being at.

Brian, Interviewer: I would say the orders certainly aren't showing any sort of green shoots for any sort of prebuy. I want to go back to EV development. Obviously, this was a big part of the Dana story when you had your investor day a few years back. Maybe talk about where Dana is now from an EV development standpoint. Not necessarily relative to where it was, but where can you drive value for your customer base? Where do you see any potential growth in that market?

Bruce McDonald, Chairman and CEO, Dana Incorporated: Yeah. So just maybe just stepping back, we have about $700 million of EV business right now. Where we are not seeing it is if you sort of went back, what do we see a couple of years ago and what do we see now? The North American SUV market electrification is pretty stalled. There were talks about electric version of kind of everything and volumes that were very high. If you look on the CV side, I would say you have got a number of OEs that have gone out of business. You have got program volumes that are down. I mean, I was just looking at one yesterday with the European OE where the total program volume that we are looking at right now is 87% lower than it was when we were awarded it.

It has required us to kind of do a fundamental shift in our strategy. This is something that we talked about when I came into the business, "Look, we are not going to invest our shareholders' money for these increasingly risky long-tail cash flows." We basically said, "Look, if it is an existing customer, we have ICE exposure, like Ford Super Duty would be a good example." Yeah, we are prepared to be their partner of choice from a technology point of view because if the EV volumes do not materialize, let us say, on the Super Duty, we will have the natural hedge on the ICE volume being higher on the other side. If we are not in that situation, then the business. With us taking that approach, we had some customers that walked away from us. We also were fairly successful in getting both capital and engineering recoveries.

Brian, Interviewer: I think you bring up an excellent point about this natural hedge for Dana being traditionally an ICE supplier. Driveline systems in the truck and SUV market. We're also continuing to win business. Maybe talk about some of the larger business wins that you've seen and the program and the content wins that you can continue to develop.

Bruce McDonald, Chairman and CEO, Dana Incorporated: Yeah. On the go-forward side, I mean, we have a. Our business is performing very well right now, and we're continuing to gain share. If you look at our customers, they're all. Kind of announcing larger SUV either capacity expansions or incremental products. That is a healthy area of growth for us. On the CV side, we've spent the last couple of years—and this I do not think is very well appreciated in the market—but we spent the last few years restructuring our North American operations. We have a brand new greenfield operation in Mexico that produces USMCA-compliant product. I believe we have a cost leadership position versus our competitors. We are being rewarded with incremental share.

On a go-forward basis, there are just a number of things that both on the growth side, Brian, but also on our opportunities to improve our margins in the future, where we've really milked our business at the expense of some of the investments we made in EV that we'll pivot back to. Some examples of that would be our aftermarket business. It's an $800 million or $850 million business at very accretive margins, and we've virtually put no investment in that business. That is something that we've been focusing on. As an example, if you look at the North American gasket part of that business, we're not in that market today, or we were not. We have about 30% share in Europe, 30-35% share. That is a focus for us. We've had some key wins this year to get into that space.

Brian, Interviewer: I would imagine. Just thinking about your manufacturing operations, that nearshoring or friendshoring is a net benefit to you, just given. Talk about maybe, and how you may be able to generate some substantial revenues from that.

Bruce McDonald, Chairman and CEO, Dana Incorporated: Yeah. It's probably less about that for us because the platforms that I kind of referred to are pretty much all manufactured here in the U.S. I think I kind of look at it more as a volume uplift because maybe they have a cost benefit versus some of their Mexican-made comparable vehicles. We're definitely seeing that. I guess tariffs is probably the topic of the day. Here's how I kind of look at it. It was very simple—not simple—but it was very evident that we were not going to get slammed from a tariff point of view. If this would have been a 5% tariff, we would have had our customers saying, "That's not our problem. You guys are going to have to eat that." Once it became 30%, 40%, 50%, you pick the number.

Nobody in the supply industry—for us or any of the suppliers—could afford to eat it. The question really became, "Hey, are these guys going to pass the cost on to the end consumer or not?" In the short term, they did not. Therefore, there was no volume deterioration. If you now look at some of the subsidies, some of these tariff rebates or the credit on average selling price, and I think very importantly, the dialing back of the penalties on fleet mileage regulations, I think net net, I see very little risk that average selling price is going to have to go up in a meaningful way. That, I think, is really good for volume. Secondly, as it relates to our exposure on the large end of that market, it's fueled capacity expansion and new program introductions. That's where I see our growth coming from.

Brian, Interviewer: That's a terrific overview as far as how it relates to Dana in particular. On the tariff side, I would imagine commercial vehicles is the same, particularly given your exposure to your largest customer in the commercial vehicle space being more of a U.S. manufacturer anyway.

Bruce McDonald, Chairman and CEO, Dana Incorporated: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They put the similar sort of rebate type program in for vehicles assembled in the U.S. Our biggest customer is much more heavily exposed to U.S. assembly than its two competitors.

Brian, Interviewer: Taking the view of Dana post off-highway sale. Effectively very little in the way of net debt, you all have talked about. Eternal leverage is, I guess my question goes to, does Dana become outward-looking from an M&A perspective, maybe elsewhere where we're not thinking?

Bruce McDonald, Chairman and CEO, Dana Incorporated: Yeah. I think the way we're thinking about it right now, Brian, is we know we're a show-and-me story, I guess I would say right now. We have to rebuild investor credibility. A big focus of mine has been very clear in terms of what we're going to do and consistently delivering on our commitments. I think we've put together four good quarters here. As it relates to cash and capital allocation, we've said that we're going to take $600 million of the $2.4 billion net proceeds that we're going to get, buy back stock. We've essentially done that. As of yesterday, we've bought back just over 30 million shares. Actually, our current share count's about 115 now, not 130.

Brian, Interviewer: Yep. Yep. This was a—the book was printed in June between 100%. The top sheet has something totally different.

Bruce McDonald, Chairman and CEO, Dana Incorporated: Yeah. Like I said on our earnings call, our stock is trading well below its intrinsic value. We've given consistent guidance to where we're going to be in 2026. The street's well below that. I would also say there's almost no imagination in terms of looking beyond 2026 in terms of what the potential is. I would like to spend a few minutes on that because I think we've got an underappreciated growth story for 2026 and beyond. We're going to, as we said on our last earnings call, set up a call here in January and go through our backlog in terms of what exactly is in there. We've got a number of growth opportunities coming at us, I would say. We talked about some of the LV ones, but we've got some niche products in the high-performance transmission.

We've got some niches that we've just historically not put the resources in. I'll give you a couple of good examples of that being something like our defense business, where we've never really had a sales force attack in that business. There's been quite a big change in terms of strategy on troop redeployment and things like that in the battlefield. Our aftermarket wins we can talk to and power sports, these off-road vehicles. This is not really like on the utility side of the market, but on the performance and higher horsepower, these things are getting up into 2,300 horsepower now. If you look at the technology that's on the driveline, one, it's almost all purchased in China. The technology is very, very almost like steering-type technology on the drive shafts and things like that.

There are several other things like that, not billion-dollar opportunities, but I would say $2,300 million growth opportunities for us that we're going to start to resource and chase. On the margin side, a lot of questions around how sustainable it is and is there anything left you can do and stuff like that. I guess I kind of think about it like the $300 million that we've committed to was stuff that we could action quickly and have in our run rate by January 1, 2026. There are all kinds of opportunities for us that either we have to make some systems investments or things like that. I would say from a margin enhancement point of view, we are in the fourth inning in terms of the opportunity that's available to us.

We've probably got another $100 million of cost that we can take out through systems investments and things like that that would add to, let's say, the $300 million. If I look at our manufacturing operations, and I know in some of your questions that you sent in advance, you asked me about bringing my JCI experience, sort of what did I see. If I look at our manufacturing footprint, we do have too many plants. There is significant opportunity to rationalize that. The level of factory automation that we have, and I am not talking about humanoid robots. I am talking about basic automation, loading and unloading machines. We are way behind the automotive standard. I would say just in automation alone, we have got a $70 million or $80 million opportunity that we can get after. Then our aftermarket business and our product profitability is exceedingly poor.

We do not have good information. As we have brought in some help to look at our product line profitability, we have a lot of complexity in our business and things that we do not make that we lose money on. We are working our way through that. That will be—we will either exit that or reprice it. Anyway, those are—I mean, I am getting pretty excited and talking quickly here, but there is an awful lot of future opportunity. When I look at the growth that we have, the opportunity we have for expansion, I think our multiples, I think we can get re-rated when our balance sheet is better. We think our stock is trading at just a huge discount to where it ought to be. Our cash flow right now, right now because quite honestly, it is buy two, get one free.

Brian, Interviewer: Yeah. No, I agree with you. Any questions out there, please raise your hand. I want to just ask a question about the defense business. How would that grow? Would a Spicer Axle be DOD-driven? From a production standpoint, is it the manufacturer?

Bruce McDonald, Chairman and CEO, Dana Incorporated: I'll let the expert answer this one.

Brian, Interviewer: Yeah. Okay.

Craig Barber, Dana Incorporated: Hey, Brian. Yeah, it certainly could be, and it certainly is today. If you think AM General for years, the Hummer, that was the original Hummer, military Hummer. That was driven on a Dana axle. Sorry, a little better? Sure, sure. The question was around the military aspect, and would a Dana axle be applicable? It certainly would be, and it is today from the Hummer. The original AM General Hummer used the Dana Spicer Axle. If you think about what the—and Bruce alluded to it—where the military is going for a lot of off-the-shelf applications, this is a perfect application for vehicular technology. General Motors is a lot of technology. You'll see more and more of that out there. A lot of opportunities.

We still also today in the commercial vehicle side, we do a lot of logistics vehicles where we provide our Central Tire Inflation System, which allows you to change the inflation of the tire to go from the street to sand to dirt to whatever. That's been out there for a long time. A lot of growth opportunities there.

Brian, Interviewer: Especially as we look out to 2026.

Bruce McDonald, Chairman and CEO, Dana Incorporated: Yeah. For next year, we've said we're going to be in a 4% type cash flow, 4% of sales. Basically, if you sort of do the math from where we are now, and again, I know there's a bunch of confusion around discontinued operations, accounting, and whatnot. What I'd say is 10-10.5% margins will probably be in the 4%-ish percent. Capital, or sorry, capital will trend up next year as we put some money into the automation and footprinting that I talked about. What's the real big driver, though, is interest and taxes go down by a couple hundred million year over year, interest obviously because of our leverage going down. Our off-highway business pays a disproportionate amount of our cash taxes. Our Dana overall, we have significant tax losses in the U.S. that mean we'll really pay very little here in the U.S. for many, many years to come.

If we said 10.5 minus, let's say, 4% for capital, that leaves you at 6.5. We still have some interest and taxes, just not none. I'd say there's room for improvement, but it's not going to be 6 or 7 next year anyway.

Brian, Interviewer: Bruce, when you, upon the announcement of the exploration of strategic alternatives for off-highway, you took on the CEO role on an interim basis. What I have heard today is someone who is very excited about this company. Has your thought changed as far as how long you want to be in the role? Because one, you're doing a terrific job, and two, it seems like there's a lot in front of you.

Bruce McDonald, Chairman and CEO, Dana Incorporated: Yeah. A couple of things on that. In coming in, I originally sort of signed up for about a year. That's what I told my wife anyway. We wanted to make sure we had the cost reduction behind us. Thirdly is put together a growth plan for beyond 2026. That's what I've been working on. I'd say with the board, we did not get started on the succession planning for longer than we thought because the off-highway sale, quite honestly. We thought we were going to have internally. We were hoping we could announce something back in February, March, but it ended up taking us. Be heavily involved. I'm not walking away from anything when I phase out here. We've kind of put together a structure where I do expect that my successor will start here towards the middle of next year, and I'll phase out gradually.

I'm going to be very hands-on going forward.

Brian, Interviewer: It sounds like whomever has the opportunity to take over is going to get to do so really running because of the foundation that's been put in place.

Bruce McDonald, Chairman and CEO, Dana Incorporated: Yeah. Yeah. We will start to be more transparent in terms of some longer-term financial metrics and some quantification on some of those things that I talked about. We are giving some thought to having an analyst day here maybe after we get through the year-end, so more to come on that.

Brian, Interviewer: Terrific. If there are no other questions from our partners in the audience, I want to thank you very much for being here. It's really been great, and I really appreciate you taking the long flight out.

Bruce McDonald, Chairman and CEO, Dana Incorporated: You know, in all my years at Johnson Controls, I never made it down to your conference, so I guess I owed you one.

Brian, Interviewer: We're always trying.

Bruce McDonald, Chairman and CEO, Dana Incorporated: Yeah. Yeah. I think some of our guys did.

Brian, Interviewer: Yep. Thank you very much.

Bruce McDonald, Chairman and CEO, Dana Incorporated: All right. Thank you.

Brian, Interviewer: We're going to take a quick pause. Lunch is being served next door or two doors down. If we can get back in here for Sonic in 10 minutes, it would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to bring your food back in here, but lunch is served. Off and run.

Ready to try a little bit?

Oh, yeah.

Literally and beginner.

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