Earnings call transcript: Superior Industries misses Q1 2025 EPS forecast

Superior Industries International (market cap: $85.39 million) reported a significant miss in its first-quarter earnings for 2025, with earnings per share (EPS) coming in at -$0.92 compared to the forecasted -$0.37. The company’s revenue was $322 million, slightly below the expected $322.74 million. Following the announcement, the company’s stock price saw a dramatic pre-market decline, dropping to $1, representing a 65.17% decrease. According to InvestingPro data, the stock typically exhibits high price volatility, with a beta of 3.32, making such sharp movements not unprecedented.

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Key Takeaways

• Superior Industries reported a larger-than-expected EPS loss of -$0.92.
• Revenue slightly missed forecasts, coming in at $322 million.
• The stock plummeted by over 65% in pre-market trading.
• The company is focusing on local manufacturing in Mexico and Poland.
• Superior Industries suspended full-year 2025 guidance due to uncertainty.

Company Performance

Superior Industries showed a mixed performance in Q1 2025. While net sales increased slightly to $322 million from $316 million the previous year, the company faced challenges in maintaining its profit margins. Adjusted EBITDA fell to $25 million, reflecting a margin decrease from 18% to 15%. The company’s trailing twelve-month EBITDA stands at $122.69 million, with a concerning gross profit margin of 8.72%. Despite these challenges, the company managed to improve its net loss by $20 million compared to the previous year, reporting a net loss of $13 million. InvestingPro’s analysis indicates the stock is currently undervalued based on its Fair Value model.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $322 million, up from $316 million year-over-year.
• Adjusted EBITDA: $25 million, down from an 18% margin last year to 15%.
• Net Loss: $13 million, an improvement from the previous year.
• Cash from Operating Activities: $24 million, up from $4 million.
• Unlevered Free Cash Flow: $33 million, up from $8 million.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Superior Industries’ actual EPS of -$0.92 was significantly below the forecasted -$0.37, marking a substantial miss. This represents a negative surprise of approximately 148.6%. Revenue also fell short of expectations, albeit by a narrower margin, missing the forecast by $740,000.

Market Reaction

In response to the earnings miss, Superior Industries’ stock experienced a sharp decline in pre-market trading, falling to $1 per share, a 65.17% drop from the last close of $2.87. This movement places the stock well below its 52-week low of $1.5, indicating heightened investor concern and negative sentiment.

Outlook & Guidance

Due to ongoing uncertainties, Superior Industries has suspended its full-year 2025 guidance. The company is exploring options to strengthen its financial position, including seeking an additional $70 million in term loans and considering a debt-for-equity recapitalization. While the current ratio of 1.58 indicates adequate liquidity to meet short-term obligations, the total debt of $496.34 million remains a significant concern. The focus remains on recovering lost contracts and leveraging its competitive manufacturing footprint in Mexico and Poland.

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Executive Commentary

CEO Madji Abulaban emphasized the company’s resilience, stating, "We delivered a good start to 2025 despite a challenging macroeconomic environment." He noted an "unprecedented level of quoting activity" and reiterated the company’s commitment to overcoming recent challenges.

Risks and Challenges

• Tariff Pressures: Significant tariffs on Chinese and Moroccan imports could impact cost structures.
• Financial Restructuring: The need for additional loans and recapitalization indicates financial strain.
• Market Volatility: The sharp stock decline reflects investor anxiety and market volatility.
• Supply Chain Issues: Ongoing global supply chain disruptions could affect operations.
• Competitive Landscape: Maintaining a low-cost leadership position requires continuous innovation and efficiency.

Superior Industries’ latest earnings call highlights the challenges it faces amid a difficult economic landscape. The company’s strategic focus on local manufacturing and financial restructuring efforts will be crucial as it navigates these turbulent times.

Full transcript - Superior Industries International (SUP) Q1 2025:

Argy, Conference Operator: Thank you for standing by. My name is Argy, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Superior Industries First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Call. We are joined this morning by Madji Abulaban, President and CEO Dan Lee, Senior Vice President and CFO. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise.

Thank you. I’ll now hand the call over to Dan Lee. Please go ahead.

Dan Lee, Senior Vice President and CFO, Superior Industries: Good morning, and welcome to our first quarter twenty twenty five earnings conference call. During our call this morning, we will be referring to our earnings presentation, which is available on the Investor Relations section of Superior’s website. I am joined on the call by Manjeev Lovam, our President and Chief Executive Officer. Before I turn the call over to Manjee, I remind everyone that any forward looking statements contained in this presentation or commented on today are subject to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Please refer to Slide two of this presentation for the full Safe Harbor statement and to the company’s SEC filings included in the company’s current annual report on Form 10 ks and the current quarter’s Form 10 Q for a more complete discussion of forward looking statements and risk factors.

We will also be discussing various non GAAP measures today. Non GAAP measures exclude the impact of certain items and therefore are not calculated in accordance with U. S. GAAP. Reconciliations of these measures to the most directly comparable U.

S. GAAP measure can be found in the appendix of this presentation. I now will turn the call over to Majdi to provide a business and portfolio update. Majdi?

Madji Abulaban, President and CEO, Superior Industries: Thanks, Dan. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter twenty twenty five earnings call. Let’s begin with an overview of the first quarter on Slide four. We delivered a good start to 2025 despite a challenging macroeconomic environment. Our value added sales outperformed the market, driven by our leading product portfolio, while our team’s continued focus on execution and cost reduction delivered results.

Further, during the quarter, we saw evidence of how our competitively advantaged local for local footprint is paying dividends. As the broader industry responds to tariff pressure, especially from China and Morocco, we are seeing an intensified urgency from OEMs to localize production in regions as they seek more cost effective manufacturing partners in both North America and Europe. More than ever, our local for local manufacturing footprint in Mexico and Poland is creating tremendous opportunity. We have seen an unprecedented level of quoting activity in recent months. In fact, year to date, we have quoted on more than 53,000,000 lifetime views.

I will speak more about this in a bit. While tariff tailwinds are accelerating localization momentum in North America and Europe, in favor of Superior, we experienced a setback in April as we were notified by certain customers in North America who undertook a major global sourcing activity of their intent to resource existing contracts with minimal wind down notice. This unfortunately represented 33% of our expected revenue in 2025. As such, we immediately shifted focus to working to secure short term liquidity to mitigate risk to our customers and suppliers and secure the commitment from our term loan lenders providing access of up to $70,000,000 of additional term loans under our existing credit agreement. This is obviously subject to satisfaction of certain conditions.

We are also working towards obtaining covenant relief from our lenders and are having advanced discussions regarding a broader recapitalization transaction with our lenders and preferred shareholders. This is to significantly delever the balance sheet by eliminating the preferred equity instrument and reducing our outstanding debt. This will be done through a debt for equity exchange, leaving Superior with a strong capital structure. If implemented as contemplated, this recapitalization transaction is expected to provide Superior with the financial strength to execute on those strategies and position us as a premier wheel solutions provider with a competitively advantaged localized footprint and market leading portfolio of products. We have made progress in support of our short term liquidity position, given support from our lenders, and we are executing self help liquidity measures, including working capital and capital expenditure reductions.

We will also continue working with our lenders and preferred shareholders towards a transaction designed to deliver a deleveraged company with financial strength to capitalize on the tremendous opportunities ahead. Turning to Slide five, I spoke briefly regarding our potential transaction. You may recall last year in August 2024, we successfully refinanced our debt, which was a key milestone for Superior and a testament to our company’s potential to deliver long term growth. The result was a stronger financial profile, dollars 117,000,000 reduction in total debt and the extension of our debt maturities to the end of twenty twenty eight. Now as you can see on this slide, a contemplated transaction is designed to significantly reduce our debt burden while positioning our company with additional financial flexibility for future opportunities.

Turning to Slide six. As we mentioned in our last earnings call, tariff dynamics in Europe and in North America are presenting unprecedented opportunity for us. Recall that unlike most automotive commodities, the real commodity is highly dependent on imports from China and Asia for The US and Morocco and China for Europe. More notably, incremental tariffs on Chinese real imports into The US are now more than 100%, and on Morocco, wheel imports into Europe are almost 50%. This is an extremely favorable tailwind for Superior.

We believe that we are the low cost leader in the industry, with a restructured local manufacturing footprint in Poland and in Mexico ready to support existing customers and new customers. Slide seven highlights our proof points and how recent tariff actions are accelerating OEM localization initiatives in our favor. Here you see the remarkable level of customer RFQs in the last four months in Europe and in North America, an all time record. Year to date, we are quoting on more than 53,000,000 lifetime deals in both regions, twice the level compared to last year at the same time. More encouragingly, many of these schools are for startup production in 2025 and 2026, which is unusual in the automotive space.

Compared to last year, we have six times the opportunities we saw last year in this category. We are encouraged by these localization dynamics as they will go a long way to support our efforts to mitigate the recent volume losses. I will conclude with Slide eight, which highlights our current position given the updates I shared with you today. While recent contract losses are regrettable, we are focused on recovering these losses through the many short term opportunities we are pursuing. Further, we will not give up and will continue to pursue recovery of these customers given the recent tariff dynamics that are sure to impact them as well.

Superior is well positioned to compete in the wheel space with a leading portfolio of products and a competitively advantaged local footprint. We have been talking about localization tailwinds for many years. They are here now. Superior’s journey has been one of perseverance over hardship and unprecedented recent challenges. I am grateful for the hard work and effort of our Superior team.

Year in and year out, they have prevailed over unprecedented challenges, and I am confident we will continue to do so. I will now turn the call over to Dan to review our financial results in more detail.

Dan Lee, Senior Vice President and CFO, Superior Industries: Thank you, Manji. Beginning on Slide ten, first quarter twenty twenty five financial summary. Net sales for the first quarter was $322,000,000 compared to $316,000,000 in the prior year period. First quarter adjusted EBITDA was $25,000,000 The associated margin expressed as a percentage of value added sales was 15%. I will provide color on this in the upcoming pages.

Net loss was $13,000,000 in the first quarter, which is a $20,000,000 improvement versus the same period last year. The first quarter twenty twenty five year over year sales bridge is on Slide 11. Value added sales were down approximately $3,000,000 compared to the prior year quarter, primarily driven by lower unit sales and the negative impact of FX, partially offset by favorable pricing. On Slide 12, in the first quarter twenty twenty five year over year adjusted EBITDA bridge, adjusted EBITDA for the quarter decreased to $25,000,000 compared to $31,000,000 in the prior year period. The adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was 15% compared to 18% in the prior year period.

The decrease was mostly due to unfavorable cost absorption due to lower production volumes, the impact of metal timing and lower unit sales, partially offset by favorable FX. An overview of the company’s first quarter twenty twenty five unlevered free cash flow is on Slide 13. Cash provided by operating activities was $24,000,000 for the first quarter compared to $4,000,000 in the prior year period. The increase in cash provided by operating activities was driven by lower working capital. Capital expenditures in the first quarter were $6,000,000 compared to $7,000,000 in the prior year period, reflecting our continued efforts to reduce the capital intensity of the business.

There were $1,000,000 of cash payments for non debt financing activities in the first quarter compared to $4,000,000 in the prior year period due to picking of dividend payments. Unlevered free cash flow in the quarter was 33,000,000 compared to $8,000,000 in the prior year period. The increase in unlevered free cash flow was primarily driven by lower working capital. An overview of the company capital structure as of 03/31/2025, can be found on Slide 14. Total cash on the balance sheet as of 03/31/2025, was $54,000,000 and we did not have anything drawn on the $60,000,000 revolving credit facility.

Net debt at quarter end was $462,000,000 down $18,000,000 compared to 12/31/2024, and represents two consecutive quarters of reducing net debt since refinancing. Superior’s debt maturity as of 03/31/2025, is on Slide 15. As you may recall, we successfully completed our debt refinancing in 2024, attracting $520,000,000 of new capital and extending our term loan maturities through 2028. As mentioned by Manji, subsequent to the end of the quarter, certain larger North American OEM customers notified Superior that they would be shifting their wheel purchases to other suppliers with immediate effect and minimal wind down. This sudden loss of volumes results in a short term liquidity constraint and reductions to the company’s earnings generation.

The combination of these items has put in doubt the company’s ability to meet the near term covenant threshold in the term loan and revolving credit facility. As mentioned in our earnings release this morning, we have received a commitment letter from our term loan lenders providing us access up to $70,000,000 of additional term loans under the existing credit agreement. This is subject to certain conditions required by our lenders. We are also discussing with our lenders about getting some flexibility in our financial covenants. In addition, we are actively engaged in advanced dialogue with our lenders and preferred shareholders on a broader recapitalization transaction designed to delever the balance sheet.

The results of the successful recapitalization transaction and the access to the incremental funds from the commitment letter would be near term financial stability and a meaningful improvement to the long term capital structure. Given the uncertainty stemming from our subsequent events, ongoing discussions with our lenders and preferred shareholder and challenging macro environment with sudden global tariff changes, we are suspending our full year 2025 guidance. Once the environment stabilizes and we have more clarity with our discussions, as previously mentioned, we will provide a comprehensive update, full year projections. In conclusion, I want to thank the Superior team for their hard work in our challenging operating environment. This has been a challenging quarter for the entire industry, and we appreciate everyone’s commitment as we pursue solutions for our near term headwinds and overall capital structure.

As we continue discussions with our lenders and preferred shareholder, we will not be taking any questions during this call. Majdi?

Madji Abulaban, President and CEO, Superior Industries: Thank you again for joining our call today, and many, many thanks for the Superior team for your hard work and efforts. This concludes our call.

Argy, Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today’s call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.

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