Gentherm at J.P. Morgan Auto Conference: Strategic Growth in New Markets

On Tuesday, 12 August 2025, Gentherm (NASDAQ:THRM) presented its strategic vision at the J.P. Morgan Auto Conference 2025. The company outlined plans to diversify beyond its core automotive market, aiming to expand into adjacent sectors like construction and agricultural vehicles. With a focus on operational efficiency and financial performance, Gentherm is poised for strategic growth, despite competitive pressures.

Key Takeaways

• Gentherm plans to reduce reliance on the automotive market, targeting less than 70% revenue from this segment in five years.
• The company reported $1.5 billion in revenue with a 12.5% EBITDA margin and aims to reach $2 billion revenue without expanding its current facilities.
• Strategic expansion into adjacent markets is underway, with initial awards in commercial vehicle and power sports platforms.
• Gentherm is exploring M&A opportunities to diversify revenue streams and accelerate growth.
• The leadership expressed confidence in the company’s ability to adapt to electrification trends due to its powertrain-agnostic technology.

Financial Results

• Current revenue stands at $1.5 billion, with a target of $2 billion.
• Automotive revenue constitutes 97% of the total, while medical revenue accounts for 3%.
• EBITDA margin is currently at 12.5%, with a target to reach the mid-teens.
• The company maintains low leverage, with less than 0.5x.
• Gentherm has secured $1.1 billion in new business awards in the first half of the year.
• The medical business boasts a gross margin of approximately 50%, significantly higher than the company average of 24-25%.

Operational Updates

• Gentherm is consolidating its manufacturing footprint by 30% across Europe, North America, and Asia.
• The company is implementing standardized operating systems and KPIs across all manufacturing sites.
• Expansion into adjacent markets has begun, with five awards secured in commercial vehicles and power sports.
• The medical business distribution network in Europe has expanded through a partnership with DuoMed.

Future Outlook

• Gentherm aims to grow faster than the market, revitalizing the China market and benefiting from pneumatics solutions.
• The company is confident in continued automotive sector growth due to increasing adoption rates.
• Medical business growth is a priority, with potential revenue exceeding previous targets.
• M&A strategies are in place to achieve a revenue mix of 70% light vehicle and 30% from adjacent markets.
• Development cycles in new adjacent markets can be as short as six months.

Q&A Highlights

• Gentherm has been awarded the Ford F-Series business, underscoring strong OEM relationships.
• The company is shifting its customer mix in China towards domestic OEMs to align with market trends.
• Despite Lear’s acquisition of Kongsberg Automotive, Gentherm reports no significant impact on market share.
• The company is managing operational complexity in adjacent markets with standard kits and platforms.
• Tariffs have limited direct impact due to USMCA compliance and pass-through agreements with customers.

In conclusion, Gentherm’s strategic focus on diversification and operational efficiency positions it well for future growth. For more details, readers are encouraged to refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - J.P. Morgan Auto Conference 2025:

Ryan Brinkman, U. S. Automotive equity research analyst, JPMorgan: So it looks like the webcast has started. Once again, I’m Ryan Brinkman, U. S. Automotive equity research analyst here at JPMorgan. Thanks for joining us for our next presentation with a relatively new management team of Gentherm.

Bill Presley, President and Chief Executive Officer on the end and seated next to me, John Duyard, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Bill and John, thanks so much for coming to the conference.

Bill Presley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Gentherm: Great to be here. Thank you. So we’re set. So go ahead and advance.

Ryan Brinkman, U. S. Automotive equity research analyst, JPMorgan: Do we have a slide presentation loaded for Gentherm?

Bill Presley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Gentherm: Nope. I don’t see it on screen.

John Duyard, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Gentherm: Oh.

Ryan Brinkman, U. S. Automotive equity research analyst, JPMorgan: I apologize.

Bill Presley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Gentherm: I thought we we had a deck. But listen, I can let me make a couple comments here. So as Ryan said, John and I joined Gentherm on January 1 as CEO and CFO, so at the same point in time. But let me just tell you a little bit about Gentherm. So Gentherm is a $1,500,000,000 global leader in thermal and pneumatic comfort solutions.

That means is, let me give you some examples of what that means, is if you have a vehicle that has heated and cooled seats, that’s likely our technology given the market share. If you’ve ever had general anesthesia in a surgery, and you’ve laid on a heated pad, or you’ve had the blanket over you that blows warm air to control your body temperature, That’s the type of technology Gentherm does. Our systems, our comfort solutions, are built off of four core technology platforms. Those would be thermal devices, which are the heating pads. There’s pneumatics, which are basically air filled bladders.

There’s air moving devices, which are a fancy name for fans. And then there’s the valves, which either control fluid or airflow. And again, we put those four core platforms together to build out those comfort solutions. Right now, as a company, we’re $1,500,000,000 97% auto, 3% medical. However, we know that that technology has the ability to scale to other markets.

As an example, construction vehicles, agricultural vehicles, two wheelers, we’re starting to see demand in those markets for those types of solutions. In addition, there’s something called motion furniture, which if you have a power recliner in your living room, those are the types of furniture that are now starting to ask for these types of solutions. So part of our strategic proposition and the strategy that we’re pushing is to scale our technology into these adjacent markets. Need to be very clear on something, though. Our focus in doing that is to scale through existing plant property and equipment.

So it’s not a bespoke solution for a unique market. It’s scaling our core technologies through existing plant property and equipment to drive that growth. Our commercial model is kind of unique. We, even though we generally integrate into a tier one supplier, so we would integrate into, let’s say, an automotive seat, we sell directly to the OEMs. So we’re working with the OEMs product and to get it into their product plan before the product launches happen.

So we are in control of our own commercial destiny. So that’s kind of a unique proposition for us. We’re not a small player. We have global reach. 14,000 employees working in 13 different countries.

And they’re producing and engineering in region for the customers in that region. We work with over 50 OEMs globally. And as a result of doing that, we’re in over 1,500 makes and models in over 150 different countries. So we have global scale. We have what I would consider a very innovative product that the market demands.

So given that we’re very confident in the automotive growth, I’m going to touch on the other adjacencies in a minute, but we’re very confident in the automotive growth. As an example, if you look at lumbar massage, which would be the pneumatics in the seat, in 2024, that business was about $175,000,000 We know based on awarded business that by 2027, that business line is well over $300,000,000 So we have a very clear growth path in the light vehicle market. However, we’re interested in scaling beyond the light vehicle market. And our core strategy to drive shareholder return is based on three very specific pillars. It’s profitable growth, strategic profitable growth, which I’ll touch on.

Its operational excellence and its superior financial performance. So off to a good start. As I said, John and I joined January 1. On the profitable growth front, we’ve laid out the strategy that scales us from just light vehicle and medical into other markets. And since April, we’ve engaged with about 30 different manufacturers in those markets.

And in the second quarter, we won our first five awards in adjacent markets. So we won two awards with commercial vehicle, which were thermal solutions. And it’s the exact same thermal solutions that we sell in light vehicle, but now they’re using them in heavy over the road trucks. And we actually won three power sports platforms, think like ATVs, off road vehicles, and valve solutions. So that’s a catalog part.

And again, the numbers are small right now, but it proves that just we went out there organically, knocked on the doors, the doors opened, and we’re pushing into those markets. We expanded our distribution network for our medical business with DuoMed in Europe and opened up the full portfolio of our product there. And again, on the strategic growth side, we’ve continued to invest in new product development on our medical business, and we expect to have some significant announcements before the end of the year. That will be another proof point of transitioning the automotive technology into the medical market. So just a pure read across.

On the operational excellence front, first six, seven months in the business, we’ve been very focused on standardized operating systems. Gentherm is a young company for those of you that don’t know. It’s only about thirty four years old. So we’re in the process of standardizing operating systems. In the second quarter alone, I visited five different manufacturing sites in Asia, Europe, and North America.

And it’s really going there, best practice read across, ensuring the KPIs are all aligned, making sure we’re driving standardization across the business so that we’ve instilled that mindset of continuous improvement. On the financial performance piece, earlier in the year, John and I announced that we are accelerating our footprint consolidation plans. We have plans in every region to consolidate footprint. So Europe, North America, specifically Mexico and then Asia. And we’re confident that even after reducing our footprint by 30%, we can still fit 2,000,000,000 plus revenue into that existing footprint.

So again, 1,500,000,000.0 today. We have a very clear path. We feel that the 2,000,000,000 in existing plant property and equipment. I’m going to keep harping on that because I think it’s very important that we don’t need to make large scale investment to grow the business. And then the last thing, I’ve kind of talked about the organic channels we’re pushing into, but we spent a lot of time building out the M and A funnel.

So even though, like I said, light vehicle, we’re confident in the growth, we see a very clean path to the $2,000,000,000 M and A could be part of that, will be part of that to accelerate us beyond that. And so that’s something we’re focused on as well. So if somebody was to say to me, why Gentherm? I would say, given our innovative product portfolio and given our access to the markets, being a product that customers want, we’re very well positioned for growth. We’ve instilled that continuous improvement mindset, so we know that we will continue to expand margins while we grow.

And we’re in a very strong financial position, 1,500,000,000, 12.5% EBITDA. We’re levered less than half a turn. So we have the ability to strategically deploy capital to accelerate our plans for growth. So as we sit here seven months into the job, John and I are very confident in the path for auto. We’re very confident in our ability to scale into the adjacent markets to maximize utilization of existing plant property and equipment.

And we have the financial assets to give us the maneuverability that we want. So I would say, Ryan, that’s it in a nutshell there.

Ryan Brinkman, U. S. Automotive equity research analyst, JPMorgan: Great. Thank you for the overview. Maybe starting with the quarter just completed. And with regard to business awards, you touched on the exciting strategic awards in the non automotive area. Maybe just on the automotive side too, there was a lot of development, like you had award with the F Series right before the Tier one was selected.

Can you tell us about this award and about the award environment generally and what your potential of your pipeline of even automotive awards might look like?

Bill Presley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Gentherm: You want to take that, Jon?

John Duyard, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Gentherm: Sure. Yes. Mean the Ford wind is a great example for us for a number of reasons. It’s platform that we’ve been on for a number of years. I think Ryan, as you talked about, we were announced before this Ford even announced who the seed supplier is.

So we don’t we know that we’re going to be shipping parts. We actually don’t know where we’re shipping them to yet. And I think that speaks to sort of the power of our commercial model, the importance of our technology, importance of the customer relationships that we have. I think the other piece there is when people look at us they sometimes think luxury or high end products in terms of customer acceptance and those types of things. The F Series platform is top five in the world, very broad based.

And so as you think about the applicability of where our products are in the reach that we have, we think it’s very important to highlight that platform as an example.

Ryan Brinkman, U. S. Automotive equity research analyst, JPMorgan: Thank you. And another thing that stood out about the quarter, thought, was that while you very slightly outgrew production in your key end markets, if you unpack it a little bit further, actually you had some of the fastest outgrowth of any company we cover in North America and Europe, where you were up like eight points versus the industry. It was way down though by continued underperformance in China. So can you talk about the drivers of the outperformance in those markets where you are outperforming? And then touch on the headwinds in China too and the steps you may be taking to better align that business to where the growth is taking place in that market.

Bill Presley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Gentherm: Yes. Let me take the first shot at that, and then John can layer on. So if you look at North America and Europe, the outgrowth is really driven by adoption. We see a high adoption rate of our products continuing to roll on, both heating as well as the lumbar massage and the pneumatic solutions continue to gain market acceptance. So we’re actually growing in those markets through take rate.

China is a little bit of a different story. China is a market mix dynamic. And I’ll give you just a little bit of a background. But if you look at the China market in 2022, 50% of the vehicles sold were domestic OEMs in China. 50% of the vehicles sold were global joint ventures.

So it was a very balanced market at that point in time. Today, it’s 70% Chinese OEMs in China, and it’s 30% global JVs selling in China. Our customer mix is actually opposite the market. So right now, we sell to 70% global JVs and only 30% domestic OEMs in China. So the lack of growth you saw from us in China was just a result of the Chinese OEMs taking share from our customer base.

So we’ve been very conscious of that. We’ve been very focused on that. And our sales conquest maps since the beginning of the year have been tailored to correct that dynamic. The awards that we had in China this year to this point have been with 70% Chinese OEMs. So we are actively shifting the mix to represent the market.

With that said, the China market is actually very important for us because working in the China market, we believe, is a competitive edge. And what I mean is the Chinese OEMs turn their product every 18 months. So it’s a very, very fast development cycle. So that gives us the opportunity to accelerate our product line management. Second, it’s the most cost competitive market in the world.

So by us being there, we’re actually getting insights into what the Chinese suppliers are doing to maintain a cost advantage. And we’re learning from that and reading that into our product plans and our sourcing plans in China so that we can remain competitive everywhere in the world. John, is there anything else?

John Duyard, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Gentherm: I would just add, you look at the company historically, it’s been really a mid single digit grower over the automotive market. And I think we certainly have a path back there. Just over market in the second quarter, we talked about sequential improvement as we go from Q2 to Q3 and expect the second half to return to something that resembles more of a low to mid single digit increase. And so not worried about our positioning. I think Bill highlighted the actions, particularly in China appropriately as the big initiative there to change the construct of the business.

Ryan Brinkman, U. S. Automotive equity research analyst, JPMorgan: Thank you. And it’s great to hear the progress that you’re making and the new business bookings with those faster growing domestic Chinese automakers, sure to help your global growth over market performance. Wanted to ask though because we do see some headlines from time to time about the fastest growing Chinese automakers commanding very favorable pricing and payment terms with suppliers perhaps because they know all the suppliers want to realign with them. So can you talk a bit about your approach to balancing the opportunity for growth and portfolio realignment on the one hand with maintaining commercial and financial discipline on the other?

Bill Presley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Gentherm: John?

John Duyard, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Gentherm: Yeah, mean I would say generally we’re not in the business of buying growth, right? I mean we are looking at these on a case by case basis, understanding where we have differentiated products or can frankly offer a range of products with different technologies in order to meet the markets. And at the end of the day, it needs to be acceptable margins to the business. I think in terms of the cash flow side of it, to Bill’s point about being in country for country, I mean, an advantage for us is being able to push some of those terms in terms of the payment terms from the customers down through the supply base. But we’re very conscious of scrutinizing each and every one of these opportunities to make sure that it’s aligned with, as Bill talked about, strategic profitable growth being one of the three pillars that we’re focused on as a company.

Bill Presley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Gentherm: Yeah. And I would just a little more on that is I’ve said that the China market is very important for us to learn from. And I’ll give everybody a very concrete example. China for China, I think a problem that a lot of Western companies make is they try to take their Western product and push it into the China market. The China market, while our products there perform the same function, are not necessarily the same product.

As an example, on a ventilated seat, there’s a fan or an air moving device that circulates the cool air through the seat. In Western markets, noise, vibration, and harshness is a very important aspect. So they’re measuring the vibration in the fan. So you have to dampen the fan. You have to have a different phase of electricity to make it run very smooth.

In China, the requirement is, can you blow cool air through the seat? So you can engineer the fan differently and more cost effectively and still move air, but now you’re price competitive at an acceptable margin. That’s a very concrete example of how that works.

Ryan Brinkman, U. S. Automotive equity research analyst, JPMorgan: Interesting. Thank you. And maybe to circle back on your non automotive comments. This has probably been the most surprising thing I think since you took over is just how large you see the opportunity being. I think at one point in dinner, I don’t know if he’s like, dollars 1,000,000,000, okay?

And then also how quickly it’s kind of coming to pass. I didn’t hear you say before today, I don’t think that you had discussions with 30 different manufacturers. It seems to have happened very quickly. What is driving the progress that you’ve got there? And what can we expect over the back half of the year?

I mean could something happen that soon given that you’re in talks with so many? And in coming years do you think how material can this get how quickly? And then talk to about like the conversion into earnings from this incremental revenue because I think there’s a lot of perception that, well, you have to spend money to make money, right? But you’ve been emphasizing your ability to leverage existing capacity.

Bill Presley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Gentherm: Yes. So I’ll start with in the company previously, there hadn’t been a focus on adjacent markets. The focus had been primarily light vehicle. And then there was a medical business. Like I said, that’s a very small piece of it.

I’m a big proponent of utilization and maximizing utilization of assets. So when we look at these adjacent markets, we know that we can push the same technology with the same equipment because those markets are demanding it. An example of a conversation we had with a construction vehicle manufacturer is, my customer who buys my equipment has heated and ventilated seats in his $60,000 truck and wants to know why he can’t get in his $300,000 skid steer, right? So we’re seeing a pull from these adjacent markets. It’s out there, but a lot of the volume is fractured.

And they look at what we do at scale and light vehicle, and they’re saying, Okay, you guys can deliver with quality. That’s very attractive to those markets. The second thing is two wheelers. We’re seeing a great deal of interest in two motorcycles mopeds for cooled seats. So we’re actually in proof of concept now with some two wheeler manufacturers showing them what we can do.

And then motion furniture has been similar to the other near adjacencies that I mentioned. It’s like people have this feature in their car. They come home and want to know why they don’t have it in their living room. So we’re actually seeing a pull from the market, which I think is unique. The development cycles in these markets is much faster.

And some of the stuff we’re working on now, these could launch as soon as six months from the time of award. As opposed to, like I said, the Chinese OEMs turn it around in eighteen months. Some of the Western OEMs, it’s thirty six to forty eight months. So these adjacent markets have much smaller development cycles, which is good. The one hurdle that we had to overcome was in these other markets, the volume is generally low because you have so many different manufacturers.

And that’s been a hurdle in the past commercially if you try to tool up specifically for them. So what we’ve designed in our product line management are what we call standard kits. And what we’ve told them is as long as you use the standard kit, you don’t have to guarantee any volume. We already have plant, property and equipment in place. Stick to the standard kits.

That’s been very, very well received from the adjacent markets. So anything else you’d like to Yes.

John Duyard, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Gentherm: I mean, I think in terms of what this could mean from a magnitude perspective, we haven’t come out and said anything specifically from a company standpoint. I would say we’re confident in where the growth is on the core automotive light vehicle business. We think there’s more growth in the medical business that’s been untapped. And we think adjacencies can be on top of that. I think if you think about it aspirationally, we would say five years from now this company is less than 70% light vehicle as you look at the entire portfolio.

And so that’s really the objective and focus that we put on the team.

Ryan Brinkman, U. S. Automotive equity research analyst, JPMorgan: Very interesting. And what about your vision for the remainder of the company over the next several years? Do you see going in any different directions or in a bigger way with the medical side? And what about automotive too? Where would you kind of like to take the business over the next several years, the whole business?

Bill Presley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Gentherm: Yes. So the medical is definitely a focus for us. I mentioned it in my comments earlier that we’ve been very focused on reinvigorating the product portfolio on the medical side. And there have been advancements in the surgical front that require new solutions for patient warming. And we found an answer to that in our automotive technology.

So we’re in the process now of actually working through new product development on the medical side. We expect some announcements by the end of the year once 510s and other things are formally submitted. But in the past, the company said that they believe the medical business could be $100,000,000 We believe that really underwhelms opportunity. We think that the medical business could be a multiple of 100,000,000 So definitely focused on the medical side. The light vehicle side, again, we continue to win new business in the first half of the year, dollars 1,100,000,000.0 of new business awards.

So we see the adoption continuing, which is why we’re so comfortable in the light vehicle trajectory. But as John said, that adjacent markets provides an additional opportunity for us at higher margins utilizing existing assets to scale the business. Anything else?

John Duyard, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Gentherm: Just to I mean to hit the margin point, I think if you look at our medical business today, it’s a $50,000,000 business. Gross margin is closer to 50% versus the total company gross margins about 24%, 25%, right? So the flow through from incremental volume in the medical business is it can have a substantial impact to the company, particularly as we get to the magnitudes that Bill is talking about.

Ryan Brinkman, U. S. Automotive equity research analyst, JPMorgan: Very interesting. Thank you. I wanted to ask next on M and A. You mentioned recently on the 2Q call that M and A is an important part of our capital allocation strategy. You mentioned that you have progressed the funnel, the M and A funnel development and are evaluating opportunities.

Can you talk about what you look for in acquisition candidate? While I know you’ve stressed expansion into non automotive end markets can be attractive financially because of the aforementioned ability to leverage existing technology and plant capacity, Would you though be potentially willing to consider using M and A to grow your non automotive business in a more step change fashion?

John Duyard, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Gentherm: Short answer to that is yes. I think the nice part about where Gentherm is as a company is we’ve got an amazing balance sheet. At the end of the second quarter, we’re levered about a half a turn. And so very high level of liquidity for us and provides optionality and flexibility in terms of where we want to invest in the business. I think as you look at it strategically, we’ve touched on a lot of it.

It’s how do we shift the portfolio to be something that’s closer to 70% light vehicle with 30% in adjacencies and medical? How we get access to different channels that are in some of the either the commercial vehicle markets or other markets, whether it’s ag or otherwise? And then it’s how do we expand the product portfolio beyond sort of the current offerings. And so we think as we’ve looked at funnel development that there are a number of opportunities out there that complement that very well. And I think as you look at it from perspective, again, the balance sheet is there.

We want to make sure the return profile is there as well. We’re looking to drive incremental ROIC for the company. We’re looking for things that are margin accretive overall to where we are today. Ultimately, we see this business in that mid teens range from an EBITDA perspective, and we think M and A is an avenue to help that.

Ryan Brinkman, U. S. Automotive equity research analyst, JPMorgan: Great. Thank you. And Bill, maybe going back to your first call as Gentherm CEO, right, 4Q24 back in February, amongst the things that stood out to me the most beyond the obvious excitement about the non automotive opportunity was the emphasis on business process standardization. You stated that you wanted to build operational excellence through business process standardization. And just given your observation that the company was doing things differently in different regions, which might have been natural given how the company grew over time, including via acquisition, but that things could be done more efficiently if harmonized.

Are you able to provide any examples of that? And then do you have a sense yet? Because I don’t think you’ve quantified how great the margin savings might be from process standardization.

Bill Presley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Gentherm: Yeah. So just a little bit of background history. Again, I said Gentherm’s less than 35 years old. So it was done as an innovation startup in California back in 1991. So it’s been built through that.

There’s been some acquisitions. So I wasn’t surprised by the state of the company. You know, I come from some pretty established companies, six years at Aptiv, ten years at Lear, fourteen years at Chrysler. So when we walked in, what we saw wasn’t a surprise, right? There were kind of different KPIs and different locations, different processes.

So some of the first things we focused on is John and I are big believers in minimizing utilization of net working capital. So one of the first plans we put into place was with supply chain management, we established what we called plan for every part. And that was for every raw material part number and every finished goods part number, how many days on hand should you have based on certain criteria. And then you run your master production plan schedule according to just replenishing inventory. That was a new concept at Gentherm, but it’s yielded results very quickly as we’ve rolled that out.

Because we’re actually reducing inventory related to production, kind of offset by the inventory we’re building for the footprint moves. But it’s instilling a discipline on reducing net working capital. The second thing was this program management in each region was different. So we standardized the program management process, which was important because we have programs that transfer from region to region on global platforms. So it was important to standardize that.

And then the third thing was we standardized all the KPIs. Oddly enough, different locations had different key performance indicators. When we standardized those, we were actually able, for lack of a better term, pit sites against each other and figure out which site was better in one category versus the other and take what the better site was doing and read that across to the site that was perhaps not optimal. So I know it sounds fundamental, but in a thirty year old company, those were kind of new concepts, and it’s starting to yield fruit now. And John, you want to talk about the margin piece?

John Duyard, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Gentherm: Yes. Think as we think about we’re at 12.5% adjusted EBITDA last year, getting to that mid teens number, we would say that operational excellence is about onethree of that bridge in conjunction with a number of footprint actions that we have going on right now. And so it’s a meaningful contribution. Think the other example that Bill highlighted beyond just profitability, I think the cash conversion on the inventory side, I mean, we should be driving improvement here as we’re able to get through these cycles. We’ve also taken a different view on CapEx and back to utilization of capacity.

We’ve been able to scrutinize that CapEx as well. We took down our full year guidance there in our last earnings call. So we’ll continue to focus not just on the profitability side, but how can we drive that efficiently through the company.

Ryan Brinkman, U. S. Automotive equity research analyst, JPMorgan: I wanted to ask on tariffs. I think you’ve done a good job outlining your mitigation of any direct impact, impact, maybe on the margin side, but not on the EBIT side, right? What about the indirect impact? What do you think could be the impact of tariffs on consumer demand or the level of production as automakers raise prices?

John Duyard, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Gentherm: I mean, think our concern, given our structure, the biggest impact for us would be North America. We do all of our North American manufacturing or most of our North American manufacturing in Mexico. But we are more than 80% USMCA compliant. And so that’s certainly helpful. And where we’re not, we’ve got agreements with the customers to be able to pass it on.

So from a direct impact, we think it’s minimized. We said 15 basis points in the second quarter. It’s roughly the impact. We think it’s about the same for the full year. So not hugely material for the company, and the team’s done a nice job there.

I think the most interesting thing, which we’ve been sort of questioning all year, is what that what’s going to happen to the demand side from a consumer perspective. And it’s probably been one of the more stable periods that we’ve had in a long time. We are not seeing big swings from an OEM scheduling perspective or our production schedules are not changing quite a bit. So we have not seen any real change in demand from that standpoint, which I think has been positive and certainly gives us confidence as we look at the second half of the year right now.

Bill Presley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Gentherm: Yes. No, I think that’s well said. And I think we look at multiple inputs for volume. So we look at the IHS, but we also look at the customers, what they call M schedules. And those are long range material planning schedules so that those go out maybe twelve to eighteen months.

Then they send us what they would call their weekly EDIs or their orders. That’s a firm goods order six to eight weeks out, depending on the OEM. And then we look at the weekly call offs. The weekly call offs are what they actually pick up. Any disconnect between any two of those is usually a red flag for us.

Those have all been floating in what we would call standard deviation or standard norms for production. So there’s nothing on the horizon that gives us pause or fear right now with regard to volume. So it’s not we trust what the customer tells us, but again, we verify through other sources, right? So everything’s kind of floating as it should.

Ryan Brinkman, U. S. Automotive equity research analyst, JPMorgan: I’d to ask on your outlook for electrification also given the recent changes in the regulatory backdrop, eliminating the 7,500 consumer tax credit, relaxation of the penalties around greenhouse gas and CAFE. Obviously, electrification was front and center in your role at Aptiv, But how does the trend in electrification impact Gentherm?

Bill Presley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Gentherm: So the great thing about Gentherm’s technology is we’re powertrain agnostic. Whether you have an ICE vehicle, a hybrid vehicle or an electric vehicle, the comfort solutions that we provide are the same. We actually provide the same part number on an EV platform that has an ICE counterpart platform. So we actually can’t differentiate from that customer whether that part is going on an internal combustion engine or an electric vehicle. So great news for us is whichever way that trend goes, it’s great.

What we’re really focused on and watching is to take rates and the adoption. And we see that continuing to increase well out into 02/1935. And

Ryan Brinkman, U. S. Automotive equity research analyst, JPMorgan: on the competitive landscape, what have you seen in terms of the impact of Lear’s acquisition of Kongsberg Automotive? Has your share of the seat heating, cooling, ventilation, lumbar massage market gone up or down since they vertically integrated those features?

Bill Presley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Gentherm: Yes, we don’t see frankly any direct impact of Lear’s vertical integration on our market share. I’ll just go back to our commercial model is we engage directly with the OEMs ourselves. And I think one of the most telling things, and John talked about it right off the bat, is the F Series we just won still don’t know who the seat supplier is, right? So we were sourced that business before they chose the tier one. So haven’t seen any meaningful change in our competitiveness as a result of that.

Ryan Brinkman, U. S. Automotive equity research analyst, JPMorgan: Great, thanks. I’ve got some more questions for these guys, but are there any in the audience? There is.

Unidentified speaker: Over the next three years, what financial metrics are you focused on driving the company so we can kind of track them along with you?

John Duyard, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Gentherm: So I think as you go back to the pillars, right, I mean, a growth perspective, growth over market and just growth in general, right. We need to move the top line of this company from a margin perspective taking us from that 12.5% up to more of a mid teens from an EBITDA standpoint. And then cash conversion would be the third that I would say. And we’ve adjusted internal compensation along these lines as well. But really focusing on cash, last year our cash conversion was something like 30% of EBITDA.

I think if you go back historically, it’s 50%, 60%, 70%. And through the operational excellence actions Bill talked about, that’s a clear target for us to get back to.

Unidentified speaker: And if I could just follow-up. I think return on invested capital is part of your LTIP at the company. I don’t know if it is now going forward. And if it is, is that also a financial metric that you’re going to look to improve year over year?

John Duyard, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Gentherm: Certainly, it’s a metric we’ll be looking to improve. I think it gets back to just the efficiency as well as how we’re looking at M and A. I believe I’d have to go back and see the year that was removed from the calculation or from the compensation, but it’s been a couple of years. But it’s something that we talk about every day.

Ryan Brinkman, U. S. Automotive equity research analyst, JPMorgan: Another question up front.

Unidentified speaker: It’s interesting to hear about your adjacent market efforts, and they sound like they’re interesting. At the same time, sometimes these start adding operational complexity to the business when great take the box, the standard kit, but then product roadmaps start to get developed while listening to your clients. Seasonality of one industry versus another, maybe an ATV vehicle people are or a snowmobile. It’s a winter dominant marketplace. How do you make sure that those costs and those complexity costs don’t start to drift out of whack compared to where you are today?

Bill Presley, President and Chief Executive Officer, Gentherm: I think that’s a great question because I think, frankly speaking, it was one of the sins of two administrations ago within the company. And it generated a lot of bespoke solutions. And as a result, no asset was, I would say, fully utilized. So when we revamped the product line management, right, when John and I came to the company, things were talked about in terms of seating systems or steering wheel systems. It was talked about in terms of systems.

That’s why we broke it up specifically into the platform of thermal, pneumatic, air moving devices and valves, right. So when we broke the product line management up like that, we put monuments in place that said these things are unchangeable. In other words, this is your base material, you must use this base material. This is the base, say, copper that goes into it, you must use this. Now, whether it’s a square or a rectangle for our machines and our processes, it doesn’t matter.

It’s a form factor, right? But it’s about driving scale without investing in new plant property and equipment for a bespoke solution that you never get the payback on.

Ryan Brinkman, U. S. Automotive equity research analyst, JPMorgan: Okay. Maybe just a quick one in the twenty seconds or we can go a little bit over. I wanted to ask about the potential for normalized growth over market. I don’t know if it’s just as simple as looking at the regions outside of China and saying, once you fix China, this is what you can What is your book of business that you’ve got today, your awards, what does that tell you about the growth that you might be able to expect relative to the market in the next several years? And then we’re talking about relative to the automotive market and as you start to get in these non automotive categories, that’s going to be a driver.

Have you given any thought to what you might be able to grow in relation to the auto industry going forward?

John Duyard, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Gentherm: Yeah. Mean, think as I mentioned, I think our focus is on growth first and foremost. I think as we look at growth over market, as we look at the award backlog that we have, we were confident in our ability to outgrow the market even as I mentioned starting here in Q3 of the second half of the year. We’ve got particularly in the pneumatic solutions business, we’ve significantly outpaced the market in terms of award activity. But if you listen to the numbers that Bill talked about earlier going from 175,000,000 to over $300,000,000 of revenue over the next three years, that’s massively above what any of the markets are going to do.

And so it’s continuing to push our technology from a North America and Europe perspective. I think we’ve got a number of launches here in China in the third quarter even that will help rebalance the mix there. And I think longer term, having the team focus on the alignment with the Chinese OEMs is certainly a critical piece to that as well.

Ryan Brinkman, U. S. Automotive equity research analyst, JPMorgan: Great. Thank you. That’s all we have time for, so please join me in thanking Bill and

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