Motorcar Parts at 49th Annual Automotive Symposium: Strategic Insights

Motorcar Parts of America (NASDAQ:MPAA) presented a robust strategic outlook at the 49th Annual Automotive Symposium on Monday, 03 November 2025. The company highlighted its impressive financial performance, notably a strong EBIT margin, while addressing challenges such as tariff risks and cost increases. The session underscored both the company’s strengths and areas of caution as it navigates the competitive automotive landscape.

Key Takeaways

• Motorcar Parts of America achieved a Q3 EBIT margin of 14.7%, surpassing many competitors.
• The company operates a capital-light model with CapEx under 3% of sales.
• MPA is strategically positioned for electric and autonomous vehicles, with future updates expected at an Investor Day in 2026.
• Significant growth opportunities are identified in Mexico and the diagnostic business.
• The company is actively repurchasing shares, with an average price of $9.19.

Financial Results

• EBIT Margins:

- Q3 EBIT margin reached 14.7%, outperforming automotive competitors.

• Capital Expenditure:

- CapEx is less than 3% of sales, highlighting a capital-light approach.

• Free Cash Flow:

- Guided at $385 million for the year at the midpoint.

• Gross Margins:

- Gross margins are back in the low 20s%.

• EBITDA and Cash:

- Trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA is nearly $100 million, with cash reserves at $76 million.

• Share Repurchase:

- Shares repurchased at an average price of $9.19.

Operational Updates

• Customer Breakdown:

- Revenue is split 60% from professional installers and 40% from the DIY market.

• Manufacturing Footprint:

- Facilities in Mexico and Malaysia mitigate tariff risks.

• Brake and Diagnostic Business:

- Brake business revenues are in the hundreds of millions; diagnostic business aims for $100 million+.

• Expansion in Mexico:

- Growth opportunities driven by rising discretionary income, with 20% and 12% increases.

Future Outlook

• Electric Vehicle Strategy:

- Targeting a billion-dollar market in new electric products by 2030.

• Investor Day:

- Planned for 2026 to provide strategic updates.

• Share Repurchase and M&A:

- Continued share buybacks, with a focus on organic growth and potential M&A opportunities.

Q&A Highlights

• Trade Pact Renegotiation:

- Uncertainty around US-Mexico trade agreements.

• Non-Discretionary Demand:

- Confidence in demand for essential parts despite consumer spending pressures.

• First Brands Bankruptcy:

- Opportunity for market share gains due to retailer shifts.

• Interest Rate Cuts:

- Benefits to supply chain costs, saving $7 million annually per rate point.

Motorcar Parts of America’s full conference call transcript is available for those seeking detailed insights into the company’s strategic initiatives and financial performance.

Full transcript - 49th Annual Automotive Symposium:

Unidentified speaker: The stock. And it’s very different because it has changed quite a bit. We finally, in my mind, are getting the recognition for all the good things that this company does, the balance sheet that it has, and just the stability and growth potential of the business. That is why our stock has had a nice growth. What do we think about when it comes to valuation? We think about cash flow yield as a percentage of the stock price. We look at EBIT margins. That is why we changed this year from EBITDA to EBIT, because we also do not believe that people appreciate our capital-light model. Okay, we are less than 3% of sales spend, again, part of our financial framework, on CapEx. When you look, 14.7% EBIT margin in Q3, show me another competitor in the automotive space that does that.

There are none that I know of, maybe one or two, but not doing what we are doing globally. That, to me, is what we think about. When we look at that, and we compare across, and we see also where we are going in terms of the potential opportunity to expand into new industries. Industrial type of applications, we think there is a really good shot at even re-rating the company at some point in the future. Again, that is where we are going. It is all about, in the end, offering a technology that is differentiated, that customers are going to pay for because it solves a problem they have.

Andrew: Just remind me, free cash flow this year is $385 million at the midpoint per latest guidance.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. And on a $3.3 billion equity cap company, you’re still over 10% free cash flow, yeah?

Andrew: Yes.

Unidentified speaker: Andrew, you have the microphone.

Andrew: Just to build on what you were talking about. The new electric products, you had a billion-dollar target in 2030. Even though you guys often move at China speed, it takes time to ramp these. Are you starting to think that that billion-dollar target could be on the low side?

Unidentified speaker: Right now, we have not walked back the billion-dollar target. We are, this year, as you know, things have changed a lot. Interestingly enough, just because BEV is later, it doesn’t necessarily affect us because our strategy always was to really target certain sections of the mobility space that’s electrifying, where, again, we’re solving a problem. We’re coming with a product that’s much more efficient, that uses electricity in a more efficient manner. You can either put more weight, it weighs less, so you can put more weight in the car via battery or cargo. Again, we have not walked back that number. We are looking at what’s happening as things are changing, but we also have some of these new opportunities that a year or two ago, we didn’t even think, well, two years ago, that wasn’t on our radar, and now they are.

A lot of interesting things happening. I would say we are looking at doing an Investor Day at some point in 2026, and then we’re going to do a refresh and an update.

Unidentified speaker: It has been a great story. You guys have done a terrific job, and look forward to seeing what is next. Thank you very much for being here.

Unidentified speaker: Thanks, Bryan.

Unidentified speaker: Sean, Nils, thank you very much.

Unidentified speaker: Thank you, Christopher Byrnes.

Andrew: Thank you for having us.

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: Diagnostic business focused on alternators and starters and inverters, electric motors, and battery power packs, sort of the electric powertrain fundamentals. If we want to do Q&A or?

Unidentified speaker: Yeah, yeah. We can start with the business and some of the operations you guys do. Can you just review for us your breakdown of customers coming between the warehouse distributors, large distributors like AutoZone, O’Reilly, and then any direct selling, if you do any?

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: Yeah. The vast majority of our—we sell almost everybody in the marketplace. All the retailers, a big chunk of the WDs. We do not segment report. We do not report by customers, but probably 60% of our revenue is to the professional installer and about 40% to the DIY market.

Unidentified speaker: We’ve talked about kind of the complexity of getting hundreds of thousands of SKUs to the end customer within a short time, 30 minutes. Can you just talk to us about how you help some of these big distributors kind of serve their customers in that sense?

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: It goes back to—I mean, thank God we don’t have to distribute within 30 minutes. It goes back to sort of our branding strategy. Probably 25 years ago, we decided to become a B2B brand and really focus on doing all the things for the retailer that a consumer product company would do for themselves. We have incredible vendor-managed inventory capabilities, category management capabilities, and we track all the statistics on registrations on the vehicles. We know where they are. We know whether it’s likely to be a DIY job or a DIFM job. We are able to help our customers be more effective than our competitors’ customers and have the inventory in the right place. I mean, there are 220-plus thousand varieties of light and medium vehicles on the road.

You can’t carry all of that and deliver within 30 minutes, but using the hub-and-spoke systems that these retailers have and the WDs have, we are able to get the right product in the right locations.

Unidentified speaker: Can you just give us a quick overview on your remanufacturing process and kind of what the value add is there and what kind of customer would prefer that over a—

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: The first thing to understand is why do we exist? I mean, the most—and it’s really the fundamentals. Is that when an OE manufacturer plans their vehicle production, and they’re not making the parts necessarily that we make, they plan enough for their production for that year and perhaps maybe for warranty replacement that year. Most of the time, they don’t even get through the warranty replacement. You move on, and then five years later, that vehicle fails, and that OE is not making those—the OE manufacturer is not making those parts anymore. The only way you can really get them remade, which is basically the remanufacturing, is almost a diminished title for what it is because they are completely remade, but they are remade with the original equipment. That’s the only real way.

You talk about if you really want a replacement that’s as identical to OE as you can get, remanufacturing is the answer. Most cars have a one-time replacement. As the vehicles get better, you get more than one. Most of the replacements that are coming in are from original equipment cores, the broken down units, so original equipment. You’re able to reproduce an original OE-style product as opposed to a knockoff type product, which is a new unit, which everyone thinks new, "Oh, it’s new, maybe better." The reality is it’s probably not.

Unidentified speaker: Gotcha. Just talk about how you’re positioning the company for increased complexity, EVs, autonomous vehicles, and if this is a benefit to Motorcar Parts of America.

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: Yeah. So, I mean, one of the things—first of all, we think we have plenty of time for the EV space, and I think that’s sort of being proven out. You’ve got, I think, 293 million cars on the road, and the vast majority of them are not EV. I mean, they’re either hybrid. Most of them are just straight combustion engine, a little bit of hybrid out there. The beauty of the aftermarket is it’s not a market you need to look forward. You’ve got to look backwards. While we have significant know-how on how to—because we develop all the diagnostics on inverters and battery packs—we don’t have to worry about that for a lot of years. Okay? We look back when they start failing, and there’s any density in the market, as a remanufacturer, we’ll call competency or a manufacturer, we’ll make what’s needed.

We have some ideas of what’s coming. I think my kids would be in a better position to worry about that than me.

Unidentified speaker: Perfect. Yeah, we’ll move on to kind of just the environment, kind of more recently, some of the dynamics going on. Can you just talk about your exposure to tariffs and what kind of steps you’re taking to diversify manufacturing and sourcing footprint?

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: Yeah. So, 10, 15 years ago, I really took the initiative to try and remove as much as we could out of China. And not because I anticipated tariffs, and maybe I’ll be clairvoyant on that one, but I just felt that the social environment there was not conducive to stability. I decided that we would take most of our production and reliance away from China. We did that. We’re pretty much based in Mexico and Malaysia. I mean, Malaysia does have tariffs. We are exempt of the USMCA in our Mexican operation. We’ve got—we’re a lean manufacturer. Our efficiencies enable us to put more into Mexico, and there’s lots of capacity to absorb. We’re flexible in terms of where we can move production. Right now, we’re very comfortable with our footprint.

I mean, we do have some Chinese reliance, and we do have tariffs, but we think we can be a leader in sort of mitigating that. Obviously, automotive tariffs are everywhere other than Canada and Mexico right now in the USMCA compliant product, and we’ll see how that all goes. We think we can leverage that very effectively.

Unidentified speaker: Given kind of some of the pressures that consumers have been facing on inflation, how comfortable are you on your ability to pass through any price, if needed, to offset some of the cost increases?

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: The reality is they are cost increases, and someone’s got to pay for them. We’re passing them through, and sometimes not as successful as you want to be, but we are passing through price increases. I mean, there’s no choice. At the end of the day, we’re non-discretionary parts, and we make a great product, and we’re trustworthy, reliable, financially secure. We’ve got less than about half a turn of debt on EBITDA. We have capacity, and we’re legitimate, and we’re there every day. We will need to be paid fair value for our products. That’s really our opinion. Less worried about revenue growth than I am about making sure that we get the right returns on what we do every day and generate cash.

I mean, we’re on our way to being completely debt-free and buying back stock and being able to deploy it in whatever the opportunistic opportunities, whatever opportunities come up. We’re excited about that. I think we’re in a great position.

Unidentified speaker: Given some of the more recent news around factoring the supply chain financing programs, can you just talk about Motorcar Parts’ use of these factoring programs and how it affects working capital and reported cash flows?

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: I mean, the biggest, the retailers all got their supply chain financing programs. That’s pretty much what we do. Everything we do is on the balance sheet. Everything we do is pretty easily reported. I mean, we have the interest expense that reflects around that. Nothing’s really changed for us. I mean, I think we have a very simple method, and just really, it’s not our financing. It’s our customers’ financing.

Unidentified speaker: You don’t expect any changes to come about the recent First Brands bankruptcy?

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: Yeah. I don’t expect the retailers to have to change their programs, and I’m not hearing any bounce back from the banks. I mean, the banks have always called us and asked questions. It’s not our programs, but I don’t anticipate those changing.

Unidentified speaker: How has kind of recent interest rate cuts been a benefit towards these programs and the interest rate expense?

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: Yeah. It has been a good and a bad for us. I mean, the good is the rates are coming down. We like that. The bad is we never got the benefit of price increases when they went up. We are just running on the spot, really, on interest rates. Eventually, every point in interest is a reduction in factoring in the supply chain factoring cost of about $7 million a year. Our profitability will come back because we never got the price increases. We have nothing to give back.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. So moving along towards kind of just the different product lines you guys have and how you’ve kind of expanded and entered into new lines recently, can you just talk about the expansion and how it kind of fits with the old line?

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: Yeah. At one point, we had, and we still do, over 50% of the rotating electrical business in the United States. The big challenge was, do we take that and become an international rotating electrical company, or do we leverage our relationships with the supply chain? We decided to leverage our relationships with the supply chain and choose parts that had big market value and that were somewhat technology agnostic. We made a big push into the brake business. We’re a full-line brake supplier today. I mean, that brake category is a couple hundred million for us, and it’s probably only about five years old. We’re excited about where we are there, and we think there’s going to be a lot more opportunity for us in that space.

Unidentified speaker: Yeah. So that brake caliper business started as kind of greenfield operation, you said, five, six years ago. Can you just discuss the growth there and kind of the margin opportunity moving forward?

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: I mean, the growth has been phenomenal. I mean, I do not know whether we are the second largest player now or not. I am not sure. Obviously, we make a great product. We ship it reliably. It is a state-of-the-art facility. As we scale the absorption of the overhead in that facility, we are seeing margin accretion. We will see that continue. I think that there is some weakness in the market around us in terms of our competitor base. We are aggressive, not so much on—we are aggressive in making sure that we have the best product and that it is available to people who need it. I mean, we are not price aggressive, but we are aggressive in being proud of the need that we are filling. We think there is a big opportunity going forward there.

In our other brake products, I mean, we have got a family of brake product lines that are going to grow. They will produce margin, and we are excited about that.

Unidentified speaker: When you choose to enter a space like on this brake caliper side, from whom are you typically taking share when you’re successful?

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: It depends on the category you go, right? I mean, it goes into. There was a—when we entered into the brake caliper business, there was a significant supply chain challenge. I mean, the fill rates in the industry were very, very low. We had a lot of customers coming to us. I mean, a lot of our growth has been initiated by customers. In fact, I saw one of the—what I call—the co-founder, a former retailer, who invited me to go to see them and said, "Can you be here tomorrow?" I said, "I can’t be there tomorrow. I got to go to a conference in New York." He said, "I’ll meet you in New York tomorrow." That night, without having produced one brake caliper, we ended up with a commitment of close to $100 million of brake caliper business. We hadn’t—we’d never been in the business. Okay?

People trust us. We’re there sometimes for better or sometimes for worse, but we’re there, and we live by our word, and we are reliable. We’ve built, I think, the state-of-the-art brake caliper program.

Unidentified speaker: Bryan, did you have one?

Bryan: Well.

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: Go on.

Bryan: Okay. A couple of questions, actually. This came up in one of the earlier meetings. I know it’s difficult to answer. I just want to see how you’re thinking about it. The potential renegotiation of the trade pact with the United States and Mexico, you’ve obviously put a lot of focus on Mexico. You’ve moved a lot of your manufacturing there. I mean, how are you thinking about that as a potential variable for Motorcar Parts of America?

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: I don’t know how to think about any of this stuff. So if I told you how I was thinking about it, I’d be lying. But we have flexibility. I mean, we do have some flexibility. I think from a relative competitive base, we’ll certainly be no worse off than any of our competitors with the footprint that we have. We do have significant capability in Malaysia as well. I mean, we’re ramping up there. We’ve opened up new facilities there. One of the biggest assets we have is experienced workforce on the production floor. And it gives you a tremendous flexibility to be able to move around into different parts. But with the tariffs keep changing, and you can’t just jump around from place to place. At some point, someone’s going to have to pay for that, and at some point, it settles down.

I was sort of hoping that we were there now. We’ll have to see. I’m also bullish that being close to the borders, all in all, is still going to be more effective than running all over the world to try and avoid a tariff, whether it be even made in the USA, for that matter. I don’t know the answer, Bryan. I mean, I just don’t. I mean, I read it just like everybody else and wonder what’s next.

Bryan: Second question, if I could—again, this is also maybe not a totally fair question, because I know you’re reporting next week. But we’ve heard from—you talk all the time about your business that you’re on the non-discretionary side of auto parts. And so we’ve heard from retailers lately, I think O’Reilly and then to a certain extent, Advanced Auto Parts talked about this. But they might be seeing some type of impacts on demand, even in categories that may have been less discretionary because of tariffs and pricing and consumer. Is that something you’re seeing in your business, or could you pine upon that at all?

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: Look, I mean, you can’t drive if your car doesn’t start, and you can’t drive if your car doesn’t stop. We start cars, and we stop cars. I mean, that’s really what it is. You can defer your brake job a little bit. At some point—and that’s not a real big deferral—that ends. Our parts are all pretty much non—not pretty much. They all are non-discretionary. I think the challenge is, where’s the consumer going to buy it? I mean, the consumer’s going to decide where he can get the most efficient deal for them. As different alternative channels become more efficient, they got more choices. For us, the producer’s producing. There may be some consumers that will try and go to a cheaper solution. At the end of the day, the consumer needs faith that their product’s going to work.

We’re giving lifetime warranties on products that are wear items, which is a little bit crazy. The point is, it does give the consumer confidence that you’re buying a legitimate product. I do see some of that. I think for our products generally—and I’ve seen this in recessionary times—we hold our own. I expect that to happen. I’m more worried about what the channels will do for the non-discretionary items, how that affects where their capital goes and what happens. I mean, I think the non-discretionary will be there for them. Just hope that there’s not diversion because of the discretionary items.

Unidentified speaker: Selwyn, just a quick question on the—

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: Where’s this coming from? Oh, there.

Unidentified speaker: Okay. Selwyn, I guess you’ve got brake rotors and pads up there on your slide, and obviously, Centric and Robestis at First Brands are in those categories. Do you see any near-term share gain opportunities, or are the retailers shopping for alternative suppliers as we speak?

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: Look, I think we’ve got a lot of opportunity. We’ve got a lot of capacity. We’re trusted. To be honest with you, we have fantastic brake products. I mean, every company says that. The original Centric formulations are ours. They are no longer Centric’s. I think that we’re a natural. We’ll have to wait and see where that all goes. There is definitely a lot of opportunity, I believe.

Unidentified speaker: You stated that your diagnostic business could be a $100 million-plus business in the future. Can you just talk about where you’re at now and the kind of investments needed to get it to that level?

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: We call it our diagnostics business. It sounds like it’s really amazing. Our diagnostics business is focused along this little red machine here that I don’t know if the slide’s still on behind me. Yeah. That little red machine will be in every single retail store, perhaps in the world. It’s the only machine that can test the communication protocols for alternators and starters. If you can’t test that, you’ll have fake results because when you put your—it’s like the inkjet cartridges. If you’ve got an alternator that doesn’t have the right communication protocol, the control module on the vehicle is going to shut down the vehicle because it’s going to be a knockoff. Okay? If you don’t test using that, you’re never going to know whether you’ve got a unit that really works or not. It’s on its way to being in every store in the United States.

I think we’re moving into other countries now. That alone is a $100 million business and ongoing. Then we’ve got all the other stuff, okay, I mean, which is also around rotating electrical. Every OE manufacturer uses our diagnostics really to make their product. I would imagine, and I believe almost all our competitors use our diagnostic equipment to make their products. I mean, we are the standard for rotating electrical quality. On the periphery of that, we’ve got electric powertrain applications. To be honest with you, that to me is a little bit on the side of our mainstream. It’s not where we—we don’t wake up every day and think about electric vehicles. We wake up every day and think about non-discretionary aftermarket hard parts. In the electric vehicle, we have plenty of time for that. I hope I don’t eat my words, but you can see it coming.

We’ll be there when the time is right.

Unidentified speaker: Mexico is also highlighted as kind of a growth opportunity moving forward. Can you talk about the vehicle population there and where you see the biggest opportunities?

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: Look, I mean, in Mexico, the most significant thing for the Mexican marketplace is that discretionary income has gone up. Minimum wages have gone up there dramatically. I mean, the government implements these 20% increases, 12% increases. While that’s not so great for us as a manufacturer, it’s phenomenal for us as a supplier because people don’t have to tear their cars apart themselves. They can go somewhere and get it repaired. They can buy another finished good unit. If you look at the results of some of the retailers that’s all public out there, they’re experiencing significant growth there. So are we. We’re there. On top of that, we are very Hispanic-friendly, I mean, as an entity. I mean, our base is really Hispanic.

Unidentified speaker: Touching on profitability, if we look at gross margins kind of pre-COVID, they were 20-plus %. How has the operating environment changed since then, and do you see a path back towards that number?

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: I’ll just start with we’re there. I mean, we are sort of low 20s now, back at that. We’ve been through a massive amount of inflation, and pricing has been difficult to get price increases. But we’ve worked through that. We’ve worked through eliminating waste and efficiency. And I think we have the most efficient manufacturing facilities in the world, I mean, in what we do. And we’ve had a number of OE customers tell us that. So I think margin pressure is always in the aftermarket is always a reality. But our fundamentals are getting stronger and stronger, especially if we get opportunity from the current changes in the marketplace. And we continue to grow our business. Overhead absorption will become a big contributor to margin. We’re cautiously optimistic about that.

Unidentified speaker: Can you just talk about how you’re prioritizing organic investment, debt reduction, share repurchase?

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: Look, to the extent that we feel that. We’re undervalued and to the extent that we feel like we have lots of liquidity, which we feel both, we buy back shares. We’ve been doing that. We’re very cautious about it because we don’t want to jeopardize any liquidity issues. I can tell you. Our liquidity hasn’t been this strong, I don’t know, probably in the last 20 years. I mean, the company is. Doing very well from a cash perspective. We think that. Our stock is an opportunity. I think our average purchase prices are. That we reported were around. I don’t know, Harold, do you remember that number? About $11. Somewhere around there. The stock hit $18 today, so. $9.19. Okay. There you go. We even got it cheaper than I thought. We’ve done well buying back stock, and we think we have continued opportunity to do that.

Unidentified speaker: Any potential M&A you see in the future?

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: That’s all opportunistic. We’ll have to see. I mean, our focus, we have tons of organic opportunity, especially in light of where the marketplace goes and the capacity and the capability that we have. If there’s opportunity, we’ll certainly look at that. Really, we’ve focused on organic growth. Really managed organic growth. I mean, trying to make sure that we’re no longer proving a point on share. We’ve proven a point on being viable. You’ve seen that in our numbers we’ve generated. If you look at the summary, the trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA is almost $100 million. Cash is $76 million. Net debt is down dramatically. The share count has come down. Our volume in our trading has gone up. I think we’ve eliminated some less profitable opportunities. We’re holding on.

Unidentified speaker: I really appreciate you being here, and thank you for speaking. Looking forward to seeing.

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: Great. Thank you.

Unidentified speaker: Where it goes in the future.

Selwyn, Motorcar Parts of America: Thank you so much again for including us. It is always a pleasure to be here. I appreciate everybody’s time. Appreciate it.

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