NN Inc at 49th Annual Automotive Symposium: Strategic Turnaround Insights

On Tuesday, November 4, 2025, NN Inc (NASDAQ:NNBR) presented a strategic turnaround story at the 49th Annual Automotive Symposium. CEO Harold Bevis outlined the company’s operational improvements and financial restructuring efforts amid challenges in key markets like diesel fuel injection. Despite these hurdles, NN Inc has achieved a 45% increase in EBITDA over two years and is now free cash flow positive, signaling a shift from cost-cutting to revenue growth.

Key Takeaways

• NN Inc has increased EBITDA by 45% in two years and is now free cash flow positive.
• The company is transitioning to a revenue-driven phase with significant new business wins and a large quoted pipeline.
• Strategic focus areas include automotive, electric grid, and defense sectors, with a notable presence in China.
• M&A and refinancing are key priorities to enhance growth and manage leverage.
• The company is open to selling its 49% JV share in China.

Financial Results

• Adjusted EBITDA rates have reached 11%.
• Gross margins stand at 18.4% year to date.
• The company generated $11.1 million in cash from operations in the most recent quarter, netting $9 million after CapEx.
• New business wins totaled $65 million last year, with similar performance expected this year.

Operational Updates

• NN Inc is moving from a cost-cutting phase to a revenue-driven phase.
• The company has launched 150 programs with various customers, including Finneya, contributing over $100 million in annualized sales.
• An $850 million quoted pipeline, twice the size of the company, indicates robust growth potential.
• The company has closed plants and reduced redundancy to improve operating leverage.

Future Outlook

• NN Inc is planning for a $30 million revenue increase in 2026, regardless of market conditions.
• The company aims for a steady-state goal of a $40 million revenue increase.
• M&A opportunities are being explored to drive disruptive growth.
• NN Inc targets a leverage ratio below the high threes through refinancing efforts.

Q&A Highlights

• CEO Harold Bevis explained that the bespoke business model faces competition and customer procurement practices, impacting margins.
• The company’s automotive brand, AutoCam, remains a strong asset in the market.
• NN Inc’s capital structure includes $100 million each in preferred and common stock, with $135 million net debt.
• Refinancing will likely involve both debt and equity options.
• The company is considering selling its 49% JV share in China to bolster financial flexibility.

In conclusion, NN Inc’s strategic initiatives and financial performance were thoroughly discussed at the symposium. For a detailed account, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - 49th Annual Automotive Symposium:

Brian: Moving on to our last, and certainly not least, presenter of the day, NN and company CEO, Harold Bevis. Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, it’s a designer and manufacturer of high-precision metal and plastic components for a variety of end markets, not the least of which is the auto industry. Real unique opportunity that Harold took on to transform this business, both from an operational perspective and also from a financial perspective. Company recap to a real small-cap opportunity here by the $300 million total enterprise value. And we’ll get into some Q&A with Harold here.

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: Thank you, Brian.

Brian: Okay, I realize I stand between you and a cocktail, so I got to. Following the Penske guy, I feel like the Monty Python saying of, "And now for something completely different." We are a small-cap turnaround. Brian referred earlier in the day to financial engineering. We’ve had to do both operational engineering, and we have upcoming financial engineering. Last year, I kind of talked through the turnaround. I’m a turnaround person, and I brought the turnaround team I’ve worked with for about 20 years to this company. It’s very similar to what we’ve done in the past. We’ve pretty much finished the first phase, which was really killing some bad volume that we had and becoming free cash flow positive. I’m really proud of it. I didn’t really contemplate a really big downturn in the market for us, our top customers, Cummins. Yep, we’re connected to diesel fuel injection.

They had a tough year. We supply them globally. We had a little bit of a top-line pressure on us this year. We kept doing what we said we were going to do last year. I’m going to give you a report card in a minute. We were able to ramp up and gain some new business for us. These figures are a lot smaller than the last few presenters, but they’re meaningful to us. We’re entering phase two, which is ramping up the business that we have won, as well as redoing our balance sheet. We had our earnings last week. I made a bunch of public comments about what we’re up to with the financial refinancing, as well as M&A. Our top-line results are poised to pivot next year, in large part because of the new business that we won, but also recovery in some of our markets.

I agree with some of the comments made about trucking, truck sales, car sales. We’re in other markets too. I really do feel like we’re at the bottom of the bathtub, and we can kind of see positive indicators for next year. We’re starting to feel good about 2026, where this year was very uncertain and volatile. We have been able to increase our EBITDA by 45% in two years. I’ve been here eight quarters now. Last year, when I came, I had been here about a year, and we were just getting organized. We’ve been managing the company pretty well through the volatility. We had about $110 million of our sales lost money, and we had complete plants that lost money. We had to kind of work that through. That obviously takes the revenue goes down, but your EBITDA goes up.

That move is about over for us going into next year. We are in several markets. Auto’s our biggest. 40% of what we do is making bespoke custom parts. For automobiles, and the biggest being steering, braking, and fuel control. We’re also in the electric grid. We’re connected to data centers, Brian. I can say data centers a couple of times, man. You can say it as many times as you can.

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: Our second largest customer is a company called Itron, and they do grid management. I do not know if you followed Itron at all. They had a really bad week last week when they announced earnings. They went down 21%. They lost $1.5 billion of market cap that day. It was because they reported down in revenue. They said it, so I could finally say it. What has been happening with the federal funds cuts has been cutting back on infrastructure investment in the grid. While the demand keeps growing, the grid has had a problem. Now you see reporters calling it out. Itron called it out last week and took a punishment for it. We are also in defense, and that has been growing for us. Lack of supply. Overall, we are having a slightly down year on a pro forma basis. We do have a global footprint.

We have several thousand employees operating out of 24 plants. I am going to show you our China story. We have a big China story. We have two wholly owned facilities there and a JV with a public Chinese company called Weifu. The biggest customer is BYD. We also directly serve Chery, Lee, Great Wall, and BYD also. We are really, really connected to the China automotive story. Against this transformation that we have done now for eight quarters, we have had some light soft sales, which have held us back, but it has actually given us some breathing room to take out some of the underperforming capacity. We have done it. Primary markets, we talked about automotive all day. We are up to speed on that. We do not need any more of that, probably, at 4:30. We are also in the grid.

The grid is a big one for us: Siemens, Honeywell, Itron, that crowd. They have had a tough year too with the herky-jerkiness that has gone on with federal funding. Long-term good. It is all about timing. Very few things get canceled in that world, just pushed. There have been pushes this year. Defense has really taken off for us. We make parts for weapons, sighting systems, guidance. Patriot system, big end customers, Raytheon. It is the same kind of thing. It is a small metal part that is bespoke. Commercial vehicles, we have heard a lot about that. It is going through a tough moment. We do have a long-term plan that is based on growing sales.

We had to really clean out some of the bad sales that we inherited here at this company. It is a 45-year-old company, but they really hit the skids if you look at the prior five years on performance. There was some pent-up work to do, and we are through that. At this point in time, we are launching 150 programs with different customers. One of them was here today on Finneya tomorrow. It is worth a lot of money to us. It is over $100 million of annualized sales. They are very technical. They go through a process that in steering and braking involves crash tests on completed vehicles. It cannot be short-cuted. Therefore, they have a gestation period to come into the P&L. We have a lot of them underway right now. I want to report out a little bit.

Last year, I was talking about getting our gross margins up over a five-year period, getting our EBITDA up over a five-year period, getting our headcount down and leaned out. I want to report that we are on track with the plans that we articulated last year. Our adjusted EBITDA rates are now 11%. Our gross margins are 18.4% year to date. Year to date, we are up in adjusted EBITDA through three quarters. We are up in free cash flow versus prior year, down in sales in a couple of areas. I talked last year about how we wanted to try to win $65 million in new business a year, and we were able to do that. We are tracking this year also to do the same thing.

That will be about $200 million of business that we are now backfilling into our capacity that we, what I call, price cleared. We had discussions with our customers like Bosch, ZF, Schaeffler, these type of people. You have pricing discussions. If you agree to get divorced, there is usually a notification period in the contract that is 18 months unless they can get out of it earlier. It takes a while to get out of that business. Then it takes about the same amount of time to ramp into the new business. That is underway right now. From a start eight quarters ago with no pipeline, we now have a quoted pipeline of $850 million, which is twice the size of our company. We now have a 40-person engineering team working on all that type of development.

I really think that we are on the edge of becoming now a revenue story versus really a cost and fix-it story. Next year, we are just like most companies going through our 2026 business planning right now. I can report out that we have added up our SOPs, our start of production on our programs, have an estimate of our end-of-production programs. It is already going to add around $30 million no matter what the base market does. Our steady-state goal is $40 million. China, we have been in China for 20 years. We started the JV and our WFOE within 45 days of each other 20 years ago. Our goal is CNY 1 billion in the country. All of our sales are, we buy our metal in the country. We convert it in the country. We sell it in the country.

The biggest end customer of both our JV and our WFOE, wholly and foreign entity, is BYD. BYD is the big one. We have long-term contracts. We already are close to being on track to the one dealing with business that we’ve won in the country. It’s also our most profitable business. Our Wuxi plant in China is our most profitable business. China Auto is a profitable part of our company. M&A is important for us also. We came here to kind of fix the core business, get it to be scalable, free cash flow generative, and then add to it. We started looking at the beginning of this year, and we have a full business development pipeline, and we have a couple that are close. We’re right now trying to decide, do we couple it with our refinancing or just refinance and do it after?

We’re getting advisors right now, and we’re going to begin the next phase of the game plan. I went through the third quarter last week, but the basic game plan was that we’d made steady progress against the metrics that we’ve pointed out for ourselves. The only hurt that we’ve had really is in North American and European auto. We’ve had less part production in our EDI portals than we had expected. Like was referred to earlier today, we had to variabilize a lot of our headcount. I don’t need to go through that at this time of the day. We’re tracking. Our investment thesis really, it’s different than some of the other presentations of today. There are a lot of steady-state, everything’s kick-and-ask story. We’re more of a turnaround special situation story for people that like that in your portfolio.

As a company, we’re towards the end of phase one here. We’re still improving our financials, even on down sales, and tracking into next year. Phase two, we’re just getting ready to start. We’re looking for disruptive growth because of the M&A approach, and it’s a target-rich environment. Although we’re not that big, we’re really big at what we do. We get a lot of looks at global car production. Virtually all the OEMs, we’re involved with them on the specific subsystems, steering, braking, fuel. We’re kind of an expert at that. That’s who we are. We think that we’re in a good position right now and worth a look. We’re seeing some cyclical recovery of our legacy markets. We’re going through a steady ramp-up of over 150 programs. If you do the math, there’s no big ones in there. It’s about $100 million.

They’re a little less than a million dollars per part. It’s usually a part that we’re making that’s going into a system. We really have a more streamlined footprint now. We’ve closed a couple of plants, and we’ve laid off a lot of people, and we’ve eliminated redundancy. We have really improved our operating leverage. We’ve really improved it, and we’ll benefit from an uptick in revenue. I’ll try to finish on time.

Brian: Sure. A number of questions. Harold, one of the things that you mentioned a few times is this idea that what you do is very bespoke for your customer base. I guess my question is, why is that not a higher margin business in general? I mean, clearly, you came into a business that was very low margin, and you’re working to improve upon that. Why is this bespoke business not just a naturally higher margin one?

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: That’s a good question. We have a few big competitors. We have a few big competitors who do similar work to us. I guess it’s just a natural competition. The best part of our mix is actually defense. The U.S. government’s not great at procurement, so we get to charge a little bit extra for that. For automotive production, they’re good at procurement. At the end of the day, they do dual source, so you have to be one of the best two. There’s a limited opportunity, I really think there, Brian.

Brian: How do you evaluate? Take that a step further. This is an automotive conference. We love having you, but are you best served being here? Are you best served being in the auto industry?

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: Our highest profit plants are automotive. Our number one most profitable plant is in China for making parts for the China market. Our second most profitable plant is in Kentwood, Michigan to make parts for the US automotive market. Automotive is a good thing. When we think of automotive, our brand name serving the automotive market is called AutoCam. We have a strong brand name in the market, and we make really good money at it. The part of the company that we’ve been trying to rid and was losing money was commodity auto parts. We were making them in Mexico and a couple of other high-cost plants, and it just didn’t work.

Brian: Yeah. As you’re thinking about M&A, which surprises me a little bit, just given your leverage. That includes the preferred mezz debt. Can you maybe explain to the audience basically your capitalization and what challenges you have?

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: Yep. We have $100 million of preferred stock. We have $100 million common stock. We have $135 million of net debt. For us to do anything, it’s going to involve debt and equity. Debt and equity. Our preferred stockholder is Morgan Stanley. Their maturity, they’re coming to the point of wanting to be refinanced out. Our term loan is held by Marathon Capital. We have all of our stakeholders in constructive conversation to recapitalize the company.

Brian: What’s ideal for you from a recapitalization standpoint?

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: We definitely don’t want to be levered above the high threes. Yeah, we don’t.

Brian: No, no. Among the various options on your previous slide, all the way on the right, you talked about the balance sheet and focus on that.

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: Yeah.

Brian: To accomplish your goals, what would you like to see the balance sheet look like? What are you sharing with the outside advisors as to what you need for 2026, 2027, 2028 in terms of those goals? The second part. There has got to be somebody that is interested in some of your businesses, including the sale of assets. I do not know how much you can discuss, but I know all of that has to be work in progress.

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: Yep. There are obviously a lot of options when you hit an inflection point like this where the core business is finally attractive. There are multiple angles that you can go on it. We have all options available to us, Mario. Yep. If we had a specific path, I would not be able to say it with MNPI, but we have not ruled out anything. No, we have not. The plan to answer your first question is we have a build-up plan to $1 billion. If you have tracked my track record, I have done that twice, as has our Chief Operating Officer, Tim French, who I have worked with since 2003. We have a team that has done this, and that is our base plan. There are so many deviations from that. What do we need?

We need capital partners who want to lend money on a path like that or invest.

Brian: You get a good slide there with business that’s rolling off at low margin, business that’s coming on at the higher margin. You mentioned $30 million, all else equal. That’s what, 8% on your 8% growth no matter what. As this matures for the next 2026, 2027, 2028, how much of that exit business can there possibly be relative to what you’re targeting from a new business standpoint? What are the differences in margins between what’s going out the door and what’s coming in?

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: Yep. The portion of the company that’s automotive is 40% of our revenue. On average, those programs last about seven years. They go into life and go into a refresh. Then there’s another competition for who’s going to win that. There’s an element of it, and it backtests to be around $20 million-$25 million a year. There’s a competition to win the next generation. It’s competitively bid, and it’s a different design usually. Our game plan is to gain above that. Usually towards the end of the life, it’s not making much money due to price downs.

Brian: That’s price downs of 2.5-3% a year?

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: Yep. Exactly. Three, three, three is usually how you start out. You usually have a productivity plan lined up, three, three, three, and negate it. Towards the end of life is when you really need to be. You have to have the leverage to say no. In order to have that, you have to have an active pipeline and trying to win alternate business for those assets. The equipment we have in our plants is of two types. We do machining of rod stock. We have CNC equipment, like nine-axis lathes. We have stamping presses to stamp out metal parts out of coil. We weld or plate the items depending on what the assembly looks like. Yeah.

Brian: Medical is an interesting end market, albeit small for you. Can you talk about that and whether that’s something that maybe just is too small and could generate a multiple for someone that wants to buy it?

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: Medical is one that we entered last year and talked about it. We have an active pipeline there. It is longer to prove to the customer that your quality system is sufficient to meet their requirements. We are doing that. Defense has been a better alternate market for us.

Brian: Yep. Just on defense, you mentioned the Patriot system. Where are you on the Patriot system? Is it a consumable? Is it the actual?

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: The siding. The guiding. Yep. Both of those markets are attractive for us. We’re equally attracted to both of them and have similar-sized teams. It’s exactly the same machines that we already have. It’s no CapEx required. It fits what we do. Yeah.

Brian: In your journey, CapEx is $15 million-$20 million a year?

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: 10-14.

Brian: Okay. So. As you’re thinking about your ability before you engage in refinancing, you’re thinking about maybe free cash flow before you get to your capitalization. Where are you and where do you need to be?

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: We were really happy with the quarter we just had. It was a turnaround quarter for us. We generated $11.1 million of cash from operations. We paid for some CapEx, so we netted nine. It was $9 million in the quarter, which this company hadn’t done that, had not been able to do that before. That was good operating cash flow. I feel like.

Brian: Anything seasonal there?

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: No. No. It was just legit. And we were able to also get a lot from working capital. So instead of adjusted EBITDA, it was EBITDA. And we had the working capital coming down as we get rid of, shed this business that makes some money. So free cash flow is what it is right now because we are in the market now. We are not waiting for another set of free cash flow activities. We are going to go with who we are. Yep. We made up some time.

Brian: No. Absolutely. I’m a little hung up on just the idea of M&A given your capitalization. How do you do deals at a $100 million equity cap because you’re not going to do it with equity?

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: No, you have to do it with equity.

Brian: Okay. So basically, at that point, you just.

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: You have to do it.

Brian: You do it?

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: You have to. Yeah. It’s an equity-based program. Yeah. Definitely is. It helps if the potential seller is willing to take equity.

Brian: That’s the other part of it too. It’s a partnership.

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: It definitely involves equity, but I can’t really say too much. It’s not a surprise to me that this day came, right? Because usually in turnarounds, it involves the balance sheet also. Usually, my experience has been the operational turnaround doesn’t cause the balance sheet turnaround. They’re two separate beasts. We have the company in position now to be pitching, and that’s where we are. Yeah. I’m very thankful to be here and speaking about it again. Appreciate it, Brian. It was an issue.

Brian: It wasn’t an issue that you created, but it seems like you have a good plan to solve it.

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: Yeah. For whatever reason, I like to do these kinds of jobs.

Brian: Go ahead, Harry.

Harry: Yeah, Harold, thanks for a lot of great Q&A. I guess as you think about the refinancing, how married to your assets in China are you, both the wholly owned plant and the JV?

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: Yeah. It’s a good question. We have a 49% JV. If you look at our P&L for this year or last year, it’s around $9 million is what shows up in other income. That 49% JV share can be sold. Deutsche Bank just did one in the town that we’re in, Wuxi, last week. A 38% share was sold at a good multiple in the market. That’s something that we’re looking at too. Yep. In fact, I’m going to China the week after Thanksgiving and meeting with our other shareholder there to talk about that. I don’t need their approval, but we’re transparent with each other. It’s an option for us this year.

Brian: Yeah. Interesting ideas come in all sizes, right? This is one that’s certainly a challenge that you took on. It’s good to see that you’re moving in the direction that you wanted to. Harold, I thank you very much for being here.

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: Thank you.

Brian: I thank my colleagues for being a great and attentive audience for the day. That concludes our program. We will see everybody who is attending the dinner at 6:00 P.M. for cocktails at the Left Bank room in Paris.

Harold Bevis, CEO, NN and company: Thank you.

Brian: Thank you.

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