BorgWarner Aktie

Good morning. My name is Nick, and I will be your conference specialist. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the BorgWarner 2026 Third Quarter Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the conference over to Patrick Nolan, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Nolan, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Nick. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We issued our earnings release earlier this morning. It's posted on our website, borgwarner.com, both on our home page and our Investor Relations home page. With regard to our Investor Relations calendar, we will be attending multiple investor conferences between now and our next earnings release. Please see the Events section of our Investor Relations home page for a full list.

Before we begin, I need to inform you that during this call, we may make forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties as detailed in our 10-K. Our actual results may differ significantly from the matters discussed today.

During today's presentation, we will highlight certain non-GAAP measures in order to provide a clearer picture of how the core business performed and for comparison purposes with prior periods. When you hear us say adjusted, that means excluding noncomparable items.

When you hear us say organic, that means excluding the impact of FX. We will also refer to our incremental margin performance. Our incremental margin is defined as the organic change in our adjusted operating income divided by the organic change in our sales. We will also refer to our growth compared to our market. When you hear us say market, that means the change in light vehicle production weighted for our geographic exposure. Please note that we have posted today's earnings call presentation to the IR page of our website. We encourage you to follow along with these slides during our discussion.

With that, I'm happy to turn the call over to Joe.

Thank you, Pat, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to share our results for the third quarter of 2026 and provide an overall company update, starting on Slide 5. I want to begin by thanking our employees, customers and suppliers for all of their trust and efforts and continued support. In the quarter, we achieved sales of just under $3.5 billion. Excluding the decline in our Battery Energy Systems segment, our organic net sales were down modestly year-over-year or roughly in line with the decline in global market production.

Importantly, our light vehicle eProduct sales were up 33%, primarily due to European growth. Our adjusted operating margin and adjusted earnings per share performance was strong in the quarter. The company continued to operate at a very high level and delivered 20 basis points of adjusted margin expansion and 12% adjusted earnings per share growth despite a declining production environment. This solid result was once again driven by our focus on cost controls across our business.

I'm excited to report that our strong award activity continued into the third quarter. Today, I'll highlight 9 new business awards across our foundational and eProducts portfolios. These wins represent only a portion of the awards secured during the quarter and highlight the strength of our foundational and eProduct portfolio and the need for our products across combustion, hybrid and electrified architectures.

Additionally, I believe the sustained level of award activity that we've seen over the last several quarters underscores the strength of our technology-focused portfolio and our deep customer relationships.

Equally exciting is the progress we made in the quarter in taking meaningful steps to advance our product readiness and accelerate our floating activity across our data center and other industrial markets portfolio. I will share a more detailed update in a few moments. Lastly, we remain focused on the efficient deployment of capital to drive shareholder value.

In the quarter, we returned approximately $210 million or over 100% of our third quarter free cash flow to shareholders through share repurchases and the payment of our quarterly cash dividend. Including our currently planned fourth quarter repurchases, we expect to return over $700 million to shareholders in 2026.

Looking back, on our year-to-date performance. I'm very proud of our team and our results. Once again, we executed at a very high level, which I believe positions us well to achieve our full year sales, margin, free cash flow and increased EPS guidance.

Next, I'd like to highlight 9 product awards that demonstrate both the competitiveness of our technology and our ability to support our customers' powertrain needs in key markets. First, BorgWarner will supply engine control modules for a new internal combustion engine pickup truck platform for one of our long-standing global OEM customers. The new high-volume contract extends the company's existing customer relationship. Securing the strategic ECU program maintains BorgWarner's Electronics leadership and extends our engagement with this longtime partner through 2034.

Next, BorgWarner has secured three separate business awards with a global powertrain technology leader, including one contract for our variable turbine geometry turbocharger and two contracts for our waste turbocharger. The technologies will be used on a customer's light vehicle gasoline platforms in both South America and Europe. I believe these awards reflect the strength of our offering, including our competitive solutions and technical expertise.

Next, BorgWarner has secured its first business award for its new aluminum wire eMotor technology from a major Chinese OEM, marking the technology's introduction to the market. This product will be used in hybrid vehicles across multiple applications, including generator and traction motors for our auxiliary drive applications. The technology combines aluminum conductors, with BorgWarner's hairpin winding expertise to deliver significant weight and cost benefits.

Compared with a conventional copper wire motor, the aluminum wire solution maintains peak torque and peak power while reducing wire weight by more than 60% and reducing wire costs by more than 80%. We are proud to introduce BorgWarner's aluminum wire eMotor technology to the market and to further strengthen our long-standing relationship with this customer.

Next, BorgWarner has secured three eMotor business awards in China for a range of electrified and hybrid vehicle programs, the new business broadens the company's customer base and expand the application of its eMotor technologies in the Chinese market. I believe that the breadth of these programs demonstrates our ability to address diverse application requirements through strong product performance, cost optimization and localized manufacturing.

And lastly, BorgWarner has secured a next-generation high-voltage inverter award for future battery electric vehicle programs with a global OEM. The award builds on an existing electrification partnership and further strengthens BorgWarner's position as a leading provider of advanced power electronic solutions for electric vehicles. I believe this business reflects the confidence customers place in BorgWarner's power electronics expertise and our ability to deliver innovative, high-performance electrification solutions.

Next, on Slide 7, I would like to discuss how we are improving our product readiness and accelerating our floating activity across our data center and other industrial markets portfolio. Let's start with an update on our turbine generator launch progress. I'm very pleased with the advancements we've made over the past quarter. Our partner is planning to expand external demonstrations of the turbine generator system during the fourth quarter due to strong customer interest.

Our UL compliance process continues to progress well. The UL certification process of the subsystems is now largely complete and system UL certification is underway. The construction of the final assembly plant in North Carolina has now been completed, and manufacturing floor and capital installations are expected in December.

As a result, we expect to begin production trials by year-end. Overall, I'm very excited and pleased with the team's progress, which will position us well to meet the strong customer interest that we continue to see, including multiple hyperscalers.

Turning next to our Battery Energy Storage system. Our Energy Storage Solutions are intended to support a range of use cases and data center and other industrial environments, and we continue to assess new potential applications. Customer validation and our UO compliance processes are advancing well. In addition, we are getting solid engagement with multiple customers across both NMC and LFP cell applications. We continue to expect that we will be production-ready in 2027.

Now turning to our microgrid and further offerings. We have now shipped BorgWarner samples to seven customers and engagement with other potential customers are underway. We expect to complete UL certification of our microgrid inverter in early 2027. Customer reaction has continued to remain very positive. For example, our inverter system efficiency testing is ahead of peers based on customer feedback. Customers believe we have the right value proposition, including U.S. manufacturing. Additionally, our high voltage and power dense liquid cooled power electronics expertise is seen as a competitive advantage as we continue to advance our product readiness.

We are also continuing to expand our power electronics portfolio for both data center and industrial applications. We've developed an 800-volt power supply unit, or PSU, and showcased it at the recent data center world power industry event in Dallas, Texas, in the third quarter.

Lastly, I'm proud to report that we have begun the initial quoting process with our first major customer for our microgrid inverter. Overall, I view all of these steps as great signs of increased customer engagement and our right to win in this high-growth market.

To summarize, I believe there are four key takeaways from today's call. First, BorgWarner's third quarter results were strong. Our light vehicle eProduct sales increased 33%, our adjusted operating margin expanded 20 basis points, and adjusted EPS grew 12% compared with the third quarter of 2025. Additionally, we increased our full year EPS guidance, reflecting our continued focus on growing the earnings power of the company.

Second, we announced 9 new business awards across our portfolio in the quarter, which we believe further demonstrates our focus on product leadership and the need for our highly engineered solutions across combustion, hybrid and BEV architectures. Third, we further improved our product readiness across our data center and other industrial markets portfolio. At the same time, we saw accelerating folding activity. I continue to believe that our mechanical and electronic core competencies will enable us to successfully capture multiple growth factors outside of our core automotive market.

And finally, we took meaningful steps to return capital to shareholders during the third quarter with approximately $210 million returned to our cash dividend and share repurchases. Overall, I believe our year-to-date results illustrate the strength of our team, our product portfolio and the long-term earnings power of our business. I'm excited to continue our positive momentum as we close out the year and look ahead to 2027.

With that, I'll turn the call over to Craig.

Thank you, Joe, and good morning, everyone. I'm excited to share the details of our third quarter financials by turning to Slide 8 for a look at our year-over-year sales book. Last year's Q3 sales were just under $3.6 billion. In the third quarter, stronger foreign currencies drove a year-over-year increase in sales of $8 million.

Then you can see that sales headwind from our battery business, which drove a year-over-year decrease in sales of $54 million. The remaining organic sales decrease of $58 million or 1.6% was roughly in line with the decline in light vehicle market production for the quarter. Importantly, our light vehicle eProduct sales were $630 million in the quarter or a 33% increase compared with a year ago, primarily due to strength in Europe. Some of these items resulted in under $3.5 billion of net sales in the third quarter.

Turning to Slide 9. You can see our earnings and cash flow performance for the quarter. Our third quarter adjusted operating income was $381 million, equating to a strong 10.9% adjusted operating margin. That compares to adjusted operating income of 385 or a 10.7% adjusted operating margin from a year ago.

Excluding FX impacts, adjusted operating income decreased $6 million on $112 million of lower sales. This strong year-over-year performance benefited from ongoing cost reduction actions that our teams continue to take across our business.

Our adjusted EPS was up $0.15 or 12% compared with a year ago from lower taxes and the impact of approximately $725 million in share repurchases or approximately 6% of the company's current market capitalization over the past 4 quarters. And finally, we generated free cash flow of $195 million in the third quarter, which helped support $175 million in share repurchases and $35 million in dividend payments. I believe this once again demonstrates our focus on creating value with our consistent and our strong free cash flow.

Now let's turn to Slide 10 and take a look at our full year 2026 outlook. We are modestly adjusting the high end of our full year sales outlook based on a narrow of our industry production expectations. However, we are maintaining our full year adjusted operating margin range despite the lower production environment based on our strong year-to-date results. Additionally, we are increasing our adjusted EPS guidance due to the impact of our third quarter and planned fourth quarter share repurchases and a lower full year effective tax rate outlook.

We currently project total 2026 sales in the range of $14.0 billion to $14.2 billion compared with our previous guidance of 14.0 billion to 14.3 billion. Starting with foreign currencies, our guidance now assumes an expected full year sales benefit of $250 million compared with 2025 due to the strengthening of the euro and the renminbi versus the U.S. dollar. This benefit is modestly higher than our previous guidance. We expect our weighted end market to be down 1% to 2% for the year, which is a narrower range than our previous flat to down 3% assumption.

We expect our light vehicle business, which comprise over 80% of our sales performed broadly in line with our weighted light vehicle market, consistent with our performance through the first 3 quarters of 2026. However, we expect a sales decline in our battery business due to the lack of North American incentives and weaker European demand. We expect this decline to represent roughly a 170 basis point headwind to our year-over-year sales growth. Based on these assumptions, we expect our 2026 organic sales change to be down 4% to down 2.5% year-over-year.

Now let's switch to margins. We continue to expect our full year adjusted operating margin to be in the range of 10.7% to 10.9%, compared with our 2025 adjusted operating margin of 10.7%. At the midpoint of this guidance, we expect to expand margins on a year-over-year basis despite a lower production environment, sales headwinds from our battery business and a $10 million to $15 million industrial R&D investment to support our long-term profitable growth.

I believe this performance shows our commitment to drive a superior short-term business performance while also ensuring we position the company for profitable growth for years to come. Based on this sales and margin outlook, we are increasing our expected full year adjusted EPS in the range of $5.20 to $5.35 per diluted share from our previous guidance of $5.05 to $5.30 per diluted share.

This $0.10 per share increase at the midpoint of our guidance is driven by our third quarter and currently planned fourth quarter share repurchases and a decline in our full year effective tax rate. The midpoint of this adjusted EPS guidance represents approximately a 7% increase over our 2025 adjusted EPS and once again demonstrates our focus on consistently driving the earnings power of the company despite lower industry production. And finally, we continue to expect full year free cash flow to be in the range of $900 million to $1.1 billion, building off a strong 2025.

With that, that's our 2026 outlook.

So let me summarize my financial remarks. Overall, we were very pleased with our third quarter results. Our light vehicle sales performance was roughly in line with industry production. However, our light vehicle eProduct sales were $630 million in the quarter or a 33% increase compared with a year ago. We achieved a 20 basis point adjusted operating margin improvement and a 12% increase to adjusted earnings per share on relatively flat reported sales. And our strong free cash flow supported a cash return of approximately $210 million to our shareholders during the quarter.

Q3 performance once again demonstrated the Board Warner team's ability to deliver strong financial results and a declining production environment. As we look the balance of 2026, we intend to remain focused on expanding the earnings power of the company. At the midpoint of our 2026 guidance, we expect another year of adjusted operating margin expansion and adjusted earnings per share growth despite our expectation that market volumes and battery sales will decline and an incremental $10 million to $15 million investments in industrial R&D to accelerate our long-term sales growth.

Finally, with another year of anticipated strong free cash flow of $1 billion at the midpoint of our guidance, we expect to continue to deploy capital in a balanced manner that reward shareholders [indiscernible] and deliver on our 2026 financial commitments.

And I'm equally excited by our efforts to grow our technology-focused portfolio in automotive and other adjacent markets by continuing to focus on near-term execution growing the long-term earnings power of the company through organic and inorganic investments and following a disciplined and balanced approach to deploying we believe BorgWarner will create significant shareholder value for many years to come.

With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Pat.

Thank you, Craig. Nick, we're ready to open it up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question will come from Chris McNally with Evercore.

Congrats on another good quarter in tough times and really do appreciate the continued color on progress of all the industrial initiatives. Maybe if I could play the buy-side use for just a second. There's clearly lots of excitement around where these three industrial businesses can grow in the coming years. It's going to take some time, 2030 for round numbers to get to some of the bigger numbers that we've all sort of projected out. And the direction of travel, I think your comments, the interest, the quoting the engagement all moving forward. I wanted to see if you could maybe give us some idea about when we have more clarity of sort of the shape of that travel, the $300 million in 2027 rev, what that could become in '28, for example? Is that the type of certainty you think will come over the next 6 months? Or is that too hard to say at this point because there are so many moving pieces?

Yes. Chris, this is Joe. So first of all, I would say we're really pleased with the progress we're making in the quarter. I mentioned some of the highlights. One additional thing, our hiring to support the start of production is also in line with expectations. So I'm really pleased with the progress. We continue to see the backlog and demand for this turbine generator to be very strong. We won't be giving you any kind of color until we get into early 2027. We'll do our best to provide you a little bit more shape of the curve, as you call it, but it's a little bit too early for that.

Okay. Perfect. And my follow-up is basically around the sort of the second derivative of your customers was in power gen. Any comments if you're seeing any issues from your data center partners around any of the sort of industry timing permitting delays that we're kind of broadly hearing about within data center build-outs across the U.S. Is that in any way affecting negotiations? Or is that something that's not an issue for you guys?

Yes. So as we stated, the quoting activity is very strong. We generally see some of the current political environment is possibly slowing the finalization of some of the program awards or program agreements. But overall, the activity is there and the work up on these final agreements remains really high. So we see this as probably a very short-term issue. We're looking beyond them in terms. Long term, we don't see any change in the demand.

The next question will come from Dan Levy with Barclays.

Maybe we can just start with just the near term and the trimmed revenue outlook. And maybe we could just project that into 2027. I believe your prior commentary was for some outgrowth or some modest outgrowth on the core automotive business as you have all of this business launching, I want to confirm that's still the case. So guidance this year and then just on the launch of the backlog next year.

Yes. So maybe I'll talk about Q4 and then we can touch on 2027. So when you look at Q4, and I'll walk it from our average for Q1 through Q3. Revenue Q1 through Q3 on average was about $3.55 billion. As we look at Q4, we see it being closer to $3.43 billion. So down about $123 million. That's really a reflection of industry production. From a margin perspective, we expect to decrement in the mid-teens on the lower revenue. And then we have $10 million industrial R&D in the fourth quarter. So that's how you get to the midpoint of our guide.

As we think about 2027 and the top line, I'd say right now, as we sit here today, we do see some industry headwinds. A couple of those are just higher interest rate environment, vehicle affordability or things that we're watching. With that said, our goals for BorgWarner remain the same. What we expect as we move into 2027 from the top line perspective is we expect to see modest growth over market as it relates to our automotive business.

We've won a lot of awards over the last 2 years, and we expect to see some of those wins in our P&L as we move to 2027. And then we expect to see $300 million of turbine generator revenue. So excited to get to 2027 and see an upswing in our top line for BorgWarner.

Great. My second question is on the microgrid inverter where I think you've put out a couple of updates here on your starting quoting and you're shipping more testing samples to additional customers. And I think this maybe also pairs with we saw some news about entering into a multiyear supply agreement with one of the silicon carbide suppliers. And we know that your core inverter technology, there's a significant technology mode. So maybe you can just help us understand how large the potential opportunity here and the technology moat that you have and maybe just even how much of the silicon carbide is sort of an unlock of that if at all?

So -- great question. We're first of all, really excited about the fast progress our team is making on the inverter products. If you think about a year ago, we weren't even talking about these products so to see where that business is poised right now is really exciting. It is true that we're leveraging heavily the light vehicle technology. So in light vehicles, as a reminder, we use both silicon and silicon carbide technology. And some of the more advanced EVs are using 800 fold as, let's just call it, the architecture across the car. This is exactly what we are leveraging to bring more efficiency, more competitiveness into these microgrid inverter. So the fit is very strong between light vehicle and industrial.

And if you step back a little bit, if you look at the three product family operating, power gen, power conversion, energy storage, this is a family of products that can play on their own, but there's also a lot of system synergy between them. The name of the game with the speed to compute is making it more efficient, lower carbon and the more efficient is that means less power is lost and can be used for compute. So we're excited about how we're leveraging that into the space. And yes, we're going to reuse many of the automotive suppliers, including the folks that supply of silicon and silicon carbide.

The next question will come from Joseph Spak with UBS.

Thanks for some of that preliminary color for '27. I guess I wanted to maybe pick up a little bit there and really not on '27 specifically, but just over the midterm because you used to really talk about how you've immunize the portfolio against powertrain a lot. And you still mentioned it, right, but it's been a little bit quieter on that front, I'd say, over the past year. But now we've obviously seen some acceleration in electrified powertrains, particularly in Europe, and you did highlight product growth in Europe this quarter, but then you also sort of mentioned some foundational product clients in China. So I guess maybe you can just sort of refresh us your thinking about how you see that balance between foundational and eProduct mix impacting BorgWarner's auto business over the coming years? And maybe if you even could talk about it by Europe versus China?

Sure. Thanks, Joe. So let me start with our portfolio, which is highly resilient. When you look across the portfolio, we're a market leader in all of our foundational products. We have a fast-growing and scaling eProduct business. Really pleased with the 33% increase year-over-year in eProduct sales which is really evidence of all the hard work our teams have been putting in and those business awards are starting to pull through now.

As Craig mentioned, that's primarily in Europe, which kind of makes sense. If you look at the increased penetration of hybrids and EVs in Europe. That is where the growth is at the moment. So we're starting to see that play through our P&L. A couple of other good examples.

You've probably noticed a lot of eMotor awards over the last 12 months, including some of the new technology like aluminum wire wound motors. This is just clear evidence that BorgWarner is a leader in this space. Many of those are in China where the music has been playing for quite some time on both hybrids and EVs. So from our standpoint, our portfolio is positioned well. The regions are playing out a little bit differently when it comes to adoption of EVs. But as you see EVs accelerate, you can see that it's driving some increased sales in the heat product sales side.

Okay. So it sounds like your big picture view is that, that sort of balance between the two is still sort of you're sort of indifferent from a -- at least from a sales perspective as to sort of how that will play out. Do you think the portfolio properly protects you?

That's true. Not only the portfolio. Just as a reminder, we have probably the most adverse customer portfolio of anybody in the powertrain space. So we think that positions us well. Even as some of the Chinese OEMs have been growing, we've been seeing some benefit from that as they export more to other markets like in Europe because a lot of those vehicles have borer technology riding along. So -- yes, we think we're in a great position to capitalize on the growth as it comes.

Okay. On the power gen side, I know you mentioned sort of multiple hyperscale engagements. And then to the earlier question, you sort of talked about some maybe like near-term noise on some of some of the policulization, if you will. There's also sort of been industry noise around Neo clouds and their ability to fund and capital. And I'm curious if you could sort of just talk about that subset of opportunity, whether there's been any interest shift there or you would sort of classify it as similar to sort of how you classify the hyperscaler engagement?

Yes. I wouldn't say we see any specific challenge with some of the issues that we hear around the Neo cloud players. I mean as many people know, the Neo clouds are strictly focused AI data centers versus our products, they serve all types of data centers. So edge data centers, co-locators, in addition to the hyperscaler data centers, some of which are handled on their own, some of which go through Neo cloud players, but there's many players out there. And if I step back, I don't see any change in the demand for our products. If anything, we continue to see an increase in a lot of the quoting activity. So pretty optimistic about the future here.

The next question will come from Emmanuel Rosner with Wolfe Research.

Just a quick follow-up on your Q4 math there. Not looking to nitpick just sort of to better understand the framework. But I think you were talking about $140 million lower revenue versus the first 3 quarters of the year rate at 15% decremental but then there's also $10 million in higher R&D. Now -- in recent past couple of years, so you've sort of prided yourself a lot to being able to incorporate all these investments within sort of like the regular incremental and decremental. Is there anything -- is the framework changing? Or is there anything particular about the investments needed and in the fourth quarter that sort of like make you call it out?

No, nothing is changing. So when you go back to our July discussion and guide, I'd say the second half is playing out as we expected, came in a little bit better in Q3. We -- due to recoveries in Q4 were being impacted by some industrial R&D, but I would say overall, the second half is playing out just like we expected.

Just to refine some of your numbers, Emmanuel, $120 million is the revenue decline versus our Q1 through Q3 average to Q4. So down, call it 4-ish percent. Again, you're right, we expect to decrement in the mid-teens. And as we talked about in our July call, we expected $10 million to $15 million in incremental industrial R&D in the back half of the year. We saw $5 million of that in Q3. We expect $10 million in Q4, and it's to support the floating activity that Joe spoke about. We're really bullish about that business, and we're happy to support it with some of the incremental R&D.

Okay. Understood. And then turning to some of your non-auto business, could you provide us a framework on how to think about the size of the inverter opportunity just either what are sort of like the average content per vehicle that you're starting to quote or what is like the normal or range of sizes of business. It feels like for the other 2 projects, we have actually a little bit of a framework around what capacity installed is or what available battery capacity is. For this one, it's a little bit earlier stages. So curious if you can help us there.

Sure. So it is earlier stage and what we're really focused on right now is our first and second business awards upon which we'd be happy to provide you more color on the TAM for those products. I think what's exciting this quarter, what we announced is a new product that we're developing this power supply unit which actually goes inside of the data center. The microgrid is outside, which they call the great space and the PSU is inside, typically right next to the computer servers. So we're excited about that expanded TAM, and we'll provide you more color after we win our first few awards.

The next question will come from Tom Narayan with RBC.

I note that you said we're going to get more detail on the $300 million launch year turbine generator system sales. Just curious if we could get any color on these active discussions kind of potentially signed contracts, just in terms of the progress there? I know you talked about hiring, but anything more concrete on how those discussions are fair? And then I have a follow-up.

So the -- if I go back a little bit, we do have a signed agreement with Endeavor. They are our go-to-market partner on this. And their role in this beyond some of the IP they carry is mainly the customer intimacy and serving the customers directly. So as we stated, the backlog and the quoting activity is an open book. Our teams operate as more or less one team here, so that we can see the activity. They're the ones that coordinate the on-site visits from the hyperscalers, and that continues. So we're really, I would say, encouraged by the continued support here. So from our standpoint, we're probably more bullish now than we were 3 months ago because we're making progress against our plan. But as we stated, we'll be able to give you a little more color as we get into early next year.

Got it. And thanks for the commentary on Europe and the EV growth and how that's impacting. Just curious if you're seeing a benefit on the hybrid side in the U.S. that's picking up a lot of growth there. And then if I could just sneak in, how you think about debt paydown versus tax and you guys did a big pay down in Q3 and your gross leverage around 2x? Just curious what your target leverage is, how you think about the step feed-out.

Sure. I can take the hybrid question. So the immediate hybrid growth you see in the market, mainly from the Japanese players, where BorgWarner is strong is on these advanced hybrids. So plug-ins, for example, range extenders which are some of the awards we've won but haven't come to market yet in North America.

Okay. I can take the tender one. Really pleased with the execution of our debt tender in the third quarter. Our gross net leverage target is 2.0x. Right now, we're at 1.5x. But when you think about the debt tender, it was EPS accretive, NPV positive. We're using every lever at our disposal to grow the earnings power of the company, and this is a great example of that.

As you think about share repurchases, really pleased with our execution in the third quarter, $175 million in shares repurchased. We expect the same level in Q4. And when you take a big step back, we're excited about $1 billion of free cash flow generated again in 2026. And we're on target to distribute 70% of that to shareholders between share repurchases and dividends. Love the balance, love the discipline that the team is executing against, and we're excited to wrap up the year.

The next question will come from James Picariello with BNP Paribas.

just focus on the Power Drive segment. The EBIT loss was only $5 million very strong growth, which was called out already. But did the quarter have any onetime recovery benefit at all? Or are we getting close to a breakeven run rate here at $700 million plus in quarterly sales? Because I assume the $5 million of additional R&D commitment at the Power Drive segment as well, you confirm?

Yes. Thanks, James. I'll start with the top line. As we both mentioned, really pleased with the growth in that business unit quarter-over-quarter, it was about 20% on a reported basis. So when you look at light vehicle eProducts growth, again, primarily in Europe, it was 32%. So outstanding growth. We were able to capitalize that, convert at an incremental conversion of about $0.24 from the dollar. So that was great to see. There was a volume recovery in that Q3 figure. And if you go back to last year, we had a recovery in Q4. So just another data point between Q3 and Q4.

As we look forward for that business, we expect to see about 20% growth this year, coming up 30% growth last year. So we really like the trajectory of that business, and we're excited to get into 2027, continue to capitalize on that. Our objective for that business unit remains the same, convert in the mid-teens on a year-over-year basis, and we're on track to do that this year.

Got it. That's helpful. And then my follow-on, my two quick follow-ons. As we think about the company's microgrid inverter development. I know it's early, but you guys are actively quoting the product. Any sense for what the margin profile could be similar to the confidence in turbine generators immediately contributing at a mid-teens margin profile. Are there any parameters to think about future microgrid inverter award?

And can you help us clarify the U.S. ban of foreign-sourced equipment for the electric grid because it sounds as though the products listed within the executive order cover all three product categories that you're trying to enter. So -- just curious if you have -- I'm just wondering if you have any thoughts to share on what the implications and timing might look like for that

Yes, this is Joe. Maybe I can start with the executive orders. So it is true there were some orders issued and some of the scope of those orders has grown throughout the year. We're still getting clarification on those orders. From us, it doesn't matter if those orders are there or not. It would provide a nice tailwind since we're a U.S.-based company. We're going to produce these electronics in the U.S. But besides the FIA executive order, our products are still extremely innovative, competitive and provide a lot of value to our customers based on the feedback we're getting from the 7 customers.

I'll let Craig answer the margin profile.

Yes. So James, I mean we're obviously in the quoting phase. But I think the way to think about microgrid is very similar to the TG what we said for next year is, we expect mid-teens conversion on that first year of launch. We expect some inefficiency in the process as we build out that plant, as we get we gain supply chain savings and higher OE coming off our lines. So I would expect the same thing as we get to year 1 launch in microgrid. But we believe that there's upside potential as we move forward up from that 18 incremental base.

The next question will come from Mark Delaney with Goldman Sachs.

The input cost environment has been very challenging for several companies in the automotive industry so far this quarter. Recognize the good margins that BorgWarner was able to put up and guide to you for this year. But can you talk a little bit more on what you're seeing in terms of input costs? And as you start to look into 2027, I'm not sure if you're starting to see input costs rising to an extent that maybe you haven't seen yet in '26, but may become more problematic in '27 and perhaps could create more challenging incrementals as you try to deal with that next year?

Thanks, Mark. We are seeing some inflation, especially on the electronics side of our business in 2026. The good news is the teams are doing a fantastic job, and we think we can manage it within our incremental conversion for this year. As we go into next year, we're going to watch it really closely. To the extent that we do experience both higher cost we're going to manage them just like we have in the past, whether it's been previous inflation area environment, tariffs, et cetera. We're not going to get caught in between our suppliers and our customers, and we'll manage it appropriately. But right now, we are seeing a bit higher inflation cost on the electronics side of our business.

Understood. My other question was on capital allocation and a fair amount of discussion already around the free cash flow generation of the business and your plans around how much you want to return to shareholders. Could you also touch on the potential for M&A? I know the company has previously articulated several key criteria. Any deal we need to meet? Any update around the funnel and the likelihood of deals being completed over the near to medium term?

Mark, we still remain active. Seen M&A as a lever for us to expand the earnings power of the company. As we've stated in the past, you can count on Craig and I for a very disciplined approach. And those three criteria of a reminder, we want to leverage our core. So what are we really good at? I need to make industrial logic. The second is we're looking for near-term accretion to any asset. And then finally, we don't want to overpay. We want to bag the asset properly. It's these criteria that sets quite a high bar for us. But I would say we've opened our aperture. We're looking inside automotive. We're looking outside automotive.

What I'm really pleased about is we're applying the same discipline that we have in our operational business to our M&A side of the business and sometimes the best decisions are the assets you don't purchase. So I'm pleased with the pipeline. But of course, we will move on something that fits those three criteria.

The next question will come from Andrew Percoco with Morgan Stanley.

Maybe just to come back to the turbine generator, I know a lot has already been discussed, but it's clear that based on your discussions and your presentation that the customer interest has definitely picked up, which obviously makes sense given the environment that we're in. But I'm just curious if you could just maybe provide a little bit more insight into -- or information into what the dialogue is with those customers? Like what are they asking you? What do they want to see? Obviously, like the power shortfall is very well advertised. But when they're looking at your technology specifically, I'm just curious if you could provide a little bit of insight in terms of what their asking most frequently? Is it efficiency? Is it durability? If you could just kind of bring us into those conversations a little bit, I think that would be really helpful.

Andrew, a little bit of color on the TG first, and maybe I can even touch on some of the other eProducts. So many of the visits we received at our Arden R&D facility, especially the hyperscalers, these are engineered discussions. So the customers are focused on, first, are we able to meet the requirements that we've set for ourselves and that they may have how are we managing the tolerances and the built-in quality and robustness. Uptime is a big topic, of course, for any kind of stationary power. So reliability is important.

And then, of course, they want to understand the efficiency and a mission profile of these. What's really important to hyperscalers is a sustainable solution that is a lower carbon diesel and other solutions. So these are typically the dialogues that we are having with them, and they're very deep and reporting overdrawing specifications. More recently, we're looking at test results. We're seeing the units perform, including some third-party sites, which endeavor organizes those visits.

As we look beyond TG, when we talk about battery and further. For battery, we have really built-in advantage with this capacity that's installed. So we're not using all that capacity for the CV and eBus market. So we're able to get to market quickly with that because there are some constraints on energy storage in the market.

And then on the inverter, it has a lot to do with the technology and the conversion efficiency. This is a big deal because the more efficient that inverter is, the less power they need to drive the data center. I would say the last thing which applies to all three speed to market is very right now. And we know that having this automotive mindset, where we can stand up manufacturing, leverage our supply base, we can get to market in 18 to 24 months typically, which is about half the time of some of the industrial competitors.

That's super helpful. I appreciate that. And maybe just a follow-up on energy storage. One of your competitors who reported recently on energy storage, there was a pretty significant kind of about face in terms of what they're thinking on pricing or just the pricing environment that they're seeing within data centers being a much more lucrative or higher margin than maybe expected a few months ago. I know you're just maybe an earlier stage kind of quoting or negotiations there. But when you corroborate that? Like are you seeing a more favorable maybe pricing environment on the energy storage side than you maybe anticipated a few months ago?

Yes. I don't know if Craig to comment on that. What I would say is there is very strong demand for energy storage and we're focused on leveraging the capacity we have. So I think our team is focused on our first win and making sure we can bring that to the market. We can probably provide you a little bit of color next year as we get into 2027.

The next question will come from Alex Perry with Bank of America.

So I just wanted to follow up on some of the key bridge items for next year that we should be thinking about on the cost side. Are there specific initiatives that you have in place that could help offset some of these cost pressures and the commodity headwinds that you're seeing? And then the incremental industrial R&D investment that you incurred this year, is that something we should be thinking about continuing going forward?

Yes, Alex, I would say this year is a great example of what BorgWarner can do in a down production environment. We're expanding margins year-over-year, inclusive of that industrial R&D and things like supply chain savings, productivity in our plants are great examples of what the teams have been executing to achieve that result. As we move into next year, we're going to continue to focus on those same things, and our goal will remain the same. We'd like to see growth over market in our automotive business, at least modest growth over market we'd like to see $300 million in PC revenue, and we'd like to see mid-teens conversion at extra growth. So we're really excited to move from a no-growth environment to a growth environment and really see what we can accomplish as a company.

Really helpful. And then my follow-up is just on China. Could you talk through your outlook for the region a bit more. It looks like you took your production outlook down there, but how are you positioned with some of the OEMs that are having higher export volumes? And any signs of the China market improving?

Yes. So I'll take that one. In China, we expect the overall market to be down between 6% and 8% this year, although we do see higher export volumes despite that. So from our book of business in China, we've been there over 30 years. We have a great mix of customers there. 70% of our China OEM business there, in fact, is with the leading 6 or 7 OEs, and most of them are the export champions. So we're feeling pretty good about where we're positioned there. And including as they start to move to localized in some of these other markets, you talk about Europe, you're talking about South America, we're highly engaged with them to support some of their localization efforts. So we see it as a win in the short term and also win in the long term.

We have time for one final question, and that question comes from Rajat Gupta with JPMorgan.

Just wanted to follow up from the last question. The recent news around restricting exports from China on hybrids system. I'm curious like how does that net out for board? Presumably, I would -- if it seemed like it would be a net positive, detecting some of our legacy European customers on the content there. But curious to get your thoughts on if that actually plays out, how it would impact your growth profile in those regions? And I have a quick follow-up.

Rajat, so our customer diversity is one of our strengths. So what we tend to see is when one customer loses another customer wins and you really hear us talk about customer mix. I'm going to call for that reason. So we'll have to see how it plays out, but I don't anticipate this is something we're going to be highlighting in the future.

If I look at just like content on your exports from China to Europe versus just a hybrid content within Europe. Is there a material difference there that we should think about if this turns out to be a more long-term move to restrict exports?

Yes. I would say comparable vehicles, there's no difference.

Understood. And just as quickly on commercial, not a lot of talk about that on the call. We've seen some super report, see pretty healthy growth in their commercial business and kind of offsetting some of the light vehicle industry weakness. Just any update on that would be helpful. And any preliminary view on '27 on that end market?

Sure. So from a market perspective, there is some growth globally, about 3% in EV overall. Most of that is plan out of North America with about 11% growth. Ex battery business, we do see about mid-single-digit sales growth there. It's a little bit too early to comment in 2027, but we'll be able to give you some more color when we get there.

With that, I'd like to thank you all for your questions today. They follows, feel free to reach out to me or my team. With that, Nick, you can go ahead and conclude today's call.

Thank you. This concludes the BorgWarner 2026 Third Quarter Results Conference Call. You may now disconnect.

Thanks, everyone, for joining. My name is Rajat Gupta. I'm a member of the Automotive Equity Research team at JPMorgan. Very pleased to have with us the team from BorgWarner; Craig Aaron, Chief Financial Officer; and Patrick Nolan, Vice President of Investor Relations. So we'll just go right into Q&A. And thanks, Craig, for being here.

Thanks for having us.

So maybe like a little high-level question to start. BorgWarner, you spent the last couple of years expanding margins and earnings against a pretty flat and at times declining revenue backdrop, which is an unusual place for a supplier to be. Could you give us a sense of what's changed internally to make this possible? Whether investors should think of this as a company that's being rebuilt rather than one that has just simply managed a difficult cycle pretty well?

Yes. So I'd really point to going back a couple of years ago, I took over as CFO of the company and Joe was the Chief Operating Officer, and obviously, he's the CEO now. But we really sat down and said, "Hey, what do we want the company to look like? What do we want to do differently?" And we really decided on 3 things. The first one was, we wanted to ask all of our business units to grow. If you go back 3 or 4 years ago, it was really all about eProducts' growth, focused on hybridization and electrification. And that was really engaging only $2-ish million of the organization. We wanted to engage all $14 billion of revenue to grow. And we're really pleased with the progress that we've made. We've announced around 60 awards over the last 18 months or so. That's phenomenal. The quality of the awards are across our foundational business, our eProduct business. So we're really excited about that. That was priority #1. We want to make sure that we're moving towards growth over market.

The second item was, grow the earnings power of the company. We need to focus on what we can control and growing the earnings power of the company is important internally, it's important externally. Let's make sure that we're growing profitably. And the third was, we want to have a really consistent, disciplined, balanced capital allocation approach that rewards shareholders. Let's make sure we're creating value with our cash. We focus on those 3 items that will be good for our employees. It will be good for our customers and for our shareholders. So those are the 3 items that we're really focused on.

Got it. No. Helpful. Just quickly moving to the quarter and some of the guidance items. Obviously, a pretty strong quarter across the board. Margins up meaningfully, every business unit contributing. Can you just talk us through the quarter briefly why the sales and margin guidance were left where they were? Obviously, you talked about the R&D spend pickup. But just given how the first half has tracked, like how much cushion should we think there is in the fresh guidance?

Yes. And I would say cushion, I think we have a really realistic guide for the full year, but I was really pleased with the quarter. The business units and corporate delivered in a really great way. Revenue came in about $3.6 billion. That was flat year-over-year, but we expanded margins 100 basis points year-over-year getting to 11.3%. Like you said, every business unit expanded margins in the quarter. Corporate provided a nice tailwind. So that was phenomenal. We grew earnings per share 17% year-over-year. part of it, operating income enhancement, the other increase coming from share repurchases. And then we delivered about $0.5 billion in free cash flow. From every KPI, it was a great quarter.

As you walk first half to second half, we do expect revenue to be down about $200 million first half to second half. There's really 3 components there. It's foreign exchange is an $80 million headwind. Our battery business, we expect to decline about $60 million. And then we do expect industry production to be modestly lower, about 1%. But when you look at our margin profile first half to second half, and you exclude the step up in industrial R&D, our margins are right on top of each other. It was 10.9% in the first half, 10.8% in the second half. So that's why I believe it's realistic. But we are stepping up in R&D in the second half $10 million to $15 million.

When you take a big step back, what is the company doing year-over-year in a relatively flat environment? We're expanding margins, we're expanding EPS and we're leaning forward into industrial R&D because of strong feedback we're getting from our customers in that space. To me, that's what success looks like.

Got it. And then just quickly, just a very early peak into '27. Obviously, we'll talk about the power products in a bit. But outside of the $300 million you've already communicated on the turbine system, any puts and takes around what's going to drive outgrowth in automotive, any regions or segments that might do more of the heavy lifting next year?

Yes. Well, really happy that we expect the contribution from turbine generating next year. Let me start there. But that's not the only driver of our improving growth as we look out to 2027. If you rewind back to 2024, we really do start to see a pickup in our order activity then. And that should start flowing through, right? We saw that in '24, picked up again in 2025 and has continued into this year, as Craig referenced. What's really exciting, though, is it's not 1 product, it's not 1 region, it's not even 1 customer group, it's a nice broad array of products, which means you should see the benefit versus -- our different business units have different markets that they serve, but their performance versus those markets should benefit from this award activity that we saw pick up about 3 years ago, and we're excited to see that come through because the past couple of years, we've been performing more or less in line with the market.

Got it. So there's not like 1 specific like driver? It's pretty diverse?

No. And that's really the positive takeaway here versus if you rewound back 4 years, it was all E, right? What's nice -- we love our eProducts, too, but it's nice to see a much broader base that if 1 program doesn't take off, there's a lot of others that can make up.

Got it. And maybe going just quickly on the margin side and the durability of that. You cost control has obviously done a lot of work in a flat environment for you guys. Could you give us a sense of how much of that is structural versus just running lean through like a tough phase? And what happens once volumes eventually come back and all these opportunities that you're seeing? And how do you maintain and keep growing margins?

Yes. So I would say it's all structural. So when you go back a couple of years ago, we won a lot of awards coming out of the Delphi acquisition. It was primarily on the eProducts side of the business. And because of all those awards, we heavily invested in R&D resources to support those programs. Those programs either didn't launch or launched at lower volume. So it was important for us to rightsize those businesses. So we restructured our PowerDrive Systems business. We restructured our battery energy storage business to get those cost structures in line with the current level of revenue.

On top of that, the company has done a really phenomenal job focusing on what we can control as well, which is lower cost of poor quality, productivity in our plants, supply chain savings, those are all sustainable items, and we found success in those areas to ultimately expand margins year-over-year. So it's a combination of a lot of different factors.

Understood. Maybe just moving on to like the fun stuff, which I think everyone wants to hear about on the Turbine Generator System. Could you just walk us through like quickly for some who might still be new to the story how you got there? And what makes you believe that you have a right to win against companies who've probably been doing this for decades?

Well, I think starting with the technology and what we're leveraging there, if you look at our turbine generator, what is it leveraging within the BorgWarner competence? Well, it's leveraging our turbocharging technology, leveraging our rotating electric technology, our thermal technology, our electronics controls technology, right? So I think bringing our automotive scale across those different technology portions of the product is a big benefit that we have in this market. And we've spent the past close to 4 years now developing this product that we believe is going to be competitive versus traditional offerings.

And I think what's going to bring our credibility to that market and allow us to be competitive is, from a performance standpoint, we're really confident in the technology that we have developed. But not only that, bringing the automotive scale, cost competitiveness, viewpoint of constantly improving the efficiency of the product, we think that really is going to be a competitive advantage in that market.

Got it. I know you're going to get this question asked like in a lot of your meetings, but I just -- I probably have to just throw it in there. Are you at a stage where you're getting close to sizing what the 2-gigawatt capacity might mean from a revenue standpoint? I know you've given us the multiples number on the earnings call, but any more breadcrumbs on that?

So what we're laser-focused on is launch. This successful launch will set us up for a multiyear cycle that we're going to be taking advantage of. This is the first inning, right? So we're focused on launch and successfully achieving that $300 million of revenue that we've set out for us in 2027. We'll give more updates as appropriate as we go along. But we're really excited with what we see from the demand side, and we need to continue to focus from our perspective, hitting the key KPIs of the different certifications, different testing, durability testing and getting into production.

Got it. You've said there's a capacity decision coming in the second half and that it may not necessarily serve the same market or sit in the same geography. Can you talk us through what you -- how you're weighing demand again, as you said, like, again, proving out quality and just a supply readiness first?

Well, I think it's both sides of the equation, right? I think we are continuing to receive indications of demand, not only in the near term, but on the mid- to long term, and I think that's important. But I think we have -- I mean, let's be clear, this is a new product for us in a new plant, for a new market. We want to make sure we ramp production in a very measured way and hit a lot of these key KPIs before we make that decision on capacity. And then what we see from end demand will dictate not only when we add capacity, but which region of the world does it make most sense is another consideration we have to look at as well.

Got it. And you've described Endeavour as owning the customer interface while you're providing the guts of the system. Could you walk us through how that has evolved? As you've just had more discussions and the businesses scaling or at least the testing is scaling, whether the division of labor changes as you build more and more direct credibility with the end customers?

So maybe I'll walk you through kind of the relationship and how it's evolved over a period of time. So the relationship started about 4 years ago. They came to us with certain intellectual property and they could see our turbo competence, and that started with a proof-of-concept and seeing if we could bring this type of product to market. So we worked through a proof-of-concept phase, made sure the attributes of the turbine generator was meeting the requirements that we had set out together. And then ultimately, we ended up signing a supply agreement late this year -- late last year, early this year, and that's what we announced in February.

I would say the relationship is great because: one, they bring that customer interface, like you mentioned. They bring expertise in the data center market and BorgWarner stays true to our core competence, which is we are able to manufacture at scale. So I think that's the beauty of the relationship. They're bringing that customer interface, that data center knowledge, and what we're bringing is manufacturing capability at scale.

Understood. Just one last one, maybe on the system. The mix has flipped versus what you originally underwrote moving from the backup to primary power. Could you give us a sense of what that changes commercially, and how customers evaluate you? And just how durable that position becomes once you're on the site?

Yes, I won't go into the details of the contract and our pricing. But I think it's a strong indication of the durability of the product that we're able to pursue this primary power market. And I think that's where we're seeing pull from our customers. That's -- to give an indication, when we started down this road 3.5, 4 years ago, we would have said we skewed more towards backup power. But given where we're seeing the supply-demand dynamic in the market, definitely skewing a bit more towards primary.

Got it. I just want to pause there for like a second to see if there are any questions from the audience. We've got a couple. Go ahead. Yes.

[indiscernible] in your space maybe not have said yes, we'll add capacity because you're going to pay us and take long-term contracts. So how would you think about that?

Yes. I'd say we always look at business cases the same, whether you're talking about an automotive business case or an industrial business case, what's the goal. The goal is 15% ROIC or higher. So I'd start there. I'd also point to, we're generating a lot of free cash flow. So cash or capital is not a constraint for us. We want to create value with that cash. And if it's investing further in the industrial space, we have the capability to do it, and we'll certainly take advantage of it.

Jim, do you have a question?

Yes. Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Good to see you guys. I wanted to just double check the competitive landscape on all the products that you have kind of geared towards electrification, not the traditional ICE product, which I think you've got a very clean line of sight on the competitive landscape, but on things like inverters, e-motors, things like that. Are you seeing anything on the business that you're winning? Because I know you've been very successful getting wins in China. But from the contract standpoint, the competitive landscape, are you seeing anything on that front that is deteriorating? Like some of the newcomers in the space and maybe getting, wow, it's amazing they're putting that price out or those terms. Anything on that front that gives you a little bit less visibility on that incremental margin regardless of where it comes from?

Yes. I'll start and maybe Pat can add. Our goal ultimately is we need to convert that extra revenue into income in the mid-teens. And yes, is pricing dynamics, are they a challenge whether you're in China or outside of China? Of course, that's always a major point of the conversation with any customer, but we need to find a way to make sure that we're turning that growth into income. And that just means we need to lean into other things if pricing is going to be a challenge. It means we have to lean into supply chain savings, and we've done that really successfully, continue to drive productivity. So we need to continue to work on our bill of material, our cost structure within the plants to make sure that we can ultimately deliver that income.

I would say, as time has gone by, we see the same competitive dynamics and the same players in most of our quotes. So when you're going after an inverter award, it tends to be the same 3 or 4 players. In the past, if you were to take a step back 3, 4 years ago, I think the concern was that there was going to be 10 players in the market. That's not really what we're seeing. We're seeing kind of the same names over and over again. Any thing to add?

No. I think that's well said.

Okay. Great. Maybe moving to the other industrial products, energy storage. That portfolio has widened pretty quickly from packs into blocks, backup power, racks, controls, established categories with some entrenched incumbents. Could you talk us through like what's driving that, whether it is a customer pull or your own read on where the value sits across the power chain?

Yes. So you've seen us broaden out the portfolio a bit on BESS business. And I think it's a combination of what we're hearing feedback from our customers as we're actively quoting for that business, but also where we see the market going over time. So I think it's both of those. Remember, on the BESS side, we're going to be focused more in industrial data center markets than the larger grid storage market. So that's where you should think about the market that we're playing. It's much more engineered solutions for what the needs that our customers have in these various applications than it is these larger scale truck or trailer size battery packs, which will be great business for others, it's just not where we're focused.

Really what we're focused on initially in that market is utilizing the existing capacity that we have particularly focused on NMC solutions. I think over time, you'll see us potentially move in LFP, but first, it will be NMC.

Got it. And you also emphasized obviously, chemistry agnostic and leveraging capacity to put -- that you had to originally put in for commercial vehicles. Any way to size like help us understand how far that existing capacity takes you in this business? And like what the decision looks like when demand starts to outrun it?

Yes. I mean, let's get the first award over the gate first. We haven't broken down what the opportunity in revenue is yet. But really, it's going to be focused, at least initially, in North America, utilizing the capacity that we have in our Seneca, South Carolina [indiscernible].

Got it. The last one on the inverter side, you've pointed to the power model you design and build yourselves and how you manage cooling at high power. Could you walk us through why it is hard to replicate and how it translates into a right to win against incumbents, again, like just to previous questions, who have been in this market for a long time?

What we think are right to win and the window that we have done to this market is the need in the data center market that they're moving up to the higher voltage configuration. Today's large-scale industrial inverter suppliers don't operate at 800-volt. We do in our automotive side. In North America, there's not many companies that have produced more 800-volt inverters than we have in North America. I'd argue maybe not many. And that's the benefit that -- and the window that we see in this market. How to be able to deal with the higher temperatures that come along with those 800-volt solutions is where we think is going to provide us the opportunity to enter this market.

Now as we've started to have some of those initial conversations with customers, Joe shared on our call last week that we're actually going to broaden out the inverter portfolio from a voltage standpoint from -- starting from 400-volt solutions up to potentially 1,500-volt solutions. We still do believe the first award will likely come in that 800-volt vertical, but we are expanding it out.

And how would you characterize the timing of where the inverter system is -- product is versus the battery energy? Like is it 6 months behind? Is it 18 months? Any way to like help us understand the cadence?

Timing is always a little bit difficult to predict because you're largely bound by what your customers are doing. But I guess I would describe it this way. When you think about turbine generator, it's leading, right? It is -- we have a manufacturing sales agreement with Endeavour. We're ramping capacity. We know what our first year sales are going to be. Battery, we are in the active quoting phase and hopefully, that materializes into a win. And inverters is slightly behind that. They're in the developing the product phase, having some customers having test units. Hopefully, that means we move towards quoting in the latter stages of this year. We intend BESS and inverters to be production ready in 2027, but ultimately, it's going to come down to what those awards detail look like.

Understood. Just want to check any more questions on the industrial side here before we move on to automotive. No. All right. So maybe just on like margins quickly. Mid-teens conversion is the yardstick you typically hold everything to, including the new industrial products. Could you help us understand what would have to go right for those businesses to convert better than that once the first year of inefficiencies are behind?

Sure. So on the turbine generator side, what we've communicated, $300 million in revenue next year and mid-teens incremental conversion on that revenue. And what we expect in that mid-teens conversion is some inefficiencies. We've never launched this product before. We're not going to be completely -- we're not going to have complete utilization in our plant from an OEE perspective. We're going to have some scrap and other things. Inefficiencies is part of that manufacturing [indiscernible]. So that's what mid-teens incrementals look like in the first year with all of that built in.

As we move forward, I think we're going to have opportunities, whether that's productivity, whether that's supply chain savings, continuing to work on the bill of material. We're going to do all those things like we do on the automotive side of our business to ultimately continue to try to squeeze as much margin out of the product as we can because that's what we do at BorgWarner.

Got it. Makes sense. Maybe like going to the automotive business, last 10 minutes here. A meaningful -- we talked about like the order strength last 2, 3 years and how that's [indiscernible] the next few years. But just double-clicking on the order book itself. A meaningful part of the book is more conquest rather than replacement. And one of our competitors has also been pointing to share gains in turbochargers as a theme. Could you give us a sense of how the competitive field there is actually evolving? Whether smaller players are generally under pressure? And where have you been really taking business from?

Yes. Take a big step back. I think Joe gets -- our CEO gets a lot of credit for this. I think you really challenge the organization to go find your growth opportunities. And part of that is, clearly, we still have secular opportunities in many of our products, but why can't we gain share, really challenging the organization of why can't you go out and conquest those [indiscernible]? I do think that dynamics in the market have changed a bit, too, as more and more of the engineering requirements are falling on to the suppliers, which I generally think plays to the -- if you're larger supplier, generally, you're in a better position to win that contract. And I think that's what you've seen started playing out, not only just in our turbo business, you see conquest awards, whether or not it's in our DMS businesses, on all-wheel drive VCT as well as what you're seeing on the turbo and thermal side.

Got it. just wanted to see any questions here on the automotive side? All right. Let's move to China. I mean just following up on some of Jim's questions here. Your China mix is weighted heavily towards domestic OEMs and towards the leading names rather than the long tail. Could you walk us through how that mix has moved over the past few years and where it settles? And whether the backlog is running at a higher domestic weighting than current revenue? Maybe also talk about the mix of that 70% exposure that you've talked about before?

So if you take a step back, China is about 20% of our sales. Within China, as you said, about 75% of our sales are with the Chinese locals, which puts us at a slightly overweight position where the market is. Last I saw it [indiscernible]. If you were to double-click on that, what's the breakdown of those domestic sales? It's skewed towards the larger Chinese OEMs. The top 6 by market share represent about 3/4 of that domestic, and that's important for a couple of reasons. First, those customers are the ones that are trying to pursue world-class propulsion technologies, whether or not it's on the E side, the hybrid side or the combustion side of the business. And also, those customers are the ones that ultimately have the ambitions to export volumes, which is obviously a growing part of that market today.

And just on that export topic, as those customers move from exporting to more localized production overseas, could you help us understand the visibility you have that your products are going to be traveling with them, and whether you have to compete afresh like in every new region?

I mean -- I think the best indication we have is success that we're having with them in China. Ultimately, as they move towards production in other regions, which will eventually happen, we think that is ultimately what puts us in a good position to [ compete ] for those awards. That will come, right? They will be competitive bids. They won't be just giving BorgWarner right off the bat, but we think we're in a great position [indiscernible].

Understood. Jim?

Yes. One follow-up on these 2 topics. Three-year view -- things go really well on that launch on the -- and the 2 gigawatts is all booked up, walk me through on a 3-year view you CapEx because I know your long-term framework, but is there a situation where 3 years from now, we could use substantially higher CapEx for that opportunity. Then on the flip side, you're always getting ahead of the curve on the automotive rightsizing. What's going on, on that front in terms of restructuring cash on the automotive side over the next 3 years?

Yes. So maybe I'll just talk about CapEx really quick. Last year, CapEx was really [indiscernible]. And why was it so low? Because we did a phenomenal job of reutilizing eProduct capital that we have put in for the last few years, but volumes were just lower. And we made a very strong effort to say, "Hey plant manager, if you need a new piece of equipment, let's first look at a piece of equipment that might be sitting in North America and needs to be sent to Europe rather than getting a new piece of equipment." And the teams did a fantastic job. So I'd start there.

As we move forward, historically, we've been in this 5% of sales range. This year, we're about 4.5% of sales, which includes an industrial investment for the turbine generator. I think we're in that 4.5% to 5% range as we move forward. But if there's a great opportunity, we have incredible liquidity, a really strong balance sheet, we will invest. There's no question about it. As long as that business case, again, is 15% ROIC, we're going to put cash to work. So I would say that.

As far as restructuring, we're constantly looking at opportunities to restructure our business. I mean you can see, every quarter, there's a restructuring charge because we're looking at the automotive side of our business and making decisions to ultimately improve our cost structure, and that's how you should think about it. It's one of those things where we're just constantly assessing opportunities to try to squeeze additional margin out.

Did you have another one, Jim? No? Okay. So just again, following up on like the original eProducts question, I didn't get much airtime like on the last earnings call, last few calls. Just looking at the filings, looks like revenue was up slightly. Just could you give us an update on expectations around growth in that portfolio this year? Like how should we think about the next, or just the medium-term outlook there?

Yes. Well, I mean, I think, first off, it's worth acknowledging they had a really strong last -- growth last year. They well exceeded their markets. This year, what are we expecting from our light vehicle eProducts business? We think it's going to grow close to double digits off a really strong 2025 base. And ultimately, what is their objective as they move forward? They want to perform in line or modestly better than their markets. And their market is, obviously, when you look at hybrid plus BEV volumes on a global basis, that's how they're measuring their success. Do they keep pace or outgrow that market?

And where are we with like margins just for that portfolio? What level of volume do you think we can break even there?

Yes, maybe I'll take that one. So what does success look like? So what we were looking for last year because remember, we restructured those businesses back [indiscernible] was we want to see growth, and we want to make sure that, that growth is generating income at a mid-teens incremental conversion. And so last year, what did we see? We saw about 30% light vehicle eProducts growth, and they converted that growth into income right at the mid-teens. That was what Joe and I were looking for to say, "Hey, do we get this restructuring right? Or do we have more to do?" So that was success. As we move into 2026, what we're expecting is about 10% growth year-over-year. So still nice growth, and we want to make sure that we're converting that growth into income. So as long as we're doing that, then we think we got that cost structure right and it's more just let's continue to scale the business and continue to win new business, both in China and Europe and the Americas when this market catches up.

Got it. Maybe last one here. Just on -- just following up on the capital allocation and some of the M&A discussion. You've raised the hurdle on M&A while just opening the aperture beyond automotive. And you've passed on deals that did not clear it. Could you give us a sense of -- obviously, a lot of your management bandwidth is going in like ramping up the industrial business. But what else are you looking for from a product fit standpoint, like technology fit standpoint? Any capability you feel that you still need to buy rather than build?

First, I'd say we love our portfolio. We're operating from a position of strength from both our foundational businesses that we've owned for years, but also the acquisitions that we've made over the last several years. So we're operating from a position of strength. As we move forward, we really have 3 criteria, which is, as you mentioned, raise the bar, but we've increased the aperture. We're looking at mobility, we're looking outside of mobility. That's increasing the aperture. But we've raised the bar, meaning we're not going to do any deal where you guys are scratching your head. It has to have industrial logic and it has to link to the core competencies of the company, and we have a lot of core competencies.

The second is, it's got to be EPS accretive in the short term because our goal as a company is to grow the earnings profile of the company. That's what success looks like and that's what great companies do. And then third, we don't want to overpay. We have to pay a fair price. And obviously, in the industrial space, some of the multiples that are out there are pretty significant. So we want to make sure that we're paying a fair price for the asset. So I would say those are the 3 items that we are focused on.

Understood. Great. Any one final question here from the audience? Otherwise we'll end it there. Great.

Thanks for the time.

Thanks everyone for listening.

Good morning. My name is Nick, and I will be your conference specialist. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the BorgWarner 2026 Second Quarter Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Patrick Nolan, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Nolan, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Nick. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We issued our earnings release earlier this morning. It's posted on our website, borgwarner.com, both on our home page and on our Investor Relations home page. With regard to our Investor Relations calendar, we will be attending investor conferences between now and our next earnings release.

Please see the Events section of our Investor Relations home page for a full list. Before we begin a inform you that during this call, we may make forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties as detailed in our 10-K. Our actual results may differ significantly from the matters discussed today. In addition, during today's presentation, we'll highlight certain non-GAAP measures in order to provide a clearer picture about the core business of platforms and for comparison purposes with prior periods.

We heartly adjusted that means excluding noncomparable items. When you hear us say organic, that means excluding the impact of FX and net M&A. We'll also refer to our incremental margin performance. Our incremental margin is defined as the organic change in our adjusted operating income divided by the organic car sales. We will also refer to our growth compared to our market. When you hear us say market, that means the change in light vehicle production weighted for our geographic exposure. Please note that we posted earnings call presentation to the IR on-page or our website. We encourage you to follow along with these slides during our discussion.

With that, I'm happy to turn the call over to Joe.

Thank you, Pat, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to share our results for the second quarter of 2026 and provide an overall company update, starting on Slide 5. I want to begin by thanking our employees, customers and suppliers for all of their trust, efforts, and continued support. In the quarter, we achieved sales of over $3.6 billion. Excluding the decline in our Battery Energy Systems segment, our organic net sales were up modestly year-over-year outperformed the decline in market production primarily due to strong North American transfer case volumes.

Our adjusted operating margin, adjusted earnings per share and cash flow performance was strong in the quarter. The company continued to operate at a very high level and delivered 100 basis points of adjusted margin expansion and 17% of earnings per share growth in a relatively flat year-over-year sales environment. This outstanding result was once again driven by our focus on cost controls across our business. I am excited to report that our strong award activity continued into the second quarter.

Today, I'll highlight 7 new business awards across our foundational and e-products portfolios. These wins represent only a portion of the awards secured during the quarter, but I believe they underscore the strength of our technology-focused portfolio, our deeper relationships and the global demand for our efficient powertrain technologies around the globe. Equally exciting is the progress we've made in the quarter in taking meaningful steps in our product readiness across our data center and other industrial markets portfolio. I will share a detailed update in a few moments.

Lastly, we remain focused on efficient deployment of capital to drive shareholder value. In the quarter, we returned approximately $134 million to shareholders through share repurchases and payment of a cash dividend. Additionally, our Board of Directors approved a $1 billion increase to our current share repurchase authorization, increasing our authorization to $1.35 billion or approximately 10% of BorgWarner's market cap. These actions demonstrate our confidence in the long-term cash generating ability of our business. and our focus on driving shareholder value through a balanced capital allocation approach.

As I look back on the second quarter and the first half of 2026, I'm very proud of our team and our results. Once again, we execute at a very high level, which I believe puts the company in a strong position to achieve our full year sales, margin, EPS and free cash flow guidance. Our strong first half performance has also allowed the con to increase our second half 2026 industrial R&D investment to accelerate our product readiness. We are doing this while delivering our full year 2026 financial commitments.

Turning to Slide 6. I'd like to highlight 7 recent product awards that demonstrate both the competitiveness of our technology and our ability to support our customers' powertrain needs in key markets. Let's start with our foundational product awards. First, Fort Warner has been awarded a new E-Turbo program with a major European OEM for an advanced hybrid passenger car application. Further strengthening Fort Warner's leading position in electrified boosting technologies. Production is scheduled to begin in 2029.

I believe BorgWarner's E-Turbo innovation and leadership remains a core technology underpinning the industrial power generation product line leveraging our automotive scale to disrupt the data center market. Second, BorgWarner has secured new business with a Chinese OEM to supply our Torque-On-Demand transfer case with mechanical lock for a newly developed full-size SUV in China. We have built a 20-year relationship with this customer, and we're proud to continue supplying our all-wheel drive technology for their newest unit.

Start of production is planned for the fourth quarter of 2026. Fort Warner continues to expand its variable cam timing business with new program awards in Europe and China. These programs include a program life extension and significant volume increase for a leading European premium OEMs V6 engine family. And a complex plan from a major Chinese OEMs 1.5-liter turbodarge gasoline engine family, replacing the previous incumbent supplier.

These awards underscore the long-term competitiveness of our PCT portfolio across both hybrid and combustion engines. Switching now to our recent e-product awards. First, Fort Werner has secured a new integrated drive module award with a global OEM. This IBM features Board Warner's latest 3-in-1 integrated co-axl drive system, combining an advanced team or gearbox and fully integrated Gen 4 inverter in a compact high-performance package.

I believe this award reflects BorgWarner's continued commitment to delivering advanced electrified drive solutions through the strength of our global technology portfolio and localized capabilities. Production is expected to begin in 2027. Second, BorgWarner has secured a major extension of 2 high-volume, high-voltage inverter programs with a major European OEM. These awards cover updated and burner designs for both plug-in hybrid and 800 fold battery electric vehicle applications, building on a trusted partnership and power electronics.

I believe that extending several high-volume programs at the same time confirms BorgWarner's leading position at power electronics and the strength of our technology in-house expertise and customer focus, involving our inverters generation by generation, together with our customers, for both hybrid and fully electric applications is how we build trusted long-term partnerships with the world's leading OEMs. Production is expected to begin in 2029.

Importantly, all the product awards I just highlighted include BorgWarner's in further technology, and it speaks to the world-class technology leadership and scale or nor have and high-powered inverters. This expertise has been developed over decades of engineering effort and represents our product leadership in this area. Our automotive and burner competence is another great example of a world-class technology that BorgWarner could use as we continue to advance our product readiness to capture additional growth factors outside of our core automotive markets.

As I will discuss in a moment, the world is a need for more power and our highly efficient inverter is a solution that solves this growing problem. Next, on Slide 7. As I would like to discuss the acceleration of our product readiness across our data center and other industrial markets portfolio. Let's discuss with an update on our turbine generator launch progress. I'm very pleased with the advancements that we've made over the past quarter.

First, I'm excited to share that our testing has confirmed that we have achieved carbon-level emission standards. I view this as an important milestone as we continue to expect our turbine generator to provide a lower emission solution relative to competing technologies. Our compliance process continues to progress well. UL component certification is expected to start in September and our component level evidence books have already been submitted.

Construction of the final assembly plant is quickly moving forward with the footprint largely complete. We expect our capital equipment installation to begin in the third quarter. And overall, I'm excited and pleased with the team's progress, which will position us well to meet the strong interest that we continue to see from end customers, including multiple hyperscalers.

Turning next to our Battery Energy Storage system. Our energy storage solutions are intended to support a range of use cases and data center environments. We continue to position our battery energy storage solutions to support data center, AI, and mechanical loads. Our product scope spans the entire energy power time requirement spectrum, operate high energy long duration and/or high-power, short-duration solutions. .

We are working to widen our portfolio, which includes DC blocks uninterruptible power supplies, high-power racks and controls. Our solutions are modular, scalable, and sell chemistry dependent. [indiscernible] 2027, our quoting activity for our battery energy storage systems continues, and I look forward to providing you with additional updates later this year. Turning to our microgrid inverter offerings. Initial customer feedback has been extremely positive. We believe that we have the right value proposition, including U.S. manufacturing and supply chain.

Our automotive supply chain is increasingly being viewed as a differentiator, and our decades-long experience in highly engineered, high voltage power events and liquid cooled power electronics is recognized and confirmed by potential customers. Our customers now have BorgWarner samples and discussions with other potential customers are underway. With feedback already we received, we are quickly moving to develop Gen 2 designs. While we continue to see the move toward 800 volts supporting our entry into this market, we have now begun to develop a high-power portfolio, spanning applications ranging from 400 volts to 1,500 volts as we see potential for volumes across the spectrum.

I look forward to progressing toward customer quoting later this year. To summarize, I believe there are 3 key takeaways from today's call. First, BorgWarner's second quarter results were outstanding. Our sales remained strong at over $3.6 billion. Our adjusted operating margin expanded 100 basis points and adjusted EPS grew by 17% to the second quarter of 2025. Additionally, we increased our full year adjusted EPS guidance, reflecting our continued focus on growing the earnings power of the company. Second, we announced 7 new business awards across our portfolio in the quarter, which we believe further demonstrates our focus on product leadership, and the need for our highly engineered solutions across combustion, hybrid, and architectures.

Third, we further improved our product readiness across our data center and other industrial markets portfolio. We see strong customer demand and are confident that our mechanical and electronic core competencies will enable us to successfully capture growth outside of our core automotive market. This confidence in our strong first half 2026 performance has allowed us to increase our second half industrial R&D spending to further accelerate our industrial product readiness.

And finally, we took meaningful steps to return capital to shareholders during the second quarter with approximately $134 million returned to our cash dividend and share repurchases. Additionally, the $1 billion increase to our share repurchase authorization and $1.35 billion total authorization demonstrates our commitment to following a disciplined approach of consistently returning cash to shareholders to create value.

Overall, I believe our year-to-date results illustrate the strength of our team, our product portfolio and the long-term earnings power of our business. I'm excited to continue our positive momentum into the second half of 2026. With that, I will turn the call over to Craig.

Thank you, Joe, and good morning, everyone. I'm excited to share the details of our second quarter financials by turning to Slide 8 for a look at our year-over-year sales matter. Last year's Q2 sales were just over $3.6 billion. In the second quarter of this year, stronger foreign currency drove a year-over-year increase in sales of $54 million. Then you can see the sales headwind from our battery business, which drove a year-over-year decrease in sales of $62 million.

The remaining organic sales increase of $18 million, 0.5% was modestly ahead of the decline in light vehicle market production for the quarter. This increase was primarily driven by transfer case outgrowth in North America. Ultimately, sales were relatively flat year-over-year and remained strong at over $3.6 billion. Turning to Slide 9, you can see our earnings and cash flow performance for the quarter. Our second quarter adjusted operating income was $413 million, equating to a strong 11.3% adjusted operating margin.

That compares to adjusted operating income of $373 million or a 10.3% adjusted operating margin from a year ago. The exit of our charging business in 2025 increased operating income by $7 million year-over-year. Excluding this benefit and FX impacts, adjusted operating income increased $28 million on $44 million of lower sales, this strong year-over-year performance benefited from ongoing cost reduction actions that our teams continue to take across our business.

Equally exciting, with every business unit expanded operating margins in the quarter and lower corporate costs provided an additional tailwind to our sunsets. Our adjusted EPS was up $0.21 or 17% compared to a year ago as a result of higher adjusted operating income and the impact of approximately $650 million in share repurchases or approximately 5% of our market capitalization over the past 4 quarters.

And finally, we generated free cash flow of $492 million in the second quarter which supported $250 million in share repurchases and $70 million in dividend payments in the first half of 2026. I believe this once again demonstrates our focus on creating value with our consistent and strong free cash flow. Now let's turn to Slide 10 and take a look at our full year 2026 outlook. We are maintaining our full year sales, adjusted operating margin and free cash flow guidance.

However, we are increasing our full year adjusted EPS guidance based on our share repurchases in the first half of 2026. We continue to project total 2026 sales in the range of $14.0 billion to $14.3 billion compared to $14.3 billion in 2025. Starting with foreign currencies. Our guidance now assumes an expected full year sales benefit of $175 million compared to 2025 due to the strengthening of the euro and the renminbi versus the U.S. dollar.

This benefit is modestly lower than our previous guidance. We continue to expect our weighted end markets to be flat to down 3% for the year. We expect our light vehicle business, which comprises over 80% of our sales to perform broadly in line with our weighted light vehicle market consistent with how we performed in the first half of 2026. However, we expect a sales decline in our battery business due to lack of North American incentives and weaker European demand.

We now expect this decline to represent roughly 170 basis point headwind to our year-over-year sales growth. Based on these assumptions, we expect our 2026 organic sales change to be down 3.5% to down 1.5% year-over-year, which is roughly in line with our market and consistent with our previous outlook. Now let's switch to margin. We continue to expect our full year adjusted operating margin to be in the range of 10.7% to 10.9%, and compared to our 2025 adjusted operating margin of 10.7%.

On a year-over-year basis, we expect the exit of our charging business to drive a 10 basis point improvement in adjusted operating margin. Excluding this benefit, the low end of our margin outlook contemplates the business delivering a full year decremental conversion in the low double digits. At the high end, our outlook assumes we largely offset the impact of the organic sales decline through further cost control similar to what we delivered in the first half of 2026.

Our strong first half performance is enabling the company to increase our planned industrial R&D spending while maintaining our full-year adjusted operating margin and guidance comment. We continue to see strong customer interest in our growing industrial portfolio and believe BorgWarner's mechanical and electronic powertrain core competencies fit extremely well to serve the needs of a high-power industrial market.

Given these factors, we are leaning forward in accelerating our R&D spending on these products by investing an incremental $10 million to $15 million to support our future growth. This is a great testament. The Board want our team's ability to execute at a high level in the short term to support our long-term sustainable sales growth in a growing market.

Importantly, we are making this R&D investment while maintaining our full year margin guidance. Based on this sales and margin outlook, we are now expecting full year adjusted EPS and in the range of $5.05 to $5.30 per diluted share, which is an increase compared to our initial guidance range of $5 to $5.20 per diluted share. This increase is primarily due to the share repurchases completed during the first half of 2026. The midpoint of this adjusted EPS guidance represents approximately a 5% increase versus our 2025 adjusted EPS and once again demonstrates our focus on consistently driving earnings expansion despite lower industry production.

And finally, we continue to expect full year free cash flow to be in the range of $900 million to $1.1 billion, building off a strong 2025. With that, that's our 2026 outlook. Now let's turn to Slide 11 and discuss our recently increased share repurchase authorization. As Joe highlighted in his opening remarks, we repurchased approximately $100 million in BorgWarner stock during the second quarter. This takes our share repurchases over the last 4 quarters to approximately $650 million and leaves $350 million remaining under our prior share repurchase authorization.

Our Board of Directors approved an increase of up to $1 billion through 2029. When combined with the $350 million remaining under our prior authorization, management has the ability to repurchase up to $1.35 billion of the company's outstanding shares or just over 10% of our current market cap. I believe this authorization increase demonstrates the confidence we have in the long-term cash-generating strength of our business and our focus on driving shareholder value through a balanced capital allocation approach that rewards shareholders, so let me summarize my financial remarks.

Overall, we were very pleased with our second quarter results. Our light vehicle sales performance was modestly stronger than industry production. We achieved a 100 basis point adjusted operating margin improvement and a 17% adjusted earnings per share increase on relatively flat reported sales. Our strong free cash flow performance supported a cash return of approximately $134 million to shareholders in the quarter.

Q2 performance once again demonstrates the Board Werner team's ability to deliver strong financial results and a declining production environment. We believe this increased share repurchase authorization by our Board of Directors demonstrates our long-term confidence in the cash-generating ability of our business. As we look ahead to the balance of 2026, we intend to remain focused on expanding the earnings power of the company.

At the midpoint of our guidance, we expect another year of adjusted operating margin expansion and adjusted earnings per share growth despite our expectations that market volumes and battery sales will define in 2026 and an incremental $10 million to $15 million investment in industrial R&D to accelerate our long-term sales growth. With another year of anticipated strong free cash flow of $1 billion at the midpoint of our guidance, we expect to continue to deploy capital in a balanced approach that reward shareholders.

By continuing to focus on near-term execution, growing the long-term earnings power of Kony through organic and inorganic investments and following a ballast deployment of our capital, we believe BorgWarner will create significant shareholder value for many years to come.

With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Pat.

Thank you, Craig. Nick, are to open it up for questions. .

[Operator Instructions] The first question will come from Chris McNally with Evercore.

Thanks, team. Joe, could you maybe provide a little more color on some of the quoting progress you discussed on the AI initiatives. I think in particular, maybe you could give like a really quick one-on-one on the BorgEndeavor Turbocel relationship I think given most of us are keeping cloud kind of busy mapping out the different public entities such as Edge, which is also recently in the news. So one of the questions I think that would be great to answer is will Borg announce every smaller DC win within the relationship? Or is it likely to back them together as they become material? And then a follow-up.

Yes. Chris. So as I mentioned in the remarks, we're really pleased with the progress we made in the second quarter. And we remain on track starting with the TG. So as you know, we're launching that next year in 2027. And a couple of data points here that business, first of all, the customer interest remains really strong, including multiple hyperscalers. And as you know, endeavor, that is their value in this relationship. So we're really pleased with that. We achieved the car level of missions, which is really a differentiator for us compared to what's out there.

And then the UL compliance is in process. So from where I stand, we're on track to deliver -- with regard to the Endeavour relationship, it continues to grow and get stronger as time passes on. We won't decide do we announce every individual event. We try to share the important events and milestones with the investors. And then with the recent news on Endeavour and their partner in Coke. We're also aware of it. It's not unusual that these financial partners are constantly out raising money for the data center growth, which is out there.

But we don't think it materially changes anything between us and our relationship with Endeavour. Partnership is stronger than ever. We see a great fit between our company and also how we see the future of the world. If anything, this has credibility to Endeavour. It adds credibility to their edge data center business that they're a fantastic player, and we're just happy to be partnered with them.

That's great. I agree. And I think the hyperscale wins obviously would be material by themselves. And -- so then just a quick follow-up is on the BFS side. You reiterated start of production '27. The quoting continues Nick, you even shared in your prepared remarks, more to share later this year, which is great, and I imagine aligns with RFP timing.

Is there any order of magnitude for what a typical contract or win size maybe that you can give sort of rule of thumb. I know no contract is the same. But anything rule thumb because we're trying to start to think about what an average contract could be there.

Yes. I wouldn't say there's any type of rule of thumb. Every data center project is bespoke, what we find is important is that our TG and Turbo cell solution, our battery business and our power conversion all play a very important role in these future data centers. So any award in the battery space with hyperscaler obviously to be substantial. We continue to see a strong pipeline of quoting. We're progressing our product offering here. In fact, we're expanding the range of products that we're offering. So I'm really pleased with the progress we're making here, and we'll likely share more updates later this year.

The next question will come from Colin Langan with Wells Fargo.

Just a follow-up on the turbine generator. I think in the past, you commented that you'd consider announcing adding more capacity in the second half of this year. Is that still the plan? I mean, any thoughts on the need to add more capacity given the customer interest? And if you do decide how quickly can the new capacity come online?

Yes. Colin, so we do continue to see strong demand, as we have mentioned. So we're really encouraged by that. And as we've shared with you, we do anticipate we're going to have to make a decision in the second half of this year on capacity and also decide is that capacity going to serve this market or maybe a different market, which we're also active with our partner in Deveron. No decisions made yet, but I am encouraged by the demand side of the equation, so more to come.

And just 1 question on the results today. I mean if I look at your sales were up just $10 million EBITDA $40 million. That's quite a strong conversion. Even if I take batteries out, it's up $40 million on $70 million in sales. What is driving this extremely high sort of strong conversion on growth? And I think you mentioned strong cost controls sort of can possibly continue in the second half, would be the upper end of guidance. What are those cost controls? And why wouldn't they continue since you have a couple of quarters of that under your belt?

Thanks, Colin, for the question. It was great execution on all fronts across our business. 11.3% margin in the quarter, up 100 basis points. When you break down that 100 basis point improvement year-over-year, 60 basis points came from strong performance from our foundational businesses, TT and DMS great job by those teams. We had 20 basis points of enhancement through BES, the restructuring actions that they've taken in 2025 and 2026 as well as the exit of the charging business. Then the final 20 basis points came from strong cost controls. What I was most excited about was we expanded margins every business unit, and I was equally happy that corporate provided a nice tailwind. It was just strong execution across the board.

Next question will come from Luke Junk with Barrett.

Joe, curious to double click on one of your comments in the script around inverter efficiency. Just hoping you speak a little more to what you see as the company's motinverter efficiency, especially potential future applications that could stem from that? Do you have an ambition to expand the portfolio further there? And in terms of scope, maybe if you could just remind us also of some of the markers for efficiency the outline at the 23 Investor Day, I think you'd outlined a path to kind of industry-leading levels for automotive. .

Yes. So thanks for that question. So when you think about efficiency, why is that important, especially on the industrial side, power is the constraint. So any improvement in efficiency is important -- we continue to see efficiency gains as we develop next-gen inverters. Sometimes that comes from the silicon and silicon carbide technology, often, it comes from our proprietary power module, which we produce and develop ourselves. And a lot of that just has to do with how you cool the device as we're driving a lot of power through it. So efficiency numbers from generation to generation, they tend to vary. But similar to the fuel economy improvements, you tend to see a few basis points or even a few hundred basis points at times with major steps forward.

Yes. And then just in terms of the investment in scope, I think if I think Microcat inverter, I mean there certainly could be other places in the gray space or even getting more into the transformation of power. Just how should we think about the scope of opportunities that you might be looking at in inverter type things? .

So our leading product to the market is like they're going to be a microgrid tie type of inverter. So tying together power gen, with all the other power sources and possibly even the bid, which of course, is outside the building. So that's what we're leading with. But we see other possible opportunities here. So on the grid side, we've started to expand our range. We were leading with 800 volts, and it's likely that will be the first award.

But -- we've expanded the range from 400 volts to 1,500 volts. And then secondly, our teams evaluating other opportunities in the gray space and inside the building, as you know, with the next-generation NVIDIA chipsets there's a high demand for power at the rack level, and this plays very well into the work we do on the automotive side.

And then for my follow-up, Joe, could you just maybe give us some additional color on the new product your website that you briefly touched on the script, things like UPS battery backup units and similar sort of what the incremental R&D that you're putting in the back half of the year is pointing to?

Little incremental products are some of the examples when we talk about expanding the portfolio, whether it's energy storage, like you mentioned, on boundary backup, or some of the new power conversion products, which I just mentioned. And those are the areas where the $10 million to $15 million incremental R&D are to support. So we're really excited about that. A year ago, we weren't even talking about these products. If you can imagine the progress our teams have made, especially in the first and second quarter, I'm just extremely pleased with that. So excited to see what comes with this additional investment.

The next question will come from Joseph Spak with UBS.

So you came in about almost $40 million higher this quarter. You're raising R&D said by 10% to 15%. So -- the other in OI is basically flat, so -- for the full year. So the other $25 million to $30 million, is that just some higher cost. Maybe you could just talk about that. And then just with this higher level of R&D, should we think of this as a more sustained pace into the future? Or is it something of a pull forward because you see some of these emerging opportunities that you alluded to in your prepared remarks?

Yes, thanks for the question. So I think it would be helpful to walk you first half to second half revenue and then operating income or margin. When you think about sales, sales in the first half came in just under $7.2 billion. The midpoint of our guide puts us right around $7 billion from a top line perspective. We have 3 headwinds, first half to second half. First is the battery decline. That's about $60 million. FX is a headwind, it's about $80 million, and the rest is industry production, we're assuming a modest decline in industry production of about 1%. That, again, takes us to $7 billion of revenue at the midpoint.

On those lower revenues, we're decrementing at 15%, call it mid-teens -- and then we're leaning forward with that $10 million to $15 million in industrial R&D. If you were to exclude that step-up in R&D, our margin would be at 10.8% that's effectively in line with first half if you include industrial R&D, at the midpoint, we're at 10.6%. So from our perspective, this makes a lot of sense, and we're excited to invest that extra $10 million to $15 million to enhance our portfolio.

And Joe, I can answer the question on sustained investment. So from my standpoint, these opportunities that are what's driving the R&D investment. So as we continue to see more opportunities in the industrial space, we're going to go after them these products, keep in mind, they think probably 18 to 24 months to develop in general. So when we start investing, you can expect to have some level of sustained spending, but I think we know that BorgWarner is pretty efficient with how we spend our R&D and in this case, focused on really attractive growth.

And Joe, maybe just 1 other comment. We got to step back and think about we're executing in the short term. We're still expanding margins. We're still expanding EPS. We're still generating a significant amount of free cash flow. And at the same time, we're investing in our long term in a high-growth market. It's a great time to be a worried. Yes.

No, absolutely. Second question, maybe just sort of turning back to the automotive business. One of the things that has clearly come a little bit more into focus is some of the vehicles being exported from China and similarly, some of the maybe European luxury programs into China. Can you remind us like what you think your exposure is to I guess, China export this as a percent of your overall China business? And then have you seen any impact from some reduced demand of, let's say, legacy European vehicles in China?

So maybe to frame that a bit. So China is about 20% of BorgWarner's global sales. We don't break out global versus export. I mean, quite frankly, we don't know when they're exporting a vehicle or not. So that's not something. I don't know if you really break out. What we are feeling good about is that position, a strong position we have in China has led to some tailwinds as they export more to the other markets.

So the Chinese OEMs had an amazing first half in terms of export. And we don't see any reason why that won't continue. With regard to the European luxury car makers. We really don't see a big issue and mix of a lot of that just comes down to our customer diversity. When a few others are down. Most of that tends to just kind of wash out. So that's what we see at this point.

Next question will come from Andrew Percoco with Morgan Stanley.

Great. I want to come back to some of the comments you made on the turbine generator product in the hyperscaler interest that you're seeing. Can you just provide some context on whether they're looking at this product on a primary power basis or a backup power basis? And Also, if you can provide any insight in terms of if the economics look any different from your perspective on your side on whether or not they end up using it prime versus backup?

Yes. James. So our turbine generator can serve in both primary and backup. In fact, when we started this project a few years ago, we thought the majority of applications would be in back up, I would say, in the last 12 months, that's flopped that we see more of them in prime use. So I think that just speaks to the speed to compute and the shortage of power generation in general. So this turbo cell unit using BorgWarner TG serves equally well.

And both of those are very low emissions, lower noise than some of our competitors and speed to market is really important. So we're excited about it. In terms of the economics, I would just say, overall, we're very pleased with the terms in the agreement that we have with Endeavour across of all use cases.

Okay. That's helpful. And you mentioned time to power obviously being probably more important at this point than just cost of power. So as you scale production in 2027. Like what's your targeted order to kind of delivery conversion time line? Like what are you trying to advertise to the customers that are talking to you about taking delivery of this product?

Yes. So we've announced we're installing 2 gigawatts of capacity and in the initial year, which is next year, about $300 million of revenue. So we are quoting through Endeavour lead times to deliver these units. I would say it's another advantage we have and this. I mean think about it this way. we're standing up materially automotive production and supply chain in an environment that's probably not used to that type of speed. So -- we feel this is also a competitive advantage for us. So the order time as well within the lead times of our capacity and the capacity of our suppliers.

So you're talking about like potentially less than 6 months from when you -- when someone places in order to when you can deliver? Is that a fair way to think about it? Once you have capacity?

Yes. I would say we haven't really disclosed our lead times, and I'm not going to talk about that. But I would say the main focus right now is on launching the unit in 2026. And we'll share more as we get into 2027 with regard to your questions.

The next question will come from James Picariello with BNP Paribas.

Everybody. I know Coke Industries has already been mentioned, I mean, the recent news flow of Coke potentially looking to sell its stake in edge at an i $15 billion valuation maybe. My question is, I know it's all speculation at this point, but within the contractual relationship you have with Edge by way of turbo cell, are there any change in control triggers involved? Anything that could affect the $300 million plus in revenue that you have slated for next year?

Yes. So there's nothing in our agreement that triggers change in control. You keep in mind that there are several edged legal entities. The one that directly deal with is 100% owned by Endeavour. That's not what being spoken about. It's more about what we understand how co can raise additional money to support the growth that's coming. So again, we don't see this as a material issue. We're just excited to be partnered with Endeavour and their edge business unit. And we just think it has great credibility to what they're doing if partners like Coke and others are out there raising money to fund their projects.

Yes. No, for sure. Totally agree. And then on battery systems, losses through the first half only totaled $4 million. I know there are charging exit and battery plant consolidation savings in play. But like if we scrub for those, the underlying performance is still far and away better than the company targeted mid-teens decremental. Can you just shed some light on what's driving that? And just directionally, how we should be thinking about the first half to second half bridge for this particular segment?

Sure. So really pleased with BS on their performance. They've taken a lot of restructuring actions both in 2025, we continue to take actions in 2026 to get that cost structure right. On top of that, you mentioned that we have the benefit of the exit of our charging business last year. That's benefiting our financials this year. Ultimately, as you walk from first half to second half, we would expect to manage it in that mid-teens decremental conversion to us that success, and that's what we're focused on executing.

Mid-teens decremental half over.

Half Cap over.

Next question will come from Emmanuel Rosner with Wolfe Research.

My first question, you've been obviously announcing a real significant amount of awards pretty consistently every quarter, another sort of like 7 today. And to help us frame what is would do for your close over market on a go-forward basis and the timing of it? Can we expect it to be already positive in 2027? And where could the trend sort of like over time as you launch a lot of these businesses?

Sure. So what I am pleased with and you reference said is this booking strength that we've had over the last 2 years, and it's been across all of our product lines. So I do expect these bookings to support improvement in our objective in outgrowth across portfolio in 2027. And then, of course, we announced the $300 million of new growth associated with the industrial business. So overall, Craig and I are pleased with the progress we're making, and we'll share more early next year on 2027.

But if it started even longer term without being specific in 2027, like -- and does that enable you to go back to historical levels of growth of the market?

Yes. So Emmanuel, what we've clearly stated is Greg and I are not pleased with the current outgrowth that the company has witnessing. And that is why we adjusted the strategy to drive growth across the entire portfolio. So -- as you can probably imagine, the strong bookings that we've had over the last 2 years, they take time to come to production, but we're clearly expecting that they're going to improve the outgrowth of the company. And as those volumes move through launch and into peak volumes, we're anticipating those improvements will continue to come. So we'll share more in 2027, but I think that probably gives you a good idea of where we're heading.

Yes. And on the industrial side, can you help us dimension the inverter size of the opportunity for you, not so much in terms of addressable market, but more in terms of how much capacity you're planning to have, right? Because for the turbines, we kind of know the initial capacity that's put in the ground. On the energy storage side, I think your capacity is essentially the available 1 from some of your battery pack earlier investments. So we kind of have an order of size, but I'm not super clear on the inverter side, what do you have in terms of facilities, in terms of investment and capacity.

So we haven't announced any capacity availability or what we plan to install. I mean, frankly, we're going to move to quoting at the end of this year. That will be what we used to kind of gauge how do we leverage the existing capacity investment versus where we may need new capacity. One of the things we're really excited about with especially our grid tie inverters, is their majority is designed in the U.S. We made plans some U.S. manufacturing even -- so we've got a lot of opportunity on that product line. But it's early days in terms of quoting, and I'm sure we'll be in a position to share more in 2027.

The next question will come from Dan Levy with Barclays.

I wanted to start with a question on capital allocation. And I know that you, in your release issued a new $1 billion buyback authorization, you've been buying back a fair amount of stock -- how are you thinking about your capital allocation program in light of this new growth opportunity that you have in light of a multiple that is better, I know you've talked about stepping up the spend a little bit, but that doesn't seem fairly modest. Is there more that can be done on accelerating spend, be it R&D or CapEx that would then accelerate the growth opportunity? Is there any M&A that can be done? Just how are you thinking about spending accelerating the industrial opportunity?

Yes. Thanks, Dan. As I step back, what are Joe and what are we focused on? And we're focused on growing the earnings power of the company. And we want to create value with our cash. That's the ultimate goal. -- and we're always balancing inorganic opportunities, organic opportunities, share repurchases. We review it every quarter to make sure that we're creating value quarter after quarter.

When I take a look back over the past year, we repurchased $650 million, it's 5% of our market cap. That was success for us over the past 4 quarters. We're excited that we have the flexibility from our Board of Directors with another $1.35 billion. That represents 10% of our market cap. But presently, it gives us a lot of flexibility. And I think it also shows the confidence we have in the future cash-generating ability of our business. But ultimately, our goal is to drive the earnings power of the company, and we're going to use every lever at our disposal to do just that.

And maybe to add a little bit, we will always prioritize these organic investments as we see growth opportunities, both on the R&D side and the CapEx side.

From a tech perspective on the new growth opportunities, do you have everything you need in house? Or is there something you still need to acquire to sort of beef up the portfolio from a tech perspective?

I mean, I think we're moving from a position of strength. When I look at our portfolio, especially that we've invested and grown over the last 10 years, these 3 new product lines for industrial, our able leverage a lot of that competence now there may be opportunities through inorganic growth that we want to continue to strengthen the current portfolio or improve market position. So in terms of M&A, we're sticking to the 3 criteria, which, again, is leverage the core competence of the company is the first priority. The second is making sure it's near-term accretive. And then third, that we don't overpay and we pay a fair value for any assets. So we continue to look at inside mobility and outside, but I would say we've really raised the hurdle in terms of any decision we're going to make.

Okay. And as a follow-up, I wanted to ask about your battery storage opportunity, from some of the other players, we've heard a lot about the importance of having access to domestic LFP supply, which gives you the right chemistry, but also give you ITC and PTC compliance. It looks here like your focus on battery storage is more on data centers. I know you've talked about being chemistry agnostic, but to what extent does having access to LFP matter? And to what extent does PTC and ITC eligibility matter as you're building out the business case for battery storage.

So I think the way to see our energy storage first as we want to leverage the existing technology and capacity we have in, especially in our Senegal plant. So that's our first priority. But we have always and we continue to work with other cell types and cell supply manufacturers. So LFP is included in that sodium ion is included in that.

I think it's 1 of the great advantages of being so agnostic is we have a lot of competence in how to integrate these cells, package them control them and sell EMS and ship them as a unit. So we do anticipate that we will require some of those other cell technologies on a go-forward basis and we continue to invest and how we bring those to market and to each partner.

The next question will be coming from Alex Perry with Bank of America.

Here. Just for the core auto business, I wanted to follow up. So how the organic sales was slightly lowered the sort of low end of the range of production. Maybe just talk to us sort of what you're seeing in schedules. And particularly, I wanted to circle back on China. It's been a more challenging market for most of the supplier group so far. Maybe talk to us what you're seeing in customer schedules there and maybe versus Europe and North America.

Yes. So starting on a global level, production range has largely remained unchanged in our view. We still see schedules holding up as we expected. I would say there are some small regional changes in China likely to be down 4% to 7%. Europe down slightly, a little bit wider range, I would say, in North America, between up 1.5% and down 2.5% to 3%, so there is a little bit of volatility still, especially on the pass car side. But overall, no big changes. I think what people are recognizing is the strength of the Chinese OEMs ex from China.

They had very strong exports in the first half. So if you play that forward, you can imagine they're going to be exporting them where from, I don't know, 9 million to 11 million units, which would be a big year-over-year increase. For us, it doesn't change much. We're very strong at these leading Chinese OEMs and our customer diversity more or less washes out some of those mix issues that maybe others see in their business.

Really helpful. And then just another follow-up on the power gen. Any sort of sense on how fast you can scale the power gen sales with the existing capacity. So I think you're sort of earmarking $300 million for next year. What can that sort of scale to over time? And then any sort of Palmer sent in sizing the sort of EBIT contribution as we start to build out our models here?

Yes. I would first say we're very focused. Our teams are very focused on a successful launch. And so we have announced $300 million of revenue, which we're very comfortable with next year. But right now, we're focused on executing flawlessly and doing everything we need to and supporting our suppliers and doing the same. We haven't shared any ratios of revenue to capacity that might be something we do in the future. But we don't see really demand as a constraint on our ability to scale as a constraint. It really comes down to our leading our quality milestones and our operational milestones to be able to serve those requirements that we see out there.

We have time for 1 final question, and that question comes from Rajat Gupta with JPMorgan.

I just wanted to follow up some of the hyperscaler opportunity. You mentioned earlier about our award in the battery space will be substantial. I'm curious like without a rule of thumb, can you free in the range of outcome? What comes first with that kind of an award? Is it the turbine? Is it distorted systems in order -- I'm just curious like how the sequencing will work and impact just a capacity decision? And I have a quick follow-up.

Yes. Maybe for clarity's sake, the turbine generator, that's a product that we have developed and are supported by Endeavour. We go to market through Endeavour. On the battery side or energy storage side and the power conversion side, we can serve the entire market. With the sequencing, we expect the leadless turbine generator. Obviously, we've announced that it's the most developed product and we're launching that with clear customer next year.

We do expect to see some battery awards this year, as we've shared in the past. And then I would say the power conversion is a little bit behind that. And that's mainly due to the development is a little behind the energy storage side. So that's why we've shared -- we'll start to go that toward the end of this year. So hopefully, that's helpful.

No, that's helpful. And then just on the 2027 start of production of $300 million. What are the remaining gating factors to that sort of production? It seems like everything so far has been tracking per plan. I'm curious like what are the next final 1 or 2 steps before the shipments.

Sure. So we announced a couple of the milestones, which we're really pleased with the progress we've been making to date. There's additional milestones, how are we doing against our qualification testing that show that we meet all the requirements we need to. There's reliability testing. There's the ramp-up of production to make sure we're hitting our quality and cycle time as we expect -- so those are some of the things we're looking at internally to gauge our success and where do we have to adjust. But this part of the process is well known to BorgWarner. We conduct over I can't even imagine hundreds, let's just say, hundreds of launches a year. So this part of the product development and launch phase, we're very familiar with. So it's just a lot of work and focus on execution and adjusting where you find issues. So really pleased with the progress to date.

With that, I'd like to thank everyone for their questions today. If you have any additional follow-ups, feel free to reach out to me or my team. With that, Nick can conclude today's call.

This concludes the BorgWarner 2026 Second Quarter Results Conference Call. You may now disconnect.

Why don't we kick off the next session with BorgWarner. Today, we have the CEO, Joe Fadool and CFO, Craig Aaron, as well as Pat Nolan, Head of IR.

Most of you probably know, BorgWarner is obviously an auto powertrain leader, both in ICE and EV. And it has been actually our top pick for quite a while now, mostly on my view of them proving out the EV story and e-powertrain story. However, recently, pretty well known now as you've made a pretty smart pivot into data centers, which is, I think, a pretty very compelling diversification opportunity. And I think it has generated quite a bit of excitement, obviously reflected in the stock year-to-date. It will probably be most of the focus of my questions today.

But -- maybe just sort of more maintenancey. Any color on -- I know you guys don't preannounce, but how is the quarter trending? We've seen S&P has cut numbers a bit. Does that sort of present a risk to you guys? Any thoughts there in terms of the quarter and the outlook?

Yes, sure. I can take that one. So when you look at our full year guide from an industry production perspective, we said flat to down 3%. S&P is coming in right around 2%. So we're right in the middle of the guide. We did reconfirm our February guidance in April, sales coming in right around $14.15 billion at the midpoint. When you look at Q1, Q1 came in at $3.53 billion. You sort of annualize that, you get pretty close to the midpoint of our guide. So we feel good about how we executed in Q1. Margins up 50 basis points, revenue, again, coming in at $3.5 billion. We feel like we're right on track to deliver our guide. So we're pretty pleased with the way the year has played out so far.

Okay. So obviously, a lot of excitement on the new products and data centers. You announced a win on the turbine generators on the Q4 call. And last call, you highlighted storage and the microgrid inverters. Can you talk a bit about how long have you been developing this product? It sounds like it's been several years. And how much overlap is there with your current auto tech in these products?

Sure. So thanks for having us, Colin. If we first start with the problem we're trying to solve, it's all around power availability. That's the problem. So these 3 products all addressing that issue. Starting with the power generation or turbine generator, we've been working on this with our partner, Endeavour over 3.5 years. But if you consider all the technologies and size, for decades. When you look at the inside of this, it's turbocharging, it's high-speed rotating machines, power electronics, software and controls. So we bring quite a bit of know-how and IP to the table here. And we're pretty pleased with this partnership we've had with Endeavour.

When you think about the battery storage business, this is a business -- we actually started talking about this topic of nonautomotive for a couple of years now since 2023. But this is the window that we see the opportunity to move into the space more concretely. So we have been working to leverage the open capacity we have. We all know the CV market, which we position this business for has been much softer than we all anticipated. But these systems are designed for very high reliability and tough use cases on a commercial vehicle. So it makes them very suitable for stationary power.

When we look at the microgrid, which is a little bit newer product to market, the basis of that is the convergence of 800 volts in data centers with automotive technology, which already operates at 800 volts. So that's the piece or the window that really gives us a chance to move into this space fairly quick. If you look at why are people moving to 800 volts, it's really driven by the NVIDIA chipsets. On the next generation, which requires the higher power, higher power density. And we're a market leader in inverters and have been shipping 800-volt systems for years. So for us, that gives us a right to win.

When you cut across all 3 of these products, so power generation, storage and conversion, the one big common theme is the automotive scale and competitiveness. When I talk about automotive scale, you're talking about high volume with very high-quality requirements, very competitive space in automotive, and that cuts across all 3 of these, which allows us to sort of accelerate the disruption.

Can you talk about starting with the first, the turbine generator. I mean, what is the Endeavour relationship? What kind of products is that exclusive to? What can you do in that area beyond that partnership?

Yes. So with Endeavour, as I mentioned, we've been working with them for over 3.5 years. And the way you want to think about it is they're the front end of the relationship. So the customer-facing piece, their principals have been in the data center space for 25 years or more. They see the world similar to us, more efficient, lower emissions, so it was very easy to work with them. We're providing the guts of the system. So we're designing and developing more or less the content of the turbine generator, and this is where we're able to leverage all of our internal knowledge.

The combination of the 2 of us makes complete sense. We want to be laser-focused going to market. They provide that customer relationship with many of the customers like the hyperscalers. And you've probably heard us on our calls, we've had visits at our Asheville location from some of the hyperscalers. That never would have happened without Endeavour. They're the ones that have those relationships. So each of us bring pretty strong contributions to the relationship, and we couldn't be more excited about it.

Now with regard to the other 2 products, the battery storage, we can serve Endeavour, but we can serve the rest of the industrial and data center market independently. Same with microgrid inverters. We can sell them to Endeavour for their use case or we can sell to other players. So we're not in an exclusive relationship like we are with the turbine generator just to contrast the 3 product lines.

And with the turbine generator, though, is it a certain size generator and only data centers? Can you do any of that on your own or everything in that space is through the...

Not everything. So what we have an agreement on is what we call a 350-kilowatt system. And that's the one we're going to market first with and quite frankly, has a lot of interest and demand. So that's where we're putting all of our efforts. I mean we've developed smaller systems in the past. We have a 100-kilowatt system that we've worked with a different start-up on for a sort of waste-to-energy conversion. So we've been playing in this space for, I would say, 12 to 15 years in some form or another. But the exclusive relationship is with the 350-kilowatt system.

Okay. And then -- but you have -- you're bringing 2 gigawatts of capacity. So is that just a whole bunch of those systems together, Joe?

Right. So if you want to imagine, and this is in our investor deck, these 350-kilowatt systems, you can also put them in a single enclosure for a 1-megawatt system, okay? That is likely the first application, but may not be the only. And then as you need more capacity, you add more of these generator systems in place.

One of the things we probably don't talk about enough is the flexibility of that. So when a hyperscaler designs and develops an AI farm, let's call it, they don't start with maximum capacity. You even hear today, some are building 2 gigawatt to 5 gigawatt data centers. Well, they don't start there. They start at maybe 0.5 gigawatt. And then over time, they add on, and that makes our system completely flexible for them. So they don't have to build a complete turbine power system that meets the whole needs at once. They can do it incrementally as they bring more capacity out.

Can you maybe talk about the competitive landscape? Who are the main competitors? And in terms of size, cost and efficiency, how does your products compare?

So there's really 2 use cases. One is primary power and the main competitor there are turbine companies. So you think of Siemens, GE Vernova, Mitsubishi. Now the advantages our system has to theirs is going to be lower emissions. It's designed for Tier 4 emission levels, a little bit less noise. I would say the big advantage right now is if you were to order a large turbine right now, you probably won't see it until 2030. Let alone find an EPC that's going to build it for you.

So for us, we're installing that capacity. We know how to scale quickly. And we're going to make a decision later this year, do we add additional capacity given the demand and the backlog. So the other use case is backup generation. Backup generation usually is with diesel gensets, a little bit natural gas. These are guys like Cummins and Caterpillar are well-known players.

Now how do we compare to them? So significantly lower emissions, which is becoming more and more talked about today for our system. The total operating cost, also much lower. Diesel fuel, pretty expensive compared to natural gas. So even -- let's just say this power to compute starts to subside and you don't have such demand, which has really given us the window to play right now. Let's say that gets back to more normal situation. We still have a very competitive product for the reasons I mentioned. So we think this business is very sustainable over time.

And your initial launch in 2027, that's primary? Or is it backup?

We believe it's going to be primary. I'm not sure we announced it yet. But when we started this journey 3.5 years ago, 80% of the applications were going to be backup and 20% primary. But with the acceleration of generative AI and companies like Anthropic and others, we think it's going to be just the opposite, 80% primary. So I think we're in a really strong position.

Those are more lucrative, I believe, right?

I'm sorry.

Primary is usually more lucrative. I think...

Yes, we haven't delineated between the 2 of them. I mean, for us, they're both great business cases. But let's just say if you're solving the primary need, you're in a lot stronger position because the utilities can't get there fast enough. Once you're there, you're building your brand and your knowledge of the site much more than you are as the backup. We're going to learn a lot more in that primary position. So yes, we're happy to serve both markets. But yes, it's more likely the primaries will be larger.

And on -- if we look at the BESS battery storage. Obviously, that was a pretty smart pivot. So any color on where did this tech come from? This was part of AKASOL, I believe, that was already in the capability set? And any color on the capacity that you have to pivot over to storage and the opportunity there?

So yes, we purchased AKASOL 3, 4 years ago, and the primary purpose was to serve this CV space and the e-bus space. And we installed quite a bit of capacity to serve that space. Unfortunately, those trucks and buses are more expensive than their equivalent diesel. So the market hasn't developed like we all expected. Given that, though, the technology is very fitting to these industrial and data center applications. So it's more how do we design the form factor different. We're cell agnostic. So we're not stuck to one cell type or chemistry. And then, of course, we're leveraging the open capacity.

The name of the game right now is if you can provide generators, if you can provide stationary storage, people are moving you way up the list, okay? So they're willing to take more risk on a player like BorgWarner, which is unknown in the industrial space, but we're well known in the auto space. So that existing capacity, we haven't released a number on it, but let's say it's able to serve the next couple of years what we expect the demand to be. And if we see that demand is going to be even higher, we're happy to put more capital in, more investment in. But I would say we're able to leverage that pretty fast and be in production by next year.

Okay. So I thought in the past, you've capacitized to $1 billion and then you closed one of the facilities further.

Yes, we did announce we capacitized 6 gigawatt total storage between the 3 facilities, Darmstadt, Seneca and Hazel Park. We've since closed Hazel Park. So we have -- in total capacity, we have less than 6 now, but we haven't really given those numbers yet.

And when we think about transitioning from the EV to e-bus type packs to storage, they're pretty much the same technology, just one sitting flat and one is up and down.

Yes, I would say it's similar technology. There's not a lot of new invention going on. We're pushing these down the same production line. We're using the same end-of-line testers. We had to make some small investments to adapt to the new form factor and there's some software changes needed for stationary power. But in all essence, they're a very similar product.

And where are you looking to compete? Because I think there's some big players that are doing more grid-type applications. I assume you don't have that kind of capacity or plans. And what gives you sort of an edge in the areas that you're going to compete?

Right. So some of the big announcements from Ford or LG are more in the segment of those very large container storages, which support the grid directly. We're not playing in that space. We're more in the custom tailored solutions for particular use cases. So think about smaller form factors that are designed specifically for an application. And again, speed to market is important here. I think in Ford's announcement, they're not going to start shipping until 2028. So the need is now for some of those customers, we're able to fulfill that.

I mean any sense of how quickly, because you actually already have showed some customers on the storage side?

Yes. So we're actively quoting battery systems. We're doing everything needed to support a 2027 production launch. So not that far away. And I would say it's likely we're going to be successful.

I thought one -- I was talking about last week. The microgrid inverter, can you talk about the competitive landscape there? And any way to frame the sort of revenue opportunity from these systems? I guess it's sort of interesting with the 800-volt shift, the current product set, the current players in that space don't have -- or aren't used, currently supplying. So is that the big window for you to kind of get into that?

That is the window. As a technology company, you're always looking for the right time to jump into a market because there's incumbents that are very strong. We have a lot of respect for the current players. The shift to 800 volts is the moment. Why is that? First of all, these 800-volt systems are not just higher voltage, they're higher power in general. And we've been serving that market in automotive for quite some time. We're a top 3 player in inverters.

So we understand the requirements there. We design and develop and produce our own power modules, which is the guts of the system. We do that in Singapore. So for us, this is the moment to move, and we're getting very good feedback from the 4 customers we have samples with. So I would say we would expect the next step would be to make sure this is UL certified and that we can support production again in 2027. So we feel we got a very good right to win in this space.

And how should we frame the revenue opportunity there? Because I think a car inverters is like $600, $700 per car or something like that.

Yes. Thank God, they're not at that pricing. But -- we haven't quantified. Automotive is a different space. You're talking about 1 or 2 inverters per car, highly competitive, and we're very successful in that space. So we haven't released any numbers for industrial. But if you think about the backdrop of data centers, they're growing in the mid-teens every year for the next 10 to 20 years. I mean, it'd be hard to believe we wouldn't see a significantly different landscape, especially using 800-volt technology and higher in the future. So pretty sizable TAM.

Also outside of data centers, power conversion plays a big role anytime you're trying to adjust power from AC to DC or up and down the voltage level. Like in a data center, you're generating power at, let's say, 480, you need to move it up to 800, maybe even 1,500 DC. And then when you step it into the building, you got to step it down again to serve the individual racks. So there's tons of opportunity for inverters throughout that entire data center. And those -- that inverter technology is applicable to other industrial applications as well. If you think about oil and gas or power security, power gen applications, they all need inverters that operate at this higher voltage.

In terms of sort of sizing, like are you looking for a handful of wins here? Because it sounds like they'd be in the very large in terms of revenue for just one individual win because it's massive data center versus a car.

Yes. I wouldn't put a number on it. I would say we don't enter any market lightly. We want to make sure we have a right to win in the space. So based on our assessment, we continue to invest R&D into this area, and we're prepared to capacitize for that microgrid inverter that we've been talking a little bit about recently. But I think we have walk before we run. We want to make sure we get it right out of the gate. And that's why it's important to have samples with customers. We'll get important feedback from them, then we can fine-tune the application and make sure we go to market with something that's really different and of value to those customers.

And can you talk about the financial profile? I think you've talked about mid-teens type margins or converting at mid-teens businesses not really exist today. So is that a mid-teen EBIT margin overall that we're thinking about?

Yes. When we publicly discussed the power generation opportunity, we've shared $300 million in revenue in 2027, and we would expect that to convert in the mid-teens, consistent with our auto expectations. We're, of course, expecting some inefficiencies in that mid-teens conversion because it's our first year of launch. We're just ramping up. We're not at full capacity. So that's the expectation in the first year. And that's what would mean success for us as we look at power generation.

As we get into battery and power conversion, the same discipline applies in our auto business. So we're looking for 15% ROIC or higher. And I think Joe and I feel pretty bullish that we'll meet or exceed that threshold as we look at those other opportunities.

And what about R&D and CapEx in these areas? Because it seems so far, it's extremely CapEx light, but how are you thinking about those headwinds going forward?

What I think is really impressive about our business, and I'll use power generation as a great example. We've been working on it for 3 years. That's what Joe mentioned. But when you look at TTT that's been doing all of this work, they've exceeded or expanded or at least maintained their margin while still investing in this technology. That's incredible work by that team. And we have the same expectations as we jump into battery and we jump into power conversion. We still think we can meet our mid-teens incremental conversion while still investing in these new technologies. So that's how I think you should think about it from a margin perspective.

As we jump into the capital side, we did a phenomenal job last year really managing capital. We had a lot of eProducts capital in play. We need to make sure that we utilize that capital throughout the world. And that's why CapEx as a percentage of sales is only at 3%. As we step into this year, our guidance assumes about 4.5%, which is more in line with our historical range. And as we move forward, Joe and I think, hey, that 4.5% to 5% of sales range is likely where we're going to stay as we expand into these new opportunities. And we see that as a very achievable level of CapEx as we move forward to support all this growth that we expect to see in the near future.

How much -- if you were to add more capacity, I mean, how should people frame that in terms of the CapEx needed?

Yes. So when we think about power generation and this expansion, we publicly disclosed it cost us about $70-ish million to stand up this greenfield site in North Carolina. So that's probably a good baseline as we move forward. But again, I think as you think about -- as this revenue comes into our P&L and we're going to continue to expand, that 4.5% to 5% of sales range is probably a good modeling assumption as we move forward. That's the best way I think should think about it.

And I think what's important to note, in the automotive space, efficiency of capital is super important, of course. It's no different in this industrial space, but the demand is so high. We'd be happy to invest more capital because ROIC is super attractive. So people shouldn't think about us constrained too much on the capital side. If the demand is there for the products, we're going to invest because it's very attractive for us.

And don't forget, we're generating $1 billion of free cash flow. We have plenty of opportunity to invest if the business case makes sense. So I completely agree with Joe.

Got it. And maybe going back to the core business. You didn't change guidance last quarter. S&P has gotten a little bit worse. Raw mats are a bit worse. I mean, any puts and takes to kind of kept things sort of held in line?

Yes, it is really what I mentioned earlier. S&P has come in about 2% down for the year. It's right within our range, flat to down 3%. So market production is right in our assumptions for the guide. Q1, Q2 seem to be holding up pretty well from a revenue perspective. Really happy with how the team performed in the first quarter, 10.5% margin, up 50 basis points. It's a continuation of the great performance that we've seen over the last couple of years. As Joe and I sit here, I think we feel really good about our guide, and we're just going to continue to focus on Q2 and execute. So we feel good about where we're going for 2026.

Got it. I actually going back a second for the -- when would you decide to put more CapEx in place? Do you need the orders in hand for the turbine generator opportunity? Or would you do it just anticipating those orders? How are you thinking about that?

Yes. What we've said is second part of this year, we'll likely make a decision on whether we put more capacity in. So the criteria we're using for certain demand is part of it, but not only. If you think about bringing a new product to market, we want to make sure the quality is right, the first time through on the manufacturing side, our supplier readiness. So we're evaluating all those things. Hey, we want to come out strong and make sure the BorgWarner brand really shows well in our first big industrial play.

So those are the criteria. Also, we're looking at where would we put that investment. Would we put that in Hendersonville or will we put it in Europe? We see demand on the data center side in Europe or would we put it in Southeast Asia. So that's also part of the decision so that we can balance the capacity and serve the customers in their markets.

Got it. Okay. Switching back -- going back to the core guidance. One question I have gotten hasn't been too much year-to-date, but Q1 organic growth was a bit weak. I mean even if you take out batteries, it was down 3%. How should we -- what sort of drove that sort of weaker growth? And how should we think about it playing through the rest of the year? Because you've historically been very solid grower over market.

Yes. So if you look at Q1 and you remove battery, we're basically right in line with market, which is right in line with our full year guide. So that's one data point. When you break it down by region, North America, we saw some strength. It was really coming from our DMS business from some transfer case growth in that market. On the European side, we did have a thermal program ending. So that was a bit of a headwind for us. And then in China, it was really timing of an eProduct program.

So those were kind of the puts and takes. But I wouldn't over-index on any one quarter. When I take a big step back, $3.53 billion in revenue in the first quarter, you annualize that, we're right around $14.15 billion, which is in the middle of our guide. So it seems like we're right on track. That's, I think, the best way to look at it.

And how should we think about -- you mentioned sort of an organic growth. I think you've highlighted this year was a tougher year going into this year. The '27 still on track to be a strong recovery with some launches coming? Is that the right way to think about it that picks up on the core auto business next year?

Yes. So when you think about where have we been in the last couple of years, it's been -- we've been moving in this flat to 1% growth over market. And it's because we've had this EV overhang for the last several years. Obviously, there were a lot of expectations that EVs were going to grow, and we won our fair share of business, but those programs either didn't launch or they launched at much lower volume. And one of the things that Joe and I were really focused on as we took these roles was we're not happy with the outgrowth profile of our business, and we want to change it.

And Joe set a tone of we want all of our business units to grow, find your growth opportunities. And that's led to a lot of energy in our company being released and 40-plus wins that we've announced over the last 5 quarters. And as we look into '27, '28, '29, we expect to see some of those programs into our P&L. And we see it as a step function. So we should see outgrowth in our auto business in '27, further outgrowth in '28 and further outgrowth in 2029.

And so we're really excited to get to a place where we're seeing outgrowth and increasing revenue in our P&L because it's amazing what our company has done to expand margins and the earnings power of the company despite revenue being relatively flat. I think we're really excited to see what our company can do when we see that top line growing again in '27, '28, '29. It's going to be a really powerful story for us.

Got it. Any questions out there? I got a quick check in there. Raise your hand if you have any. I'll try to get you before we end.

Yes, one question on the backup power when you talk about [indiscernible] so coming up faster [indiscernible]?

So it matters to a certain extent. Our system comes up in about 45 seconds, which is a main requirement. Diesel gensets has come up a little bit faster than that. So we feel that where we're positioned with that 45 seconds is adequate for what the hyperscalers are asking for. Remember, they got -- they often have battery storage on site too. The trio effect here is primary power, backup power and battery storage to help smooth out transients and also interruptions to primary power.

Follow up on the comments made on the auto business returning to growth in '27, '28, '29 [indiscernible]. Just what's driving that [indiscernible] program specific launches or anything else?

Yes. I mean, as we had mentioned on the calls, the change we made to leverage the entire business for growth, not just electrification, resulted in the business units really working on and winning new business. And we've been trying to share many of those awards in the last 18 months. If you look in those awards, some of them are conquest businesses. So this whole idea of the strong get stronger in these -- especially the foundational businesses, we're starting to see it now in the wins. So those wins take 2 to 3 years to bring to production. So this year, we're still living with this EV slowdown in the Western world, but we'll start to see those programs launch next year and then pick up volumes in '28. So that's our thesis there.

Maybe to add just a little bit more. I love the profile. It's across region, it's across customer. It's across technology. When you think about where the world was 2 or 3 years ago, it was really focused on eProducts. Now it's across all different technology, all different customers. That gives us a lot of confidence that we're going to see this growth accelerating in '27, '28 and '29.

Color on maybe China. It seems like you're very strong position globally in your technologies. But what is the competitive landscape in China, particularly on the e-powertrain, where there's just a lot of emerging suppliers, at least in other segments that seem to be taking share. Is that -- are you seeing the emergence of pretty good competition out of the Chinese suppliers at this point?

So there are a few new players in China, but we're competing extremely well. A number of those wins that we've announced over the last 18 months have been in China. So why are we winning there? First, we've been there a long time, over 30 years. We have very close relationships. And especially when we think about the leading 6, they're the ones that are gaining the export market benefits. What do Chinese OEMs want? They want speed and they want competitive technology, and we have both of those.

So we run shoulder to shoulder with them to get products into the market usually in the 12- to 18-month time frame after you kick off a program. So that's half the time of the Western OEM. So speed is super important. So as we see those Chinese OEMs exporting more, over 7 million vehicles last year, this year, it's likely going to be higher. We're on a lot of those product lines and a lot of those vehicles. We even get a little tailwind here and there, like in the 4-wheel drive business. because the take rates are higher in Europe than in China. So we feel real good about our position there.

And the next step is they're going to have to localize, and we're going to be the likely partner of choice if we're supporting them in China. We already have factories, people, knowledge. We understand the local laws. We can move fast because we've already got existing assets and folks that can stand up localization for them in those markets. So that's our game plan for China so far. It's working quite well. And I think being nimble as they adjust is also important.

How about overall eProducts profitability? So you've shown really, really good growth. It seems like the competitive landscape seems like you're emerging as a leader. But when should we think -- what needs to get that to profit levels overall and then sort of in line with the rest of the business?

Yes. So if you go back a couple of years, we were investing heavily in that side of the business, and it made a lot of sense the world was moving to electrification, and we were supporting a lot of programs that we had won. But it was important as time went on that we rightsized that business to the level of revenue that we were seeing. And so we went through a restructuring that started in 2024. And one of the things that Joe and I were really watching last year, besides the growth, and we had phenomenal growth, 31% light vehicle eProduct growth was, are we converting that growth into income at the mid-teens. That's our expectation.

And that would give us confidence that we got that restructuring -- and that's exactly what we saw last year, 31% growth, and we converted in the mid-teens. That's something that we need to continue to watch as we execute this year. We're expecting growth in light vehicle eProducts around 10%. And we've got to make sure that we can continue to convert that growth into income. If we do that, we got our restructuring right. But we also need to look at the regions. The regions are adopting electrification differently. You know that very well. So we need to make sure that we're continuing to adapt our cost structure to what's happening in the various regions, and I see our business units doing that.

Maybe to wrap it up, there's so much focus on data centers. How are you now thinking about M&A, which is a big -- seem to be a big -- historically has been a big focus of the company, doing smart deals. What are you looking at now? Are you looking more outside of auto? Or how should we think about what you're focused on in terms of M&A priorities and types of assets from here?

Yes. First of all, we're really pleased with the portfolio and the move back toward growth and growth above market, and we're getting good traction there. When we think about M&A, we've really raised the hurdles around M&A. We're in a different situation than we were 5 or 6 years ago. So we can be a little more selective. But we've opened the aperture. So we're not just looking at automotive, we're looking at nonautomotive, including industrial and data center spaces. The criteria we use is straightforward. It means to make industrial logic, leverage our core -- the second is near-term accretion is important. And then third, how we value it. We want to pay a fair price.

So we are very active looking at targets. We've passed on a number of deals that didn't meet one or more of those criteria. But I feel Craig and I and the team will be as disciplined around M&A as we're being around the rest of the business, and you can see the benefits of that's yielding. So if we can't action something, we then return much of that cash back to shareholders and buybacks, dividends. In fact, the last 5 quarters, we've returned 70% of it back to shareholders in that form. So we're looking for balance and consistency in the capital allocation side.

Great. I guess we'll wrap it up there. Thank you very much for joining.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Michael, and I will be your conference specialist. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the BorgWarner 2026 First Quarter Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Patrick Nolan, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Nolan, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. We issued our earnings release earlier this morning. It's posted on our website, borgwarner.com, both on our home page and on our Investor Relations home page. With regard to our Investor Relations calendar, we will be attending multiple conferences being now in our next earnings release.

Please see the Events section of our IR page for a full list. Before we begin, I need to inform you that during this call, we may make forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties as detailed in our 10-K. Our actual results may differ significantly from the matters discussed today. During today's presentation, we will highlight certain non-GAAP measures in order to provide a clearer picture of how the core business performed and for comparison purposes with prior periods. When you hear us say adjusted, that means excluding noncomparable items.

When you hear us say organic, that means excluding the impact of FX. When you hear us refer to our incremental margin performance, incremental margin is defined as the organic change in our adjusted operating income divided by the organic change in our sales. We will also refer to our growth compared to our market. When you hear us say market, that means the change in light vehicle production weighted for our geographic exposure. Please note that we posted today's earnings call presentation to the IR page of our website. We encourage you to follow along with these slides during our discussion.

With that, I'm happy to turn the call over to Joe.

Thank you, Pat, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to share our results for the first quarter of 2026 and provide an overall company update, starting on Slide 5. We I wish to begin by thanking our employees, our customers and our suppliers for all of their trust, efforts and continued support. In the quarter, we achieved sales of $3.5 billion. Excluding the decline in our Battery Energy Systems segment, our organic net sales were down approximately 3% year-over-year, in line with the decline in the market production.

I am excited to report that our strong award activity has continued into the first quarter. To date, I'll highlight 12 business awards across our foundational products and e-products portfolios. These wins represent only a portion of the awards secured during the quarter. But I believe that they underscore the strength of our portfolio and the global demand for efficient powertrain technology.

Our adjusted operating margin performance was strong in the first quarter, coming in at 10.5%. This strong underlying operational performance was once again driven by our focus on cost controls across our business. And we are taking steps to grow our product capabilities for the data center and other industrial markets. I will share 2 additional products with you in a few slides. At the same time, our turbine generator continued to make progress towards its 2027 launch.

Lastly, we remain disciplined in deploying capital to drive shareholder value during the quarter, returning approximately $185 million to shareholders through share repurchases and our quarterly cash dividend. Looking back on our first quarter performance, I'm extremely proud of our team and our results. Once again, we executed at a very high level which gives us confidence that we are on the right path to achieve our full year guidance while also continuing to win awards across our portfolio to deliver sustained shareholder value throughout long-term profitable growth.

Turning to Slide 6. I'd like to highlight several recent product awards that demonstrate both the competitiveness of our technology and the strength of our execution in key markets. First, BorgWarner has secured 3 electric motor business awards with Asian OEMs in South Korea and China. BorgWarner is broadening its electrification offerings in China by introducing S winding and ultra short hairpin winding technology for hybrid vehicles. In South Korea, BorgWarner secured a new state or assembly business for an electric vehicle program I believe these awards reflect the customers' confidence in BorgWarner's engineering capabilities, localized manufacturing footprint and product quality in Asia.

Second, BorgWarner has secured a 7-year contract extension to supply 8 families of engine, machines, power module and battery management controllers to a leading off-highway manufacturer. The extension builds on decades of partnership with the OEM and spans a broad range of applications from construction vehicles and marine platforms, the stationary power systems. I believe this contract expansion validates our position as a trusted long-term propulsion partner that is agile enough to support them and provide tailored solutions as they expand into new and emerging markets.

Third, BorgWarner has secured 3 turbocharger program extension awards and 1 turbocharger conquest award with a major European OEM. Our turbochargers will be utilized on a range of passenger car and fan applications. The awards include variable turbine geometry, twin-scroll wastegate and regulated 2-stage turbocharging technologies. These technologies are tailored to a range of engine and vehicle requirements, helping the customer meet demanding performance fuel economy and emissions targets across a broad range of applications. I believe these business wins reflect -- BorgWarner's strong turbocharging technology.

Our competitive solutions and the trust we have built with this long-standing customer. Fourth, BorgWarner secured conquest business with a major European commercial vehicle OEM to supply both a variable turbine geometry turbocharger and an exhaust gas recirculation cooler for a Euro VII compliant heavy-duty diesel engine platform. The award expands BorgWarner's product portfolio in the on-highway commercial vehicle sector and further broadens our collaboration with this customer. Production is expected to begin at the end of 2028. And finally, BorgWarner continued to grow its drivetrain and engine timing portfolio in Asia with 2 new program overs.

BorgWarner will supply a next-generation wet dual clutch for a Chinese OEM SUV platform. BorgWarner also secured a conquest win for a Tamtor-actuated VCT system for a Japanese OEM's next-generation hybrid ego. These new awards reflect BorgWarner's continued commitment to advancing efficient and competitive propulsion solutions across both transmission and engine timing technologies. I believe they further demonstrate the resilience and growth potential of our propulsion business in Asia as customers continue to value high-performance, cost-competitive solutions for both combustion and hybrid powertrains.

Next, on Slide 7, I would like to discuss our expanding capabilities for the data center and other industrial markets. Let's start with an update on our turbine generator launch progress. I'm very pleased with the advancements we've made over the past quarter. First, strong customer demand indicators continue with ongoing end customer visits to our facility in Asheville. Next, I'm pleased to report that our first B sample turbine generators are now being delivered to our customer. This is a very important step to allow our customers to move towards field testing our product.

In addition, our teams have continued their testing processes, which are performing as plan. And as part of our production readiness, I'm also pleased to report that our supplier nominations for production are now complete. Our UL compliance process is now well underway. We have completed our internal UL compliance requirement evaluation on our B samples. This is an important milestone toward our final certification which will take place with C samples later this year. In my opinion, these are all positive steps as BorgWarner continues to progress towards industrialization and production, currently expected in 2027.

In the middle and right side of the slide, you'll see that BorgWarner continues to expand its portfolio to serve the data center and other industrial markets. I'm really excited that this portfolio now includes battery energy storage systems and bi-directional microgrid inverters. With this expansion, we have products that serve the market needs across power generation, energy storage and power conversion.

First, I would like to highlight our battery energy storage system offering. You've heard BorgWarner speak about the possible application of our battery technology for various industrial markets, and we are now testing and quoting business for these markets. We believe our battery energy storage system will be well suited for deployment in multiple uses across the data center market, but we also see other commercial and industrial applications.

Importantly, our battery energy storage system designed a cell chemistry, form factor and application independent. I believe this is important. Given the wide range of needs and potential battery cell technologies that could be deployed for these markets. Our product design is modular lean and scalable with redundancy in our design. We believe this design can be deployed for applications, including peak shaving, backup power and more.

We believe our battery energy storage system will be production-ready in 2027 with ongoing customer validation and UL compliance and process. I look forward to providing you with updates as we receive customer feedback. Finally, we are also adding bidirectional microgrid inverter or grid tie inverter to our portfolio for these markets, and we expect this product to be production-ready in 2027. Our grid tie inverter features a power distribution unit, critical for efficient and flexible grid forming across microgrid applications. Our tie inverter is designed to enable the filing, significantly reduced weight and size compared to traditional systems, efficient bi-directional power flow for seamless charge and discharge. Why voltage conversion capability to support diverse energy systems and fast dynamic response for improved micro grid stability and controlling.

Our UL compliance for this new product is already underway as part of our product readiness. We're excited to share that the first grid tie inverter B sample units are being shipped to 4 customers, a major milestone for the program and a testament to the work behind it. To summarize, there are 3 key takeaways from today's call. First, BorgWarner's first quarter results were south. Excluding the decline in our battery and charging sales, our sales performance was in line with industry production and is consistent with our full year outlook.

Our adjusted operating margin expanded 50 basis points and adjusted EPS grew 12% compared to the first quarter of 2025, reflecting our continued focus on cost controls and growing the earnings power of the company. Second, we announced 12 new business awards across our portfolio in the quarter, which we believe further demonstrates our focus on product leadership across the propulsion market for combustion, hybrid and BEV architectures.

And third, we plan to take steps to continue growing our capabilities for both our existing markets while also expanding into data center and other industrial markets. We expect this technology expansion will help ensure that our profitable growth continues long into the future. While the current environment remains challenging and uncertain, I'm confident in our team's ability to effectively navigate these conditions, which we clearly demonstrated in the first quarter.

I also continue to firmly believe that we have the right portfolio decentralized operating model and financial strength to deliver our full year 2026 guidance and drive long-term profitable growth.

With that, I will turn the call over to Craig.

Thank you, Joe, and good morning, everyone. Let's jump into our first quarter financials. By turning to Slide 8 for a look at our year-over-year sales. Last year's Q1 sales were just over $3.5 billion. In the first quarter, stronger foreign currencies drove a year-over-year increase in sales of $167 million. Then, you can see the sales headwind from our batteries, which drove a year-over-year decrease in sales of $54 million.

The remaining organic sales decline of $95 million or 2.7% was in line with the reduction in our light vehicle market production for the quarter. This decline was primarily driven by transfer case outgrowth in North America, which was more than offset by foundational product headwinds in Europe and a timing-related e-product sales decline in China. The sum of all this was just over $3.5 billion of sales in the first quarter.

Turning to Slide 9. You can see our earnings and cash flow performance for the quarter. Our first quarter adjusted operating income was $372 million, equating to a strong 10.5% adjusted operating margin. That compares to adjusted operating income of $352 million or a 10.0% adjusted operating margin from a year ago.

The exit of our charging business in 2025 increased operating income by $8 million year-over-year. Excluding this benefit and FX impacts, adjusted operating income decreased $4 million on $149 million of lower sales. This strong year-over-year performance benefited from ongoing cost reduction actions that our teams continue to take across our business. Our adjusted EPS was up $0.13 or 12% compared to a year ago as a result of higher adjusted operating income and the impact of over $650 million in share repurchases over the past 4 quarters. And finally, free cash flow was a generation of $13 million in the first quarter, which was a $48 million improvement from a year ago.

Now let's turn to Slide 10 and take a look at our full year 2026 outlook, which is unchanged compared to our initial guidance provided in February. We continue to project total 2026 sales in the range of $14.0 billion to $14.3 billion. Starting with foreign currencies. Our guidance assumes an expected full year sales benefit of $200 million compared to 2025 due to the strengthening of the euro and the renminbi versus the U.S. dollar.

We continue to expect our weighted end markets to be flat to down 3% for the year. We expect our light vehicle business, which comprises over 80% of our sales performed broadly in line with our weighted by vehicle market. However, we expect a sales decline in our battery business due to the lack of North American incentives and weaker European demand. This decline represents a 150 basis point headwind to our year-over-year sales group.

Based on these assumptions, we expect our 2026 organic sales change to be down 3.5% to down 1.5% year-over-year, which is roughly in line with our market, excluding the decline in battery sales. .

Now let's switch to margin. We continue to expect our full year adjusted operating margin to be in the range of 10.7% to 10.9% compared to our 2025 adjusted operating margin of 10.7%. On a year-over-year basis, we expect the exit of our charging business to drive a 10 basis point improvement in adjusted operating margin. Excluding this benefit, the low end of our margin outlook contemplates the business delivering a full year decremental conversion in the low double digits, while the high end of our outlook assumes we largely offset the impact of the organic sales decline through further cost controls, just like we saw in the first quarter.

We view this as strong underlying performance with our first quarter results, providing a strong start to the year. Based on this sales and margin outlook, we're expecting full year adjusted EPS in the range of $5 to $5.20 per diluted share, which is unchanged compared to our initial guidance. The midpoint of this EPS guidance represents approximately a 4% increase versus our 2025 adjusted EPS and once again demonstrates our focus on consistently driving or expansion despite lower industry production, battery sales declines and potential cost inflation.

And finally, we continue to expect full year free cash flow to be in the range of $900 million to $1.1 billion, building off a strong 2025. With that, that's our 2026 outlook.

Let me summarize my financial remarks. Overall, we were very pleased with our first quarter results. Our sales performance was in line with our full year guidance despite a challenging first quarter production in market. We achieved a 50 basis point adjusted operating margin improvement on relatively flat reported sales. And our free cash flow performance represented a solid start to the year. Our Q1 results once again demonstrates the BorgWarner team's ability to deliver strong financial results and a declining production environment.

As we look ahead to the balance of 2026, we intend to remain focused on expanding the earnings power of the company. At the midpoint of our guidance, we expect another year of adjusted operating margin expansion and adjusted earnings per share growth despite our expectations that market volumes and battery sales are expected to decline in 2026.

Finally, with another year of anticipated strong free cash flow, we expect to have additional opportunities to create value for shareholders as we prudently evaluate inorganic accretive opportunities that grow BorgWarner's earnings power and execute a balanced capital allocation approach that reward shareholders.

With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Pat.

Thank you, Craig. Michael, we're ready to open it up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question today comes from James Picariello with BNP Paribas.

Good morning, everybody. So I'd like to hit on the company's non-auto industrial focus to start things off which is clearly gaining momentum in terms of the company's strategy. So for the battery energy storage product launch potential, how translatable is the company's competency regarding commercial truck battery packs to a proper energy storage system. How -- I mean, clearly, you're targeting the potential for production next year. Like is there additional investment that we should anticipate within that Battery Systems segment this year? And how rich is the quoting pipeline. .

Yes. James, so first of all, the battery energy storage business and our products are very portable to these types of stationary applications. If you think about the requirements in commercial vehicles and buses, they're pretty significant in terms of reliability and quality. So -- we are leveraging our existing capacity to pivot further into the data center space and other industrial markets. So from that standpoint, it's a really smart play for our teams and as we mentioned, the battery energy systems are cell chemistry and form factor independent. So we think we're well positioned for various types of applications that are out there. As far as the pipeline, we are actively quoting with a number of customers. So we're really pleased with the pipeline we're seeing.

Got it. And then as a segue, my follow-up, is there a natural synergy for battery energy storage through your turbine generator partner endeavor? And -- as we think about the power generation business for data centers for BorgWarner, I know production starts next year, targeting $300 million plus in sales. It's early days. But -- are there any considerations to potentially expand your turbine generator capacity like beyond the North Carolina plant? I know Endeavor and its subsidiary edged have data centers, active data centers in Europe in addition to the U.S. So I'm just curious how the company might be thinking about that capacity potential international expansion element and then the synergy, the potential synergy on the energy storage piece.

Yes. Sure. So the first question on synergy, there's definite synergy. I mean, if you think about the 3 offerings we show on Page 7, turbine generator, battery energy storage and then power conversion. Those are highly related products in the system, and they're all solving a major issue, which is lack of power. So when it comes specific to Endeavor, definitely, we've got a great partnership with Endeavor.

We see it continuing to grow over time even better news is these energy storage systems and power conversion have lots of opportunities outside of the strong endeavor relationships. So we're optimistic. There's a lot of applications and potential customers out there for both energy storage and power conversion. With respect to your question on the turbine generator, as we mentioned on the call, the progress is quite good, in our view, we're on track for a 2027 launch sometime this year, we will have to make a decision on whether we expand capacity further beyond the 2 gigawatts that we've installed in North Carolina, but we'll take that decision as we get closer to the second half. .

And your next question comes from Emmanuel Rosner with Wolfe Research.

Great. Just 1 follow-up on the power gen side. Obviously, it's still early days and a lot to learn there from customers, et cetera. Are you able to give us some color on how do you think about the value proposition that your solution offers. What unit economics look like? How does that compare with the existing established solution? Just trying to understand how the conversation with potential customers is going.

Sure. So a couple of things we're solving here for. One is time to market the backlog for power generation is pretty significant, sometimes up to 5 and 6 years. So our ability to leverage automotive scale and move quickly into the space is speed that's well needed in this market. That's the first thing.

The second is the emission profile of these turbine generators raises the bar and meets even the car requirements in 2027 and beyond. So from an emission standpoint, very clean power. The third thing is the total cost of ownership is very attractive. So -- we feel really good about the value proposition of this into the space, especially right now.

Understood. And then the -- my second question would be on the capital allocation. So it looks like you have in front of you some opportunities to invest more capital into this industrial solution, you'll make a decision on the capacity for power gen. And then obviously, you're trying to get into energy storage, power conversion. Is there any change at all into how you're thinking about capital allocation, either within CapEx in terms of increasing that or just shifting that towards these solutions and away from autos? And then in terms of M&A versus buybacks, like if you have so many organic opportunities, you still need -- do you still have as much focus on M&A as you did recently?

So let me begin by saying our top priority will always be on driving organic growth, and we're able to show that we're leveraging our entire portfolio especially if you look over the last 18 months of win. So we want to continue with that winning strategy and the first priority then for capital would be to invest for those projects. Nothing has changed from our capital allocation process beyond that. I'll answer the M&A topic, maybe Craig talk more deep about the other way to serve shareholders. On the M&A side, we continue to open up the aperture and have a very disciplined process and flow of targets that we're looking at.

But just to remind you, there's 3 main criteria here. One is really leveraging the core competence we already have. So it has to make some strong industrial logic. The second is we want any acquisition to be accretive. And third, we want to pay a fair price. So we're sticking with that disciplined approach. We continue to have a good flow of targets inside auto and out. And I would just say you can expect from Craig and I to stick to that game plan.

Maybe just to add on to Joe's comments, what is our goal? Our goal is to create value with our cash. And I think we've done that very effectively over the past several quarters. Q1 was another great example of that, $185 million of cash deployed to shareholders between share repurchases and dividends. Over the past 5 quarters, we deployed over $800 million of cash, which represents about 70% of our free cash flow. Joe and I are focused on discipline, consistency and how we're allocating capital across the business, but it's through those levers for investing in the business organically. So we feel really good about the actions we've taken over the last several quarters.

Your next question comes from Joseph Spak with UBS.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Back on the best opportunity. I just want to be clear sort of what you're doing here. So you're -- it's similar to what you doing -- or we're doing on commercial trucks, where you're putting the pack together into a system with some software because it does say sort of chemistry and form factor independent, which leads me to believe you're still not doing the calls here. But I guess the reason I ask is I keep going back to this FinDreamsLFP announcement from 2024. And I know that agreement said it was specifically for commercial vehicles, but I'm wondering if there's any leeway in that agreement to be able to leverage that relationship as well.

Yes. Joe. So as you mentioned, we do have a strong partnership with FinDreams and our products are cell chemistry agnostic. So, we're in production today on NMC, but we're also working on future cell chemistries, like LFP, sodium-ion and others. The great part about the pivot here is we're leveraging both our technology that's existing that commercial vehicle and the current CapEx that's invested. So that's 1 of the reasons we can get to market so quickly. So we're moving forward with UL certification and quoting. As far as our content on it, it's very similar to CV or eBUS in terms of procurement of the cells, design of the entire pack, the system, the BMS and the final testing. The main difference is these will be for stationary applications versus mobility.

Okay. That's helpful. And then just to, I guess, follow on to Emmanuel's question on capital. Look, these opportunities are super exciting, are still relatively small, but you can see how they are much, much -- are much more meaningful in the future. So is there any like just a rule of thumb for -- and I know you're using existing capital as you sort of just mentioned, but is there any rule of thumb about how you would advise investors think about incremental investment dollar per every pick your metric of revenue just so we can understand how the return profile looks going forward?

Yes. I think it would be Fair to say that the ROI and capital intensity will be similar to our light vehicle business. So if I look at our turbine generator, which we talked about over the last quarter, although we're putting a greenfield site in for the final assembly and test and Henderson Bill, we're leveraging 4 existing auto plants, broad components and subassemblies. So I think it's a great example of how we're leveraging our CapEx, our capability and our speed, so that we can move quickly into these new markets.

And your next question comes from Colin Langan with Wells Fargo.

Just on the overall guidance to step back. I mean, production has come in a bit worse. Raw materials have gotten better. and the guide is being held. Are there any puts and takes within that we should be thinking about? Is there favorable mix or favorable FX? And any additional cost actions that may be needed to offset some of the inflation we've seen in the market?

Yes. Colin, overall, we think we can manage the inflationary impact at this point. in our mid-teens decremental conversion. So let me start there. But I'll walk you through again the guide from a revenue perspective and a margin perspective at the midpoint. And really, it's unchanged from our view Q1 was a good start to the year. So when we think about sales year-over-year, we ended last year at $14.3 billion. We do see a headwind from industry production right around 1.5%. A decline versus last year. We see the battery business declining, but we see positive FX coming in as well as some modest outgrowth.

And that's what gets us to $14.15 billion, when you think about the margin profile, we're excited that we're expanding margins at the midpoint and the high point of our guide despite some challenges from a market perspective. That's really coming from a couple of areas. First, the exit of our charging business, that's about 10 basis points of enhancement. Additional cost controls, just like you saw in Q1, that's another 10 basis points. And then again, we're holding that decremental conversion in the mid-teens, which includes the inflationary pressures that might, might happen in Q1 and throughout the year. So we're closely monitoring that, but we feel good that we can expand margins and expand EPS this year despite some macro headwinds.

Okay. So there's no incremental -- there's no cost or there's no -- you're going to offset those cost savings actions from a raw material side.

At this point, we feel like we can manage that appropriately.

Okay. And then on the -- just on the data center and storage. I'm just trying to understand all this. One, just from the energy gen side. I mean, just to be clear, this is more -- at this point, you're just capacity constrained that looks like that market is just completely sold out. And then on the storage side, anything -- any way to size that market, is that potentially just as big as the turbine generator opportunity. And then lastly, as we think of these businesses together, does that actually help you market to customers? Because I believe hyperscalers are actually starting to actually have storage requirements as they build out data centers. Does the combo actually, is that a selling package that you could provide both and that created an added opportunity to win business?

Yes. Colin, maybe I'll start with the second question. When you think about, again, Page 7 power gen, storage and power conversion, those are highly related and they're all towards solving this power availability issue. So yes, there's synergy between those 3, and we do find customers that want more of a system solution or at least someone that understands the complete system across these very complex product segments.

With regard to your first question? The ability to bring storage to market fits well within the same data center growth that we see across all 3 platforms. So from our view, we're talking mid-teens CAGR for the next 10 years or more. So the backdrop and the demand very strong for these products, and it's actually increased over the last 12 months as many folks know.

And your next question comes from Chris McNally with Evercore.

Thanks so much, team. And sorry, some of these will be really questions, I get the toner of the call on the industrial extensions. But I wanted to just kind of phrase it differently. I think the way I'm questioning the size of -- let's focus on the power gen opportunity over the next couple of years. Would you characterize it as -- are we -- is there a supply constraint, a capacity constraint or signing up customer by customer?

I mean it's a new business, it's going to be deal by deal. But I would love to know is what is a capacity ramp look like? How does that occur? Is that the type of thing that you'll need multiple years lead time or as the deals come in, as the customer wins come in, capacity will follow. But that supply versus demand, what would be the bottleneck taking a couple of years out would be great for sizing the business.

Sure. Thanks for the question, Chris. So let's say this starts massively with demand. The demand for power gen, especially behind the meter, driven by the fact that many utilities have a 4-, 5-, 6-year lead time to get the power to serve these data centers. And on top of that, the growth of Gen AI specifically, it's creating a massive demand challenge. I would say over the last 12 months, what we've seen is the supply constraints of the existing turbine generators and other behind-the-meter solutions has made the challenge even bigger. So we're fortunate to come in at the time we are with a great product that has a lot of value to the customer.

So I hope that answers that question. With regard to the capacity we have installed and how do we go about selling that. So as a reminder, we've installed at of capacity, the $300 million next year is the initial launch and revenue that we're planning. So it's a subset of this capacity. So we feel really good about the installation of the 2 gig. We wouldn't install that much if we didn't feel that there was going to be a backlog created.

And as we mentioned earlier in the call, we'll likely take a decision whether or not we add additional capacity based on the demand we see in the purchase orders placed. And that capacity could be installed in this market, but we also see demand in Europe and other markets. So we'll also have to decide the location.

And I know we tried to do this last call, and obviously, we're not going to get specific pricing, but just ballpark like 2 gigawatts is multiples of $300 million of revenue. Is that fair to say?

Yes. We haven't provided pricing. So yes, multiples is a fair way to think about it. I think if you look at the pricing that's out there for power gen, especially behind the meter, you get a range that's out there. And it's only increased over time. So that might give you some indication of where we're at.

No, that ended. That was the check on the math. And is the last follow-up. I think someone asked right before -- it seems like with the behind the meter and the battery stores that also you could have great lead-in from some of the auto customers, right, on the battery restorage side, a lot of excess capacity we know in batteries. Is that helping on a cross-sell specifically on those 2 businesses?

Yes. I would say it's adding significantly to our play. Our play is more about serving these industrial markets directly, not with our automotive customers. Clearly, we have relationships with those customers and where we can work together, we will. But these plays are more about our relationships with the industrial customers.

And your next question comes from Dan Levy with Barclays.

Thanks for taking the questions. I'll continue. The line of questions on the data center side. And more so just a supply chain question. I know you've talked about 2/3 on the turbine generator 2/3 of the content is coming from you and then you're heavily leveraging the automotive supply chain. But I think we've heard within the power gen side that 1 of the key sort of supply constraints out there is areas around [ blade, veins ] and very large lead times. So we know that generally, it takes maybe only 1 or 2 components to have a bottleneck.

So maybe you could just walk us through your confidence that when you look across the supply chain, there won't be any issues getting what you need for the turbine generator system and that if you're going to expand capacity that the supply chain can keep up with you, even on the most supply limited component.

Yes. No, thanks, Dan. So a couple of things that I think may help address your question. So first of all, our turbine generator system, it does leverage not only our supply base, but our technology. So our turbo products are radial turbos many of the large turbines are more flow-through or axial turbos. So it's different technology, different levels of material selection for these are more consistent with what you see in commercial vehicle applications and sometimes pass car. So the requirements are different for what we're buying.

Second point, -- it is true 80% of the supply base for the turbine generator is already in a BorgWarner is already a BorgWarner supplier. So they know how to work with us from developing those components to launching and producing those components. So we feel that's a big risk reduction, getting this product to market. I think the third important thing here is 1 of the things that we are experts on is global supply chain. I mean we have teams of people around the globe that manage suppliers in many, many commodities.

So this is our wheelhouse. It's a core competence of the company and we're going to bring all that confidence to launch these products. So from time to time, you do see a constraint or you see an issue with the supplier. But as a global company, we get boots on the ground to address those constraints and make sure it doesn't impact the products to our customers. .

Great. As a follow-up, I'll give you a question on the core business today. I mean our reaffirming the guidance for the growth of the market to be flat this year, but you've given a sort of another slide of all these component wins. You've talked about really being this reacceleration of growth. Maybe you could just give us an update on where we are on line of sight to the rest of the portfolio seeing a reacceleration. Is it just content gains, new new program launches? What's going on that's driving that uptick in growth from the core portfolio in '27.

Yes. I think it's fair to say, in 2016, we're still living with the overhang from some of those programs on the EV side from a couple of years ago. but we're working through that. In '27, what we like to point to are the product wins across the entire portfolio. So if you just go back last 18 months I mean over 30 awards we've announced publicly. And it's not just 1 part of the world. It's not just a couple of product lines. The other thing to point to is if you just look at this quarter, we announced 12 wins, 3 of them were conquest wins.

So what we've been sharing over the last 12 months that the strong will not only survive, they're going to thrive in this type of market, we're starting to see that in the program wins. And of course, as those launch we'll start to see the revenue beginning in 2027.

And our next question comes from Luke Junk with Baird.

Maybe you could just put a finer point on how you're thinking about capital allocation is a way to maybe potentially accelerate the data center and industrial story in an inorganic sense. Is that something that you're looking at intentionally in terms of building the acquisition funnel and thinking sort of holistically and deploying capital towards these efforts?

Yes, Luke. So the capital allocation story hasn't changed. I would say, over the last 12 months, we've continued to open up the aperture of what we're looking at. So not only automotive and CV space, but also this new data center space, but I just want to bring us back to the 3 criteria. The first 1 is, it needs to make a lot of sense and leverage our competence. We wanted to be accretive, and we want to pay a freight price. We want to pay a fair price.

So we want to stick to that discipline, and you can kind of Craig and I to do that. But we do feel more and more confident that our products and technology played really well into this data center space. So as you can see, we're leaning further into it with the R&D investment. And so I can expect we're going to look at some things that might help accelerate that journey. But you can count on us being disciplined about it.

Stay tuned there. And then second, maybe this is an unfair question, Craig, but I'll ask it. Just you mentioned that you're confident in the right path to achieve full year guidance, why not raise the display margins, especially, -- is it just too early in the year? Or is there something that we should be thinking about in terms of investments tied back to these incremental products that you're showing us this morning.

Yes. I think we had a really good Q1. There's still a lot of uncertainty in the overall environment, but when you look at our performance, that's implied in the guide, and I'll walk through what we saw Q2 through Q4 last year versus this year. Q2 through Q4, sales were about $3.6 billion a quarter. Margin was about 11.0%. And -- what's implied in our guide is revenue is coming in a little bit lower, $3.54 billion per quarter, about $60 million loss per quarter, and that's really the contraction in our battery business.

But our margin profile is staying right about 10.9%. So basically on top of the 11.0% and it's managing that decremental conversion right around the mid-teens, which is what we've communicated consistently. So from my perspective, I think, hey, solid Q1, a lot of uncertainty with higher energy prices around the globe, through Q4 looks pretty consistent year-over-year. We feel like we're on the right path to create value by executing our guide. So that's where we sit today, look.

And your next question today comes from Andrew Percoco with Morgan Stanley.

I do just want to come back to the power gen side 1 more time. I know you're in an exclusivity with Endeavor for this turbo cell product. But as you mentioned, it's such a capacity-constrained market and you obviously have a decent amount of content and in-house capability there. I'm curious like whether or not you've evaluated if there is an opportunity to develop a product on either on a stand-alone basis or work through Endeavor to look outside of their captive universe of customers to deploy this product.

Sure. So Andrew, a couple of things. It is true. We're an exclusive relationship with Endeavor to bring that turbine generator to market. What we're hyper focused on is a successful launch next year in 2027. One of the things that's important to know, so Endeavor and the entity we're working through Turbocell, they sell internally for their own data center use, but they also are able to sell to other customers and users.

So you need to keep that in mind. They understand the market. They've been in this market for a long time, the principals have -- and of course, they want to leverage those relationships and know-how. And we're more of the design and manufacturing house to help them deliver.

So Hopefully, that brings some clarity. As far as the other 2 products, battery, we're actively quoting and I would say, with an outside of Endeavor inverters, the same. The exciting part about the inverters is the 4 customers we're shipping product to for their testing. So I feel real good about the overall momentum of these 3 product segments.

Okay. So that makes sense. So essentially, Endeavor could sell that turbo cell product outside of their own data center applications, if there was demand for it. So that's a helpful clarification. And maybe to follow up, on the battery storage for a second here. I think it was asked earlier about the content. Can we just double click on that. If you think about the current environment, I think battery storage on average, it's $225 to $250 per kilowatt hour. Is there a way to bracket what your content is as a percentage of that potential ASP?

And as a follow-on to that, I think it makes sense that you guys are getting into this market, you have core competencies there. I think 1 thing that we've seen across this landscape is the service angle and the service requirements from some of these customers can be a lot different than maybe what you see in auto. So I'm just curious in terms of the investment needs maybe on the service side of the organization to make sure you're providing the level of uptime needed for some of these customers?

Sure. So the content of the battery energy stores, we want to think about it, it's very similar or maybe a little bit incremental to what we serve on the CV side. So we're buying cells. We're designing complete packs. We're assembling those complete packs. There's other value-add like battery management systems and control systems, software development, and then we test and ship those packs.

Now the main difference is these are in stationary applications as opposed to mobility. So you would see a little bit different structure there. But in essence, it's a very similar type of product that we serve the CV market with.

We have time for 1 final question, and that question comes from Mark Delaney with Goldman Sachs.

One on the power gen business as well for me. Joe, you mentioned BorgWarner may need to expand capacity there, and you're going to have to make that decision soon. We've also seen several hyperscale guides now during earnings season, they've been pretty robust. So given that backdrop and based on your customer engagements and discussions with Endeavor, should investors think about BorgWarner shipping the full 2 gigawatts in 2028.

Yes. We haven't shared that level of detail. I would say as we get into early 2027, we'll start to provide more color on the sales and a longer-term view on the business. It is true. We've seen recent announcements with hyperscalers really growing their capital investments, which I think holds well for this entire data center space.

So -- but we'll provide more details as we get into late '26 or early '27.

Okay. My other question was specifically on the auto business and China, the company spoke about a little bit of growth in our market in China in the first quarter based on some program timing. Maybe talk a bit more on how you see the China market developing from here and your ability to get back to growth over market in part given some of the past wins you've discussed?

Sure, Mark. So first, it's important to note, generally speaking, we are really strong in the China market. We continue to win business there. It's a very important market for us. I think what you've seen in this last quarter, if you start with the market itself, the domestic market was down -- but overall, it was buoyed by a lot of export sales. And much of that export sales has put into content on it. So we continue to feel optimistic about that market. It's hard to read too much into 1 corner like we have in the first quarter. But generally speaking, the Chinese OEMs continue to grow their share globally and a lot of it has to do with the export markets, which we're very well positioned in as they eventually localize in those markets.

Thank you all for your great questions today. If you have any follow-ups, feel free to reach out to me or my team. With that, Michael, you can conclude today's call.

This concludes the BorgWarner 2026 First Quarter Results Conference Call. You may now disconnect.

Again, Doug Karson here, and Alex Perry. We're really grateful to have BorgWarner with us. With us from the firm, we have Craig Aaron, Executive Vice President and CFO; and Patrick Nolan, Vice President, Investor Relations. And BorgWarner has been with us through thick and tin and Auto Summit for the last 17 years. They've quoted a lot of time to both the equity and credit investors. I think you'll see they're a leader in clean efficient technology solutions, combustion, hybrid electric vehicles to really do it all.

And with that, we're going to kind of just dive into a fireside chat. We try to have it interactive. We'd love some questions from the audience throughout. But maybe I'll just kind of open it up with -- how are you guys seeing the market right now for global production.

We had this, obviously, this oil shock, but for many of our panelists before, they said that unless it's going to be a 3-, 4-month prolonged event, we don't really think it will be a major mishappen in the auto industry and affordability has been a concern in people's minds.

Sure. First of all, thanks for having us. Bank of America is an important relationship for us. So we're really happy to be here. As we sit here today, our initial guidance from an industry production perspective was flat to down 3%, and midpoint of that is, of course, down about 1.5%. And I think S&P right now is right around the right around 1%. .

So the schedules right now are hanging in there, but we'll see how the year plays out. I think our biggest concern is with higher vehicle prices already in North America, and with this oil shock happening, this consumer demand dry up at some point. Obviously, the longer this goes on, the higher the risk.

But as we sit here today, we're or seeing demand hang in there, but what's the out plays now early days.

Perfect. I wanted to get a little bit more into sort of mix, hybrid versus bed versus ICE and how that plays into things. I think the beds are growing at a lower rate than previously expected, hybrids are taking off. Can you just tell us how mix in more hybrids and how you sort of impact your business? What are the positives? What are the negatives as you think about sort of the evolution of the mix?

Yes. So when you think about our business, we're able to provide each of the markets, which we're seeing move differently with our portfolio. Our portfolio is very broad. We can supply and provide solutions for our customers, whether it's foundational products, combustion products, hybrid or electric. How we measure success for those businesses is pretty simple.

So for our foundational businesses, which is DMS and TTT we measure their success based on the foundational market plus the hybrid market. And their goal is to outgrow industry production. And for our e-product businesses, it's the hybrid market plus the battery electric vehicle market. And so that's how we measure success for them.

And again, their goal is to outgrow those end markets and increment in the mid-teens on an all-in basis. So that's how we measure success. What I'm seeing across all of our businesses that's maybe changed over the last couple of years is really regionalization. So each region is adopting hybrid products and battery electric vehicle products at a different pace.

And I think our operating model and our portfolio is playing out really nicely. So in this market, we don't see battery electric vehicles penetrating significantly over the next handful of years. That's okay. We'll sell foundational products, and that provides us a nice cash tailwind because we have capacity in this marketplace, and we're not having to put in new capital.

We can utilize what we have. In China, it's probably the opposite, right, battery electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles are a significant portion of that market. And we're having a lot of success with local Chinese OEMs and we're winning in that market.

And Europe is probably somewhere in the middle. So I think it's our portfolio diversification, our customer diversification. Our operating model where we're making decisions at the lowest level of the organization, which is at the plant level. That's really playing out well for us.

And you can see it in our metrics from a win percentage where we had record wins last year, but also from an operating perspective where we've increased margins 60 basis points. We had record free cash flow last year. We grew EPS 14% year-over-year. That's our operating model in action and being able to adapt to these different dynamics.

Maybe I'll double click on China for a moment. So we were just talking earlier that you're winning in the local Chinese manufacturers. And we've seen over the last day to many panels have kind of shown that the Chinese market is continuing to evolve. Of course, EV has been very strong, but also the domestic manufacturers there are gaining a lot of share relative to the rest. So what's giving you the wins in the Chinese market? What are you doing maybe differently than some competitors?

Yes. So if you look at the breakdown of our China business is about 20% of our overall sales. Of that, about 75% of that sales base is with the local Chinese OEMs. Maybe you double-click whether in that about 3/4 of that is with the top 6 Chinese OEMs by market share.

So we tend to do better with the larger Chinese OEMs. And why is that? Well, those Chinese OEMs prioritize speed to market. They prioritize technology leadership, both from a standpoint of their domestic market strategies, i.e., electrification or eventually, I mean, we're now at almost 7 million units exported from China. Those large OEMs are the ones that ultimately have aspirations to go global.

When they go global, they want to have that technology leadership, but they also want to get the speed end market very quickly.

And you guys are able to get them to the market faster than...

That's what we hear. When we hear from our customers, and when Joe, our CEO is meeting with his principles over in China, what he hears is 3 things. They really like our overall technology portfolio. likes the fact that we've been in China for quite a long time. I have those deep ingrained relationships as OEMs but also probably most importantly, we can run shoulders with them.

Right. In the Western world, typically, it's 3 years from award to going your production. In China, you're knocking at least a year for that.

Like a 2-year window.

If not less.

We've taken products from PowerPoint to production in 12 to 18 months. I mean that's how fast we can yes.

So I wanted to double-click a little bit on the competitive environment. I think maybe you're alluding to some competitive advantages in China that you have. But just give us an overview of the competitive landscape for both the foundational products in EV products, have you seen any change?

Do you expect consolidation in the space and do you see any risk from Chinese suppliers in China locally, and I guess more globally?

On a global basis, there is typically between 5 and 7 true competitors in most of the products that we do. And there's a handful of Chinese competitors and different products that we do compete in. So they have gotten to that point where they do have a good, strong global presence.

I think when you look at the 2 different sides of the business from dynamics of where are we stronger. On the foundational side, we're typically a 1 or 2 in terms of market share, in terms of those product categories. We do see some natural consolidation.

And the way I mean that is the larger suppliers are generally winning some conquest business. You see it in our awards on a quarterly basis as ultimately, the OEMs want to lean a little bit more on the supply base there as we go forward.

On the e-product side, we see a path towards being a top 3 in most of the products that we play in today, and we are starting to see share consolidation there where there was a lot of players in some areas and now you're seeing more of that consolidation play out?

Maybe we'll kind of switch gears a little bit to the regulatory regime. How are some of the regulatory changes, whether DPA, Cafe, CARA, impacted your strategies, your growth initiatives. I've been covering the company for almost close to 30 years. I know that some of the regulatory changes have actually been in favor as things need to get cleaner it impacted your ability to put turbochargers into kind of lower new gasoline content. So can you just give us a little color on how you're looking at the regulatory environment.

That's what I think is beautiful about our portfolio. We can adapt. So in this market, obviously, regulatory changes moved in one direction. And that's fine. We're meeting with our customers to solve their problems, and we're not trying to push one technology or another. In this market, it's probably going to be more foundational products. .

And that's okay. We're #1 or #2 in everything we do. And again, it's going to provide a nice cash tailwind for us. In other regions in the world, it's probably going to be a little bit more e-Products. And again, we're meeting with our customers for understanding the issue they're trying to solve. We're providing solutions on both sides of the portfolio that helps them. And if we're doing that, BorgWarner is going to be successful. And that's what I see.

And I think the evidence point is the 30-plus awards that we announced last year across the entire portfolio. I think that's a great evidence point. So I see us being able to adapt nicely. Win new business. And ultimately, as we win new business, we'll increment that extra revenue in the mid-teens on an all-in basis and create a lot of value for our shareholders.

Just going as a part of that, let's talk about the battery business a little bit. So I think you called out a lack of North America incentives and softer Europe are driving headwind in the battery business, at least for 2026. Can you detail sort of the policy and the demand drivers there and what actions you sort of take in to minimize the losses in the battery business.

Sure. So when you go back a couple of years ago, we acquired Akasol and we saw a tremendous growth in that business in Europe, and we ended up adding capacity in North America to support that growth. And then the world changed on us a little bit and demand dried up in North America and to a lesser extent in Europe.

So it was important that we rightsize that business for the demand dynamics that are -- that have been happening at this time and the team did a fantastic job of rightsizing that business.

So we restructured that business and took other actions. And I think the evidence point you can look at is our fourth quarter, revenue is down, in comes up. So we feel really good with the cost structure, and we are confident that as that business grows, we can implement in the mid-teens from this point forward.

Overall, we're still pretty bullish on that business. Although revenue is going to be down about a couple of hundred million dollars this year, and that's causing about 150 basis point challenge to our growth this year. From a long-term perspective, we're still bullish.

Energy storage is a trend that is going to occur for many years to come, and there's a need for energy storage, whether it's in automotive or outside of automotive. So our product can solve that global challenge.

And for us, it's about winning new business, whether it's in auto, outside of automotive. As that business grows, will increment in the mid-teens. So again, we're bullish. We got our cost structure right, and we think we can capitalize on that growth when it materializes.

I mean do you think that business is going to require more CapEx and R&D? Or do you feel like you've got a good foothold on it right now?

We have a good foothold on it. We have the right level of CapEx in that business. We've restructured appropriately. Now it's about winning new business and incrementing in the mid-teens as it grows.

I guess we'll kind of circle back to the different markets you're in. So maybe you help us a window into you have a pretty good sense as you're talking to when a lot of us are North America focused because it's where we work. But if you look at China, the EV mandate is still super strong there. if you look at like IHS, S&P Global ability, their projections in China, they keep on increasing the penetration rate in the EV.

North America has come way down and Europe is kind of somewhere in the middle. So what do you think is driving the EV focus in China and it's still trying to stay alive in Europe and in the U.S. is kind of on pause almost.

Yes. So in China, clearly, the mandates are still there. The electrification is happening in that market. It's continuing to grow in that market at a relatively rapid pace. The one thing I would add, though, is we talked about the Chinese exports.

They're going to explore whatever vehicles they think they can sell. And we've actually seen some awards on the foundational side of the business. each high enough for export purposes. So I think, clearly, the opportunity set is going to skew towards electrification in that market, but I think there will be pockets on the foundational side for opportunities for growth.

In Europe from what we see, we're still going down the path of electrification. I think the timing may shift a little bit based on some of the changes in regulations, but it's still happening. You're still seeing launches happen. North America, as you said, I think electrification here is delayed for quite some time. It's likely going to be a predominantly foundational business unit, our region, excuse me, with hybrids coming a couple of years from now when I say high is I'm talking more advanced hybrids.

I think it's really what this speaks to is that there's 2 benefits that BorgWarner can use to capitalize on this. It's a portfolio that we talked about. We're happy to sell foundational products happy to sell bare products and across hybrids, we're happy to sell both.

The other thing that's going to -- we're a very decentralized company. And this is going to be much more of a regional growth business than it has been in the past. And I think that will play to our strength.

I have a capacity utilization question, I'll turn it over to you. One presenter showed us that capacity utilization in China is only 53%, which left us worried that there'll either be some stranded assets in China over time or they'll be hyper focused on utilizing that capacity or there will be some markets that kind of shrink.

I think we have 100 manufacturers in China. I think about it a little bit differently, and it's less of a China question because we're winning in China, and we're seeing them use the equipment that's in place. But one of our focuses last year was okay, we have a lot of capacity that we put in place in the e-product side of our portfolio. We've put that in over the last few years. And some of those programs didn't launch at all or launched a much lower volumes.

A big focus of our Power Drive Systems business unit was we need to move that capital from one region to another. So it's not going to be used in North America, move it to Europe or move it to China as an example. And it's one of the reasons that our CapEx last year was only 3% of sales. We're usually in that 4.5% to 5% range. So they did a fantastic job.

And it was a part of the reason why our cash flow was $1.2 billion last year. On top of that, we always meet with our customers when we have a program that didn't meet expectations and it's because of a constraint on their end, we're going to go back to them the ask for recovery. And we saw some of that in the fourth quarter of last year.

So we're using both of those items to mitigate risk from a capital perspective. So I don't see it as a China issue. I see it more of a North American issue, and it's important that, that plant manager doesn't get the nice new equipment. They get the equipment that's in place and they can modify it and use it. And I think we did a really nice job.

So optimizing CapEx, kind of the global pattern and you were getting some reimbursement when isn't needed.

Exactly.

Let's talk about data centers.

I was waiting for that.

Yes. I think you be able to talk about data centers at the Autocue, but as for the opportunity. So in February, you signed a master supply agreement with Turbocel, focused on data center power solutions, I think targeting $300 million in sales in 2027 well be the first year I guess what's your longer-term vision in the data center end market? How should we think about capacity and sort of the overall mix as power generation continues to grow?

So if you look at the market for power generation, it's supposed to grow mid-teens for the next 10 years. So obviously, the market itself is very appealing. When you think about hyperscalers and others, what are they trying to solve for right now. It's really 2 issues. It's water in its power.

And we're coming up with a solution that solves the power equation clearly. From our perspective, what we've shared is we feel like we have a great product that answers those needs and has BorgWarner all over. It has our thermal competency, our power electronics competencies, our turbocharger technology in it.

So we're utilizing the core competencies of BorgWarner to come up with a unique turbine generator that meets that end-user demand, which is really exciting for us. What we announced publicly is $300 million of revenue in the first year of production. And we expect that to be immediately EPS accretive. We expect to convert in the mid-teens, and we really like the return on invested capital profile.

We're in the launch phase here. So we're quickly doing B samples and C samples and really focused on launch at this point. But the team is really energized. We were just down there a couple of weeks ago.

Excited to see the product maturing and excited to see it in our P&L in 2027.

Can you just talk a little bit about sort of the installed capacity for the data center solution and how you sort of plan on scaling that?

Yes. So we communicated we're putting in 2 gigawatts of capacity in North Carolina. That will be installed at the end of the year. The $300 million in revenue is not correlated to the 2 gigawatt hours. It's our first year of production. We haven't provided that math yet, but we will give more insight as we get closer to launch.

Frankly, our decision at some point this year is do we expand capacity, so that decision will be made call it, second half of the year? And where do we put in capacity? Is it in North America? Is it in Europe? Is it in Asia? Those that the type of decisions that we're focused on making over the next 6 months.

Sorry, I think you may have given this, but how should we just think about margins in that business? And over time, how should they evolve?

So all we've shared to this point is you should expect next year mid-teens incremental conversion on that $300 million in revenue. You should expect EPS accretion immediately and you should expect from an ROIC perspective, we like it, which means it's at least meeting our 15% ROIC threshold.

Maybe I'll ask a question on e products. So I think about 5 years ago, you presented the Charging Forward initiative. I think a lot of investors know your business. If you could maybe just give a little bit of color on how the product differentiates itself from more traditional ICE business?

And what are some of the key wins that you've had to have such amazing growth in that segment?

So when you think about our 2 different businesses, I would think about you have our 3 business PMS business. Those are our foundational businesses. And then we have PDS and our battery business. So PDS has had a lot of success. You talked about the bookings and the progress that they have there. Those products include everything from your inverters, your motors, your combination products.

And they've been really successful particularly in China, but also in Europe and less in North America. What's really interesting beyond just the product itself, you're starting to get to the point where you actually start to see the award activity in China is driving wins in the Western world.

We've heard a multiple of our wins that we achieved this year. Our Western customers saying to us, well, you're winning in China, we're trying to correct that, not in terms of affordability clearly, there's something there, so let's go down this road. So I think that is actually start into the business because it goes back to what we talked about earlier, right, is that technology, that customer intimacy, that speed to market.

And I think PDS really leverages all 3 of those. It's really interesting.

Yes. I guess just switching to foundational. I think it foundational is expected to be a little softer in 2026 with more programs starting in 2027. Can you just maybe walk us through the award pipeline and incremental margins of these programs?

Just keep in mind on the foundational business, well, we do expect the sales to be down this year. That's mainly a function of their market. So the overall market, we're expecting to be down fit to down 3%. I mean the foundational market is going to be down a bit more than that. We expect our foundational sales to be down this year but it's going to outperform that market.

As you look out to '27 and 2028, and I think it applies both of the foundational businesses and the products businesses. The award activity acceleration that you started to see in '24 and further acceleration on 2025 a 3-year lead time, that means you start to see that flowing through in '27 and '28. So I think it's a function of 2 things. I think from an external environment, there was a kind of an unlock, particularly in North America in terms of OEMs awarding business, but also as our current CEO, then COO in 2024 really changed the way we think about growth.

In '22, '23, the world was going to electrification at a rapid pace. That's really what we were focused on in terms of award activities. Joe came in and said, well, our e-cars business have gotten to the point where now they're the size of a small automotive supplier, they can stand on their own.

I want all our business users to go find their areas of growth. foundational business units book foundational awards, maybe Conquest business, maybe develop a new product like turbine generator and e-products go capitalize on that secular growth opportunity.

Really independently allowing these businesses to kind of operate.

Their objectives are the same now versus 3 years ago it was, well, you as a foundational business unit, your job is margin, cash help support your brother that's growing into the products business. The e-products business has matured to the point where now our objectives are the same across the business units to outgrow your markets increment in the mid-teens.

We want to engage the full business to grow not just a portion of the business. And people want to work for businesses that have aspirations to grow. It's not as fun just to generate cash and give it to your brother or sister. And so we're seeing that change in thought process the change in maybe motivation has really unlocked the whole company, and that's why we saw 30-plus awards that we announced publicly, and there were obviously more record new business wins.

Moving into a new data center space with a new product, all of that doesn't happen without that change in tone. And so we're really happy with the progress that we've had to date.

I guess on that, so you announced data centers as sort of a foray outside of the traditional automotive value chain. Where else could we see BorgWarner go into? I mean what other sort of end markets applications as you think more broadly and longer term, do you think your current you could position?

Maybe I'll start, and Pat can certainly add on here. Obviously, power generation is the one that we spoke about, and we see $300 million of revenue next year. But we also have a lot of core competencies that we think can play outside of auto. Inverters is a good example of that, power conversion. That's an area of focus for us.

And then we spoke about the battery business and having power stored power is important too. So we think those are the areas that we can play, power generation, power conversion, power storage are all areas that we can leverage our core competencies outside of auto. And again, it goes back to finer growth opportunities, whether that's inside or outside, our goal is to grow our top line, convert to the mid-teens.

And at the end of the day, how I measure success as the CFO is we're growing the earnings power of BorgWarner. That's our job day in and day out. That's what I wake up and think about, and we have multiple avenues to do that, whether it's top line growth, whether it's cost controls, whether it's having a smart capital allocation approach that rewards shareholders through share repurchases.

We need to use every lever at our disposal to grow the earnings profile of the company, that's going to be good for our employees, and it's going to be good for our shareholders. So that's how we think about it.

Nothing else to add.

Maybe we'll just double click on the turbocharger business. leaders in that forever. We just kind of curious on the hybrid powertrains. You've had some big wins in that. And as you think about oil at $100, I'm sure it's not going to stay there, but let's say if it does for a longer period of time.

Does that influence the turbocharger business at all in a positive way perhaps?

Yes. I think there's a couple of growth opportunities for the T3 business unit. Obviously, they're developing new products like turbine generator. But I think the turbo business themselves I think we have opportunities for penetration still in North America. North America were in the 50s in terms of turbocharger penetration, much below Europe, so now much below China.

So I think there's a penetration opportunity there. In vision, you brought up hybrids, hybrids, you're going to see penetration of turbos on to hybrids as well. And then you also have potentially more efficient turbos coming more variable geometry turbocharging. I think that's coming as well.

But the last thing as I kind of talked about earlier, I think this idea that the larger players have more conquest opportunities going forward. The guy starts to play out, too. And I think that's also, Joe, again, challenging the organization of the -- I think there was a mindset of we're already #1 or #2, can we really go out and gain share.

I think you ask yourself the question, why couldn't you gain share? Why couldn't you conquest business? I got an opportunity.

And we saw those wins last year. Profitable right.

Absolutely.

What -- I mean, I guess as you look at maybe a more mature business like your turbocharger business, and you speak about large conquest wins, what's driving that? Is it better technology? Is it better pricing? Like can you just walk us through how you're sort of driving that growth in a more mature business?

I can start maybe -- all of the above I would say. Have those smaller suppliers struggle. You still have to invest in the technology. The market is still looking for advanced turbos. And we have scale that others don't have, the market should consolidate. And we're using that to our advantage. And that's exactly why we saw some of those conquest wins. So I think it's all of the above. It's pricing, it's customer relationships, it's technology.

You have to bring all of that to the table to win these awards. And I think our turbo business and our TTV business is really good in all of those regards. So I think that's what's leading to the wins.

Perfect. So I want to take a moment in the audience if we have anything out there for the BorgWarner team question in the back.

The opportunity in the turbines business is very interesting. Can you talk about how you compete against the likes of GEV CAD. Is that your true competitor? Or are you complementing their existing products? And maybe just a little bit about the auction process and how you win awards versus those [ brands? ]

Sure. So just to make sure that everybody understands the business model as it's currently set up, so we started a joint development agreement with a company called Endeavor about 3.5 years ago. And the purpose of that joint development agreement was make sure that we were able to bring a product to market that met certain specs that we agreed to with Endeavor.

And over the last 3 years, we've developed that product and it's running, and we've tested it. So we feel really good about the product. When you compare that against other competitors. We don't see a clear competitor. But when you look at items like efficiency or total cost of ownership, we're really competitive with those alternatives.

What we like better about our product is its flexibility. So as an example, some of the competitors that you talked about can provide power can provide primary power or backup power, ours can provide both. It's flexible.

We have modular flexibility, meaning we can provide one megawatt or we can provide a whole data farm. Some of those alternatives are huge turbines ours can be put on a truck and move from one data center to another data center or those larger turbines.

Once they're in place, they're in place. And ours provides fuel flexibility. So we think as we get out the curve, those things are going to be really important. As we look at the next handful of years, there's just such a need for power generation. I don't know that those discussions really are really important right now, right now is we need to get to market as quickly as possible make sure that we launch appropriately.

We have a great product that works in the field. And if we do that, then I think it's going to be our ability to supply not the demand in the short term.

The one thing I'd add is that I think the one benefit that we're really excited about bringing to this market is bringing the automotive scale, automotive technology and automotive cost base to this market. We think that's going to be a real competitive advantage for us.

When you look at the supply base for that product, 80% of the suppliers for the turbine generator from the automotive space. So think about what that means in terms of scale, pricing, continuous technology innovation. We think all the attributes that Craig talked about, the product is out for 100% right.

But I think from a competitive dynamic, bringing that automotive competitiveness is going to be a real strong differentiator to your point.

Perfect. Margins a little bit.

Yes. So we've got inflation in certain areas in the world with oil up. Just if you can talk a little bit about supply chain and the issues that you want to double-click on or raw material impact and margins have been very strong historically, if you could just fold that into the margin book.

So this is just the latest conversation. But if you look across the last 3 or 4 years, it's always something in automotive. It's a supplier a semiconductor shortage. It's inflation. It goes on and on and on. And so our teams are really agile. I think from a sales function perspective, I think we have a world-class sales function.

We know how to navigate these discussions with our customer and if we see excessive inflation. Obviously, we're going to push on our supply base and do the best we can manage it but we also have to have those discussions with our customers because the pricing power is going to probably go to the end consumer.

And we become -- we're very good at those discussions. So that's how I see it playing out. But again, it's just -- every year, it seems to be something that we have to navigate and we're really good at navigating those types of issues.

So I don't see it as a major concern at this point. And it's a complex industry. That makes it fun.

Just aftermarket, can you just sort of remind us your exposure to the aftermarket business? And how large and profitable that business is?

It's about 3% of revenue today. It's mostly on our foundational sides of our business. Margins are similar to our OEM business.

Perfect. We'll do one more skin out there before we get in rebar loss. I'm just going to circle back to endeavor in this JV. I could not find much information on endeavor. I was shocked about how little there is on the founder and the whole side of it. So what did you guys see in them 3 years ago to partner with them.

What are they bringing to the table? I'm sorry if some of this is a bit repetitive. I know you did talk on this when you announced it, but obviously, the opportunity is really big, but endeavors, I don't know, like I'm trying to understand how they're going to help get you to market quicker and all that. Maybe you can just touch on that quickly.

Patrick?

Yes. So just to give you a bit of history of Endeavor approached us about 3 years ago with this idea of bringing this product to market. And we've gone to this development stage. And now we've reached the phase of -- we have a manufacturing supply agreement with the company, which we're really excited about.

What we think endeavor brings to us is I think we're bringing a lot of the manufacturing know-how that I just talked about in the last question, but they bring that level of customer intimacy that we need to enter this new market. One great example that I find side is we've had multiple hyperscalers come through our R&D facility to see the product running. If we didn't have a customer that was already a known entity in that market.

I know they are private companies, you're not going to see as much data on their website like you would like a public company like us, but they are well known within that space. And we wouldn't have had those hyperscalers coming through our facility to see it. If we were an automotive company that just announced that this year, well, maybe they would come through maybe they wouldn't.

We've learned that in some of the other markets we've tried to enter that just because you have the best nausea, doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be successful. You need that customer and see, you need someone that can speak the language of their customers, and that's what Endeavor brings. So we think they're a really exciting customer for us, and we're really happy about it.

And just to clarify one point, it's not a joint venture. It's a supply agreement, just to make sure that's clear.

Just to be clear, on your competitors, who are you bumping up against -- is it cat? I'm just trying to understand -- I know this was asked before, but what particular competition because there's a lot of different things you got aircraft maintenance companies now taking engines right and turning them into supply -- power supply -- just trying to understand who specifically, are you kind of bumping up against when you do have an RFP?

So I want to talk about competitors' names. We all talk about products, and you can kind of figure out who their competitors. So there's 2 different sides of what this product will be aimed for. The primary power side, which you're competing against when the grid finally catches it up. But today, you're competing with as large industrial turbines are the primary source of for primary power for these sites.

And then on backup generation, there are typically diesel gen sets. So this product can compete on both sides of that market. I think you had asked us the question 3 years ago, we would have said the business is going to skew more towards back up. Today, we actually see more of a pull on the primary power side.

Perfect. Any others think we have one here.

I asked about hybrids. In the past 2 years, we've seen range extended hybrids coming into vogue, the key -- those vehicles only drive the wheels through the battery. Those vehicles also may or may not have turbocharging technology.

Can you talk a little bit about the difference in content per vehicle on those particular kind of hybrids, what the margin is on those products and how you see that market taking shape over the next couple of years?

Yes. I'd say, first of all, we love hybrids. It pulls from both sides of our portfolio, our foundational portfolio plus our e-product portfolio. When you look at content per vehicle, hybrids have the biggest opportunity for us.

$300 per vial versus $570 million in the foundational stack $2,300?

So it's a big opportunity for us. hybridization, obviously, is taking shape in across the globe, but we're seeing it obviously in a big way in China and Europe as well as starting to form in this market. And we've announced a lot of hybrid wins last year.

So from a margin perspective, same margin outlook, increment in the mid-teens on that actual growth, ROIC from a business case needs to be 15% or higher, and that's how we measure success, whether it's a foundational product, a new product hybrid application, battery electric vehicle application or a combustion application. Everything.

Regardless of the type of hybrids.

We don't really do low-end hybrids, it's advanced hybrids that you see our technology on.

Just the one thing I'd use [indiscernible] I would just point out the fact that if you look at our e-products business today on the light vehicle side in China, 45% of it is on advanced hybrids. So I know it's become the thing that comes up a lot in North America, but efficient hybrids, plug-ins, REVs have been a portion of the Chinese NAV growth for quite some time.

Perfect. I could sneak one in. Yes. Could we sneak one for allocation question and I know we're out of time. But you stepped up share repurchase over the past 2 years, how are you thinking about sort of future M&A? How do these take priority over dividend growth, share buybacks what areas would you prefer to acquire a company rather than sort of grow organically.

Can you just talk to us a little bit about capital allocation and you've got a great balance sheet and a very good rating, and we've got a lot of credit investors here who want to [indiscernible]

Okay.So maybe I'll touch on the balance sheet. -- what's my first priority in and this goes into my capital allocation philosophy. First priority, healthy balance sheet. We love our investment-grade rating. We think it's a competitive advantage. In fact, we know it's a competitive advantage for the company. .

And when I look at liquidity, my goal is 20% of sales or higher, meaning our revolver, which is $2 billion plus cash on hand. And from a leverage perspective, on a gross basis, my target is 2 times. When I look at the balance sheet at the end of this year, 12/31/25, I'd put a checkmark next to each of those. And then our focus as a company is let's create value with our cash. That's really important.

And we can do that in multiple ways. We can increase our dividend, which our Board agreed to do in July of last year. we can repurchase shares, and we can acquire great companies that increase the earnings power of BorgWarner. And we're going to use all of those avenues to do that over an extended period of time, over, call it, a 5-year horizon.

We want to have balance across each of those areas as we worked our way through last year, we have a very healthy M&A pipeline, and we're talking to a number of potential targets, but you need a buyer and a seller to agree and in the short term, if we don't see a transaction occurring, we're going to return that cash to shareholders. And that's exactly what you saw last year.

We returned $630 million of cash to shareholders. through share repurchases and dividends. And as we work our way through this year, we'll follow a similar methodology. We already announced $100 million share repurchase in Q1 of this year, and we'll continue to do that assessment quarter-by-quarter.

Looking at transactions that may occur. And if that doesn't happen, then you should expect us to return that cash.

So I want to thank Craig and Eddie for a great conversation and we really appreciate it. So thank you, guys, again.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone, for joining, as we continue day 3 of the Barclays Industrial Select Conference. I'm Dan Levy. I lead U.S. autos and mobility coverage at Barclays and very pleased to have with us BorgWarner, leader in powertrain technologies and expanding to different markets as we're going to discuss.

Very pleased to have with us Joe Fadool, company's President and CEO; Craig Aaron, the company's CFO; and then Pat Nolan, who leads IR.

So before we start, we're going to kick off with a couple of audience response questions. So everyone -- BorgWarner used to be from Chicago at some point. So vote early, vote often. Did you used to be from Chicago?

A long time ago. We moved our headquarters to Detroit in 2004.

Okay. It's probably vote early, vote often there as well. All right. So if we could just pull up question number one. Do you own the stock? I hope all of you guys are overweight. You own very much so. Can we start the timer, please?

Okay. All right. So mark the weight some opportunity here. We could start then question #2, general bias toward the stock. Okay. I assume your bias is positive.

I think so. I think we're bullish.

Okay. Okay. All right. So it's an interesting split. All right. So before we go, Joe, I think you had some opening remarks you wanted to make.

Yes. Thanks, Dan, for having us here. So first, I thought it'd be important to recap our 2025 results and then set the stage for our priorities this year. So 2025 was a terrific year for BorgWarner.

We expanded our adjusted operating margin 60 basis points. We increased our EPS 14%. And finally, we generated free cash flow of $1.2 billion, a record year for us. In addition to this, we shared with the Street 30 wins across our entire portfolio. So both our Foundational business and our eProducts.

And in total, really a record level of new business. And the cherry on top, of course, is the turbine generator. We announced we have a supply agreement to bring that to market next year with an initial revenue of $300 million.

So really proud of our team and what we achieved last year. When I think about our priorities this year, again, first priority is driving financial performance and discipline throughout the organization. So that means doing what we need to, to secure profitable launches with the backlog; second, adjusting our cost structure as needed and then driving performance and productivity and supply chain.

That will allow us to expand margins again in 2026. Second priority is continue to win new business. We saw a lot of RFQ flow last year, and that momentum is continuing into 2026. So we want to continue to win across the entire portfolio. And this will drive future growth.

It will enhance shareholder value of the company. And then third, we remain focused on delivering shareholder value through a number of mechanisms. So last year, we provided back to shareholders more than 50% of our free cash flow and dividend and share buyback, and we'll continue to do that and look for inorganic opportunities along the way that really leverage our core competence and can expand the earnings. So for us, we feel like we're in a really strong position right now in this market, and we're starting to see growth opportunities outside of light vehicle.

Okay. Great. Okay. That's a helpful introduction. I want to just broadly get a sense because -- and I think we've had this in some of the conversations since earnings. I think we know the last couple of years, the organic growth has been muted. It's going to be muted again in 2026, but I think you're providing some guidepost signposts that it's going to get better.

Is it fair to say that starting in 2027, your core business alongside this power gen opportunity should provide you with an improved growth profile. Meaning are we sort of -- is there a light at the end of the growth tunnel, so to speak?

So it is true. We are still living with this, we call it the EV overhang, right? We won a lot of business a couple of years ago. All that business really didn't come to fruition outside of China. So we've seen much slower growth on the E side.

And 2026 is a continuation of that. But what I am satisfied with are these new business wins. If we look back the last 12 months, even the last 18 months, we've secured a record amount of new business. And not just on the eProducts side, it's across our Foundational products, which we have a lot of confidence in.

Think about those products, we're #1 or #2 in nearly every one of them. So I'm pleased with the backlog we're building. And yes, in 2027, in addition to the turbine generator revenue, we expect to see our core business grow again.

Okay. Great. Can we also put this in context with maybe some of, I'll call it, an organizational shift that I think we've seen play out, in which it seems like you shifted your allocation of resources relatively away from being solely on eProducts and more toward the broader business. I think the words you used on the call were unleashing the growth across the segments. Can you maybe just help us understand and appreciate the organizational shift that's at play? And what's different in the past year versus the past prior years?

Sure. So what we've really done is adjusted our focus of the organization. So I'll first take us back to 2020. The whole world thought the light vehicle market was going to go to EV fairly quickly.

So we made a lot of capital decisions. We bought a few companies. We won a lot of new business, preparing for the growth that was coming. So it's fair to say we were hyper-focused on the eProduct side because that's where we thought the new world would be 10 years from now.

We all know that's not the case. It's playing out regionally different depending on where you sit. So what was important for us was to adjust the strategy and adjust the focus of the company, and that's what we did 18 months ago. Instead of just primarily focusing on eProduct growth, we're unlocking the growth potential across all the businesses.

So all 4 of our segments were asking them, go find your top line growth, go find those opportunities that you think are going to support profitable growth in the future. That's the big change that came. And what you see as proof points is we're winning business across the company.

So I'm really proud of what our teams are achieving there. And some of them are also with new products on the Foundational side, so our drivetrain Morris team, we announced last quarter a win for eXD solution, it's torque management solution. It can be used in hybrids.

That's a great example. Turbine generator, of course, getting a lot of attention. That's a great example of leveraging the competence of the company inside TTT. So I'm really pleased with how the organization has adjusted quickly to really unlock this new growth and think how powerful that is unleashing all of BorgWarner to go find growth rather than a subset of it. So really happy with how the teams are doing there.

And when we look at specifically on the Foundational wins, is that just -- these are share gains? These are CPV gains? This is -- help us contextualize what specifically is happening on the Foundational side. Were you maybe sort of not punching at your full weight previously and now there's more share opportunity to be had?

Yes. I think in the market, we also see a change, right? The rebirth, we'll call it, of the Foundational business and the extension of the combustion engine is clearly here. I mean it's going to have a much longer life than everybody thought.

So what we see is OEMs are adjusting their cycle plans to incorporate more combustion engines, a few of them even bringing new engines to market, which -- whoever thought that would happen a couple of years ago.

So our wins cut across a number of types. One is new business, which is very competitive to win it. You need the right technology and the right pricing. Some of it is conquest business. This is something we've been talking about, Dan, being #1 or #2 in nearly all of our Foundational business, we expect over time, we're going to conquest more and more business.

The reason for that is the smaller players are not going to be able to stay competitive and keep up with the demands of innovation. If you think about turbochargers, there's still another couple of generations so that you can be a great supplier in that space. So also uplifts are part of those wins, extensions, volume increases.

So all of the above, and we're participating in all of those types of wins. So we're really pleased with how the Foundational business has started to evolve with all that backlog.

Okay. So I think then my next question is to then transition to the power gen side. I think there is a view on the part of some that what you're doing in power generation might be a way to offset maybe declines in the core LVP market. It sounds like you're saying that's not the case. There's still growth in the core market. You're just getting it in different ways. And then the power gen is additive. Is that right?

That's correct. So think about our core markets, which are very important to us. We strongly believe in the future of electrification, okay? Electrification is coming. You see it playing out in China under the right environment. It's growing in Europe. It's growing in other markets.

It's just not growing here at the moment for a number of reasons, which maybe we'll talk about later. But electrification brings more content opportunities for BorgWarner. So think about our business. We're going to remain strong on the Foundational side, and we've got a growing eProduct side. Last year, we did $2.6 billion in eProducts. So we can complain about the lack of growth, but we've been growing year-over-year for 5 years. And now we've got a reasonable size supplier just in our eProducts.

So I'm really pleased with that. So that's our primary growth engine that we've been working on. In addition, now we're going to mark with this turbine generator. So for me, it's a great example of unleashing the power of BorgWarner to enter new market spaces. So it's more cherry on top than it is to replace what we think is our core market.

Okay. So let's talk about that. Can you maybe give us a sense how long this was in the works, the turbine generator, the path to success, the challenges you're going to have. I mean, we'll unpack these, but give us an overall flavor of this opportunity.

So we've been working with our partner, Endeavour and their subsidiary, TurboCell for over 3 years. First, I'll just start with Endeavour. They're a very innovative data center supplier. They've been in the business for over 25 years.

So they've got a lot of experience building out data centers, operating data centers. We share the vision of a cleaner, energy-efficient world, which is really cool. They are coming at it from a data center space. We're coming at it from a mobility space.

They're a very innovative partner. As we know now, time to power is a crucial part of data center success. It's water and it's power, and we're able to solve one of those 2 problems, at least to a smaller degree.

So think about the development cycle of a typical automotive platform, it's 2 to 3 years. In this case, we're already 3 years into this development. By the time we launch, it will be 4, 4.5 years. So a little bit longer cycle than typical, but I'm excited because we're leveraging all the core competence of the company to bring this to market.

So think about the content of a turbine generator. You got a multilevel turbocharger system in there, high-speed rotating electrics, an inverter, advanced software controls. I mean, these are things BorgWarner has been known for, for 20, 30, 40 years.

So we're leveraging all of that even though we're only working with Endeavour on this solution for 3-plus years. The other thing I'm really excited about, which we can't emphasize enough, think about bringing automotive scale and competitiveness to the power market, okay?

There's a lot of great power companies out there. But none of them are bringing the automotive scale, the automotive quality, the discipline, the ability successfully like BorgWarner is. And that's the piece we're really excited about. We haven't talked about as much in the past, but we think that's a game changer.

Okay. So as it relates to the specific offering, and you just touched on it, help us understand, I think the number you gave on your earnings was a 65% of the content is going to be BorgWarner. So help us understand what you're responsible for, what Endeavour is responsible for? And then within that 65%, how much of that is technology that's already in-house that was used for auto and is just being applied differently versus technology you have to go out and acquire or a different supply chain you have to access. Help us understand on that.

Sure. So the 65% when we talk about that, just to frame it properly, 65% of that content, we are developing and producing internally. So in addition to the new site we're investing in, in North Carolina, we have 4 other locations around the globe, where we're leveraging their competence, their footprint, their know-how.

So it's things like turbochargers, motors, inverters, advanced controls and thermal management. Those are the things that we're leveraging our auto core to bring into this product. So the confidence is there. The application is different. So there is some invention along the way, and we've got a lot of IP in this new product, which helps create some moat to it.

When you think about the other 35%, we're still the design source, but we're asking our supply base to supply the parts. So we're 100% in control of what we call the turbine generator. Then we ship that to Endeavour. They finish the packaging with one of their other partners. They add some more material to it, and then it's a complete unit.

And we're talking about how large is the application, at 2-megawatt plus applications, like what is the typical product look like or unit that you would sell?

Right. So they're packing and shipping in as small as a 1-megawatt system. So if you only need 1 megawatt, they'll be able to serve that piece of the market, but you can scale these up. So that's another beautiful part of this is they can serve an entire data center farm if you need them to.

That flexibility also extends to -- we can serve as backup power, we can serve as primary power. So we've got the flexibility between those 2. And then these things can be lifted from one site to another if you want -- let's say, we're used as bridge power, meaning the utility is not ready to serve that market yet.

We can be there for a period of time and then airlifted somewhere else to another data center to serve that data center. So a lot of flexibility built in. And when we talk to some of Endeavour's customers, they're sharing with us, hey, we really value some of the things you guys are doing.

Okay. And then as far as Endeavour, you said you've been working with them now for a few years already, and you gave some sense within the product itself, who's doing what. Who's handling the go-to-market? How broad is their potential customer set? Maybe just give people a better sense of Endeavour and where they sit in this situation, their relationship with hyperscalers, et cetera?

So Endeavour is the face to the customer, okay? They're the ones with the 25 years of experience building data centers. We are providing -- and that includes the service and the install. We're providing really what I call the content, right?

We're providing the complete turbine generator system. We are technical support. We're going to provide all the service parts as needed over the lifetime of these things. So think about it, all the hardware, we're the majority of the supplier there.

But they're interfacing with the hyperscalers and the edge customers as they normally would as a data center designer and provider. So that's the split of the business. Again, it's a great partnership because we need them for the entry into the channel, but we're providing a lot of the technology and product into the final assembly.

And your sense of how this product will compare to maybe some of the other power gen players being the larger players like a CAT or Cummins or even maybe guys that are newer guys or like Generac or how does it compare versus others? What's your sense?

So one reason we feel very good is we don't see a direct competitor for what we're doing. Those names you mentioned, all valuable companies. We supply some of them turbochargers today. But you think about their backup power. They don't serve the primary power.

And it's very expensive backup power. They only run on diesel for the most part. There's a few natural gas entrants now, but it's very expensive uptime for that. The larger turbine players, the time to power is much longer. They don't have the resiliency we have.

In data centers, you have loads coming in, loads getting dumped on a regular basis. And our system is able to handle that beautifully. The time to power is much shorter. So 45 seconds to start up a turbine generator, BorgWarner turbine generator. We can serve a variety of fuels. So natural gas, diesel in the future, hydrogen. Many of the players don't have that variability.

And then finally, it's the scalability of this thing. Like I mentioned, you can serve a 1-megawatt system and even outside of data centers. These can be used for backup power for hospitals or for hotels or island nations. Oil and gas is another great potential application here.

So we just think the flexibility, the total cost of ownership is very attractive, and that's what the hyperscalers are also feeding back to us.

And maybe one last one on this. So $300 million next year, you said 2 gigawatts of capacity. Maybe what subset of the 2 gigawatts of capacity does next year's revenue represent? And what's the line of sight for there being demand to the capacity that you have?

Yes. So the capacity -- sure. The capacity doesn't really align to the $300 million. Think about the $300 million, that's our initial SOP and ramp-up year, okay? But we wouldn't install 2 gigawatts if we weren't pretty confident that we can fill that.

So I can't answer your question directly. But beyond the 2 gigawatt, we see enough demand and backlog that we're considering decisions in the near future, do we expand beyond that?

And not just in this market. We're seeing demand in Europe. We're seeing demand in other countries like India. This is a solution that works globally. So for us, we're super excited, but we're hyper-focused on the initial launch.

I think Craig and I, we were just in North Carolina yesterday to spend time with the team, see the new site, see the testing and the progress we're making and the progress is tremendous. So I'm feeling really good about our ability to launch and secure that $300 million, and that's what we're super focused on right now.

Great. Let's pivot maybe to the margin dynamics because I think the margins last year, this year are a very interesting part of the story here that even with a tougher growth environment, not only have we seen margins hold in, but actually expand.

And now the outlook this year, this is with incremental R&D and spend. So maybe just give us a sense of the levers that you've already pulled and how much more runway there is on margins in spite of what's been a tougher growth environment the last couple of years?

Yes. Joe and I are really focused on growing the earnings power of BorgWarner. That's our ultimate goal. That's really what we've been doing in the last few years. And margin has been a big story as part of that.

So when you think about our margin progression over the last 2 years, up 110 basis points over a 2-year period, 60 basis points last year, 50 basis points the year before. The main drivers is cost controls. So focused on restructuring, productivity, supply chain savings is a big part of it.

Lower cost of poor quality has also been a big part of it. So really proud of the progression. As we move to 2026, we see another 10 to 20 basis points of margin expansion focused on cost controls again, while we also invest in the future with the turbine generator that Joe just mentioned, plus the 30-plus awards that we've announced publicly, we're supporting those launches as well.

And that's what great companies do. They support the growth objectives as we move to '27 and forward. At the same time, we're able to expand margins. That's what we're focused on doing.

Your R&D profile this year versus past years, is it elevated?

No, it's similar. It's at a similar level.

Okay. So it's spend in some areas offset by maybe saves in other areas. That's how it nets out.

Exactly.

Okay. Commercial recoveries, maybe give us a flavor for how significant it was in '25 and what's in '26?

Sure. So we mentioned in our fourth quarter call that we had a sizable recovery that went through our PDS segment. It had about 100 basis points of impact on our margin profile in the fourth quarter. But as you think about our jump-off point, our jump-off point from '25 to '26 is 10.7%.

That's inclusive of that recovery. And what we're guiding to is 10.8% at the midpoint, 10.9% at the high point. So it's important that we jump off the inclusion of that. So we need to continue to overcome that. And our goal, again, and the earnings profile of the company, that means margin expansion, that means EPS expansion, and it means including that recovery that we saw in 2025.

Great. And then maybe last question before we go back to some of the other ARS questions. The path to getting to breakeven in battery and PowerDrive. Is it purely volume at this point? Or are there other levers on restructuring beyond what you've already done?

Sure. So when you think about the battery business, Joe mentioned it earlier, but visibility from a sales perspective is a little bit challenging right now, but we're happy with the cost structure actions that we've taken over the last year.

So restructuring, we restructured that business. We've moved our breakeven point to much lower. And we do see growth opportunities down the road. Energy is a big driver going forward, and we see applications for that business outside of automotive.

And so the team is really looking at those opportunities. And as those growth opportunities come into our P&L, we have high confidence that we can capitalize on that growth. For PowerDrive Systems, we announced a restructuring 18 months ago.

And one of the items that Joe and I were really looking at as it relates to that business last year is we need to grow, but also we need to convert in the mid-teens. And when you look at that business, they grew 31% year-over-year on the light vehicle E side of their portfolio.

And if you look at the results, they converted in the mid-teens. That was an important data point for us. As we look at 2026, we expect that light vehicle eProducts portfolio to grow in the low double digits, and we fully expect them to convert on that growth in the mid-teens. So we feel good about that business. But we're also always looking at the cost structure to make sure we're as competitive as we can be as we move forward.

Great. Why don't we get to ARS question #3. We'll get through the rest of these and then a couple of wrap-up questions. #3, okay? Through cycle EPS growth for BorgWarner, and this is relative. You start the clock, please. Relative to peers, so other autos.

You're painting a good growth picture, so I can only extrapolate that it will be a better EPS growth with share buybacks and whatnot. Okay. So above in line, split. Okay. Next, question #4. You can start the clock. Maybe while that's going on, a word on sort of the capital allocation story where you sit today?

Sure. So really pleased with our actions from 2025, just to recap some of what Joe said earlier. $1.2 billion in free cash flow, record free cash flow year for the company, up 66% year-over-year, and we deployed $630 million of that free cash flow to shareholders through dividends and buyback.

We increased our dividend 55%. We got great support from our Board, and we repurchased $0.5 billion in shares last year. As we go into this year, we expect $1 billion of cash -- free cash flow at the midpoint of our guide.

And we've already indicated that we'll buy back $100 million in the first quarter. What Joe and I are always balancing and it's a constant conversation is we need to create value with our cash, and we're going to do that in multiple ways.

We're going to continue to buy back shares, but we also have to look at the inorganic opportunities that are in front of us that drive EPS accretion. And so that's a constant conversation that we're balancing, but pleased with our actions in 2025, and we're going to follow the same playbook as we move into 2026.

It's a balance. Okay. Good. Question #5. All right. Multiple. I'll point out here, the market is like 20x. So I think you're low double digits right now.

I like # 5. 5 and 6.

5 and 6. I will point out to the folks that say that your stock is expensive that -- you're still trading at a depressed multiple versus the market, okay? And then #6, most significant share price headwind for BorgWarner. And I think the message here is it's -- I mean, it's all of these points, but you're focused on the growth and the margins combined, really.

Yes.

Okay. So growth. Folks, any questions? Okay. Maybe just -- I'll wrap with a couple here. Maybe you could just talk about where the bidding is for PowerDrive, what the program -- what the pipeline looks like after this reset that we've seen. So you guided to, I think it was low double-digit growth in PowerDrive this year. What that pipeline looks like?

Yes. I think it's first important to kind of go back a few years and look how far that team has come. In 2021, that was a $700 million-ish business. It's grown 20% a year and is now a $2.6 billion business.

So we're making great progress in that business. Many of the awards we won last year were also on the eProduct side. And we've learned a lot. I think that's really important for folks to know.

We've learned a lot about what this market is going to look like, who the winners and losers are likely going to be. So our teams have done a great job to reposition some of our quoting. We've also redeployed a lot of the existing capital structure.

As Craig mentioned last year, that's one of the reasons our CapEx was down. We were moving around existing investment to serve some of that future growth. So we feel good about the backlog. Of course, there's always risk in your backlog, right?

Every OEM feels they're going to win more market share. But we've also gotten smarter about how we discount volumes, discount certain OEMs. So from our view, we're in a really good spot because the Foundational business has never been stronger.

Just as a reminder, we're #1 or #2 in every one of those products. We won a lot of new business there. The eProduct side is scaling very nicely. We plan to be a market leader in all of those products. So from our point of view, we're in a much better balanced situation and environment than we were 4 or 5 years ago.

And maybe final, just on the M&A bolt-on side. Is there any capability that you need to acquire to properly meet the power gen opportunity?

So the short answer is no. We are looking at M&A through the lens of 3 strict criteria. One is we want to leverage the core competence of the company. That's very important. So industrial logic needs to make a lot of sense.

The second is near-term accretion. So we love our portfolio. We're in a much better position than we were 5 years ago. Can we enhance it? Can we build on it? Can we add to it? Absolutely. But we want it to be near-term accretive.

And then finally, we don't want to overpay for anything. So it needs to be properly valued. We've passed on a number of deals that didn't meet those 3 criteria. So we still remain active in M&A. But I would say we've raised the bar in terms of our decision-making. And if we don't do something on the M&A space, as Craig mentioned, we're going to return shareholder value in other ways like buybacks.

Yes. Great [ call there ]. Joe, Craig, Pat, thank you.

All right. Thank you.

Good morning. My name is Michael, and I will be your conference specialist. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the BorgWarner 2025 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the call over to Patrick Nolan, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mr. Nolan, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Michael. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We issued our earnings release earlier this morning. It's posted on our website, borgwarner.com, both on our home page and our Investor Relations home page. With regard to our upcoming Investor Relations calendar, we will be attending multiple investor conferences now in our next earnings release. Please see the Events section of our IR page for a full list.

Before we begin, I need to inform you that during this call, we may make forward-looking statements, which involve risks and uncertainties as detailed in our 10-K. Our actual results may differ significantly from the matters discussed today. During today's presentation, we'll highlight certain non-GAAP measures in order to provide a clearer picture of how the core business performed and for comparison purposes with prior periods.

When you hear us say on a comparable basis, that means excluding the impact of FX, net M&A and other noncomparable items. When you hear us say adjusted, that means excluding noncomparable items. When you hear us say organic, that means excluding the impact of FX and any net M&A. We will also refer to our incremental margin performance. Our incremental margin is defined as the organic change in our adjusted operating income divided by the organic change in our sales.

We will also refer to our growth versus our market. When you hear us say market, that means the change in light vehicle production weighted for our geographic exposure. Please note that we have posted today's earnings call presentation to the IR page of our website. We encourage you to follow along with these slides during our discussion.

With that, I'm happy to turn the call over to Joe.

Thank you, Pat, and good morning, everyone. We are pleased to share our results for 2025 and provide a company update, starting on Slide 5. I wish to begin by thanking our employees, our customers and our suppliers for all of their trust and efforts during the past year and for their continued support. In 2025, we delivered approximately $14.3 billion in net sales, which was up approximately $200 million year-over-year.

This increase was supported by a 23% increase in our light vehicle eProduct sales, which demonstrated the strong demand for our hybrid and bed products. Despite challenges in our battery business, we delivered modest organic growth. Excluding the decline in our Battery and Charging Systems segment, our organic sales were up approximately 1.6% year-over-year, led by outgrowth across both our foundational and light vehicle key product portfolios. Despite modest sales growth, we significantly improved our overall financial profile by increasing the earnings power in free cash flow.

Additionally, we returned over 50% of our free cash flow to shareholders through a balanced capital allocation approach. In my view, our 2025 financial performance was outstanding and positions us for continued momentum into 2026. Looking to the drivers of our future performance, we finished the year by securing our record number of new product awards across our foundational and eProduct portfolios. All of our business units contributed to our record wins, and I expect a robust pipeline of further opportunity that 2026 and beyond.

Additionally, I am truly excited to share with you a new product that will serve as a power generation solution for the data center market and other microgrid applications. As many of you know, the demand for on-site power generation is growing significantly. We believe this product could open up an additional avenue of significant profitable growth outside of our core automotive markets. I will provide more detail on this exciting news in a few minutes.

Looking back on our 2025 performance, I'm very proud of our team and our results. As Craig will detail, we believe we remain well positioned to continue to expand margins, grow adjusted EPS and generate strong free cash flow in 2026. We expect to do this while also investing in our business to support our focus on long-term profitable growth.

Now let's look at some new light vehicle product awards on Slide 6. First, BorgWarner has secured a conquest award with a major European OEM and to supply of variable turbine geometry turbocharger for one of their hybrid electric vehicle platforms. This business win positions BorgWarner as part of the supply base that will power this OEM's first hybrid electric offering in North America. We are proud to extend our long-lasting relationship with this OEM.

Next, BorgWarner has secured a contract with a major North American OEM to provide an 800-volt secondary IBM and a generator module incorporating a dual inverter. These products will be integrated into a series of the automakers range-extended electric vehicle trucks and large frame SUV models. I believe this award showcases our product breadth in the electrified propulsion space.

Next, BorgWarner has secured an award with a premium European OEM. The supply in iDM supporting a hybrid range-extended powertrain architecture. The iDM features BorgWarner's innovative single motor and integrated drive module by enabling a single electric motor to perform both power generation and driving functions within a very compact package, the solution provides greater flexibility in vehicle platform design, system integration and performance optimization.

Next, BorgWarner's battery management system has been selected for an expanded program with a global OEM. The system will support additional B-segment and C-segment passenger cars, as well as light commercial vehicles for battery electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle applications.

Finally, BorgWarner has secured a new electric cross differential program with a leading Chinese OEM. This eXD solution is designed for a 48-volt system and is integrated with the customer's electrical and electronic architecture. This program represents BorgWarner's first 48-volt eXD application and expands the company's torque management capabilities for electrified vehicles.

Next, on Slide 7. I'm extremely excited to share the details of a new product for the data center market and other microgrid applications. BorgWarner has signed a master supply agreement with TurboCell, which is a subsidiary of Data Center Infrastructure developer, Endeavour. Under this agreement, BorgWarner will supply a highly modular turbine generator system. This exciting new technology leverages many of BorgWarner's core competencies including our world-class turbocharging, thermal management, power electronics, advanced software controls and high-speed rotating electric capabilities. It also leverages our deep manufacturing footprint.

As many of you know, the power generation market is expected to grow significantly over the next decade. We expect roughly a mid-teens annual growth in demand for on-site power generation through 2035. This is where we expect our turbine generator system to be a transformative solution for the data center market as we believe our product addresses the growing demand for alternatives to traditional on-site power generation.

Within the U.S., we expect our turbine generator system to help support the acceleration of the power and energy solutions needed to strengthen our grid. For those of you unfamiliar with Endeavour, let me provide some background. Endeavour provides turnkey facility solutions to data center and microgrid customers. The company has 25 years of experience in the data center market and operates multiple facilities, both in the United States and Europe. BorgWarner has worked with Endeavour and their TurboCell subsidiary for more than 3 years to bring this turbine generator system to market. Throughout this time, we found them to be a thoughtful partner that supports our vision of a clean, energy-efficient world. I look forward to all we can accomplish together as we bring an innovative, lower emissions power generation platform to the data center market. From a financial perspective, we expect production of the turbine generator system to begin to ramp up in 2027 and with sales expected to be more than $300 million during the first year of production.

Now let's turn to Slide 8 and discuss some of the advantages of the turbine generator system compared to existing power generation solutions. As you can see by the image on the left side of the slide, the turbine generator system leverages many of our foundational and eProduct capabilities. And we believe the breadth of our capabilities is the competitive advantage that will be difficult to replicate. We believe the turbine generator system offers unmatched adaptability for diverse applications, including backup and primary power, advanced controls and quick transient response to manage power and grid peaks. Based on our analysis, we also believe the turbine generator system provides a lower emission solution relative to other options.

Importantly, it also allows for flexible fuel types, including natural gas, propane, diesel and hydrogen, giving additional options to the end user. BorgWarner expects to leverage our robust automotive supply base and world-class manufacturing capabilities to maximize vertical integration allowing us to control approximately 65% of the contact. I am excited to update you throughout the year as we move closer to the start of production in 2027. Opportunities for other industrial applications for BorgWarner products over time. Congratulations to our entire BorgWarner team.

To summarize, the takeaways from today are the following: BorgWarner ended 2025 with strong results. We delivered $14.3 billion in net sales, a 10.7% adjusted operating margin, which was up 60 basis points compared to 2024. We also grew our full year free cash flow to $1.2 billion, an increase of approximately 66% compared to last year. We secured a record level of new business by leveraging growth across our foundational and eProduct offerings, which we believe demonstrate our focus on product leadership.

And we announced the signing of a master supply agreement with TurboCell for our turbine generator system, which expands our product reach into new and growing data center and other micro triad markets. We expect this transformational and innovative system will further support our focus on long-term profitable growth by addressing the growing need for a superior power generation solution.

As I reflect on my first 12 months as CEO, I'm so proud of our continued progress on three key factors, I believe, will drive long-term shareholder value. Second, we secured record new business wins across our foundational and eProduct portfolios, which we expect will support our ability to deliver long-term profitable growth. The 30 awards that we have announced over the past 4 quarters give me great confidence in our strategy. Our business units are embracing the challenge to find additional growth opportunities through new product developments like our turbine generator system and our EXT solution. And in 2026, we expect to launch new products like our innovative battery cooling plates.

And third, we remain focused on delivering incremental shareholder value through our free cash flow generation. As Craig will highlight, we returned over 50% of our free cash flow to shareholders over the course of 2025 and we continue to prudently explore accretive inorganic opportunities to grow our capabilities. By continuing to focus on these priorities in 2026 and beyond, I believe we are well positioned to continue growing the earnings power of BorgWarner, which we believe will drive long-term value for our shareholders for years to come.

With that, I will turn the call over to Craig.

Thank you, Joe, and good morning, everyone. Let's jump into our fourth quarter financials by turning to Slide 9 for a look at our year-over-year sales.

Last year's Q4 sales were just over $3.4 billion. You can see that stronger foreign currencies drove a year-over-year increase in sales of $104 million. Then you can see a modest increase in our organic sales, which was primarily driven by turbocharger outgrowth and customer recoveries in North America, partially offset by foundational production headwinds in Europe and China. The sum of all this was just under $3.6 billion of sales in Q4.

Turning to Slide 10. You can see our earnings and cash flow performance for the quarter. Our fourth quarter adjusted operating income was $427 million, equating to a strong 12.0% adjusted operating margin. That compares to adjusted operating income from continuing operations of $352 million or a 10.2% adjusted operating margin from a year ago.

On a comparable basis, adjusted operating income increased $67 million on $29 million of higher sales. This performance benefited from more than 100 basis points in customer recoveries, primarily for a North American new product program that has seen significant volume shortfalls, as well as $11 million of positive net tariff recoveries. Our adjusted EPS from continuing operations was up $0.34 compared to a year ago as a result of higher adjusted operating income and the impact of over $500 million in share repurchases during 2025.

And finally, free cash flow from continuing operations was a generation of $470 million, which drove our full year 2025 free cash flow to over $1.2 billion or a 66% increase from 2024.

Now let's take a look at our 2026 full year outlook. On Slide 11, we are projecting total 2026 sales in the range of $14.0 billion to $14.3 billion compared to $14.3 billion in 2025. Starting with foreign currencies. Our guidance assumes an expected full year sales benefit of $200 million compared to 2025 due to the strengthening of the euro and the renminbi versus the U.S. dollar.

We expect our weighteld end markets to be flat to down 3% for the year. We expect our light vehicle business, which comprises over 80% of our sales to perform broadly in line with our weighted light vehicle market. However, we expect a sales decline in our battery business due to the lack of North American incentives and weaker European demand. This decline represents a 150 basis point headwind to our year-over-year sales growth. Based on these assumptions, we expect our 2026 organic sales change to be down 3.5% to down 1.5% year-over-year, which is roughly in line with our market, excluding the decline in battery sales.

Now let's switch to March. We expect our full year adjusted operating margin to be in the range of 10.7% to 10.9% compared to our 2025 adjusted operating margin of 10.7%. On a year-over-year basis, we expect the exit of our charging business to drive a 10 basis point improvement in adjusted operating margin. Excluding this benefit, the low end of our margin outlook contemplates the business delivering a full year decremental conversion in the low double digits.

On the high end of our outlook assumes we largely offset the impact of the organic sales decline through further cost controls. We view this as strong underlying performance building off of 2025 that well exceeded expectations. Based on this sales and margin outlook, we're expecting full year adjusted EPS in the range of $5 to $5.20 per diluted share or approximately a 4% increase versus 2025 at the midpoint of our reach.

This once again demonstrates our focus on consistently driving earnings expansion despite lower industry production and battery sale declines. We expect full year free cash flow to be in the range of $900 million to $1.1 billion with the 2026 midpoint being a decline versus 2025 strong results, mainly due to an expected increase in capital spending as we support our upcoming turbine generator system launch and other light vehicle launches around the globe. We expect these investments to accelerate our top line growth in 2027 and beyond. With that, that's our 2026 outlook.

Now let's turn to Slide 12 and review our share repurchase progress. First, we successfully repurchased $400 million of BorgWarner stock during the second half of 2025. This was ahead of our October guidance, supported by our stronger-than-expected free cash flow during the fourth quarter. Combined with our second quarter repurchases and common stock dividends, we returned approximately $630 million to shareholders in 2025, which was approximately 52% of our free cash flow during the year. This demonstrates our focus on a balanced, disciplined and consistent return of cash to our shareholders, which we expect to continue in 2026 and beyond.

I would also highlight that we have repurchased over 31 million BorgWarner shares since 2021 or a 13% reduction in our outstanding shares over that period. This represents a $1.3 billion return of cash to our shareholders over the past 4 years and shows our confidence in the strong and sustainable cash flow that we believe we'll generate for years to come.

As we look forward, we are pleased that we have $600 million of remaining availability under our current share repurchase authorization to support additional shareholder value creation. We continue to see a consistent and disciplined cash return to shareholders as an important component of our balanced capital allocation approach.

So let me summarize my financial remarks. Overall, we delivered strong 2025 results. Sales were up modestly supported by a 23% growth in our light vehicle eProduct sales. We delivered a very strong 10.7% adjusted operating margin, which was 60 basis points higher than 2024. And importantly, we saw operating margin expansion across all business units and appropriately reduced corporate overhead. 2025 adjusted earnings per diluted share increased 14% year-over-year, supported by our focus on margin expansion and returning cash to shareholders through share repurchases.

And finally, we generated over $1.2 billion in free cash flow or a 66% increase year-over-year and approximately $630 million of this cash was returned to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends.

Now as we look ahead to 2026, our outlook aligns with our focus on expanding the earnings power of the company. At the midpoint of our guidance, we expect another year of adjusted operating margin expansion and adjusted earnings per share growth despite our expectations that market volumes and battery sales will decline in 2026.

Second, we continue to make important product investments that leverage the many mechanical and power electronics or competencies that BorgWarner has developed over decades of product leadership. These core competencies will help us continue to secure new business awards throughout 2026 and beyond. Today's turbine generator system announcement is a great example of finding new avenues of sales growth that provide a strong return on invested capital.

And finally, with another year of anticipated strong free cash flow of $1 billion at the midpoint of our guidance, we expect to have additional opportunities to create value for shareholders as we prudently evaluate inorganic accretive opportunities that grow BorgWarner's earning power and execute a balanced capital allocation approach that reward shareholders.

As I look back on our 2025 results and our 2026 outlook, I'm extremely proud of the BorgWarner team around the globe and their ability to deliver strong financial results in an uncertain light vehicle production environment. We believe we have a red technology-focused portfolio, financial discipline and global team to continue to drive the long-term earnings power of the company. We're excited about 2026, and we look forward to executing another strong year.

With that, I'd like to turn the call back over to Pat.

Thank you, Craig. Michael, I'll open it up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from Colin Langan with Wells Fargo.

Congrats on a good quarter. Can we dig in a little bit more to the data center opportunity? Obviously, you gave a lot of color, but how should we think about the margins of that business as it launches? Is the $300 million a target? Or is that already booked with upside if you could put more business? And is there any CapEx that we should be worried about as you need to invest to develop this business?

Sure, Colin. Thanks for the question. So we announced obviously the data center wins, $300 million in revenue as we look out to 2027. As you think about the margin profile, what you should assume is a mid-teens incremental conversion on that extra $300 million of sales, which is consistent with our automotive business. What you should think about from an EPS perspective, we believe it will be EPS accretive immediately, and we see a strong return on invested capital for that program. From a CapEx perspective, you can see our CapEx guide is 4.5% of sales, which is up from 2025. And that's because we're investing in the 30-plus wins that we've announced publicly last year, as well as the turbine generator system that Joe spoke on in his script.

Got it. That makes sense. And then if we could just dig into the PowerDrive. You kind of commented in your commentary, you mentioned something about a recovery. I mean, I guess that would explain why sales -- the EBIT rose about 70 million on sales up 40%. Any way to frame the size of the recovery? Does that repeat into next year? Wouldn't that be a headwind if you had a one-off recovery this year? And how should we think about the sustainability of growth in the segment given the slowdown of EV?

Sure. So in the quarter, we had about 100 basis points of benefit in the fourth quarter. But as you look at PowerDrive Systems, I would encourage you to look at the full year. Joe and I were really watching PowerDrive Systems this year. Not just from a growth perspective, where we saw substantial eProduct growth, 23%. eProduct growth in the light vehicle side, a lot of that in PDS. But also ensuring that we incremented that net growth in the mid-teens. And if you look at PDS results for the full year, that's exactly what you see.

So we feel really good about the progression of that business throughout 2025. As we look at 2026, we continue to expect light vehicle eProducts growth in that low double digits, and we expect PowerDrive Systems to convert in the mid-teens off of that 2025 basis. That's how you should think about that business as we move into 2026.

Your next question comes from Chris McNally with Evercore ISI.

Just a quick follow-up to Colin. So I mean, launching the turbine business out of 3T at auto-like margins, given the shared technology, I mean, it's obviously just fantastic. Can you give us a sense for that $300 million rev, I don't need a hard number, but like a couple of years past '27 is the opportunity because it's -- whether this is a triple or a home run, but it seems like there's a lot of runway here.

I think the way to think about that business, we announced today $300 million in the start of production year. So this program, like many others, has a ramp-up phase to it. When we look more broadly at this market, the data center market is growing in the mid-teens per year for the next 10 years is what most people believe.

We think it's applicable to over 90% of the data center market globally. And it's a product that is really differentiating us versus some of our competitors. To give you some color on the technology, it incorporates a very fast transient response to support the load imbalances that happen quickly in data centers. We have a very integrated approach to the system, one of the slides in the deck, Page 8 highlights really all the BorgWarner content that's helping us bring this to market. So from my perspective, this is exactly what we asked our business units to do, and that is drive top line growth, increment in the mid-teens, and we feel very optimistic about this new entry into the industrial market.

That's great detail. I'll definitely follow up off-line. And then just the second one, going back to the auto side. So growth over market, minus 1. You talked about the battery drag, right, which is a multiyear -- unclear when we hit sort of bottom there. But I think you said that's 150 basis points if you ex that out, you're still only really growing 50 basis points on the other three divisions, whether it's basically good secular tailwind in both ICE and hybrid.

So can you just an order of magnitude when we may see those get back to that sort of low single digit that we were doing sort of consistently. And what would get us back to that level? What is the market driver?

Sure. As I look back first at the last couple of years, '24, '25, it's clear to me that our outgrowth was impacted by EV programs that we booked several years ago. And as we know, the volume of many of these programs, at least in the Western world has been lower than we expected. So what I can see now is that dynamic is going to continue into '26 and that's what we're living with at this point.

And I can also say I'm not satisfied with the outflows we've been seeing. So what I am pleased about, however, is all the booking strength in both the foundational and eProduct side, we've announced over the last 18 months or so. So I expect these bookings to support our midterm objective for our foundational eProduct businesses to outgrow their respective markets, and we'll start seeing that top line benefit in 2027 and further in 2028 and beyond.

And your next question comes from Joseph Spak with UBS.

Thanks. It's helpful your slide that sort of shows the content you're getting on the PowerGen opportunity. And I know you have this comment, 65% of the content controlled by BorgWarner. I guess I just want to understand that a little bit more. And please correct me where I'm wrong because again, I'm sort of still getting familiar with the side of the business, but $300 million, 2 gigawatts, that's like $150 a kilowatt.

I thought the rule of thumb on industrial scale PowerGen was something like $900 per call. So that's like 15% of the value. So where am I off there? Or what am I what am I missing for your content opportunity within this PowerGen opportunity?

Joe. So first of all, the $300 million does not relate directly to the 2 gigawatts. So $300 million, the way to think about it, that's our initial year of production. So we're not going to have a full year. It's going to be our ramp-up here. We have kicked off and will install the 2 gigawatts of capacity.

In addition to that, there is a backlog there that we expect to make some future decisions about additional investments. So our focus right now, though, is on the launch and making sure it's flawless, and we deliver that $300 million board during that initial year. But I wouldn't directly correlate those two figures. One is a capacity figure, which we're installing the other is the initial revenue from the start of production year.

Okay. Well, then maybe just a follow-up there, like what does it correlate to? Or put another way, like at capacity, what -- how do you sort of size the revenue opportunity?

Yes. We'll size that as we get closer to 2027, what we're announcing today is what we see as the initial revenue during the launch phase and our teams are super focused on making sure that launch goes well. But we're really optimistic about this product and this market.

As we all know, the power generation market needs more innovative and alternative solutions. And we believe at the end of the day, this is just a better mousetrap than many of those that are out there. It has fuel flexibility, fast transient response. It's very flexible and modular. It can support the small micro grids, all the way up to serving multiple generative AI farms. So from our view, we think we have a lot of room and runway in the market, and we expect we're going to capture our share of that.

Okay. Maybe just on the core business, if we're -- how -- just broadly, I guess, how are you sort of thinking about Turbo's outlook over the coming years and the competitive dynamics, I guess, within that market.

And I guess one of the reasons I ask and this question we get a lot from investors is you have companies like Stellantis in the U.S. sort of coming back with the V8 and that sort of looks -- if you look what the V8 share of those -- on some of those vehicles used to be was quite high, and obviously, that was sort of replaced by V6 turbo. So it seems like there's some replacement going on. I know that's just one example, I don't mean to sort of overextrapolate, but I just -- at a high level, if you could sort of talk about what customers are doing on the turbo side.

Sure. So we still see growth in the turbo business line. So just as a reminder, we're in the top two market leader in that product space. We love turbochargers we see penetration continues to increase. We also see the adoption of more complex, highly efficient turbines like the one that we announced today, the variable turbine turbocharger, which improves performance at the low end.

And on top of that, being one of the market leaders, we expect to conquest business often from some of the weaker players. And we think that trend will continue, and that was one of our announcements today with the European OEM. So from our position, we're really leading from a position of strength in turbochargers. We see that there's going to be a few more generations of technology, and we're prepared to make that investment. So globally, we feel we're in a really great place with that business.

And your next question comes from James Picariello with BNP Paribas.

Hi, everybody. I want to double click on the business -- the battery systems business. So you have revenue down 35% to 40% year-over-year. Just -- what's next for this business? I assume there's an additional restructuring effort in place or underway to address the declines and -- yes. yes, curious how you're thinking about the loss rate relative to what we saw in 2025 with the business down as much as it is.

So we continue to see sales headwind in this business as we've talked about today. It's mainly due to the challenges in North America, but to a lesser degree, demand in Europe is also down. So we expect the decline in this business to be about 150 basis point headwind in our '26 growth. And in the near term, sales trends are a little bit difficult to predict.

But what I'm very pleased at are the tough decisions and the actions that our team has taken to really minimize the losses and adjust the cost structure in this business. What that does for us is it also poises us well for future growth. So near-term sales trends are difficult to predict. However, pleased with the actions we're taking, and I do feel still optimistic about this business. I believe we've got opportunities not only to continue as one of the market leaders in CV battery packs but also look outside of the commercial vehicle space for other opportunities for battery storage.

Okay. Understood. And just -- I mean, I know you guys don't guide foundational growth versus product. But maybe could you just provide some thoughts on what's embedded in the 2026 outlook with respect to the e-Propulsion sales, that revenue stream? Yes, yes, that would be helpful.

So when you look at the light vehicle to keep out from '25 to '26, we're expecting low double digits. That's the way to think about it. Obviously, we gave you the details on the battery business. So we see another year of growth primarily in Europe and China, and we expect to convert that growth on the light vehicle side in the mid-teens, that's what's implied in the guidance.

And your next question comes from Dan Levy with Barclays.

I want to go back to a question that's been asked on past calls about your M&A strategy. And obviously, we see the stock today, and what's doing to your multiple. And I see some of the multiples of other companies that are levered to data centers.

And the question really is, if we are seeing an increase in your multiple, how does this potentially change your M&A playbook that all of a sudden, there's a wider set of targets that would allow for accretive deals as opposed to when your multiple was more compressed. And you have limited upside on how much you can do deal. So how does the opportunity set on M&A change here? And let's start there, yes.

Dan. So as we've stated in the past, we still remain active but are very disciplined in our M&A approach. So we believe there's great compelling opportunities out there for a company like BorgWarner, financial strength and operational strength. So I just want to remind us the priorities that Craig and I have said, are first, any acquisition needs to really leverage our core competence and have to make industrial logic at the end of the day.

The second is we're looking for near-term accretion. So we're really pleased with our portfolio. We did a lot of heavy lifting in the last 5 years. And as I sit here today, we want to make sure any acquisition not only strengthens the portfolio, but we see near-term accretion and expand the earnings power of the company.

And then finally, we want to pay a fair price at the end of the day. We don't want to overpay for anything. So we're going to continue to keep those criteria in front of us. As we've mentioned in the past, we've passed on some deals that didn't beat one or more of those criteria. And lastly, I'll just say we've really opened up the aperture when we talk about leveraging the core competence of the company, but we've significantly raised the hurdle using those street criteria to make sure we're adding to shareholder value and expanding the earnings power.

Okay. Great. The second piece is, I think just touching on some of the prior questions. The core business alongside this PowerGen opportunity. Obviously, there's a growth slowdown this year, and that's why the core business is flat. It sounds like you're talking to some opportunity for incremental launches beyond this year and you have the opportunity from PowerGen, what is the right way we should be looking at the growth over market beyond this year, which has been compressed, but -- it sounds like you're talking about some tailwinds beyond this year that could get you back to maybe that 3 to 4 points of outgrowth that you had done previously.

So as we mentioned in the remarks, Craig and I are not satisfied with our growth or outgrowth, and we're still living with a little bit of this overhang from the EV business outside of China and that will continue in to '26. But if you look back in the last 12 to 18 months, especially the last 4 quarters and the 30 wins that we've shared, we are very optimistic about the future launches of those programs.

I think it really speaks to the portfolio strength and the flexibility that independent if a region is looking for combustion products, or EV products or hybrids, which pulls from both sides, we are very well positioned to capture that growth. So of course, it takes time for these new product wins to get to the launch phase and ramp up. And that's why we said we expect to start to see some of that growth to '27 and even more in '27 and beyond.

And your next question comes from Luke Junk with Baird.

Maybe if we could start, just hoping to unpack some of the margin dynamics around this modular turbine effort, Craig, you mentioned that you'd characterize as a mid-teens incremental margin, I just want to think through maybe some of the elements in terms of leveraging your existing production for, let's say, some of the thermal products and the model itself. It sounds like this is sort of an assembly model ultimately. And if we think about that mid-teens, is it safe to say this is piece of business you would expect to be above the corporate margin at maturity as well or even earlier stage.

Luke. So let me start first with -- this is a great example of not just leveraging our portfolio, but leveraging our manufacturing footprint and supply chain and automotive. So the way to think about it is you may have noticed in the fourth quarter, there was an announcement put out about a new plant in Hendersonville, North Carolina, which is just about 20 minutes from one of our larger turbocharger plants. That's where we're going to do the final assembly, the test and pack out of the complete system.

Now leading into that factory we've got four other factories around the globe that we're leveraging. These are existing automotive factories where we've got lots of manufacturing competence and depth, and they're producing some of the ones that will then go into this final assembly in North Carolina. So that's how we're really leveraging the strength of BorgWarner.

We are making a new investment in this factory in Hendersonville, it's a brand new greenfield site. Team is making great progress on it. But I'm really proud of the fact we're able to leverage some of our automotive footprint and supply chain, by the way, so that we can get off to the right start and profitably grow this business.

I'll let Craig comment on the incremental.

Yes. And as Joe mentioned, this year, 2026, we're focused on successfully launching that product. And as we get into market, in 2027, and you see that $300 million of sales growth, again, Luke, you should expect '18 incremental conversion. You should expect immediate EPS accretion and you should expect a strong return on invested capital. So we feel really good about the financial profile of that business and we're excited to launch in 2027.

That's all very helpful. And then I want to switch gears, Craig, you mentioned that within the margin range this year, I guess, when I just pick out two things.

One, that the path to the high end of the range is fully offsetting the organic decline. And I'm just wondering if there's anything you call out there. I know the company has some early-stage efforts around AI, in particular, that are interesting, both on the manufacturing floor and within R&D?

And then just to clarify, the mid-teens expectations for PDS specifically, is that including getting up and over the customer recovery that you had this quarter?

Sure. So I'll start, and maybe Joe can provide highlights from an AI perspective. But when you look at our margin expansion, and first, I want to highlight our margin expansion in 2025, up 60 basis points year-over-year. Fantastic job as a team and we saw margin expansion across every business unit, as well as managing corporate overhead appropriately. So a great job in 2025.

As we move into 2026, we see another 10 basis points of expansion at the midpoint and I'll kind of walk you through that, Luke. First, the charging asset that's 10 basis points of margin expansion. Additional cost controls across our entire business. That's another 10 basis points of margin enhancement. And then obviously, we have the lower sales and teams are doing a nice job of decrementing in the mid-teens on both the decline in the battery business, but also industry production. So you go through the math, that takes you to 10.8%.

To get to 10.9%, it means we're going to take additional cost measures, and I see the team is really rallying around that. With that, I'll turn it over to Joe to maybe talk about our AI efforts and what we're doing as a company.

So we are using machine learning and generative AI. We started about 2 years ago on some of the new generational AI technologies, and we serve with some pilots. We had pilots in our plants. We had pilots in our back office and also some in R&D. And out of those pilots, let me estimate about 30% of them look really positive. So that's where we're continuing to invest and scale those pilots so we can see more comprehensive improvement.

Now some of the improvements are in quality, like if you think about visual inspection. We also have areas where we're able to reduce cost, labor costs or scrap costs. We're finding opportunities on the R&D side. So if you think about when we win a new program, we're producing highly engineered products. So the stack of requirements from a customer is pretty high and engineers have to go through those requirements and turn them into specifications.

We have found a great application of using Gen AI to really simplify that process which frees up our engineers to work on higher level things like innovation and bringing the product to launch. So as we think about generative AI, it will continue to help us not only improve our quality, but our cost structure. And some of that fall to the bottom line, some of it we're using to fund some of these future projects to drive long-term growth. So we're excited about what we're doing with generative AI, and we think it could be a major lever for the company.

Just on the -- just lastly, the -- yes, the PDS margin expectation, specifically that mid-teens is all in, including the recovery, just to clarify.

It is. It is. So when you think about that jump-off point for BorgWarner, we're jumping off that 10.7% margin that we ended 2025 with. And so that obviously is inclusive of that recovery, and we expect to increment above that level as we move forward, including PDS.

And your next question comes from Mark Delaney with Goldman Sachs.

I was hoping to start first with your outlook for your business with the China domestic auto OEMs. We've seen vehicle sales in China soften in recent months and decline year-on-year, but the Chinese auto OEMs are increasingly expanding their export business and growing internationally. And just given how important of a customer set that is for BorgWarner and your strong presence with a number of those China domestic OEMs. Can you help us net out what that might mean for your business with that to the customers this year?

Sure. So the way to think about our China business, just as a reminder, it's roughly about 20% of our overall business. So it's a very important market for us. And about 70% of that China business is with the domestic. So as we know, the domestics are just about at that 70% of the total market.

One of the things you noted is, although the local market there has slowed down, the exports have hit another high last year, over 7 million exports from China. So we're pretty excited about the work our team is doing in China. Most of our business is with the leading seven Chinese OEMs there. I would say over half of our electrification business is in China, and that's where the music is playing very loudly. So for us, having them grow outside of China is a great strength for us. We're even in discussions with the Chinese OEMs about localization outside of China given our strong global footprint and technology.

That's helpful context. My other question was a follow-up on some of the prior commentary and questions around the M&A opportunity and I understand the high-level criteria that BorgWarner has previously articulated. But as you think about expanding into the data center market and with the new offering today and turbine generator systems you mentioned not having all of the content. Is that maybe an area where you can augment or are there adjacent areas within that broader data center space that you may look to do M&A?

Yes. First, I just want to double down on how proud I am of our team and how they are just leveraging so much of our portfolio. I mean, if you think about 65% of the content we're controlling, that's tremendous. So I'm really excited about what we are doing with this turbine generator.

I'll just bring us back to the criteria we're using for M&A. We want to stay very disciplined and really, the first is leveraging our core competence. We want this -- anything we look at to really make industrial logic for anyone that looks at it we want it to be near-term accretive and we want to pay a fair price. So we haven't limited ourselves to automotive, but I would say the TG is a great example of what we can do organically and many of our business units continue to look for growth opportunities. And this is just a great example of what we can do with the current portfolio that we have.

We have time for one final question. And that question comes from Alex Potter with Piper Sandler.

One question, additional question here on the turbine generator. I know permitting and the timing of, I guess, data center rollout as a result of permitting constraints has historically been sort of a headache for this industry. How does your product address that? Or is it potentially exposed to some of those same headwinds?

So we're working, first of all, with our partner, Endeavour who really has a lot of experience in the data center market over 25 years. They bring tremendous customer intimacy knowledge about the real estate market and what it requires to install a complete data center. Now specifically for our product, we're going to ensure it's UL certified, and it meets any of the requirements in any country that we plan to deploy them. We don't see that as a real constraint for us.

Again, it's together with Endeavour, who's bringing the customer side, also their innovation approach to the markets very similar to us. We have a similar vision and path to go to market with them. And of course, BorgWarner brings not only great technology, but our automotive scale manufacturing footprint. So it's really together, we think we're able to capture this unique part of the business.

Okay. Very good. And then maybe one last question here, topical issue lately. I noticed that the word DRAM never came up in your prepared remarks or anywhere else. Just interested if you could quantify or maybe ring-fence your exposure to that shortage, which has been making a lot of headlines recently. Presumably, it's not a huge deal for you, but just wanted you to maybe put a finer point on that.

Sure. We don't use DRAM in our products, but of course, we're monitoring the overall market for any impact the OEMs may incur in production.

Okay. So as of now, there's no impact to your production time lines or you're not hearing anybody flag this as a potential risk to the business in any way?

No, not from our view.

With that, I'd like to thank everyone for their great questions today. If you have any follow-ups, feel free to reach out to me or my team. With that, Michael, you can go ahead and conclude today's call.

This concludes the BorgWarner 2025 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Results Conference Call. You may now disconnect.

Very glad to have all of you here as we continue day 1 of the Barclays the -- 16th Annual Barclays Global Autos and Mobility Conference. Very pleased to have with us here BorgWarner, a leading supplier in powertrain.

We have with us Craig Aaron, CFO; and Pat Nolan, who leads the IR efforts. So we're going to go through a list of fireside chat questions. And then anyone who wants to ask questions, please do, and you can e-mail my colleague, J.R. Young, [email protected], if you want to ask a question anonymously. So with that, Craig, Pat, thank you.

Why don't we just start very near term? Because I think a lot of people on the near-term basis have been just following what's been going on with some of the supply disruptions in terms of the Ford Novelis issue in terms of Nexperia. It seems like we dodged a bullet there. Maybe you could just give us an early look at how fourth quarter has played out vis-a-vis these supply disruptions? Anything outside the realm of what you've expected?

Sure. First, thanks for having us, Dan. It's our pleasure to be here. .

You mentioned a couple unusual activities happening in the third quarter and the fourth quarter. We mentioned it on our earnings call in the third quarter that JLR was impacted by a cyber attack, and that had about a $35 million impact on our sales in the third quarter. We're watching that in the fourth quarter. It seems like it's stabilized for us.

You mentioned the Ford aluminum supplier issue. We did mention that was going to have a $50 million to $100 million impact for us in the fourth quarter. We're obviously watching that and then the semiconductor challenges with Nexperia. It seems like it's improved over the last few weeks, but it's certainly something that we need to continue to watch and navigate.

So those are the areas that we're watching in the fourth quarter and would likely impact us in Q4. And we'll give you more guidance as we look into 2026.

Okay. Great. Okay. I want to go to the topic of growth because I think this has been an area where there is maybe some different dynamics between your foundational and eProducts businesses. So maybe let's just start as we look into next year on backlog, how much is the backlog shifting? Because I think a lot of people have been asked questions. We've seen some changes on EV.

We've seen some changes on tariffs and reshoring and whatnot. How has this changed the launch cadence? And how does this impact the launch of your backlog?

Sure. So if we go back 3, 4 years ago, we did -- we won a lot of key product programs and was coming off the Delphi acquisition. And as you know, at that time, the whole world was going towards hybridization and electrification, and we had done our part, we had won of those programs. look at our outgrowth '24, '25, we've been in this 1% outgrowth range. And a lot of that reason is because these programs that we won the volumes haven't materialized for various reasons, but primarily consumer demand.

We believe there's going to be an overhang, so a similar level of outgrowth as we go into 2026. What we're excited about is that we've won -- we've announced 17 programs across our entire portfolio over the last 6 months. I've been with the company almost 20 years. I've never seen that level of activity. So we're excited about that and what that means for our outgrowth as we move into '27 and '28. But as we look into '26, we probably still have this overhang. I would say the other really important change that was made under Joe's leadership, Joe, taking over the CEO role and, call it, March, is he's encouraging all of the business units to find their pockets of growth.

Before we were really focused on, hey, let's take the foundational businesses, the combustion businesses, your job is generate cash provided to the eProducts businesses where -- and that's where it's going to be our growth engine. Joe is encouraging all of those business units to grow. And if that culture shift which I think is really resulting in that 17 wins that I mentioned earlier.

Okay. So let's maybe unpack the foundational versus eProducts side?

Sure.

Foundation is on track for some organic growth decline this year. But I think you've talked about you are still seeing some growth over market. So what is the opportunity to unlock growth -- positive organic growth in foundational if the core market is continuing to decline. Can you have enough an elevated sort of outgrowth to help? Is it hybrids?

Yes. I would say a couple of things. First, what's the goal of our foundational business units? It's outgrow your industry, your industry defined as the combustion market plus the hybrid market. So that's the goal.

What we're excited about is in the second quarter, we announced a couple of key wins. So when we talked about unlocking Joe, unlocking those business units to grow, well, we announced 2 Conquest awards. 1 in North America and 1 in Europe related to turbochargers. That means, hopefully, we're going to have more market share from a turbocharger perspective. That's really positive for those businesses.

The other thing is all-wheel drive, where we're really strong, #1 in the market. we're seeing a nice tailwind, as an example of our China business. China is exporting vehicles in the Southeast Asia, and we're seeing a nice tailwind there. On top of that, in this market, it seems like combustion is going to be here for longer. So between combustion and hybrid vehicles in this market, those are pockets of growth for our foundational business, and we expect to capitalize on those.

Would you say that there is a lot more runway on uptake of some of these advanced size technologies, turbos, dual clutch transmission. And your share, have you been picking up share? Maybe you can just talk about the positioning?

Yes. I mean obviously, I think there is still penetration opportunities. I mean Turbo is a great example. It's in the 90s in Europe, you're about 70% in China. Here, we're still in the 50s. And we're seeing there's still going to be a need for more fuel-efficient vehicles in North America. We may not switch as fast to BEV. But we'll be an efficiency push, and we see that in the bookings. So we're very happy about that.

And I think Joe is also emphasizing as we are generally a 1, 2, or worst case, 3 player in many of our foundational products, there's no reason that the stronger players shouldn't be able to gain share, particularly the OEMs have to turn back on the foundational growth engine. You need to leverage a little bit more of the larger suppliers in those areas.

What's the hybrid opportunity right now? Are you seeing that in the backlog? And what's the timing?

Yes. The hybrid opportunity, the way to think about it is, if you're talking about advanced hybrid, one that you would actually plug in, the content opportunity on that is 4 to 5x what a pure combustion engine is. So it's significant. But what's nice about it from the portfolio perspective is it's going to be both sides of the business.

We expect hybrids to have all of the efficient foundational technologies that we have, turbocharging, advanced timing, advanced transmission systems. All of those can be applied to those hybrid vehicles, and then we're going to see the benefit on our eProducts business, things like our motor business, dual inverter awards that we've announced several in China this year. So we think hybrids are a nice opportunity for us. I think that goes back to what Joe is emphasizing. Grow on the BEV side, grow on the combustion side, find the average to growth on the hybrid side.

Okay. Maybe we can talk about eProducts and let's just start with PowerDrive, which has actually had pretty good growth this year sort of after some program roll-offs last year. I think you're tracking mid- to high teens. What -- can you sustain this growth in '26?

And maybe you could just talk about -- we know that there is an air pocket that is hitting in North America, but that is a smaller piece of that business. So what is the opportunity to grow even if North America EV is obviously down?

I think it's fair to say they've had -- like you said, they've had a really strong year in terms of outgrowth of the market and growth overall.

So we haven't given guidance for 2026 yet. I don't know we'll go deep enough to give guidance by segment. But I think they probably have a little bit harder comp. We'll see how that plays out for them. But we see the growth continuing to come to that business, particularly as you look out in '27, '28. But again, really nice growth. They delivered this year, which is really driven by a lot of those programs outside of North America.

We're seeing growth in Europe, growth in Asia. And I think that's what will continue to be the drivers of that business, they'll probably grow more outside of North America versus some of our other business...

And the competitive dynamics for those businesses, I assume the vertical integration risk that had been discussed that that's probably dissipated more so?

Yes. That's a very Western world type of question because when we speak to our Chinese customers, there, what are they focused on? They're focused on technology and they're focused on speed to market. So they'll be much more pragmatic about there may be a platform where they're outsourcing a full IDM, which is the motor, the inverter, the torque splitting device.

There may be a platform that they produce that module in-house that they got to buy the motors and inverters. So we think there's opportunities on both sides of the business there.

Okay. And then maybe just one more on PowerDrive. And I think this is helpful. I think people don't realize that PowerDrive is not all eProducts, I think it's roughly like 1/3 foundational. So that growth that we've seen this year, presumably that is mostly eProducts, like what is -- maybe you could give some ideas of what exactly has driven that growth? Because I think it's mostly Europe and China, but anything to unpack that growth in PowerDrive this year?

Yes. Maybe I'll start and Pat can add on to it. Definitely on the e-product side of the portfolio. They do have about, call it, 1/3 of the revenue that's primarily ECU driven that's foundational. So that's kind of stabilized, I would say.

But really, the growth engine has been on the eProducts side. Not so much in this market, it's been in China and Europe. And importantly, for me, Joe and Pat's how are we converting on that growth? And we're on track to convert in the mid-teens.

If you go back, we had restructured that business back in 2024. And what's important for us is grow that business through the first 9 months, we're about 27% growth, and we're on track to convert in the mid-teens, and we're seeing that growth in China and Europe, which is great to see.

It's not one product here. They're seeing growth. They're seeing new program launches on the motor side. Inverter side, we then either be inverters for full BEVs or a product that we've talked about multiple times is our dual inverter in China that's seeing nice growth, and we're seeing full systems growth there, too. So kind of growth across the portfolio. We think there quickly getting to a nice share position both on the inverter side and the motor side.

That's helpful because I think in the past, we had this idea that it was really your signature eProducts with inverters, but it sounds like you're getting a wide set of uptake across the...

Yes, we are.

Maybe you could just talk about the dynamics in battery because I think we've obviously seen reset. You've exited charging, the commercial EV market has come down. So what is the right -- we've been run rating at roughly $130 million to $150 million of revenue per quarter this year. What's the right run rate going forward?

Yes. We've seen some challenges in that business, in particular, in North America, this market but also to a certain extent in Europe. We have -- it's difficult to tell what's the short-term outlook for that business. We believe in the long-term outlook.

Energy storage is an important trend, and our battery business can support that trend. So we feel good about our long-term aspirations. In the short term, it might be a bit of a challenge still. What's important about that business, which is different from charging is we're EBITDA positive and free cash flow positive. We believe that business is going to grow.

And so we feel like we're operating from a position of strength. When that business grows, we'll be able to capitalize on it. Unlike charging where we didn't have necessarily the best technology in the market. We have really good technology. On top of that, we have a great cost structure that we can leverage as we move forward.

Okay. Let's pivot to margins. And I know you talked about it. And I think this is maybe the piece that has really struck people is just the margin resiliency, especially in your foundational businesses that even in the face of organic growth declines you've still been putting up phenomenal margins in both your Turbo segment and your Drivetrain in BMS, right? I mean, some of the best results you've ever put up.

So can you just help us unpack what is going on in here? How have you maintained your margins even in the face of this negative growth where you're probably decrementing on some of those declines, you're clearly offsetting with something?

Yes. First, really happy with those businesses, as you have mentioned. And what's our goal our goal is still operate in the mid-teens, convert in the mid-teens, and we've done much better than that, as you mentioned.

And when I think about what's those drivers, it's really been a strong focus on cost controls across the business. I mentioned earlier, hey, we had restructured some of those businesses in 2023. We are operating from a position of strength, let's make sure we continue to focus on cost controls in those businesses. We're seeing that restructuring savings go through the P&L. On top of that, supply chain savings, we're seeing a nice uptick in that area. Lower cost of poor quality, things like warranty and scrap much lower.

Productivity. So it hasn't been 1 or 2 things. I would say it's been 3, 4 or 5 things that those businesses are focused on. And it's really allowing us to either maintain or expand margins despite, call it, flattish sales. And that's been really great to see. And I think we'll continue to focus on those aspects as we move into 2026.

I mean, so when we're thinking about -- and I don't want to pin you down on '26, but like when we're thinking about what the right base of margins is to look for the future, it sounds like there's nothing abnormal here. There's no one-timers, right? Is there a path that if organic growth continues to decline because of the market that there is still more in your pocket that you can dig into on the cost side or conversion or scrap? How much more runway is there on some of these initiatives?

Yes. I think I'd like to think about wherever we land in 2025, our guide is 10.3% to 10.5%. Let's just say we lane at the midpoint, 10.4%. That's our jump-off point. We're not calling anything out -- our goal as a management team is continued to grow earnings per share period. That's our focus.

And we're going to continue doing that. We did that in '25. We're going to continue to do that in 2026 and use all of those levers that we spoke about to drive earnings per share growth. That's our goal.

Can you talk about automation. What is the role of automation -- how much -- because I think this is coming up a lot more amongst some of your supplier peers. What is the level of automation that you're using in your manufacturing? What's the runway?

Yes. I mean I think you automation more from an AI perspective, we launched -- I would say, about 18 months ago, we launched a lot of programs throughout the business units and even in corporate.

I'd say there's 2 main areas that I'd focus on from the manufacturing floor standpoint, we see some cost benefits from that. One of the big things we do in a lot of our products is a lot of visual inspection, towards the end of the production line. And that's a great application for a lot of AI projects.

So we see some cost benefits there. But in other things, like R&D is another great example one of the first things you do when you're submitting a program, you have a stack of requirement and the engineer needs to work through all those requirements. Working with an AI partner, they can quickly roll through a lot of that, find a lot of the requirements they need and a lot of them focus on more of the actual engineering. So there's a cost benefit there.

So I'd say from an AI automation perspective, it's most mainly a cost play for us, but I think there's applications not only on the manufacturing floor, I think there's back office R&D opportunities, too, for cost.

Is this near term? Or is this more of a mid- to long-term type opportunity in the cost of extracting these benefits?

I think you're seeing it within the productivity that you're seeing in the business are starting to see benefits already.

Let's talk about the margins on the eProducts side. PowerDrive has seen some improvement. You're still tracking at negative margins. Just broadly, what is the path to breakeven? Is this just purely a volume play that you're going to increment at your mid- to high teens on the volume. And so you need the volume to get to breakeven? Or is there anything else you can do on the restructuring cost takeout side?

Volume is clearly going to be important. No question about it. And I think this year is a good example. Revenue up at least through 9 months around that 20-ish percent, and we're converting -- we're on a path to convert in the mid-teens.

If you go back to 2024, again, we restructured that business. And what Joe and I are watching is, do we restructure at the right level and to determine that did we convert in the mid-teens in 2025. And so that's an item that we want to finish the year and make sure we're meeting that objective. If we don't get to that objective, then we need to take additional cost actions, and we're not afraid to do that.

We showed you that in '24. And if we have to do that again, we certainly will. But our focus right now is grow that business, convert in the mid-teens on an all-in basis. That's what we're focused on doing.

Have you -- when we factor in all of the restructuring, so on a clean and volume basis, have you been converting in the mid-teens? Is that the way that the numbers have played out this year?

In Q1 and Q2, we certainly did. In Q3, there was a bit of a timing item with recovery that we got from a customer in Q3 of last year that didn't repeat in Q3 of this year, but we're still on track for the full year to convert to the mid-teens, and that's how you should look at that business.

Okay. Same question on battery. You're now running at sort of negative 5%. That's after the benefited charging exit and you've done some footprint rationalization on the battery side. Path to breakeven? Is it same -- it's a volume play or more on the cost side you can do?

Definitely volume play from here. The team has done a really great job. We exited charging, which helped that segment at the same time. They've done a lot of restructuring in that business already. When you look at Q3 is a great example of that. Revenue was down called $60-ish million, and we held operating income flat.

How did we do that through cost controls, whether it's restructuring or other cost actions within that business. What I mentioned earlier is really important. That business is in a far different spot than our charging business. We're EBITDA positive, we're free cash flow positive. I believe in the long-term aspirations of that business, we're in a position to grow profitably as we move forward, but volume is certainly going to be an important component.

Okay. From an EV standpoint, you've talked in the past, and I don't think you discussed it much this year, but this idea of R&D, there's ER&D versus, I guess, what foundational R&D would be the alternative.

So with the reduced EV environment, at least in North America, how are you thinking about the R&D approach? You've been tracking in the low 5%. How does this differ between foundational versus the what's the right R&D profile going forward?

So we've changed the way we look at R&D broadly over the past 2 years. We used to communicate mid-teens incrementals, but we're going to have to spend x amount for R&D, so you have to back that off when you think about our incremental return process.

Now we want to deliver a mid-teens incremental inclusive of that spending for R&D. And there's 2 ways to think about that. It means if you're a growing eProducts business, you need to manage the growth in your R&D spend within that mid-teens incremental. So PDS still needs to hit mid-teens, even though they're spending R&D for their future growth.

But the other side of that is our foundational businesses, which previously were funding a lot of that higher R&D spend now as long as they're hitting their mid-teens incremental, if there's R&D dollars to spend to drive your future outgrowth, so be it.

So I guess now we don't think about it, it needs to be a certain percentage outside of that incremental margin, it's one of the levers that you have on the upside and the downside to manage that incremental margin within each business unit. So we don't view it separately. It's a cost lever within the businesses now.

Okay. How about from the perspective. You referenced a moment ago in PowerDrive customer recoveries. Obviously, on the EV side, there's been a lot of programs that the volumes haven't come in as planned or have been canceled. There's some other dynamics on the commercial side in terms of tariffs. So how are we thinking about the commercial side, how much opportunity there is to maybe recover some costs that have been incurred for volumes that haven't played out as expected?

Yes. So we have volume clauses in our contracts and basically it says, hey, if volumes don't materialize to what the OE communicated, we have a right to sit at a table like this and have a discussion. And we obviously do that. I mentioned Q3 last year where we were successful in getting some recovery.

Obviously, to hit the mid-teens incremental conversion year-over-year, it means we have to replicate that this year. So it's a constant conversation as those volumes haven't materialized. We're at the table with our customer, and it's going to be a significant component of making sure that we recover that capital because those volumes do materialize.

Okay. Let's pivot maybe to the regional side of things. China, obviously, there's a lot of questions for across the supply base on China exposure.

You've given some disclosure in the past, domestic OEMs are roughly 75% of your China revenue and your China revenue as a whole on the foundational side seems like that's gone well. So maybe you can just give us a sense the domestic OEM split within China, how that is faring? And maybe you could just talk about the competitive landscape, not only against Chinese suppliers, but also from a vertical integration standpoint?

Sure. So you mentioned it about 20% of our revenue is with China -- within the Chinese market. When you think about that, about 75% of that 20% is with local OEMs. So we're overweight locals. And we tend to work with the top 8 to 10 in that market. When you think about the financial aspects of that market. It's very challenging, but we still hold our discipline of, hey, we're going to focus on 15% ROIC or higher. We're meeting that objective in China.

And for us, the dynamics in the Chinese market are very different in the Western world. Example is R&D. When we get a program in China versus a Western OEM, Joe likes to share the statistic, we have to test against customer specifications. For an IDM in Europe, there might be 20,000 different specs that we have to test against.

So think about all of those R&D dollars going to test those specs for that same IDM in China, there might be 600. So that plays into the equation significantly. But for us, it's all about 15% ROIC. 15% ROIC, that helps us to maintain our ROIC discipline and our margin discipline across different regions of the world.

So that's saying the trade-off is maybe a lower R&D footprint, but the pricing maybe is a little tighter because of the...

Absolutely.

Just R&D. I'd say the cost across the board, whether or not your supplier costs, your manufacturing cost, manufacturing flexibility. I think there's a lot of cost levers that you have. So I don't think you can look at just the price point of the product in the region, dictating what the overall margin profile is.

And I think you've answered the question, but I know there's been some question amongst other suppliers that all of this rise of domestic Chinese business could be heavily margin dilutive. But it sounds like if you're maintaining your ROIC threshold throughout regions, that's not the case for you. Is that a fair assessment?

It's a fair assessment. And the best data point I have is look at PowerDrive Systems. If we're converting in the mid-teens and the growth is primarily in China and Europe, well, we're doing our job.

Okay. And then one more on the China side. And really, it's sort of the entry of China into Europe. That there's been some concern, you've obviously seen Chinese share in Europe rising a lot of exports and talk about localizing.

So what is your exposure maybe on export business or potential localized China business in Europe. Is that -- does that change the profit picture for you at all?

Yes. I mean I think what's really interesting is I think it's clear that our Chinese customers ultimately do have aspirations to produce in other regions. And Joe gives a great example. He was at the IAA conference, the Frankfurt Auto Conference that occurs every other year, and he's been going now for decades.

What's interesting that changed this year, about 20% of his meetings that we had there were with the Chinese OEMs, talking about how do we enter this market what -- how can you help us from a supply standpoint? How can you help us understand some of the regulatory requirements. I think clearly, their ambitions are to grow in that market. That could be an opportunity for us. I think the key for us, we often get the question, is that a bad thing or a good thing.

We're so diverse from a customer end market perspective. It comes down to that same win business find outgrowth opportunities rather than customer mix dictating our success...

Okay. Why don't we talk about free cash and capital allocation. I just want to start on free cash because you've got -- the earnings profile has been steady, but really what's more interesting is the free cash is like one of your best free cash flows ever. Really good operating cash flow, very low CapEx.

So maybe you could just talk about on the free cash flow. I think we have a good grasp of the earnings side. But what else is going on in free cash flow? And maybe you could talk about the CapEx that's tracking at 4% of revenue historically 5% to 6%. What is the right profile?

Sure. Yes, really happy with the free cash flow generation that we expect for the year. The midpoint of our guide is $900 million. if you go year-over-year, that would be over a 20% increase. I think the teams have done a really great job in all aspects of free cash flow.

First, working capital. They've done a really nice job managing inventory levels, net AR/AP, but you mentioned CapEx being really low. And it comes back to your earlier questioning, hey, you have a lot of eProducts investment. Are you going back to the customer for recovery.

While we're also doing our part of -- if there's an eProducts program, and we can send that capital from one region to another to take advantage of that, do it. And that's what PowerDrive Systems is really doing very successfully. So we're able to leverage that cost, that capital that we already put in place to where it's needed and really make sure that we're managing our CapEx and our cash flow, and we're seeing a really low CapEx environment and a great impact on free cash flow.

Is that 4% sustainable?

I think it's a little bit low. I don't think it's sustainable. When you go back historically, we've been in this, call it, 4.5% to 5% range. And as we go into '26, '27, I think that's probably the right data point.

Okay. M&A, and I think you've changed the way you've defined it. You're looking not about foundationally product. You just -- you're looking for a target that is immediately accretive. So is it fair to say that, that precludes something in eProducts? And maybe you could just talk about what white spaces on the customer or technology side still exist in the portfolio?

Yes. So when we think about inorganic investments, we've laid out 3 criteria. First, it's got a link to the core competency of what BorgWarner does. We have a lot of core competencies. You mentioned the second one. It's got to be accretive. We're focused on growing the earnings power of BorgWarner, whether that's organically or inorganically.

And third is we have to pay a fair price. The way to think about our strategy is we've opened the aperture but we've raised the bar. And why have we done that? Because we have a great portfolio. We feel like we're in a strong spot on the foundational portfolio on the eProducts side of the portfolio.

Let's build on that strength. And so let's raise the bar. I'd say we're really active and we're operating from a position of strength from a free cash flow perspective and a balance sheet perspective, we're ready to execute on a transaction when it meets all those criteria. That's what we're focused on doing.

How does the experience of recent years in which I think we've all been thrown off by a very different uptake curve on EV. How does that shape the way that you look at some of these? Or is it that, okay, as long as it's immediately accretive, I'm not as concerned about how things may play out in 10 to 15 years.

Our overall objective for any of our businesses is mid-teens conversion, mid-teens conversion. So if there's an inorganic opportunity, whether it's on the foundational side or the eProducts side that meets that objective. Let's go take a look at it.

So again, we're opening the aperture, anything is possible. It's got a link to our core competencies. It can't be way off in my field, but it's got to meet those financial hurdles, and we just have to hold to that discipline. That's what we're focused on doing.

Okay. And then maybe just last one. On the -- before I open it up to folks on the balance of share buyback to return to shareholders versus M&A what should that split look like? And in the absence of M&A -- maybe you could just give us a sense of what the pipeline looks like. But in the absence of M&A, is it fair to assume the majority of that free cash flow should be deployed towards share buybacks. So just give us a sense of that trade-off.

Yes. I think that trade-off is we can do it all. I think that's kind of our focus is, hey, we have a great balance sheet. We're generating $900 million of free cash flow at the midpoint of our guide.

We have a strong inorganic pipeline, but we source our own deals so it's difficult sometimes to get a buyer and a seller to agree and get that timing completely right. So in the absence of having a near-term accretive deal, we're going to deploy cash to shareholders because we want to reward our shareholders, and that's what you saw this year. If what we've shared publicly is we're going to return roughly $420 million plus of cash to shareholders this year.

At the same time, we have a great balance sheet to capitalize on an inorganic opportunity. I think we're finding that right balance. And as we go into next year, we're going to look at it quarter after quarter.

And if there is an inorganic opportunity that's there in front of us, that's accretive, we're going to return cash to shareholders.

So when you look at our history, though, our history of M&A and capital, it's pretty bad -- it may not be 50-50 to the percent, but it's been pretty balanced between those 2 things, particularly when you look on a multiyear horizon.

Any questions, folks?

On the 3-year view, cash restructuring, inevitably, one of your customers, even if not huge, is going to do a lot better or a lot worse. But your manufacturing footprint, if I understand it correctly, it's pretty flexible. And so accordingly, do you really anticipate having to do much restructuring over the next 3 years? And if so, what kind of dollar amount should we be thinking about?

Yes. I mean, historically, we've always continued to restructure our business because we're operating from a position of strength and let's stay ahead of any one trend. I would say I like what we did in '23, I like what we did in '24, let's see how the business operates as we end 2025. And if we have to take other cost actions, we certainly will.

But where would that be? Because it seems like from a customer standpoint, that's not going to be the issue. It's going to be if there's some really big shift again that we don't anticipate in the end markets, eProducts or foundational, right?

Yes, any major restructuring actions that we have to take today, but we need to watch those markets. Those markets are moving so dramatically between regions. It's important that we stay ahead of that trend. And if we have to take actions to make sure we're hitting that mid-teens conversion.

Yes, just really add on to Dan's question about cash.

Maybe one final one. There's been some headlines lately. I know this has been sort of a volatility from a supply chain standpoint and rare earth in China. So we've seen some -- some headlines of some OEMs trying to ask suppliers to sort of clear China materials out of their supply chain.

Maybe you could just talk about to what extent the China supply chain for you with an issue in the West or does not really affect you, how easily you can sort of support that goal?

Yes. I mean our goal is to support our customers with what they need. And so if they're looking for supply that's not in China, we're going to try to support that need.

With that said, I would say the underlying goal for most OEs right now is cost competitiveness and China obviously provides a cost competitive supply chain. So I think we have to navigate it customer by customer. But as I sit here today, I would say cost competitiveness is probably the #1 priority for OEMs.

Right. We'll leave it there. Great. Craig, Pat, thank you so much.

Thank you, appreciate it.

Okay. Let's go ahead and kick it off here. Good morning. Thanks for joining us. My name is Luke Junk. I cover vehicle tech and mobility for Baird. And my pleasure to introduce you today to BorgWarner, who, as you probably know, is the global -- a global leader in both legacy combustion technologies, like turbochargers and leader in eProducts as well.

Really happy this morning to have with us Joe Fadool, CEO seated to my right, Craig Aaron, CFO of the company; and Pat Nolan from IR. All of them will be in the discussion today. Before that, let's just jump into Q&A. If you've got questions, you can send those to, I think this is session 3@ rwbaird.com. Joe, you stepped into the CEO chair, earlier this year, you've outlined some key priorities. Why don't we just walk through those to kind of set the table for the conversation this morning.

Sure. Great to be here. Our first priority, we kicked off this year is really driving financial performance of the company. We spent the last 5 years building a really strong portfolio. So we want to make sure that a lot of the business that we won, we're launching it well around globe doesn't matter if it's combustion or some of the new EV products.

The second priority is really take advantage of the environment right now, which is to win a lot of the RFQs that are out there. So if we compare today versus a year ago, the amount of RFQ flow is significantly higher. We're winning our fair share of those new businesses and it's across the entire portfolio.

So whether it's our strong turbocharger or EGR business, but also inverters, motors, complete drive systems, and then finally, it's -- as that growth comes, which we expect out in the '27, '28 time frame, converting on that growth and expanding the earnings power of the company.

We want to do that as we bring in that new business, but also having a very balanced capital allocation approach. So returning shareholder value in the short term with a balanced buyback approach, but also it's a great opportunity for us to look at some inorganic investments, we're in a very unique position to do that.

Okay. Cool. Well, why don't we start the macro and I want to touch on what you just mentioned the workflow that you're seeing out there and capturing those awards. Can we maybe just double-click on what you're seeing sort of in the foundational side of the house versus e-products, advanced hybrids, especially and then maybe geographically, what you're seeing, the lift certainly seems like it's a after shock in a good way of kind of the confusion that had existed in the West that maybe is now freeing up incrementally.