VISTEON CORPORATION Q2 2026 Earnings Call

Good morning. I'm Ryan Wentling, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Strategy. Welcome to our earnings call for the second quarter of 2026. Before we begin this morning's call, I'd like to remind you that today's presentation contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to various risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed. Please refer to the page titled "Forward-Looking Statements" in our earnings material for more detail. Presentation materials for today's call were posted this morning on the Investors section of Visteon's website. Joining us today are Sachin Lawande, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Jérôme Rouquet, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

We have scheduled the call for one hour and will open the lines for questions after Sachin and Jérôme's prepared remarks. Please limit your participation to one question and one follow-up. Thank you again for joining us. I'll turn over the call to Sachin.

Thank you, Ryan. Good morning, everyone. Visteon delivered another quarter of solid execution despite a challenging industry production environment. Customer vehicle production declined approximately 5% during the quarter, yet our sales remained essentially flat year-over-year, resulting in approximately four percentage points of market outperformance. This performance was driven by the continued ramp of recent launches, particularly in Europe and India, underscoring the benefits of our diversified customer base and expanding product portfolio. Adjusted EBITDA was $116 million, representing a 12.1% margin, while adjusted free cash flow remained positive. Our balance sheet continues to be healthy, ending the quarter with $650 million in cash, providing flexibility to invest in growth while returning capital to shareholders. Beyond the financial results, we continued to execute on the strategic priorities we outlined at Investor Day.

We launched 24 new products across 11 automakers and secured $2 billion of new business awards, bringing first-half bookings to $3 billion and keeping us on track for our full-year $6 billion target. We also expanded our SmartCore high-performance compute business with another premium brand under the Geely group, further strengthening our position in AI-enabled cockpit computing and reinforcing our confidence in the long-term growth opportunity for that product offering. This morning we announced a $200 million accelerated share repurchase program, representing the next step in executing the capital allocation framework we outlined at our Investor Day in June. Let me now turn to our second quarter sales performance on page three. This slide shows our regional sales performance in what remained a challenging production environment.

Customer vehicle production declined in every major region during the quarter, yet our diversified customer base, recent product launches, and disciplined execution enabled us to outperform underlying market trends. Starting with the Americas, sales reflected the headwinds we have discussed previously. Lower customer production reduced BMS volumes with GM and Ford vehicle discontinuations. Those headwinds were partially offset by the continued ramp of Nissan multi-display systems and Volkswagen infotainment programs, allowing us to perform broadly in line with the underlying customer vehicle production. Europe was our strongest performing region. Sales increased despite weaker customer production, driven by excellent launch execution. Our panoramic display program with Audi, multi-display systems with Renault, and the new Mercedes display launches all contributed to strong regional momentum and meaningful market outperformance. In rest of Asia, underlying demand remained strong.

Growth in India more than offset currency headwinds and the roll-off of a Mazda program in Japan. SmartCore programs with Mahindra, along with infotainment launches with Tata and continued two-wheeler growth, supported another quarter of solid execution. In China, our sales reflected continued weakness in the value segment of the market following the changes in government policies and incentives and the ongoing loss of market share of international OEMs. The premium domestic OEM segment remained considerably more resilient. That's an important distinction because our strategy is increasingly aligned with those premium domestic manufacturers. During the quarter, cockpit domain controller programs with customers such as Zeekr continued to build momentum, and with our high-performance compute launches starting later this year, we believe we are well-positioned in the fastest-growing portion of the Chinese market.

The quarter demonstrated that while customer production remained under pressure, our regional execution, diversified customer portfolio, and ongoing launch cadence enabled us to deliver a resilient sales performance and position the business well for the balance of the year. Turning to page four. This quarter was another demonstration of Visteon's ability to execute at scale. We successfully launched 24 new products across 11 automakers, keeping us on pace for another year of high launch activity and providing a strong foundation for second half growth. More than half were display products, reflecting the industry's continued migration toward larger, higher content digital cockpits, an area where Visteon has established clear technology leadership. The Mercedes-Benz S-Class Super Screen, highlighted on the right, is an excellent example. The system integrates two large displays under a single cover lens, creating a seamless premium cockpit experience.

It also incorporates advanced features such as switchable active privacy for the passenger display, illustrating the increasing software and engineering content in modern display systems. Our momentum with Mercedes extends beyond this flagship vehicle. During the quarter, we also launched display systems on other high-volume Mercedes platforms, expanding our premium display technology across the OEM's portfolio. We continued to broaden our customer and geographic footprint in the quarter. We launched a dual display system for Nissan's flagship minivan, the Elgrand, a center display for Renault Boreal, digital clusters with Hyundai in India, and multiple additional display programs supporting our growth across Europe and Asia. The quarter also highlighted the progress we're making beyond passenger vehicles. We launched the digital cockpit platform on Royal Enfield's first electric motorcycle, the Flying Flea, as well as a connected digital cluster with Hero MotoCorp.

These programs demonstrate how we're leveraging our proven cockpit technologies into adjacent mobility markets, where digitalization is accelerating, and our existing platforms provide solutions at an attractive cost structure. Overall, these launches reinforce several important trends. First, our portfolio continues to migrate toward higher-value display and software-defined cockpit technologies. Second, we are successfully expanding across premium and mainstream vehicles and in adjacent mobility segments. Finally, our ability to execute a high volume of complex launches around the globe continues to be an important competitive advantage and supports confidence in our long-term growth outlook. Turning to page five. New business wins totaled $2 billion during the quarter, bringing our first half bookings to $3 billion and keeping us on track for our $6 billion full-year target.

Approximately 45% of our wins in the second quarter came from North America, where we added two customers in the commercial vehicle segment, in addition to winning business with our traditional passenger car customers. Asia represented about 30% of bookings, with Europe contributing the remaining 25%, resulting in a well-balanced geographic mix. Importantly, the quality of our bookings continue to improve. Approximately 60% of first half wins came from our strategic software-defined vehicle portfolio, including SmartCore cockpit domain controllers, high-performance compute platforms, and advanced display systems. In addition, we secured approximately $340 million of new business in commercial vehicles and two-wheelers, demonstrating continued progress in expanding beyond traditional passenger vehicles. Let me highlight a few of the strategic new business wins in the second quarter. First, we secured another SmartCore high-performance compute program with another premium brand under the Geely group.

This expands our HPC footprint within the group, adds another premium vehicle brand to our customer base, and further strengthens our leadership position in AI-enabled cockpit computing, an area where we continue to see significant long-term growth opportunities. Second, we made important progress in commercial vehicles. We added two new commercial vehicle customers in North America, including our first integrated cockpit win with a specialty vehicle manufacturer that includes digital cluster, center display, and surround view system. We also secured a surround view system business with a leading global commercial vehicle manufacturer for their North American brands. These wins extend our commercial vehicle strategy beyond Europe and demonstrate that our cockpit platform is increasingly relevant across multiple mobility segments. Third, we won multiple display programs with an existing customer in North America across multiple future vehicle platforms.

These awards support our transition towards software-defined cockpit products with this customer and strengthens our position for future business with this important OEM. Finally, we added a Japanese OEM to our customer portfolio with our first win for a digital cluster program that will launch on multiple vehicles for Japan and U.S. markets. Beyond the immediate revenue opportunity, this represents another important step in broadening our customer base in Japan, a market where we have consistently demonstrated our ability to expand relationships over time. Overall, our first half bookings reinforce the strategy we presented at Investor Day. They are increasingly concentrated in higher-value software-defined cockpit products, expanding into adjacent mobility markets, and continuing to diversify both our customer base and geographic exposure. Turning to page six. Let me turn to our outlook for the balance of the year. The first half demonstrated that our strategy is translating into execution.

We delivered $1.9 billion of sales, $3 billion of new business wins, and 44 product launches, creating a solid foundation for both our full-year outlook and our longer-term growth objectives. Looking ahead, we expect Visteon sales to grow in the second half compared to prior year, supported by the ramp of recently launched programs and a strong second half launch schedule. This is despite customer vehicle production being forecasted to be down by about 5% in the same period. Our sales are expected to grow in all regions except in the Americas. The launch of new cluster programs with Toyota in North America are partially offsetting the headwinds from lower customer production, lower BMS volumes, and the roll-off of a legacy cluster program with GM. In Europe, we expect another period of strong execution with mid-teen sales growth despite lower customer vehicle production.

Our recently launched display programs with Mercedes, Audi, and Renault are doing very well, and we will also start production of our SmartCore cockpit domain controller with a premium German OEM. In the rest of Asia, we also expect mid-teens growth with ramp-up of SmartCore program with Mahindra, display launches with Toyota, and ramp-up of programs with Hyundai and Tata. In China, although customer production is forecasted to decline, we expect to return to low single-digit sales growth as our first SmartCore HPC programs launch with Geely and Chery. Overall, we expect mid to high single-digit market outperformance in the second half. While weaker customer production will continue to temper industry growth, our launch cadence is expected to more than offset those headwinds, supporting sales growth this year while building the foundation for stronger growth in 2027. Turning to page seven. Let me conclude by summarizing what we've accomplished this quarter.

First, we continued to outperform the market. Despite weaker customer production across all major regions, our recent product launches enabled us to deliver approximately four percentage points of market outperformance. Second, we continued to strengthen the business for the future. We secured $2 billion of new business awards, with the majority aligned to software-defined vehicle technologies and adjacent growth markets while maintaining a robust launch cadence that supports both our second half outlook and our longer-term growth objectives. Third, we remained disciplined operationally and financially. We continued to make progress recovering higher memory costs, secured the supply needed to support upcoming launches, and generated positive free cash flow. Finally, this morning's announcement of our $200 million accelerated share repurchase program represents the next step in the capital allocation framework we outlined at Investor Day.

Overall, this quarter provided another important proof point that the strategy we outlined at Investor Day is supported by our operational execution. We remain confident in our outlook for the second half of 2026 and in the long-term growth opportunities ahead. With that, let me turn the call over to Jérôme, who will review our financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Sachin, good morning, everyone. We delivered financial results in the second quarter that demonstrate our resiliency in what remains a dynamic operating environment. Our performance reinforces that we continue to make progress on the commercial and cost actions we outlined earlier this year. For the quarter, sales were $960 million, down 1% from the prior year, while outperforming our customer weighted production with growth of a market of 4%. It was driven by strong launch execution on customer programs, most notably in Europe and in India. Additionally, we progressed well with our semiconductor cost recoveries in Q2. We secured agreements with many customers, allowing us to offset the increase in memory cost incurred in the second quarter.

Adjusted EBITDA was $116 million, representing a margin of 12.1%, an improvement of more than one point from the first quarter, reflecting the progress we have made with our customer recoveries and efficiency improvements. Adjusted free cash flow was $20 million, positive for the quarter despite an increase in inventory, as we continue to build resilience in our supply chain and the timing of cash settlements of previously accrued tax expenses. In June, we completed the acquisition of an engineering service company for $20 million, further enhancing our functional safety and safety system architecture capabilities. We also returned $16 million to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases. We ended the quarter with $650 million of cash and net cash of $351 million, which allows us to deploy a significant amount to shareholders in the second half of the year. Turning to page 10. Sales for the quarter were $960 million, a decrease of $9 million year-over-year or 1%, primarily driven by a decline in customer production volumes and the non-recurrence of favorable one-time commercial items in the second quarter of 2025.

These headwinds were largely offset by a solid growth of a market of 4% when excluding pricing, customer recoveries, and currency. The additional memory cost recoveries we secured with our customers in Q2 were sufficient to offset our normal pricing reductions. Currency impact in the quarter was largely neutral on the sales side. EBITDA was $160 million, or 12.1% for the quarter, our best EBITDA margin since Q3 of 2025. This was driven primarily by the recoveries we secured in the quarter, combined with strong cost discipline. On a year-over-year basis, EBITDA declined $18 million.

As a reminder, as we noted in our Q2 2025 earnings call, Q2 2025 EBITDA was exceptional and benefited from $10 million of several non-recurring items, mostly commercial in nature. Besides this $10 million, we also had $8 million of negative year-over-year currency impact, mostly driven by the devaluation of the Indian rupee and the Japanese yen, as well as the appreciation of the Mexican peso. These two factors explain in simple terms the year-over-year decline in EBITDA. At a more granular level, year-over-year engineering increased as we continue to invest in the next generation of software-defined vehicle products, mostly for the European, Indian, and Chinese markets. The engineering services acquisitions we've made last year, as well as the acquisition I mentioned earlier, also increased our engineering cost run rate. These additional costs were mostly offset by operational efficiencies.

Finally, as cost recovery is a critical component of 2026 results, I would like to provide some more details on this topic. With regards to recovery agreements with our customers, we made meaningful progress in the quarter, consistent with the assumptions embedded in our guidance and highlighted in Q1. We were able to recover most of the memory cost inflation incurred in Q2 with retroactive agreements compensating for the lack of deals with some customers. We continue to meet with our customers and expect to close the agreements that remain open in the second half of the year. Overall, our performance in the quarter was strong when adjusting for currency, was in line with our expectations, and represents the sequential improvements that we were anticipating going into the year, driven by recoveries, product costing actions, vertical integration, and engineering productivity. Turning to page 11. Adjusted free cash flow was $20 million in the quarter and negative $3 million for the first half.

The first half reflects several key dynamics. First, adjusted EBITDA in the first half was primarily impacted by the timing of semiconductor cost recovery negotiations, which are expected to be fully closed in the second half of the year. On the trade working capital front, this line item has been a use of cash for the first half of the year. This has been a deliberate decision, driven primarily by specific actions, increasing inventory levels to support higher minimum safety stock levels, and to allow us to build a better supply chain resilience. Cash taxes were higher in the second quarter due to a one-time tax settlement in India related to prior years.

Consistent with prior years, as we expected, the first half of the year generally has more cash outflows for items like the annual compensation, which is paid in Q1. While these items limited cash generation for the first half, we believe we will be able to generate cash to the levels we are guiding to for the full year. Finally, capital expenditures were in line with our expectations as we continue to support new program launches, capacity expansion in India, and the modernization of our IT infrastructure. During the second quarter, we completed the refinancing of our $300 million term loan facility and $400 million revolving credit facility, extending the maturity to 2031 and giving us a flexible capital structure to execute our capital allocation plan. We ended the quarter with $650 million of cash and $351 million of net cash after capital allocation.

As we highlighted at our Investor Day, our current cash levels position us well to deploy capital in a disciplined and balanced manner. Turning to page 12. Consistent with our Investor Day messaging, we are reaffirming our full-year guidance across all key financial metrics. For sales, we continue to expect between $3.625 billion and $3.825 billion and are trending towards the high end of the range at $3.8 billion. Our sales reflect our year-to-date performance, continued progress on customer recoveries, as well as a strong second half launch cadence, partially offset by softer customer production. Our launch cadence includes digital cluster and display launches with our top growing OEMs, as well as large SmartCore CDC and high-performance compute program launches in China. With regards to adjusted EBITDA, we continue to expect between $455 million and $495 million and are trending towards the midpoint of the range of approximately $475 million.

As mentioned during our Investor Day in June, cost pressures initially seen in memory are now extending to other purchase components, making it difficult to fully offset inflation in 2026, despite our teams taking further actions to recover and offset these additional costs. In spite of these headwinds, we expect margins to improve throughout the rest of the year, driven by more customer recoveries and the ramp-up of our cost initiatives across product costing, vertical integration, and engineering productivity. Finally, with regards to adjusted free cash flow, we continue to expect between $170 million to $210 million, while trending towards the low end of the range of $170 million and having a good line of sight to the second half cash generation. EBITDA in H2 will support higher cash flow for the remainder of the year as recoveries and cost actions carry margins toward the full-year guide.

We also expect working capital to improve with some consumption of the first half inventory build while receiving cash on recovery agreements we secured late in the second quarter. Another significant piece of the second half performance is related to first-half items that will not reoccur, such as our annual incentive compensation payout, the India tax settlement, and other seasonal cash outflows. Overall, we plan to maintain more elevated inventory levels through the balance of the year, a deliberate choice to protect our customers' launches and production schedules, given the current semiconductor and memory environment. Nevertheless, the underlying cash generation capability of the business remains strong, and we have good visibility to a robust cash inflow in the second half. Turning to page 13. I would like to close with our capital allocation announcement this morning.

With the support of our board of directors, we have entered into a $200 million accelerated share repurchase agreement, which we expect to complete by early Q4 of this year. The program will exhaust the remaining capacity of our 2023 authorization and will utilize a meaningful portion of the new 2026 $800 million authorization we announced at Investor Day. At our Investor Day, we targeted to return approximately $1 billion of cash to shareholders between 2026 and 2029. We also highlighted that we need $150 million of net cash to run the business. Our net cash position at the end of June was approximately $350 million, and therefore supports the near-term deployment of $200 million. The ASR is the first step in delivering on our $1 billion target. It allows us to retire a significant number of shares immediately.

It demonstrates a clear pace of execution as we repurchase $800 million over the planned period, and it provides what we believe is a compelling use of our capital at current valuation levels. We have intentionally matched the completion window of the ASR with our second-half cash generation, giving us flexibility to execute capital returns in excess of the accelerated program in Q4, while maintaining the minimum net cash framework we outlined at Investor Day. Importantly, even after funding the announced program, we maintain a healthy balance sheet and flexibility to invest organically in the business going forward, as well as to pursue disciplined bolt-on M&A, as we did this quarter with our engineering services acquisition. Maintaining financial strength remains a core pillar of our capital allocation philosophy and a competitive advantage. Turning to page 14. In summary, the second quarter reflects a resilient underlying performance in a challenging production environment, continued progress on recoveries and cost improvements, and an important step in delivering on the capital return framework we outlined at our Investor Day.

We remain confident in our full-year outlook and in the long-term opportunity ahead as we execute on the plan that we outlined in June. Thank you for your time today. I would like now to open the call for your questions.

At this time, if you would like to ask an audio question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Again, that is star and the number one. We will pause just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Tom Narayan of RBC Capital Markets. Tom, go ahead. Hi. This is Tom Asito on for Tom.

Thanks for taking the question. I guess first, at your Investor Day, you guys flagged that Ford and GM were sort of moving to insource their CDCs. Given that several of your key Chinese OEM wins on CDCs are with these large sort of tech-savvy players like Geely and Chery, I guess, how do you think about the insourcing risk from the Chinese OEMs over time? Do you think that risk could be higher or lower in China relative to some of the Western OEMs? I have a follow-up. Yes.

Let me take this question and answer it a little more broadly, because I suspect that many would have similar questions today. First thing I would say is both Ford and GM are very important customers for Visteon, and we continue to engage with them on new business opportunities. If you look at our first half new business wins, about 20% of those wins came from these two OEMs, mostly Ford in this period for displays. As I mentioned on Investor Day, our portfolio will change from traditional products to more SDV products, starting with displays and eventually, hopefully, CDCs and HPCs. Coming to your question about insourcing and what do we see and how we think about it. The first thing to note is that the pace of change of technologies in the industry is just been accelerating, it continues to accelerate.

As OEMs are even dealing with the challenges of launching CDCs, they have to deal with HPC and AI and all these technologies that are coming at the industry at a very rapid pace. This challenge is even greater for larger OEMs that have multiple vehicle segments and regions to support. If you think about how the large Chinese OEMs are dealing with this, they're actively collaborating with strategic suppliers for specific types of products and technologies.

That's one of the reasons why we've been successful in China with CDC and now with HPC. Coming back to Ford and GM, with the work that we have been doing on these advanced technologies with HPC and AI and launching and gaining that experience in China ahead of everybody else, we expect to find areas to collaborate with these OEMs for future programs, especially around these technologies. I should also mention that the sales plan that we presented at Investor Day was based on a very thorough evaluation process, and we didn't include any unsubstantiated sales just based on hope, if you will. That doesn't mean that we do not have a pipeline of opportunities to pursue and hopefully outperform that sales plan. We have line of sight to multiple such opportunities with these two customers that we are actively pursuing.

This gives you a sense of how we think about this. It's really not that we have a limited set of opportunities in this environment where technologies are coming at the industry at a very rapid pace, and we have the opportunity to really lead in what we are really good at, which is this advanced electronics and software, which today is represented by HPCs and AI.

Got you. Very helpful. I guess as a follow-up, you guys demonstrate some pretty resilient growth over market through the first half, even given the tough production environment. I guess given that, is there a specific gating factor preventing you from being even more aggressive on buybacks today, especially considering where the stock is trading? I guess in addition to leaving some room for M&A, is there a minimum cash floor or maybe even a net cash target that we should be thinking about? Thanks. Yeah. It's Jérôme. I'll take that question.

You're absolutely right. We've indicated during Investor Day that our net cash target was $150 million. We finished the quarter with $350 million of net cash on the balance sheet. Therefore, having $200 million that we could deploy essentially right away, and we indicated again during Investor Day that we would deploy this pretty quickly. That's really the rationale for the ASR that we've announced today, $200 million, that will allow us to retire shares pretty quickly. It's the first step, really, deploying a large amount of capital towards shareholders. We've committed to return close to a billion dollar over the period of 2026 to 2029, in the form of dividend, but mostly share repurchases, and that's what we are executing towards. It's really following up on our plan as we laid it out during Investor Day.

Your next question comes from the line of Rajat Gupta of JP Morgan. Take it away. Great. Thanks for taking the question.

I wanted to just double-click a little bit on the recent Micron agreement. Curious if you're able to provide any more details on what it gets you, any early read on pricing. Is this more of a price agreement, more of a supply agreement, just to lock that in for the next couple of years? Any more details you can give us.

Sure around that would be helpful.

I have a quick follow-up.

Thank you. The first thing I would say is, with the recent memory technology changes that have happened, the kind of memories that we use in auto have been in tight supply all this year. It's expected to only get more challenging in terms of supply next year. Auto is a long cycle industry. Besides price, we need long-term product availability and more importantly, controlled transitions when older memory technologies are being retired. What this agreement does, the one that we've signed with Micron, is that it gives us a better assurance on supply with better long-term visibility into availability of memory. It also gives us better price predictability with better commercial terms if we were not to, for example, have this agreement.

Very importantly, these insights that we have on the planning that enables us to then reduce risk of these long cycle automotive programs. These three things, right? Supplier assurance, pricing predictability, and better planning is essentially what we get from this agreement that we've signed. Now, having said that, I want to be very clear that even with the agreement in place, we anticipate 2027 to be quite challenging in terms of getting sufficient supply to meet our demand as we see the demand where we sit today. We have been working with multiple alternate suppliers to bring them on board and to close any gap. We will know more as we progress further in the second half of this year. We're also redesigning some of the products so that we have more flexibility in using memory parts from different suppliers.

The combination of this supply agreement that we have with Micron, additional memory alternate suppliers that we are bringing on board and the redesigns I think we are doing pretty much everything we can to give us maximum flexibility. First, to tide through 2027, which we expect to be the more challenging year, and then hopefully things should start to get slightly better in 2028 and beyond as more capacity comes online to provide the industry with memory.

Got it. That's very helpful color. I wanted to follow up on the SmartCore wins and just like the overall SmartCore opportunity, started in China. Could you give us an update on how the margins are coming through, as you start ramping up the production here and the shipments?

Yeah. Any early read on that relative to like corporate average?

Thanks. Exactly. In any complex programs like SmartCore or SmartCore HPC, that attracts a lot of engineering just because of the heavier content, the launch margins are going to be a little lower than the steady state higher volume of margins. 2027, oh, sorry, 2026 first is going to be our launch year, the second half.

Also extending into, I would say, the first half of 2027. The real volume shipments would begin in 2028, and onwards. We expect margins to gradually track the higher volumes and improve into 2028 and beyond. We expect them to be very similar to our average margins. I would not want you to think of them as necessarily being a drag for certain on our margins. We expect to, as the volumes increase, to continue to improve from there.

Your next question comes from the line of Emmanuel Rosner of Wolfe Research. Emmanuel, take it away. Great.

Thank you very much. I was hoping to follow up with you, Sachin, on the topic of the insourcing. It feels like for the longest of time, it's always felt like an investor worry that this may happen, but OEMs were never really able to pull it off, for various reasons, but there were a lot of execution problems. Now it seems like it's sort of happening, and I'm just curious to hear from your perspective, what are sort of the changes that have happened that enable OEMs to do it? What are the challenges they're facing? Then any sort of gating factors, why would it be in one specific product line and not in another one? How do you see this evolve in a more holistic way?

Hi, Emmanuel. I wouldn't say that that's the right characterization, that it is happening. As you have been tracking this industry long enough, you have seen such intent from various OEMs throughout the last several years. What has turned out to be the case more often than not is that the OEMs have changed plans after progressing a little bit further in their activities. What we're seeing here, to be clear, is that we are not seeing anything different than what we've seen in the past. We fully expect it to play out similarly as it has played out with other OEMs previously. That's just our expectation, right? You'll have to ask these OEMs eventually to get more insights.

The experience that we have and the past examples that we have in front of us just tells us that it's extremely difficult to launch CDCs and HPCs doing all of those things in-house, especially for larger OEMs. That doesn't change for anything or anybody, and that's how it has been. We think that we can be a good collaborative partner and support all OEMs in their transitions through these technologies. We have been doing this successfully for several years, and we expect it to be the case as well with the customers we have here.

Thank you. Just following up on inflation in DRAM and electronics. When we do our own math around some of the commentary you provided and the implied margin headwinds, it suggests that the cost you will be absorbing, maybe, I don't know, $8 million-$10 million in 2026, maybe $20 million in 2027. I'm not sure if those numbers are directionally in the right ballpark. Just curious if you can expand what's driving this. Because I think in your prepared remarks, you were saying it's expanding to other electronics, so it's going to be hard to recover all in 2026. It looks like you also have a larger unrecovered headwind assumed in 2027.

Good morning, Emmanuel. Let me take that one. I think we need to step back a little bit and understand how things have progressed since the beginning of the year. There are kind of two big buckets that we're dealing with. The memory cost increases, which were kind of known at the beginning of the year, which have stayed reasonably stable. We've seen some increases beyond what we had originally guided to. That's the first bucket. There's a second bucket, which came in later in the year, which I'm going to talk about. Let's talk about the first bucket first.

Memory cost increases, we are progressing exactly on plan. The impact that we are seeing is approximately 2.5% of our sales, similar to what we indicated during Investor Day. We've been slow in Q1 in recovering, as we had anticipated, and we did a good job in Q2 catching up with many customers and securing a lot of deals on memory recoveries. That allowed us, in fact, to be neutral from a recovery minus cost standpoint in the quarter. We are anticipating that the few customers where we don't have yet an agreement will be settled in Q3, and possibly in Q4 as well. Overall, we'll be on target as far as memory is concerned for the full year.

Beyond that, as I said, we are seeing, we've seen that starting at the beginning of the second quarter, we've seen some other inflation cost, we are tackling this as we speak. We intend to go back to our customers to try to get some recoveries. As you can understand, we've had a first wave, it's now a second wave. It's always difficult to go back, but we'll do that. At the same time, we are also discussing with our suppliers to try to find some offset. We're tackling both aspects for these other cost increases that we're seeing since the beginning of the second quarter.

Your next question comes from the line of Joseph Spak of UBS. Joe, you have the floor.

Thank you. I actually want to pick up right there, because we've been doing some more math on the memory recovery, and it looks like you're basically assuming, I don't know, something close to 90% recovery. What I'm confused by is, I understand what's going on now, where you had to pay the price, and now you need to go back to the customers. I am confused as to sort of why that doesn't change in the future with the SCAs, because then you know the price, right? Why can't that just be the price you charge and get closer to 100%? Maybe it has something to do with what percent of the business the Micron deal covers, which I think, Sachin, you sort of alluded to that there's still more work to do.

Yeah. You saw some of the automakers also enter into these agreements.

Doesn't that help as well? Maybe you could sort of just expand on that a little bit.

It does. Yeah. Joe. Yeah, let me clarify that.

The agreements certainly help because it takes away this whole notion about us trying to come to them for price increases. This is now public knowledge. Our customers know this as well. As you just rightly pointed out, the agreements are just with Micron, and Micron is not the full extent of the memory supply to the industry or to us, right? There are other memories that we also have to deal with, right? There's DRAM, there's Flash, there are different types of memories within each category that we have to work with. In general, though, we fully anticipate to go out to our customers and recover 100% of the cost increases next year. Let's just be very clear about that, right? Now, what Jérôme has been talking about are non-memory related semiconductors. Again, I think there's some confusion there, right?

memory, separate topic. There's these other semiconductors that are also seeing some cost and price increases. This discussion- Okay was more about those.

It's smaller in scope. It's widespread, and we also have alternative options, by the way. This is not the same situation as memory. Hopefully that's clear. Yeah. maybe just to be clear on that, I think at the analyst day, you said something about a 100 basis point impact.

That was not just memory. That was all electronic related inflation.

It was everything, but it's mostly in 20.7. We expect the bulk of it to come from memory cost increases.

Okay. These additional electronics, that's embedded in that 100 basis points.

That is correct. Yes. Okay.

Absolutely, yes. Okay. As Sachin said, you have what we know, which is coming from Micron, and then you have other more dynamic memory suppliers as well, with different prices.

Yeah. Put it another way, if Micron is able to supply us everything we need, it's a different discussion. We are expecting it not to be the case.

Your next question comes from the line of Itay Michaeli. Itay of TD Cowen, you have the floor.

Great. Thanks. Good morning. I'll ask one more on just memory cost recovery. Just over time, I know it's uncertain where memory prices will go, do you expect you will eventually recover all of it, just sort of a lag effect that as inflation continues to intensify, you just have to absorb it temporarily? Related to that, to what extent are just some of the new customer wins you've had, which is great, perhaps also contributing to sort of a bit of a lag on recoveries, as in maybe you don't chase those recoveries as aggressively as some of your other customers, perhaps?

Yeah. I'll answer the second question you had first. The new wins that we have, we are already including the higher costs of memory in those business engagements. It's really more a question about the existing programs that we have. In terms of what happens in the future, the way we are looking at it is for 2027, it's really a matter of securing supply. Right now in total, the industry is not going to get as much memory as it needs just from the traditional suppliers. We have to go out and secure that supply. There will be a cost to that supply, and we fully expect to be able to recover that.

There is a cost to also, on our side, to engineer the products that I mentioned earlier, to be able to support all the various different types of memories, qualify them, et cetera. Portion of that cost we may have to absorb. That is part of what Jérôme has in his discussion. As we go forward, this increased supply is going to give us more optionality and more competitive pressures to help drive the memory cost down and hopefully also improve our margins in the process.

Great. That's helpful. Thanks, Sachin. Maybe just a quick follow-up, switching gears, just wanted a bit more color, if you can, on the new Japanese OEM customer win, I think for digital clusters that you talked about. Curious how this opportunity came about, maybe what the future can hold, and how much of this opportunity is embedded in sort of the out year financial forecast.

Great. Thanks that you asked, because this is actually a very important part of what we wanted to communicate. Unfortunately, as you know, most customers don't like us to share details and the name until the product is launched, so I'll stay away from that. I will say that this is an OEM that is not part of the global top 12, but their volume is very meaningful, and they can be a very good contributor to our revenues in Japan and North America. We have never been a supplier to this OEM, and our growing, I would say, reputation in Japan is really what created this opportunity.

We see a significant future opportunity to expand, but on the specific win itself, it's for a digital cluster that are, I believe, three vehicles in the initial award with more to follow, and I think this is going to be a very good customer for us for many years that helps us in both regions, North America and in Japan.

Apologies. Can we take the next question, please?

Yes. Next question comes from the line of Dan Levy of Barclays. Dan, you have the floor.

Great. Thank you. Wanted to double click on some of the China dynamics. You underperformed in the quarter. The revenue was down, but I see on your slide here, you're talking about getting back to growth in the second half in China, some of the premium domestic content, and you have HPC launches. Maybe you can just double click on the visibility- Yeah of that flip to growth.

Yeah. What was happening in the second quarter that doesn't happen in the second half?

Let me address that. As I'm sure you are aware, the domestic market in China is going through what appears to be a structural change, overall demand is down, driven by the recent changes in government policies as well as incentives. Most of the drop is impacting ICE vehicles. Even EVs that are not considered as smart cars are impacted, are not doing as well as EVs that are considered as smart cars. The demand for smart car EVs, what we refer to and the industry is now starting to call as the premium tech segment in China, that portion of the market is doing well. That shift is fundamentally helping domestic OEMs that have this portfolio of vehicles, it's hurting most international OEMs.

Our sales in Q2 were up with those domestic OEMs that have this portfolio, it was hurt by the lower volumes with international OEMs. This dynamic changes as we go into the second half with the launches that we have talked about, HPC, where we see a sequential growth from first half to second half, this growth should continue into next year. Overall, if you look at our performance, I would say that we performed more or less in line with the domestic market performance.

Maybe to add onto that, by the end of the year, we'll be close to 60% index with domestic OE in China. As we are launching these high-profile products, it will rebalance our positioning towards more Chinese domestic OEMs.

Okay, great. Thank you. Second question, I wanted to double-click. I think this was mentioned earlier, that as you're ramping on some of the Chinese customers with HPC. I think what we've seen in the past is that, there's not the same visibility or security on programs for some of the Western suppliers with Chinese where, there could be more rapid mix shifts or the Chinese can displace. We've seen this with other suppliers. What's the confidence that as HPC ramps that you have that visibility of being a supplier and, maybe you can also just address this as far as the export volumes go, how critical this is from an export perspective.

Yeah. That's a good question, and I think there's really two or three dimensions to how to think about it. I mentioned that the Chinese OEMs are kind of evolving their strategy to work more collaboratively and closely with a set of strategic suppliers for the long term, especially on products that require ongoing software maintenance and regional diversification. When you think about HPCs with AI, we have to think of the AI technology as being regulated and specific to the regions. These vehicles that the Chinese OEMs are launching in China with the AI technology that is appropriate for that region is not suitable at all to be sold into Europe without significant amount of change. In many cases, there's regulation already in place, like in the U.S. or emerging in Europe, which will fundamentally prohibit any AI IP that originates in China.

This requires these OEMs to have a set of capable suppliers that have this ability to support them in different regions with different AI software technologies. I think this point is somehow not easily understood, so I want to make sure that it's very clear to everybody. This changes the dynamic in terms of the relationship very fundamentally. It's not just you give me a box and I will replace it with someone else's box tomorrow. It requires an ongoing engagement between the two parties, and therefore we have to think of it as a more longer term relationship. Obviously, we need to do our part and execute. They're not going to accept our lack of performance, just like in any situation. It's, in my mind, it's up to us to continue to execute and deliver the value that they expect from us.

I do not see this as the same type of business model as before. The other thing to keep in mind is the set of suppliers that have these capabilities is fundamentally going to be a smaller set, because you have to have a strong CDC capability, a proven experience there, and then to be able to build AI on top of it. It's very hard to jump straight into an HPC without having gone through the CDC path. That's going to be also another factor that will maybe have it turn out somewhat differently than in the past.

Your next question comes from the line of Winnie Dong of Deutsche Bank.

Hi. Thanks so much for taking my questions. I just wanted to clarify the new HPC win announced in a quarter, that is incremental to what was announced at the investor day. I was wondering if you can also talk about the customer pipeline there in terms of interest from either domestic customers or those that have overseas ambitions. I have a follow-up. Thanks.

Yeah. The HPC win that we announced is incremental to what we had assumed for HPC sales. Right? In 2027, what we had talked about at investor day, this was not part of it. We will have to talk about our overall 2027 sales later this year as we incorporate all of the other input into it. As far as HPCs are concerned, that's an incremental. To the second part of the question that you talked about. We have, as I've mentioned before, three OEMs, and within that, lots of discussions about expanding our footprint within those OEMs and also actively engaged with others in China. You can imagine who these companies would be. Companies or OEMs that have export markets today that they're serving for similar technologies. The discussions are, I would say, very active.

There's a lot of energy being spent right now in coming up with solutions and next sort of generation of AI capabilities with all of the evolution that's happening in AI models, which I'm sure you are aware of as well.

Great. Thank you. If we go back to the investor day deck, on the revenue rundown from GM and Ford. Just wanted to understand to what extent is it sort of like a base case scenario or more of a worst case scenario? Do you have any conservatism built in it? If we were to think about the opportunities for supplying other components such as displays, is there any way to quantify those opportunities, and therefore they can serve as offsets to those declines?

Yeah. As I have mentioned, I'll make sure to reiterate, we certainly took a very thorough approach and did not include anything that we thought was not a clear line of sight in terms of the business with these two OEMs. You can say that in that sense, it is a conservative view of our outlook, and we wanted to make sure that we are very transparent about what we are seeing. At the same time, it's really important to stress this point, that it doesn't mean that we are not seeing opportunities with them. We are continuing to have many active discussions with Ford and GM.

A lot of that right now is centered around, in this year in particular, more displays, we're just starting to engage with them on electronics as they think about the next several years of their vehicles' needs for cockpit electronics, for CDCs, and with HPCs. We have a extremely, I would say, unique vantage point to bring value to them in terms of helping them understand what the market situation is, what our experience has been in China, and the various options available to the industry, and the deeper insights into what goes into really what makes a good or perhaps not as good as advertised solutions for SoCs that they should be picking. We are having those discussions currently.

We expect that on the cockpit electronics front, from a timing viewpoint, these are probably not something that we will be talking about in terms of decisions this year, probably next year. We have a busy couple of quarters ahead in terms of engagements with them to further these discussions along, and we'll be in a better position to share with you how we think about opportunities in the future. Just to leave you with that we certainly look at this as a sort of the baseline from which we hope to build further upon. The timing, obviously, we'll have to come back to you with that as we know more. Unlike in China and India, where we've been able to turn very quickly from award to revenue.

In fact, this has been one of the things with this $3 billion of new business wins that we've had in the first half. We have had this set of bids contribute revenue as early as 2027 in a meaningful way. That's not how it typically works with OEMs in Europe and in the U.S. The timing impact of everything that I've said previously in terms of our discussions with them, we will know more as we go further ahead. Okay. Thank you, Sachin. Thank you, Jérôme. This concludes our earnings call for the second quarter of 2026. Thank you for participating in today's call and your ongoing interest in Visteon.

This concludes Visteon's second quarter 2026 results earnings call.