Dana Incorporated Q1 2026 Earnings Call - Margin Expansion and New Business Wins Drive Confidence in Dana 2030 Plan

Regina, Conference Facilitator: Good morning, and welcome to Dana Incorporated’s first quarter 2026 financial webcast and conference call. My name is Regina, and I will be your conference facilitator. Please be advised that our meeting today, both the speaker’s remarks and Q&A session, will be recorded for replay purposes. For those participants who would like to access the call from the webcast, please reference the URL on our website and sign in as a guest. There will be a question and answer period after the speaker’s remarks, and we’ll take questions from the telephone only. To ensure that everyone has an opportunity to participate in today’s Q&A, we ask that callers limit themselves to one question at a time. If you’d like to ask an additional question, please return to the queue.

At this time, I would like to begin the presentation by turning the call over to Dana’s Senior Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications, Craig Barber. Please go ahead, Mr. Barber.

Craig Barber, Senior Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications, Dana Incorporated: Thank you, and good morning. Welcome to Dana Incorporated’s earnings call for the first quarter of 2026. Today’s presentation includes forward-looking statements about our expectation for Dana’s future performance. Actual results could differ from what we discuss here today. For more details about the factors that may affect future results, please refer to our safe harbor statement found in our public filings and our reports with the SEC. I encourage you to visit our investor website, where you’ll find this morning’s press release and presentation. As stated, today’s call is being recorded, and the supporting materials are the property of Dana Incorporated. They may not be recorded, copied, or rebroadcast without our written consent.

With us this morning is R. Bruce McDonald, Dana Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Byron Foster, Senior Vice President and President of our Light Vehicle Drive Systems, and our incoming CEO; and Timothy Kraus, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Bruce, I’ll now turn the call over to you to give us-

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo0: Okay. Thank you, Craig, and good morning, everyone, and thanks for your interest in Dana. Just maybe before we get into the slide deck, I’d just like to kind of reflect on the fact this is my last call as CEO, and I’m transitioning into the Chairman’s role here now. If you look at the first quarter results, you know, Tim, Byron, and the entire Dana team I think have delivered another terrific quarter with the first time since I’ve been back, we’re showing revenue growth and extremely strong year-over-year improvement on margins.

I’d also reflect on the fact that these are the first of our, of 30 conference calls we’re gonna have where we talk about our Dana 2030 plan, and I think we’re off to a terrific start and with the, you know, that’s the $10 billion revenue bogey that we put out there and with our margins getting into the 14%-15% range. You’ll see in our deck, we’ve talked about winning the Ram Dakota program, and with that award, we now have just over 60% of our growth through 2030 secured. I think that’s a great start. I’ll turn it over to Byron, and he’ll take you through the highlights of the quarter.

Byron Foster, Senior Vice President and President of Light Vehicle Drive Systems, Incoming CEO, Dana Incorporated: Okay. Thanks, Bruce. Thanks, everyone, for joining the call this morning. As Bruce said, the team’s off to a strong start to the year, and I’m excited to share a few highlights that I’ll take you through on page 4. Starting with the financial results, EBITDA margin came in at 9.2%, which, as Bruce alluded to, is a great year-over-year improvement of 400 basis points. Really seeing the margin expansion come through on a year-over-year basis. In terms of share repurchases, we repurchased 4.4 million shares in the quarter, returning $125 million to our shareholders, and that keeps us on track to our target of $300 million for the year here.

If you look at the program to date since we launched back in Q2 of last year, that takes us up to $775 million of value returned to our shareholders and keeps us on track to our target of $2 billion through 2030. In terms of cost reductions, you’ll see as Tim takes us through the walk that the team delivered $35 million of cost reductions in the quarter, which is right on track to our target of $65 million for 2026 and a program total of $325 million. The team remains highly focused on making sure that we remain a lean and efficient operation here.

If you look at new business growth, Bruce mentioned it in his opening comments, we were able to deliver a significant new business award in the quarter, which I’ll take you through here in a couple pages. Delivering against our commitment of profitable growth for the company. This is right in line with what we laid out relative to our Dana 2030 strategy around profitable growth and margin expansion for the company. Which if you go to page 5 in the deck, I want to take the opportunity again to thank all those that were able to spend time with us at our Capital Markets Day about a month ago.

As a quick reminder, our plan is about profitable growth in our traditional business, our aftermarket business, as well as applied technologies, and it’s about margin expansion through manufacturing excellence and structural cost reductions. You can see the financial targets that we’ve laid out and we remain committed to. Top line of $10 billion, which is 33% above our guide here or the midpoint of our 2026 guide. Margins in the mid-double-digit, 14%-15% range, which is a 400 basis point improvement over the midpoint of this year’s guide, and then 6% free cash flow margins. As we go through our journey of the Dana 2030 strategy, you will continue to hear various proof points from us as we’re in front of you to give you an update on the progress of the business.

This quarter, we’d like to give you an update on the first pillar around traditional growth of our traditional product lines, if you will. If you go to page six, you can see the new award that we’re proud to announce that we’ll be participating on the Ram Dakota program with Stellantis, where our content will be front and rear axles. It’s really a testament to the continued performance of the team relative to world-class quality and delivery performance, as well as competitiveness. It’s also a great story because it leverages installed capacity that we have in place supporting the Toledo assembly complex and really leverages our core products on the ICE front.

You can see that it’s $250 million of annual sales and that it will launch in early 2028. If you flip to page 7, just to give you a visual now of where the backlog stands. When we were last in front of you, our three-year net new sales backlog was $750 million. This takes it up to $950 million then, and that’s because as the program ramps, some of that $250 million that I referenced on the previous page will fall in the 2029 time horizon. Really proud that the team continues to deliver on incremental growth in our backlog and secured a significant new award with one of our key customers. On page 8, just in summary again, what new Dana is all about.

It’s really about focusing on our core Light Vehicle and Commercial Vehicle markets, remaining a lean, efficient organization and ensuring that the work we’ve done to take cost out, that that cost remains out and that we remain efficient. You’re going to see that starting here in 2026, and you’ll see that those margins increase over our 5-year planning horizon. It’s about delivering strong shareholder returns through profitable growth, margin expansion, and maintaining a best-in-sector balance sheet. Great start to the year, great quarter, and with that, I’ll turn it over to Tim to take us through the numbers in more detail.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: Thank you, Byron. As we begin the discussion of the first quarter with the change in sales and adjusted EBITDA, you can join me on page 10 of the deck. Starting with sales, first quarter 2026 sales were $1.868 billion, up from $1.781 billion last year. As expected, lower end market demand drove a $33 million headwind from volume mix. Despite that backdrop, we continue to execute well across the organization, as Byron mentioned. Performance actions added $2 million due to pricing and recoveries. Tariffs contributed $48 million, primarily due to the recovery timing. Currency added $64 million, largely driven by the euro strength, while commodities provided an additional $6 million top-line benefit in the quarter.

Altogether, those items brought us to the $1.86 billion of sales for the first quarter of 2026. Turning to adjusted EBITDA, we started at $93 million in the first quarter of last year, a 5.2% margin, delivered a significant step-up to slightly softer demand. Volume mix contributed $27 million in incremental profit, reflecting favorable mix and improved profitability on new programs. Performance actions added $15 million, driven by stronger operating efficiency and continued tight cost controls across all aspects of the business. Cost savings were a major driver, contributing $35 million as our cost actions continue to deliver exactly as planned and remain on pace for our full year and full program target of $325 million.

Tariffs were a modest $2 million headwind to EBITDA this quarter, while currency contributed $5 million. Commodities were a $2 million headwind on a year-over-year basis. Bring it all together, adjusted EBITDA was $171 million, representing a 9.2% margin, a 400 basis point improvement over 2025’s first quarter. This was a very strong quarter from a margin and execution standpoint, demonstrating the durability of our business post-Venturer and our ability to drive meaningful, profitable improvement even in a softer demand environment. I will turn to slide 11 for a look at adjusted free cash flow for the quarter. First, you will note that 2025 comparisons include both continuing and discontinuing operations to be consistent with the structure of our off-highway transaction.

In 2026, it’ll just be continuing operations contributing to adjusted free cash flow. On that note, adjusted free cash flow from continuing operations improved by $78 million, driven by strong operations following the completion of the sale of our off-highway business. One-time costs declined by $20 million on a year-over-year basis, reflecting completion of several of our cost reduction programs and lower restructuring spend as we move past the intensive phase of our transformational initiatives. Net interest expense increased by $6 million, driven primarily by the timing of interest payments related to the debt repayment activity after the closing of the off-highway sale. Taxes were $6 million year-over-year headwind, reflecting timing of tax payments. Working capital was a use of $224 million, largely due to higher accounts receivable and the timing impact related to certain VAT recoveries and customer paid tooling.

Net capital spending was modestly lower by $3 million. Putting all these items together, adjusted free cash flow for the first quarter was a use of $195 million, with higher operating profitability and lower one-time costs, partially offset by the loss of EBITDA from discontinued operations and normal first quarter working capital dynamics. Please turn with you now to slide 12 for an update on our full year guidance for continuing operations. Our guidance ranges remain unchanged from our February call, we now expect to be at the upper end of our ranges for sales and see a commensurate adjusted EBITDA increase. Our 2026 outlook reflects continued operational execution, accretive new business, and the ongoing benefit of our cost reduction initiatives.

Starting with sales, we expect 2026 revenue to be approximately $7.5 billion at the midpoint of our range. Increased backlog and the benefit of higher margin new business are expected to largely offset a modestly softer market environment and changes in product mix. Beneficial sales mix, potential second half commercial vehicle improvement, higher tariff recoveries, and currency translation will likely push us higher in our range for sales. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be around $800 million, an increase of roughly $200 million compared with 2025. This improvement is driven by the full year run rate of our cost-saving programs, continued operating efficiency improvements, and the incremental margin from new business that carries higher profitability.

At the midpoint of the range, this represents an adjusted EBITDA margin of roughly 10%-11%, an expansion of approximately 250 basis points on a year-over-year basis. Diluted adjusted EPS guidance for 2026 is expected to be about $2.50 at the midpoint. For this calculation, we’re using a share count of 109 million and are not including future share repurchases in this calculation. Adjustments for EPS are similar to those in nature that we make for adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted free cash flow is expected to be around $300 million in line with our 2025 performance. Free cash flow stability reflects disciplined working capital management, improved earnings, and a normalization of capital spending as major investments over the past several years begin to taper.

Our 2026 outlook demonstrates continued profit improvement driven by new business, operational efficiencies, and the structural benefits of our cost actions over the past year or so. Please turn with me now to slide 13 for the drivers of the sales and profit change for our full year guidance. Beginning with sales, volume mix remains unchanged, and we expect to reduce revenue by approximately $95 million as lower demand in traditional markets, as well as ongoing softness in electrical light vehicle programs impacts our battery cooling business. We are seeing the beginnings of higher demand for North American Class 8 trucks that may benefit sales later in the year. Performance is expected to be modestly lower, reducing sales by about $30 million, reflecting more normalized pricing environment as we lap last year’s commercial actions.

Tariffs are expected to improve sales by roughly $50 million, largely due to the timing of recoveries. Foreign currency translation adds approximately $60 million, driven primarily by the strengthening of the euro compared to the U.S. dollar. Commodities are projected to add about $15 million in sales due to continued effectiveness of our recovery mechanisms with our customers, which recover about 75% of the average commodity pricing changes. As we experienced in the first quarter, foreign currencies have remained strong against the U.S. dollar so far this year. If that trend continues, we will likely see a benefit to sales from currency translation above what is shown here. Altogether, these drivers result in 2026 sales of approximately $7.5 billion in line with prior year levels.

Turning to adjusted EBITDA, starting from the $610 million in 2025, representing an 8.1% margin, volume and mix is expected to add approximately $20 million in EBITDA. Favorable mix within our businesses will drive higher profit on slightly lower sales. Performance is expected to increase EBITDA by roughly $100 million, largely from pricing improvements and continued operation efficiency. Please note, we still expect to eliminate about $40 million of posted divested or stranded costs, which is included within this $100 million number. Cost savings, in addition to the stranded cost reduction, remain a meaningful contributor, adding $65 million in profit in the year. Tariff are expected to be a $10 million tailwind due to timing on recoveries.

Commodity cost is expected to represent a $15 million headwind driven by timing differences in recoveries and expected material cost changes. All combined, adjusted EBITDA for 2026 is expected to be approximately $800 million at the midpoint of our range or approximately 10.6% margin, represent an improvement of roughly 250 basis points over 2025. Next, I will turn to slide 14 for details of adjusted free cash flow outlook for 2026. Our adjusted free cash flow also remains unchanged. As I discussed during the first quarter review, full year 2025 included cash flow from discontinued operations that will not continue in 2026.

Even without the contribution from discontinued operations, we expect full year 2026 adjusted free cash flow to be about $300 million at the midpoint of the guidance range. One-time cost will be about $30 million lower than last year or about $40 million due to fewer strategic actions. Net interest will be about $70 million in 2026, about $95 million lower than last year due to our aggressive debt reduction actions completed in January. Taxes will be about $100 million, about $75 million lower than 2025 due to lower taxable income and the jurisdictional distribution of profits. Working capital will be a source of $25 million in 2026, a $40 million dollar improvement over last year.

Net capital spending is expected to be about $325 million this year, which is about $70 million higher than last year as we invest in efficiency improvements in our operations and support our new business backlog. Please note that we expect to utilize a portion of the proceeds of our off-highway transaction to buy out some facility leases. A portion of that buyout will flow through capital spending, but we are excluding it here as we have excluded the proceeds from our off-highway sale as well. These transactions will likely occur in the second quarter. Please turn, looking now to slide 15 for an updated look at our sales growth in 2030 targets. As both Byron and Bruce mentioned, this slide will likely look familiar. We originally walked through this framework at our Capital Markets Day back in March.

What you’re seeing here is the same underlying roadmap to the $10 billion in sales by 2030. We’ve updated it today to reflect the recently secured new business win Byron mentioned. As a result, we’ve improved both the timing and quality of our backlog. Approximately $200 million that we had previously shown as future sales growth has moved from the additional backlog column into the 2028 backlog category, increasing our near-term visibility of our sales growth. In addition, $50 million has moved from non-secured backlog into the secured backlog, further strengthening the outlook for our business. Importantly, this does not change the overall roadmap we laid out in March.

We still see $2.5 billion of organic sales growth through 2030, supporting a roughly 6% compounded annual growth rate, driven by now larger secured backlog, commercial vehicle market recovery, share gains and continued growth in aftermarket and our pursuit of applied technologies. The update here reinforces execution, converting opportunities into profitable sales and gives us even greater confidence in delivering the growth trajectory we outlined in March. Please turn to slide 16 for a brief reminder of our Dana 2030 strategy. I will end my remarks by reminding everyone of the key elements of our Dana 2030 strategy, which we laid out at our Capital Markets Day last month.

The strategy is centered around above-market growth supported by new business wins, delivering 6% growth, compounded annual growth in sales, 17% compounded annual growth in adjusted EBITDA, and 11% compounded annual growth in free cash flow through 2030. Underpinning that growth is a fundamental improvement in our operations, driven by structural cost reductions, manufacturing excellence, and a discipline focused on the right mix of traditional products, aftermarket and applied technology, all aimed at achieving top quartile margins. At the same time, we’re focused on accelerating free cash flow generation, with free cash flow expected to grow from roughly $300 million today to $600 million by 2030, and deploying that cash in ways that consistently increase shareholder value. Importantly, the targets remain unchanged.

Approximately $10 billion of revenue by 2030, 14%-15% adjusted EBITDA margins, and around 6% free cash flow margin, which we believe position Dana for sustained value creation and multiple expansion over the long term. We are off to a great start to achieve them and intend to continue to execute strongly throughout this year and the years to come. Thank you, and I will now turn the call back over to Regina for any questions.

Regina, Conference Facilitator: We will now begin the question and answer session. Our first question comes from the line of Gautam Narayan with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Gautam Narayan, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Yeah, thanks for taking the question. Tim, I wanted to get back to that slide 15 that you were talking about, the one that we saw at the Capital Markets Day. Just trying to understand, like, how do we think about those green buckets, the $1 billion worth, traditional aftermarket, applied technology? I know aftermarket, you said there’s market share gains in there. I mean, like, is the traditional product, is that kind of the easier to get, and then it kind of gets harder to get as we go down that chain, aftermarket, then applied technology is the hardest to get? Like, just trying to also the cadence of what you could get sooner rather than later, as we get to 2030.

Just trying to understand as we get trying to get proof points in converting those greens to blues.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: Yeah. Hey, Gautam, thank, thanks for the question. It’s a good one. Yeah, I think the way to think about this, you know, the $400 million in traditional products, that’s probably, think about it as, it’s our current products. We’re gaining share. We’re able to sell those. I mean, to some respect, when you think about the Dakota program, we’re using an existing plant. It’s our core technology that’s able to be applied at, you know, a very good incremental margin. That’s obviously sitting in backlog, but you can think about that with our traditional price.

That also does include traditional products that is, you know, some EV as well, because we have obviously a very good portfolio of EV products that we can sell that need minimal amounts of application engineering. You know, off-the-shelf products that we can continue to sell to the OEMs. You think through aftermarket, we continue to work on growing our aftermarket share. As Byron Foster mentioned at the Capital Markets Day, you know, we have 30% or 35% market share when you think about our gasket business in Europe, and we have, you know, less than 5% in North America.

We do believe and are making, you know, really good strides to deliver increases in our aftermarket business, especially around sealing. I think as we move through the next couple of quarters, you know, we’ll be able to share some more there, which will probably give you some more comfort around how we’re gonna fill that up. We have very strong conviction in our ability to deliver that $200 million over the next three or four years. The last is applied technology, that’s clearly the one where we’re taking our current technologies and developing products for new markets.

Now, if you think about that, you know, some of those are in defense where we’re taking, you know, largely off-the-shelf commercial vehicle, even some light vehicle products and adapting them for use from a defense. Same would be true in powersports. I think while that one probably has, you know, maybe a little bit longer tail, we are making, again, very strong inroads. We’re receiving a lot of really inbound interest in a lot of these products from various customers and we’ll be able to share that too. Byron, why don’t you guys comment there?

Byron Foster, Senior Vice President and President of Light Vehicle Drive Systems, Incoming CEO, Dana Incorporated: I was just gonna add on the powersports side as an example, we’ve gotten over $200 million of RFQ opportunities in front of us. We’re having workshops with the key players in that space, they’re really looking for kind of the automotive quality off-the-shelf product that we can bring to improve the performance of their vehicles. To Tim’s point, we’re expecting that those opportunities will begin to convert for us and launch kind of in the 2028 timeframe. We look forward to kind of giving you some more proof points as those become reality for us, but we feel really good about the progress so far.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: Yeah. Look, we’re gonna what we just laid out here with the, with the.

Byron Foster, Senior Vice President and President of Light Vehicle Drive Systems, Incoming CEO, Dana Incorporated: Mm-hmm

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: ... the Dakota pickup truck win. We’ll keep updating the schedule and moving those buckets from green to blue and showing you as we fill it up.

Gautam Narayan, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Got it. If I could just do a quick follow-up on the 2026 guidance. I guess IHS numbers came down after you guys gave this guidance at the end of Q4. Now you’re raising your guidance effectively. I mean, obviously your revised guidance incorporates the weaker light vehicle production. Is that right?

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: Yeah. I mean, obviously we have to look at our specific programs when we think through that.

Gautam Narayan, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Mm-hmm

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: ... We’re confident in where we’re at today, and we do think there’s opportunity, especially in the commercial vehicle side in the back half of the year. I mean, we did see some softness in commercial vehicle in the first quarter, especially in Brazil. You know, we do.

Gautam Narayan, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Mm-hmm

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: We are watching that closely as we move through the year. Largely, you know, we do see upside on the top line from CV and as I mentioned, also from currency. When you look at our first quarter, you know, I think we printed $65 million in currency up and there’s probably upside in currency as well from a top-line perspective.

Gautam Narayan, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Got it. Thanks. I’ll turn it over.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: Okay.

Regina, Conference Facilitator: Our next question will come from the line of Emmanuel Rosner with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Emmanuel Rosner, Analyst, Wolfe Research: Great. Thank you so much. Curious if you could give us some sense of cadence for the earnings improvement throughout the year. You know, going from the 9.2% margin, you know, this quarter to like the 10.6% at midpoint for the full year. I think the biggest driver seems to be continued, you know, cost performance and cost savings, but just, you know, curious if there’s any specific cadence or seasonality to that.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: Yeah. To, you know, as usual, Emmanuel, we’re typically second and third are our stronger quarters, you know, and then, you know, tails off a little bit in the fourth quarter just given the production schedule. I would think that’s probably how we can see it here. We’re probably a little more weighted to third quarter just given the timing on some of the performance improvements. Generally, you know, you can think about it in the way we generally do. Probably more weighted in the third than the second. We should see an improvement in margin as we march through the two middle quarters of the year.

Emmanuel Rosner, Analyst, Wolfe Research: Okay. On the light vehicle sales, you know, I guess another or I guess performance, yet another quarter of sort of like negative volume mix, you know, at the, at the top line, but obviously, you know, pretty solid sort of like at the, at the bottom line. I think you’re, you flagged again sort of product mix. Can you just remind us what exactly is going on in there and as well as, you know, for the full year?

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: Yeah. There’s a couple things in there. We’ve some of it is pricing around EV. We’ve been very successful in getting pricing on EV products despite it because of the lower volume. You’re seeing lower volumes, but better pricing and better profitability coming through that. As we start to turn over some of these programs, we tend to have better profitability on them. We’re seeing refreshed and new programs coming through on that, which is essentially giving us, despite a little bit softer on the volume, a much better conversion on the profitability. Byron, I don’t know if you have anything else to-

Byron Foster, Senior Vice President and President of Light Vehicle Drive Systems, Incoming CEO, Dana Incorporated: No. No. You hit it.

Emmanuel Rosner, Analyst, Wolfe Research: Great. Thank you.

Regina, Conference Facilitator: Our next question will come from the line of James Picariello with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

James Picariello, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Hi. good morning, everybody. just a clarification question first, and I don’t know if I only get 1 question or a follow on. Operating cash flow is cited in the press release at $156 million use of cash for the quarter. If we just bridge that against the adjusted free cash flow, right? That would imply $39 million in CapEx, but the slide deck refers to $61 million in CapEx. Apologies if I missed the clarification on that.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: Yeah. It’s just some of the adjustments. Like, when we file the Q, we’ll give you the full breakdown, but it’s some of it has to do with, you know, how we’re classifying some of the, we still have some one-time costs coming through from the transaction. We can help you clean that up when we give you the walks.

James Picariello, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Okay. Then just any order of magnitude on the on the operating lease buyouts that that I think you said have a second quarter timeframe?

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: Yeah. They’ll certainly be. I mean, we’re still in negotiations on some of these, but it certainly is, you know, it’s tens and tens of millions of dollars as we go through. I don’t wanna get too far ahead given we’re in the midst of negotiating some of this stuff. It’s a sizable number.

James Picariello, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Oh, thank you.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: ... and it’s some of the plants that we’ve, you know, when we were a bit constrained around capital that we ended up leasing. From our view, it’s, you know, these are facilities we should own because they’re core facilities. Again, we’re using the proceeds from the off highway sale, which was our intention to pay for this.

James Picariello, Analyst, BNP Paribas: Okay. Thank you.

Byron Foster, Senior Vice President and President of Light Vehicle Drive Systems, Incoming CEO, Dana Incorporated: Yeah. It’s probably also just worth noting, this is like a one-time catch up. We’ve gone through and said, "Hey, our core manufacturing facilities, we should own, not lease." And there’s a handful that we lease, and this is a one-time adjustment using our cash to clean it up.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: Yeah.

Regina, Conference Facilitator: Our next question will come from the line of Joe Spak with UBS. Please go ahead.

Joe Spak, Analyst, UBS: Good morning, everyone. I wanted to talk a little bit about how you’re thinking about the incremental margins on the backlog because, you know, you’ve mentioned in the past you’re getting some higher margin categories here. And then even on this Dakota win, you clearly called out utilizing existing capacity, minimal capital investment. Seems like it could come on pretty strongly, and I just wondered if you could, you know, elaborate on that.

Byron Foster, Senior Vice President and President of Light Vehicle Drive Systems, Incoming CEO, Dana Incorporated: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think, the Dakota win’s a great example where, you know, we’ve got a pretty substantial footprint today supplying the Wrangler and Gladiator. This program will drop basically right into that footprint for both the final assembly as well as our component plant. Our ability to leverage, you know, all the fixed cost that’s in place for those plants should deliver very strong contribution margin on the incremental sales here.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: Yeah. Joe, don’t forget our customer also knows that as well. Keep that in mind. The customer knows where we’re gonna assemble and what we have.

Joe Spak, Analyst, UBS: Yeah.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: But I, we would agree, the new programs. And don’t forget, you know, as we move through the product life cycle, you know, they tend to get less profitable over time given some of the give backs and whatnot. That’s part of it as well, but I agree. They should come on at good margins for us.

Joe Spak, Analyst, UBS: Okay. Just one quick one on the guidance. I’m just curious about your commercial vehicle market view actually, which is still flat even though, you know, I think there’s views out there that that could be up now this year. I just wanna be sure. You’re saying you’re trending to the high end even with a flattish commercial vehicle environment? If there’s some risk there.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: No, that includes, Joe, that includes some thought around the commercial vehicle market. Don’t forget, it’s North American Class 8. But at the same time, we have a pretty sizable medium duty business, and medium duty business is still, you know, flat. It’s soft. It’s actually a little down. Our mix is a little bit different, it’s mostly line haul, which we have, again, we don’t have as large a representation in as the overall market. Those, those are why we’re we still seeing. We’re being a little bit more cautious. Certainly, we’re starting to see those back half.

Of course, our South American business, you know, is weak in the first quarter and, you know, we gotta keep an eye on that as well.

Joe Spak, Analyst, UBS: Thank you.

Regina, Conference Facilitator: Our next question will come from the line of Colin Langan with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Great. Thanks for taking my questions. Just unusual question, I guess, why not delay the earnings call until you have sort of more full financials? Usually it’s sort of unusual that we don’t have, like, it’s actually less information than the Q4 release. Yeah, what is the thought process there? It just seems unusual to me, I guess maybe as a former accountant, so.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: Yeah, Colin, I think we would agree. We would like to be here with our usual cadence of filing the Q this afternoon. We’re, you know, we just continue to work through all the aspects of the transaction and tariffs and the like. We’d already had this scheduled, so we wanted to make sure we got the information out on sales and EBIT on our normal schedule. Agree. I think, you know, when you see us in the second quarter, we’ll be back to our normal cadence.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Got it. Okay. If I look at slide 13 with the full year guidance, everything is identical to Q4, yet we’ve had S&Ps lowered, raw materials been all over the place, FX moved all over the place. Is really everything not changed, or is just you’re trying to signal that nothing has materially changed from what you had last?

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: Yeah, I think.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo: I feel like I kind of expected some of those pieces to move up and.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: I think what we’re saying is, hey, we’re still inside of our range. We’re probably trending to the upper, you know, to the upper end of the range, you know, driven by, you know, potentially some upside in CV and then a bit higher tariff and currency will. If you just look, we’re at 60. I think we printed 65 in the quarter. You just trend that, you know, currency alone would drive us to the upper end. Like when you think about the business itself, you know, those are the drivers taking us to the higher end of the range.

We’re still in the range of what we gave, we didn’t go and kind of mix through the buckets.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Okay

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: ... we feel like there, we’ll likely be at the upper end of the range.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Okay. You mentioned tariff in there, so it’s commercial vehicles better, currency’s better, and then what does the tariff change?

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: Yeah, tariff, like just some of the timing and the recoveries around tariff may be a little bit higher than what we have here.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Okay. All right. Thank you.

Regina, Conference Facilitator: Our next question will come from the line of James Mulholland with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

James Mulholland, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Just as a quick follow-up on the commercial vehicle market, you talked about some recovery in North America and South America. Conversely, has there been any discussion or concerns about maybe higher energy prices could impact any recovery we might be seeing in Europe’s production? Have orders seen any improvement? It sounds like the truckers earlier today and last week came out, they sounded pretty positive, but any color that you could give there would be great. Then I have a follow-up. Thanks.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: Yeah, no, I mean, our European CV business is relatively modest. We don’t see it being overly impacted or any softness there overly impacting, you know, our overall results or our view of what and the way the year will come out.

James Mulholland, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Okay. I guess just looking at your walk for the rest of the year, as you think about, I guess the, call it $125 million in performance and cost savings, excluding the stranded cost elimination, do either segments have more room to run there, or are the savings gonna be generally proportional? From a cadence standpoint, should we think about it as relatively steady or really back half weighted?

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: On the performance, you know, it generally sized to the size of the business. You know, it’ll follow generally that split. Then I’m sorry, your second piece of that question?

James Mulholland, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: It was just on the cadence. I know, I think you mentioned when Emmanuel asked earlier that there could be a little bit more in third quarter. Should we think of it as more back half weighted just in general?

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: I mean, yes, I think, you know, in general, we’re in the middle two quarters will be better. I mean, our fourth quarter just given production schedules and the holidays, it generally, you know, is a softer quarter. I think if you think about our middle two quarters being our, generally our best two performing quarters, that’s probably more weighted to the third than the second, you know, given what our historical performance has been in those. I don’t know that I’d say it’s absolutely back half, but because of the way fourth quarter generally runs.

James Mulholland, Analyst, Deutsche Bank: Great. Thank you, guys.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: Yep.

Regina, Conference Facilitator: Our final question comes from the line of Dan Levy with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Dan Levy, Analyst, Barclays: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe we could just double-click on the commodity exposure, which you maintain is a headwind of $15 million on the EBITDA line. I, I know that you have indexing in place and you’re more exposed on steel, which hasn’t moved as much. Maybe you could just talk about broadly what you’ve been seeing on the inflationary side, your exposure to things like aluminum or freight or other, you know, oil-based exposures that, you know, is there any risk that on the inflationary or raw mat side that could be something that deteriorates?

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: I mean, I think, you know, we’re obviously watching it closely. We’re continuing to see, you know, what happens. You know, obviously oil impacts a lot because it goes into even if it’s only transportation, you know, everything that we buy. I think from us, if anything, it’s a timing issue based on when the costs come through and when we get the recoveries, because, you know, we’re on a lag for most of these indexed programs. We’re watching it. I don’t. Right now, we don’t see it as a big potential issue for us. We’ll continue to work through it.

I think if you look through over the last few years, you know, the recovery mechanisms we have in our contracts with our customers have worked very, very well. We continue to have those dialogues with our customers to make sure we’re in front of it.

Dan Levy, Analyst, Barclays: For some of the inputs like, you know, the oil or transport or freight, where you’re probably not indexed, I assume the mechanism is such that this would just be part of normal course commercial discussions with your customers, and you have confidence that you would get, you know, fully reimbursed on the inflation over time?

Byron Foster, Senior Vice President and President of Light Vehicle Drive Systems, Incoming CEO, Dana Incorporated: Yeah. That’s right. That’s exactly how it will work. You know, we’ve been through this cycle before, so, you know, we’d be in front of our customers working through recovery mechanisms for those items.

Dan Levy, Analyst, Barclays: Okay. Thank you. Just as a follow-up, you know, you talked about earlier the volume mix benefit really left some of the EV pricing. We’re seeing a number of the automakers put out in these large impairment numbers, which reflect payments to suppliers. Maybe you could just unpack, are the benefits you’re seeing within volume mix on EV pricing, are these one-time benefits, or is this a structural repricing of the contract such that you don’t see any reversal in, you know, subsequent years beyond this year?

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: It’s generally the latter. You know, for ongoing programs, we’re getting pricing that comes through over the course of the program.

Dan Levy, Analyst, Barclays: Great. Thank you.

Colin Langan, Analyst, Wells Fargo1: Yep.

Byron Foster, Senior Vice President and President of Light Vehicle Drive Systems, Incoming CEO, Dana Incorporated: Okay. With that, we’re gonna close the call. I wanna thank you again for attending our call. Thanks for the questions and continued interest in Dana and the Dana 2030 plan. I do wanna take the opportunity to thank R. Bruce McDonald for his leadership as our CEO, Chairman and CEO, and we look forward to continuing to partner and work closely together with R. Bruce McDonald in his role as Chairman going forward. I also wanna take the opportunity to thank our customers and the Dana team for delivering a great quarter and a great start to the year. Have a great rest of the day, and we’ll talk to you soon.

Regina, Conference Facilitator: This concludes today’s call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.