DANA Inc Q1 FY2026 Earnings Call

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 speakers' remarks and Q&A session, will be recorded for replay purposes. Operator provided instructions. 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.

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 expectations 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 Bruce McDonald, Dana's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Byron Foster, Senior Vice President and President of our Light Vehicle Systems Group and our incoming CEO; and Timothy Kraus, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Bruce, I'll now turn the call over to you.

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 it's my last call as CEO, and I'm transitioning into the Chairman's role here now. If you look at the first quarter results, 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 in our margins. I'd also reflect on the fact that these are the first of our 30 conference calls we're going to have when we talk about our Dana 2030 plan. And I think we're off to a terrific start. And with the — that's the $10 billion revenue bogey that we put out there and with our margins getting into the 14% to 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. So I think that's a great start. Anyway, I'll turn it over to Byron, and he'll take you through the highlights of the quarter.

Okay. Thanks, Bruce, and thanks, everyone, for joining the call this morning. As Bruce said, the team is 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. So 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. So the team remains highly focused on making sure that we remain a lean and efficient operation here. If you look at new business growth, and 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 of pages. So delivering against our commitment of profitable growth for the company. And 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. 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. And 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 — the midpoint of our '26 guide, margins in the mid-double-digit 14% to 15% range, which is a 400 basis point improvement over the midpoint of this year's guide and then 6% free cash flow margins. So 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, giving you updates on the progress of the business. And this quarter, we'd like to give you an update on the first pillar around Traditional growth — growth of our Traditional product lines, if you will. So if you go to Page 6, 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. And 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. So 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 3-year net new sales backlog was $750 million, which takes it up to $950 million. 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. So really proud that the team continues to deliver on incremental growth in our backlog and has secured a significant new award with one of our key customers. So 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 cost remains out and that we remain efficient. It's about double-digit margin performance, and you're going to see that starting here in 2026, and you'll see that those margins increase over our 5-year planning horizon. And it's about delivering strong shareholder returns through profitable growth, margin expansion and maintaining a best-in-sector balance sheet. So 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.

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 and 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 $1.868 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 and delivered a significant step-up despite slightly softer demand. Volume and 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. Lastly, commodities were a $2 million headwind on a year-over-year basis. Bringing 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-divestiture and our ability to drive meaningful profitable improvement even in a softer demand environment. Next, 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 will 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. Finally, 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 me now to Slide 12 for an update on our full year guidance for continuing operations. Our guidance ranges remain unchanged from our February call, but 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% to 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 program's 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 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 operating efficiency. And please note, we still expect to eliminate about $40 million of post-divestiture 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. Tariffs are expected to be a $10 million tailwind due to timing on recoveries. Commodity costs 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, representing 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 costs 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 improvement over last year. And 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 with me now to Slide 15 for an updated look at our sales growth and 2030 targets. As both Byron and Bruce mentioned, we look — this slide will likely look familiar. We really walked through this framework at our Capital Markets Day back in March. What you're seeing here is the same underlying road map to the $10 billion in sales by 2030, but we've updated 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 nonsecured backlog into the secured backlog, further strengthening the outlook for our business. Importantly, this does not change the overall road map 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 disciplined focus on the right mix of Traditional products, Aftermarket and Applied Technologies, 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% to 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.

Operator provided instructions. Our first question comes from the line of Tom Narayan with RBC Capital Markets.

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 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, is the Traditional product kind of the easier to get and then it kind of gets harder to get as we go down that chain — Aftermarket and then Applied Technology is the hardest to get? Like just trying to understand the cadence of what you could get sooner rather than later as we get to 2030. Just trying to understand how we get proof points and converting those greens to blues?

Yes. Tom, thanks for the question. It's a good one. So yes, I think the way to think about this, the $400 million in Traditional products, that's probably — think about it as our current products. We're gaining share. We're able to sell those. To some extent, 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 a very good incremental margin. That's obviously sitting in backlog. But you can think about that with our Traditional products. That also does include Traditional products that are 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, off-the-shelf products that we can continue to sell to the OEMs. If you think through Aftermarket, we continue to work on growing our Aftermarket share. As we mentioned at the Capital Markets Day, we have 30% or 35% market share when you think about our gasket business in Europe, and we have less than 5% in North America. We do believe and are making really good strides to deliver increases in our Aftermarket business, especially around sealing. And I think as we move through the next couple of quarters, we'll be able to share some more there, which will probably give you some more comfort around how we're going to fill that up. But we have very, very strong conviction in our ability to deliver that $200 million over the next 3 or 4 years. The last is Applied Technologies. So that's clearly the one where we're taking current technologies and developing products for new markets. Now if you think about that, some of those are in defense, where we're taking largely off-the-shelf commercial vehicle, even some light vehicle products and adapting them for use for defense. Same would be true in powersports. So I think while that one probably has maybe a little longer tail, we are making very strong inroads. We're receiving a lot of inbound interest in a lot of these products from various customers, and we'll be able to share that too. And Byron, you've got a comment there?

I was just going to 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. And they're really looking for the automotive quality off-the-shelf product that we can bring to improve the performance of their vehicles. And so to Tim's point, we're expecting that those opportunities will begin to convert for us and launch kind of in the 2028 time frame. And we look forward to giving you some more proof points as those become reality for us. But we feel really good about the progress so far.

Yes. And look, we're going to — what we just laid out here with 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.

Operator provided instructions. Our next question will come from the line of Emmanuel Rosner with Wolfe Research.

Curious if you could give us some sense of cadence for the earnings improvement throughout the year going from the 9.2% margin this quarter to like the 10.6% at midpoint for the full year. I think the biggest driver seems to be continued cost performance and cost savings, but just curious if there's any specific cadence or seasonality to that?

Yes. As usual, Emmanuel, typically second and third are our stronger quarters and then 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. But generally, you can think about it the way we generally do, but probably more weighted in the third than the second. But we should see an improvement in margin as we march through the two middle quarters of the year.

Okay. And then on the Light Vehicle sales, so I guess, another quarter of negative volume mix at the top line, but obviously, pretty solid at the bottom line. I think you flagged product mix. Can you just remind us what exactly is going on there as well as for the full year?

Yes. So there's a couple of things in there. Some of it is pricing around EV. So we've been very successful in getting pricing on EV products despite the lower volumes. So you're seeing lower volumes, but better pricing and better profitability coming through that. And then as we start to turn over some of these programs, we tend to have better profitability on them. So we're seeing refreshed and new programs coming through on that, which is essentially giving us, despite being a little softer on the volume, a much better conversion on the profitability. Brian, I don't know if you have anything else to add?

Yes, no. You hit it.

Operator provided instructions. Our next question will come from the line of James Picariello with BNP Paribas.

Just a clarification question first. Operating cash flow is cited in the press release at $156 million use of cash for the quarter. And then if we just bridge that against the adjusted free cash flow, that would imply $39 million in CapEx, but the slide deck refers to $61 million in CapEx. So apologies if I missed the clarification on that, but...

Yes, it's just some of the adjustments. And we'll — when we file the 10-Q, we'll give you the full breakdown, but some of it has to do with how we're classifying some of the items — we still have some one-time costs coming through from the transaction. But we can help you clean that up when we give you the filing.

Okay. And then just any order of magnitude on the operating lease buyouts that I think you said have a second quarter time frame?

Yes. There'll certainly be — we're still in negotiations on some of these, but it certainly is tens of millions of dollars as we go through. But I don't want to get too far ahead given we're in the midst of negotiating some of this stuff. But it's a sizable number. And it's some of the plants that we've — when we were a bit constrained around capital that we ended up leasing. But from our view, these are facilities we should own because they're core facilities. And again, we're using the proceeds from the Off-Highway sale, which was our intention to pay for this.

Yes. It's probably also just worth noting, this is 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.

Operator provided instructions. Our next question will come from the line of Joe Spak with UBS.

I wanted to talk a little bit about how you're thinking about the incremental margins on the backlog because 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. So it seems like it could come on pretty strongly. I just wondered if you could elaborate on that?

Yes, for sure. I mean I think the Dakota win is a great example where we've got a pretty substantial footprint today supplying the Wrangler and Gladiator. And so this program will drop basically right into that footprint for both the final assembly as well as our component plant. So our ability to leverage all the fixed cost that's in place for those plants should deliver very strong contribution margin on the incremental sales here.

Yes. But Joe, don't forget our customer also knows that as well. So keep that in mind. The customer knows where we're going to assemble and what we have. So — but we would agree the new programs — and don't forget, as we move through the product life cycle, they tend to get less profitable over time given some of the givebacks and whatnot. So that's part of it as well. But I agree, they should come on at good margins for us.

Okay. And then just one quick one on the guidance. I know I'm just curious about the Commercial Vehicle market view actually, which is still flat even though I think there's views out there that that could be up now this year. So I just want to be sure, you're saying you're trending to the high end even with a flattish commercial vehicle environment?

No, Joe, that includes some thought around the Commercial Vehicle market. Don't forget, it's North American Class 8. And at the same time, we have a pretty sizable medium-duty business and medium-duty business is still flat, it's soft, it's actually a little down. So our mix is a little bit different. And then it's mostly line haul, which we have — again, we don't have as large a representation as the overall market. So those are why we're still seeing — we're being a little bit more cautious. But certainly, we're starting to see those back half improvements. And then, of course, our South American business was weak in the first quarter, and we got to keep an eye on that as well.

Operator provided instructions. Our next question will come from the line of Colin Langan with Wells Fargo.

Just an unusual question, I guess, but why not delay the earnings call until you have sort of more full financials? Usually, it's unusual that we don't have the full 10-Q details. What is the thought process there? It seems unusual to me, maybe as a former accountant.

Colin, I think we would agree. We would like to be here with our usual cadence of filing the 10-Q this afternoon. We just continue to work through all the aspects of the transaction and tariffs and the like. And so we already had this scheduled, and so we wanted to make sure we got the information out on sales and EBITDA on our normal schedule. So agree. I think you see us in the second quarter, we'll be back to our normal cadence.

Got it. Okay. And then if I look at Slide 13 with the full year guidance, everything is identical to Q4, yet we've had S&P changes, raw material volatility, FX moved all over the place. Is everything really unchanged? Or are you trying to signal that nothing has materially changed from what you had last?

Yes. I think what we're saying is, hey, we're still inside of our range. We're probably trending to the upper end of the range, driven by potentially some upside in Commercial Vehicle and then a bit higher tariff and currency. If you just look, we're at $60 million. I think we printed $65 million in the quarter. So you just trend that, and currency alone would drive us to the upper end. We did — like when you think about the business itself, those are the drivers taking us to the higher end of the range. So we're still in the range of what we gave, and so we didn't go and kind of mix through the buckets. But we feel like we'll likely be at the upper end of the range.

Okay. You mentioned tariffs in there. So Commercial Vehicle is better, currency is better. And then what is the tariff change?

Maybe tariff wise, just some of the timing and the recoveries around tariff, maybe a little bit higher than what we have here.

Operator provided instructions. Our next question will come from the line of James Mulholland with Deutsche Bank.

Just as a quick follow-up on the Commercial Vehicle market. You've talked about some recovery in North America and South America. But conversely, has there been any discussion or concerns about the 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 sounded pretty positive. Any color you could give there would be great. And then I have a follow-up.

No, I mean our European CV business is relatively modest. So we don't see it being overly impacted or any softness there overly impacting our overall results or our view of the way the year will come.

Okay. And then I guess just looking at your walk for the rest of the year, as you think about, call it, $125 million of performance and cost savings, excluding the stranded cost, do either segments have more room to run there? Or are the savings going to be generally proportional. And then from a cadence standpoint, should we think about it as relatively steady or really back half weighted?

So on the performance, it generally sizes to the size of the business. So it will generally follow that split. And on cadence, typically our middle two quarters are stronger. We're probably a little more weighted to the third quarter given timing, but I wouldn't say absolutely back half because fourth quarter tends to be softer given production schedules and holidays.

Operator provided instructions. Our final question comes from the line of Dan Levy with Barclays.

Maybe we could just double-click on the commodity exposure, which you maintained a headwind of $15 million on the EBITDA line. I know that you have indexing in place and you're more exposed on steel, which hasn't moved as much. But 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 oil-based exposures that — is there any risk that on the inflationary or raw material side that could deteriorate?

I think we're obviously watching it closely. We're continuing to see what happens. Obviously, oil impacts a lot because it goes into even if it's only transportation, everything that we buy. I think for us, if anything, it's a timing issue based on when the costs come through and when we get the recoveries because we're on a lag for most of these indexed programs. But we're watching it. I don't right now 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, the recovery mechanisms we have in our contracts with our customers have worked very, very well. And we continue to have those dialogues with our customers to make sure we're in front of it.

And for some of the inputs like 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 reimbursed on the inflation over time?

Yes, that's right. That's exactly how it will work. And we've been through this cycle before. So we'd be in front of our customers working through recovery mechanisms for those items.

Okay. Just as a follow-up, you talked earlier about the volume mix benefit really reflecting 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 one-time benefits? Or is this a structural repricing of the contract such that you don't see any reversal in subsequent years beyond this year?

It's generally the latter. For ongoing programs, we're getting pricing that comes through over the course of the program.

Okay. With that, we're going to close the call. I want to thank you again for attending our call. Thanks for the questions and continued interest in Dana and the Dana 2030 plan. I do want to take the opportunity to thank Bruce for his leadership as our CEO — Chairman and CEO, and we look forward to continuing to partner and work closely together with Bruce in his role as Chairman going forward. And I also want to 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.

This concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.