Dana (NYSE:DAN) reported first-quarter financial results on Wednesday. The transcript from the company's first-quarter earnings call has been provided below.
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The full earnings call is available at https://events.q4inc.com/attendee/992392535
Summary
Dana reported strong first quarter results for 2026 with significant revenue growth and margin improvement, marking a year-over-year EBITDA margin increase of 400 basis points to 9.2%.
The company repurchased 4.4 million shares, totaling $125 million returned to shareholders, keeping it on track for its $300 million target for the year and $2 billion through 2030.
Dana announced a significant new business award with Stellantis on the Ram Dakota program, contributing to a secured growth backlog that supports its Dana 2030 strategy.
Full-year guidance remains unchanged, but Dana anticipates reaching the upper end of its sales and EBITDA ranges, driven by operational efficiencies, cost savings, and favorable currency effects.
CEO Bruce McDonald transitioned to Chairman, with Byron Foster taking over as CEO, highlighting leadership continuity amidst strategic execution towards the Dana 2030 growth plan.
Full Transcript
OPERATOR
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 and 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 and 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)
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 and 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 chairman and Chief Executive Officer Byron Foster, Senior Vice President and President of our Light Vehicle Systems Group and our incoming CEO and Timothy Krause, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
Bruce McDonald (Chairman)
Bruce, I'll now turn the call over to you to go. 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 that my last call is 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 with shown 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 going to have when we talk about our Dana's 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 to 15% range, you'll see in our deck we've talked about winning the Ram Dakota program and with 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 the highlights of the quarter.
Byron Foster (Senior Vice President and President of Light Vehicle Systems Group)
Okay, thanks Bruce and 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 four. 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 770 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 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's 2030 strategy around profitable growth and margin expansion for the company, which if you go to page five 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 guidelines, 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's 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 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. 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 install 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 seven 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 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 secured a significant new award with one of our key customers. So on page eight, 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. 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 five 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.
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
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 1.6 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 $1.86 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 and delivered a significant step up to 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 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 $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 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'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. 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 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, 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 Quarter half, 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, continue to 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 and 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 in electrical light vehicle programs impacts our battery cooling business. We are seeing the beginnings of higher demand for North American Class A 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 US 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 translations 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 index 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 postage divestiture stranded costs which is included within this $100 million number. Cost savings in addition, 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 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, 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 in 2030 Targets. As both Byron and Bruce mentioned, this slide will likely look familiar. We usually walk 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, but 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 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
OPERATOR
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. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, press Star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. We ask that you please limit your question to one and return to the queue for additional questions. Our first question comes from the line of Tom Narayan with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Tom Narayan (Equity Analyst)
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? A billion dollars worth traditional aftermarket applied technology. I know aftermarket, you said there's market share gains in there. I mean what like is the traditional product is that kind of easier to get and then it kind of gets harder to get as we go down that chain aftermarket. Then applied technology, the hardest to get, like just trying to see and 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 and converting those greens to blues.
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah. Hey, Tom, thanks for the question. It's a good one. So, yeah, I think the way to think about this, you know, the, the 400 million in traditional products, that. That's probably think about it as a. It's our current products. We're gaining share. We're able to sell those. I mean, in to some respect. When you think about the Dakota program, we're using an existing plant. It's, it's our core technology that, 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, to the OEMs. You think through aftermarket, we continue to work on growing our aftermarket share. As we mentioned at the, or as Brian 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 less than 5% in North America. We do believe and are making really good strides to deliver increases in our aftermarket business, especially around ceiling. And I think as we move through the next couple of quarters, you know, we'll be able to share some, 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 three or four years. The last is applied technology. So that's, that's clear. The one where we're taking current, 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 power sports.
Byron Foster (Senior Vice President and President of Light Vehicle Systems Group)
So 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. 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 kind of the automotive quality, off the shelf product that we can bring to improve the performance, 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 28 time frame. And 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. Yeah. And look, we're going to do what
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
we just laid out here with the, with the Dakota pickup truck when we'll keep updating the schedule in and moving those, those buckets from green to blue and showing you as we fill it up.
Tom Narayan (Equity Analyst)
Got it. If I could just do a quick follow up on the 26 guidance. I guess IHS numbers came down after you guys gave this guidance at the end of Q4 and now you're, you're raising your guidance effectively. So just curious like. So I mean, obviously your, your, your revised guidance incorporates the weaker light vehicle production, is that right?
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, I mean, obviously we have to look at our specific programs when we think through that, but 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, but we are watching that closely as we move through the year. But largely 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, we printed 65 million in currency up. And so there's probably upside in currency as well from a top line perspective.
Tom Narayan (Equity Analyst)
Got it. Thanks. I'll turn it over.
OPERATOR
Our next question will come from the line of Emmanuel Rosner with Wolf Research. Please go ahead.
Emmanuel Rosner (Equity Analyst)
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 9.3% margin, you know, this quarter to like the, and 6 at midpoint for the full year. I think the, 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, yeah.
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
You know, as usual, Emmanuel, we're typically second and third are our stronger quarters, you know, and then, you know, 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. But generally, you know, 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.
Emmanuel Rosner (Equity Analyst)
Okay. And then on the light vehicle sales, so, you know, I guess another or I guess performance yet another quarter of sort of like negative volume mix, you know, 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 against sort of product mix. Can you just remind us what, what exactly is going on in there and as well as, you know, for the full year.
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, so there's a couple things in there. You know, we've, you know, some of it is, is, is pricing around ev. So we've, we've been, you know, very successful in getting pricing on EV products despite, you know, it because of 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 in 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 add.
Byron Foster (Senior Vice President and President of Light Vehicle Systems Group)
You hit it.
Emmanuel Rosner (Equity Analyst)
Great, thank you.
OPERATOR
Our next question will come from the line of James Picriello with BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
James Picriello (Equity Analyst)
Hi, good morning, everybody. Just a clarification question first and I don't know if I only get one question or follow on, but operating cash flow is cited in the press release at a $156 million use of cash for the quarter. And then 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. So apologies if I missed the clarification on that.
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
But yeah, it's just some of the adjustments and we'll, when we, when we file the Q, we'll give you the full breakdown, but 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, but we can help you clean that up when we give you the walks.
James Picriello (Equity Analyst)
Okay. And then just any order of magnitude on the, on the operating lease buyouts that I think you said have a second quarter timeframe.
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, they'll certainly be, I mean we're still in negotiations on some of these, but it certainly is tens and 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, you know, we, when we were a bit constrained around capital that we ended up leasing. But from our, from our, our, our view it's, you know, these are facilities we, we should own because they're core facilities. And again the, the, the, we're using the proceeds from, from the off highway sale, which was our intention to pay for this.
James Picriello (Equity Analyst)
Okay, thank you.
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
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 least. And there's a handful that we lease and this is a one time adjustment using our cash to clean it up.
OPERATOR
Our next question will come from the line of Joe Spack with ubs. Please go ahead.
Joe Spack (Equity Analyst)
Good morning everyone. I wanted to talk a little bit about how you're thinking about the incremental margins on, 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, you clearly called out utilizing existing capacity, minimal capital investment. So seems like a beat could come on pretty, pretty strongly. And I just wondered if you could, you know, elaborate on that.
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think the Dakota Wind's a great example where you know, 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, you know, all the fixed cost that's in place for those plants should deliver very strong contribution margin on the incremental sales here. Yeah, 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. 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 we whatnot. So that's part of it as well. But, but I agree they should come on at good margins for us.
Joe Spack (Equity Analyst)
Okay. And then just one quick one on the, on the guidance. I know, I'm just curious about your commercial, commercial vehicle market view actually, which is still flat, even though, you know, I think there's, 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. And then Joe, that includes some thought
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
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 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 in 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. And then of course, our South American business is weak in the first quarter and we got to keep an eye on that as well.
Joe Spack (Equity Analyst)
Thank you.
OPERATOR
Our next question will come from the line of Colin Langen with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Colin Langen (Equity Analyst)
Oh, great. Thanks for taking my questions. Just unusual question, I guess, but 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? Just seems unusual to me, I guess maybe as a former accountant.
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Colin, I think we would agree, we would like to be here with our usual cadence of filing the queue this afternoon. We just continue to work through all the aspects of the transaction and tariffs and the like. And so we'd already had this scheduled and so we wanted to make sure we got the information out on sales and in EBITDA on our normal schedule. So. I think, you know, we see us in the second quarter, we'll be, we'll be back to our normal cadence. So,
Colin Langen (Equity Analyst)
okay, if I look at slide 13 with the full year guidance, everything
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
is identical to Q4, yet we've had S and P is 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. Yeah, I think some of those pieces to move up. Yeah, 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, you know, if you just look we're at 60, I think we printed 65 in the quarter. So you just trend that, you know we would currency alone would, would drive us to the upper end. We at least didn't it like when you think about the business itself, you know, those are the drivers taking us to the higher in 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, but we, we, we feel like there will likely be at the upper end of the range.
Colin Langen (Equity Analyst)
Okay, you mentioned tariff in there. So it's commercial vehicles better, currency's better. And then what is the tariff change? Like just, just some of the timing
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
and the recoveries around, around tariff maybe a little bit bit higher than what we have here.
Colin Langen (Equity Analyst)
Okay. All right, thank you.
OPERATOR
Our next question will come from the line of James Mulholland with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
James Mulholland (Equity Analyst)
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. 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 came out, they sounded pretty positive, but any color that you could give there would be great. And then I have a follow up.
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, no, I mean our European CD business is relatively modest. So we don't see it being overly impacted or any softness that are overly impacting, you know, our overall results or our view of the way the year will come out.
James Mulholland (Equity Analyst)
Okay. And then I guess just looking at your walk for the rest of the year as you think about, I guess the 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 going to be generally proportional? And then from a cadence standpoint, should we think about it as relatively steady or really back half weighted?
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
So on the performance it generally sized to the size of the business, you know, so you can, it'll follow generally that, that that split and then I'm
James Mulholland (Equity Analyst)
sorry, your second piece of that question. I was just on the cadence. I know. I think you mentioned when Emanuel asked earlier that there could be some a little bit more in third quarter. So should we think of it as more back half weighted just in general?
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
Yeah, I mean, yes, but I think, you know, in general we're in the middle two quarters will be better. I mean our, our fourth quarter, just given production schedules and the holidays, it generally is a softer quarter. But I think if you think about our middle two quarters being generally our best two performing quarters, that's probably more weighted the third than the second given what our historical performance has been those. But I don't know that I'd say it's absolutely back half because of the way fourth quarter generally runs.
James Mulholland (Equity Analyst)
Great, thank you guys.
OPERATOR
Our final question comes from the line of Dan Levy with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Dan Levy (Equity Analyst)
Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe we could just double click on the commodity exposure which you maintain to headwind of $15 million on the EBITDA line. And so 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. Is there any risk that on the inflationary or raw mat side that could be something that deteriorates? 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. But 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 as 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 and we continue to have those dialogues with our customers to make sure we're in front of it.
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
And for some of the inputs like you know, the oil or transport 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. Yeah, that's right. That's exactly how it will work. And you know, we've been through this cycle before, so, you know, we, we'd be in front of our customers working through recovery mechanisms for those items.
Dan Levy (Equity Analyst)
Okay, thank you. Just as a follow up, you know, you talked about earlier, the volume mix benefit really reflects 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 Volumix on EV pricing are these one time benefits or is this a structural repricing the contract such that you don't see any reversal in, you know, subsequent years beyond this year?
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
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 (Equity Analyst)
Great, thank you.
Timothy Krause (Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer)
With that, we're going to close the call. I want to thank you again for attending our call. Thanks for the 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.
OPERATOR
This concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.
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