Auto supplier Magna is uniquely positioned to benefit from electric pickups

Published Sun, May 15 20227:48 AM EDT

DETROIT – If electric pickup trucks from the Detroit automakers take off, auto supplier Magna International is in a unique position to benefit from producing a crucial part of the vehicles. The Canadian company produces the enclosures that house the lithium-ion batteries of the Ford F-150 Lightning and Hummer EV pickups. The parts are highly engineered and crucial to the vehicles, including helping protect the batteries in the event of a crash. Magna expects its enclosure business to move from essentially nothing last year to $600 million by 2024; then continue to climb to $1.5 billion by 2027. CEO Swamy Kotagiri expects Magna will add several other vehicles to the business. "The beauty of all of this is every electric vehicle will have one, right?" he said during a recent briefing following an investor event. "So that's why we are excited about it, it's a huge product line." Both products are custom produced for the pickups. Ford's is aluminum and fits into the vehicle's frame. GM's is steel and doubles as the frame. The new business is one reason the 65-year-old auto supplier is bullish about its future opportunities with electric vehicles. Magna has increased the value of its forecasted EV business to more than $4.5 billion by 2027, up 12.5% from a $4 billion estimate last year. For context, the company reported $36 billion in total sales in 2021, making it one of the largest auto suppliers globally. RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak said the increased exposure to EVs and other growing segments makes Magna "better positioned for the future," and supports expectations of accelerated growth in the second-half of the decade. "The increased confidence in the (long-term) electrification targets stem from a strong pipeline of booked and unbooked business the company is seeing today, and should provide a proof point that the accelerated capital deployment strategy to high-growth areas is paying off," Spak wrote in an investor note Tuesday. While Magna has non-EV business booked through 2031, it is being extremely cautious on adding any new capacity to its legacy operations, Kotagiri said. "We're cautious to put any capacity in it. We'll do it only on a program basis to support it," he told CNBC during an interview. "Not like electrification, where we're putting in investments for R & D, product roadmaps and the future." Magna said it will supply "significant content" on about a dozen new electric vehicles this year. Other than the pickups, the projects include the Rivian R1S, BMW iX, Volkswagen ID Buzz and upcoming Nio ES7. Magna also has a deal with Fisker to build its Ocean crossover beginning later this year. Henrik Fisker, CEO of the EV start-up, told CNBC's Phil LeBeau earlier this month that the companies now plan to triple production of the Ocean from 50,000 vehicles in 2023 to 150,000 annually by the end of 2024. Magna shares are down more than 25% since the start of 2022.

Production is now set to begin at the former Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant, less than two years after GM announced the massive $2.2 billion investment to fully renovate the facility to build a variety of all-electric trucks and SUVs.

Photo by Jeffrey Sauger for General Motors

DETROIT – If electric pickup trucks from the Detroit automakers take off, auto supplier Magna International is in a unique position to benefit from producing a crucial part of the vehicles.