Automotive seating supplier Adient saw sales and earnings improve in the first quarter, though executives say production disruptions are lingering longer than expected and hurting profitability.
The company swung to a $12 million net profit from a $54 million loss during the same quarter last year.
Adient said it posted an adjusted EBITDA of $212 million for the quarter, up 45 percent year-over-year on $3.7 billion in revenue, a 6 percent improvement from sales the same time last year, according to financial results released Tuesday.
While commercial recoveries and commodity cost declines helped improve margins to 5 percent from 3.8 percent the previous quarter, production problems continue to weigh on profitability.
The company, domiciled in Ireland with a base in Plymouth, Mich., said it expects to hit full year sales of $15 billion in 2023, reaffirming its previous outlook, but it slashed its equity income projection by more than 20 percent to $70 million.
"We're still far from ideal," CFO Jerome Dorlack said on a call with investors. "We still have a lot of stop-start that's occurring within our production environment. We are not running at what I would call optimized efficiencies."