Preliminary Q2 2021 HELLA GmbH & Co KGaA Earnings Call Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Akshat Kacker - JPMorgan Chase & Co, Research Division - Analyst : Akshat from JPMorgan. Just one from my side. Obviously, it is difficult to look too far ahead in the current environment. But I just want to ask if

Question: Philipp Koenig - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : My question is just sort of on the margins. You sort of obviously outside of the lower volumes, you lined out 3 major headwinds from the stop-and-go, the raw materials and the freight that obviously are weighing on the margins. If we think about sort of the path back towards sort of the 8% margin that you usually had, which of these 3 do you feel are sort of the biggest headwind and then once they sort of normalize gets you back into the normalized margins? Is it more the bottlenecks or more the higher cost base in your view? Rolf Breidenbach - HELLA GmbH & Co. KGaA - Chairman of Management Board, President & CEO of Hella GeschSftsfnhrungsgesellschaft mbH So midterm, we think the bottlenecks topic will be solved. But the question is, is it in -- at the end of 2022 or mid of 2023. Nobody knows. But then, of course, we expect that the stop-and-go burden, of course, will be solved. From our perspective, also midterm the logistic costs should be reduced. The most challenge we currently see at the material cost side, here it depends on the one hand on the sharing of this burden with our customers. And on the other hand, of course, with regard to negotiations, we are currently carrying out with our suppliers. But this material cost, of course, is the most significant challenge we midterm have to solve for this 8% perspective.