Linda Hasenfratz, executive chair of Linamar, discusses the company's fourth quarter results and how they're navigating tariff uncertainty.
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Questions asked in this interview
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1:07How did your team execute in that difficult environment?
We are trying to connect with Linamar Executive Chair Linda Hasenfratz, bring her to you as soon as we can. In the meantime, I'm Brian Madden. Your thoughts on this sector? You invested on behalf of clients in the auto parts sector.
There's a few ways to invest in it. Obviously, we don't have a new Tier 1 OEM, but we do have a number of parts suppliers. Linamar is one of them. You know, we did own for a time part of Ways, I believe, until March of 2022. We hold both of these companies in high regard, but let's make no mistake. These are cyclical companies. So we want to be here for a good time, not a long time. You want the cycles going in your favour. It's not at the moment. Both companies are controlling the controllables and doing their best as demand comes off.
Okay, we are joined now by Linamar Executive Chair Linda Hasenfratz. Linda, thank you very much for joining us. It's a busy time for you. We want, of course, to get your view on the tariff situation, and we'll get there. You made some very strong comments yesterday on the Linamar conference call. First of all, let's talk about the quarter and the year that are now in the books. It was a challenging year, particularly in Europe, and we can talk about that. How did your team execute in that difficult environment?
Yeah, absolutely. It was a tough year in the sense that all three of our core markets — automotive, agriculture, and access — were all down in 2024. Regardless of that, however, really pleased to say that we did see double-digit earnings growth. Our team executed fantastically, whether it was increasing market share, which we certainly did, or reducing costs. Our team is fantastic. We delivered double-digit earnings growth. It's the 10th time in the last 15 years that we have delivered double-digit earnings growth. I think that's pretty good in terms of consistent, sustainable growth. You might want to really rethink your investment strategy.
Yeah, you know, this is something that Linamar has long focused on, and that is around lean manufacturing, supply chain management. We go out in our plants every single day to look for opportunities to reduce waste and streamline how we're doing things. Every single day we find something. It is something I'm personally very involved in. I work closely with plants to help identify those opportunities, to bring some of those learnings I'm seeing at other plants around the world to them, help reduce. You know, this is something we're very, very good at, frankly. It's something the automotive industry is quite good at. You know, it's sort of par for the course. I notice suppliers tend to be highly efficient organizations.
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