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DATE

Tuesday, July 29, 2025 at 12:00 a.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

Chief Executive Officer — Stephan Von Schuckmann

Chief Financial Officer — Andrew Charles Lynch

Senior Director of Investor Relations — James Entwistle

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RISKS

Performance Sensing revenue declined approximately 10% year over year, with continued softness in on-road truck production across North America and Europe expected to persist.

Adjusted earnings per share decreased by $0.05 year over year due to divestitures.

Heavy vehicle and off-road production declined more than 20% in the first half of 2025 across North America and Europe, with expectations for continued market weakness in the second half.

TAKEAWAYS

Total Revenue: $943 million, down from $1.036 billion year over year, primarily due to divestitures, but up $32 million sequentially from the first quarter.

Adjusted Operating Income: $179 million, with a 19.0% margin, representing a 70 basis-point sequential margin improvement from the first quarter.

Adjusted Earnings Per Share: $0.87, up $0.09 sequentially, but down $0.05 year over year due to divestitures.

Free Cash Flow: $116 million, representing a 91% conversion rate of adjusted net income and a 17% increase year over year.

Net Leverage: 3.0 times trailing twelve-month adjusted EBITDA, down from 3.1 times at the end of the previous quarter.

Share Repurchases: $20 million executed in the quarter; $18 million dividend paid to shareholders.

Performance Sensing Revenue: $652 million, down 10% year over year, with margin expansion of 20 basis points, inclusive of tariff impact.

Sensing Solutions Revenue: $291 million, up 9% year over year, with margin expansion of 50 basis points.

Capital Return: ROI of 10.1%, up 30 basis points year over year.

Tariff Impact: $12 million in both tariff costs and offsetting pass-through revenues, resulting in a 20 basis-point adjusted operating margin dilution.

Cash Accumulation: $74 million in incremental cash added to the balance sheet during the quarter.

Guidance for Next Quarter: Revenue expected between $900 million and $930 million; adjusted operating margins projected at 19.0%-19.2%; adjusted EPS expected at $0.81-$0.87.

Sensing Solutions Industrial Growth: High single-digit outgrowth, attributed to gas leak detection business ramp.

Sensing Solutions Aerospace Growth: Revenue growth of more than 5%, outpacing roughly 3% market growth.

Operational Initiatives: Cash conversion rate improved to 91% from 74% last quarter as a result of working capital optimization.

SUMMARY

Sensata Technologies Holding plc(NYSE:ST) achieved a record 91% free cash flow conversion of adjusted net income, with sequential and year-over-year improvement. Management emphasized ongoing deleveraging, capital deployment for shareholder returns, and maintaining adjusted operating margins at or above 19%. Sensing Solutions growth, driven by new industrial and aerospace content, partially offset Performance Sensing declines linked to heavy vehicle and off-road market weakness. Additional margin expansion is targeted through operational productivity, inventory benchmarking, and cost containment. CEO Von Schuckmann noted, "Over 90% of year-to-date new business wins are with the top five local OEMs and leading new energy vehicle players" in China. The previously announced cybersecurity-related disruptions were fully recovered without material financial or customer impact. Company guidance for the next quarter assumes $15 million in tariff costs, up from $12 million, but projects continued margin expansion and dividend continuity.

Chief Executive Officer Von Schuckmann said, "We have significantly increased our pace of new business wins in China, primarily on NEVs."

Chief Financial Officer Lynch said, "In the short term, we'll look to reduce net leverage by accumulating cash on the balance sheet," with a target to move below 3.0 times and toward 2.5 times.

Management confirmed both segment adjusted operating margins—Sensing Solutions at 30.2%, Performance Sensing at 22.5%—expanded year over year despite tariff pass-throughs.

The gas leak detection business is expected to reach approximately $70 million in revenue in 2025, with a goal of exceeding $100 million in 2026, and is now operating at normalized industrial margins.

Company benchmarking, both internally and externally, is driving operational and inventory management improvements.

Regional market updates indicate persistent weakness in North America and Europe for on-road trucks, while China auto provides outgrowth opportunities as newly won programs launch.

CapEx is expected to normalize at around 4% of revenue, up from the quarter's lower level, but management does not anticipate material headwinds to free cash flow conversion from this shift.

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

HVOR: Heavy Vehicle and Off-Road; Sensata's segment serving truck, agricultural, and construction equipment manufacturers.

NEV: New Energy Vehicle; electric and hybrid vehicles, a focus for growth in China's automotive sector.

TPMS: Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems; sensor-based product line cited as key to recent technological wins in China.

DS rates: Duty structure or tariff rates, usually in the context of trade between the United States and China.

A2L / A3 / HOL: Specialist classifications for refrigerants and associated leak detection sensors, especially for regulatory-driven industrial markets.

Full Conference Call Transcript

James Entwistle: Thank you, Jamie, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm James Entwistle, Senior Director of Investor Relations for Sensata Technologies Holding plc, and I would like to welcome you to Sensata's second quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Joining me on today's call are Stephan Von Schuckmann, Sensata's Chief Executive Officer, and Andrew Charles Lynch, Sensata's Chief Financial Officer. In addition to the financial results press release we issued earlier today, we will be referencing a slide presentation during today's conference call. The PDF of this presentation can be downloaded from Sensata's Investor Relations website. This conference call is being recorded, and we will post a replay on our Investor Relations website shortly after the conclusion of today's call.

As we begin, I would like to reference Sensata's Safe Harbor statement on slide two. During this conference call, we will make forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of the company that involve certain risks and uncertainties. The company's actual results may differ materially from the projections described in such statements. Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to, those discussed in our forms 10-Q and 10-K, as well as other filings with the SEC. We encourage you to review our GAAP financial statements in addition to today's. Much of the information that we will discuss during today's call will relate to non-GAAP financial measures.

Our GAAP and non-GAAP financials, including reconciliations, are included in our earnings release, in the appendices of our presentation materials, and in our SEC filings. Stephan will begin the call today with comments on the overall business. Andrew will cover our detailed results for the second quarter of 2025 and our financial outlook for the third quarter of 2025. Stephan will then return for closing remarks. We will then take your questions. Now I would like to turn the call over to Sensata's Chief Executive Officer, Stephan Von Schuckmann.

Stephan Von Schuckmann: Thank you, James, and good afternoon, everyone. Before I begin discussing our results for the second quarter, I'd like to take a moment to congratulate Andrew Charles Lynch, who was named our Chief Financial Officer last week. Andrew has been a valuable partner to me since I joined Sensata Technologies Holding plc, and the board and I have full confidence in him. Andrew's extensive financial and operational experience at Sensata has prepared him well for this role. I'm excited to have him as a partner on Sensata's transformation journey. Now let's begin on slide three.

We delivered a strong quarter of 2025 revenue, adjusted operating income, and adjusted earnings per share, all exceeding the high end of our guidance for the second consecutive quarter. This is an important proof point for the resilience of our business and our team's determination to execute in the face of challenges such as volatile end markets, geopolitical uncertainty, and the cybersecurity incident that we disclosed in April. When I first spoke to you in February, I introduced three key pillars which would serve as my initial focal points for shareholder value creation: improving operational performance, optimizing capital allocation, and returning to growth.

In our May call, I provided an update on some of the specific work we are doing on each of these pillars, and much of the focus of that update was operational excellence. Today, I'll go a bit deeper on capital allocation and growth drivers. Before we get to capital allocation and growth, I'll share a brief update on operational excellence. We rolled out a number of initiatives over the last six months, and I'm pleased with our recent accomplishments on this journey. Our cash conversion rate in the second quarter was 91%, a significant step up from our first quarter 2025 conversion rate of 74%. This improvement reflects our focus on unlocking cash to execute our capital allocation strategy.

With operational excellence initiatives, we're optimizing our working capital and creating margin resilience in our business, enabling us to deliver on our earnings commitments. Now I'd like to go deeper on our next pillar, optimizing our capital allocation. Simply put, we will deploy capital in a manner designed to maximize shareholder returns. In the first quarter, we seized the opportunity to repurchase $100 million of shares. In the second quarter, we repurchased another $20 million of shares and funded our dividend while also accumulating an additional $74 million of incremental cash.

In turn, we reduced our net leverage ratio from 3.1 times trailing twelve-month adjusted EBITDA at the end of the first quarter to 3.0 times at the end of the second quarter. This further strengthened our already strong balance sheet. In the past, you've heard me talk a lot about benchmarking as we look to drive operational excellence. We are using extensive external benchmarks for each of our key pillars. As we look at comparable companies across the market, our differentiated margin stands out, and our cash conversion is improving. However, our capital structure and net leverage is a bit of an outlier.

For the balance of this year and into 2026, you can expect us to continue to prioritize deleveraging. Now I'm excited to share our progress on our growth pillar. Just like capital allocation, growth is enabled by operational excellence. Over my decades of experience in the industry, I have learned that the right to win is earned by consistently serving customers on time, at the lowest possible cost, with high-quality products. Operational initiatives will ensure that we do exactly that. It's equally important that we're disciplined about the new business we pursue. We need to win with the right technologies, the right platforms, and the right customers.

Over the last several months, I have worked with the Sensata team to study our past business wins a bit deeper and to identify the characteristics of our most successful programs. By using those learnings to be more selective about how and where we invest and what business opportunities we pursue, for us, it means the following: First, stick to our core product technologies: pressure, temperature, electrical protection, and certain specialty sensing such as force, position, flow, and leak. Next, prioritize platform-driven applications where high switching costs favor incumbency, with an emphasis on regulated or mission-critical sockets. And finally, focus on the right end markets that expose us to key secular tailwinds and appropriate diversification.

As we apply these criteria, our priorities become clear. In our Sensing Solutions segment, HL Gear gas leak detection is a recent example of a business opportunity that checked all the boxes for us. We were able to leverage our core sensing capabilities to win a regulated sensor socket on air conditioning system platforms. We established a market leadership position in the US, which we are continuing to grow. In 2025, this business is on track to deliver approximately $70 million of revenue, and we continue to increase our market share with the goal of well over $100 million of revenue next year.

We look forward to leveraging our incumbency with key OEMs to win globally with similar regulatory requirements on the horizon in both Europe and Asia. In our Performance Sensing segment, we've spoken a lot about the content opportunities on both ICE and EV platforms, as well as the rapidly evolving new energy vehicle or NEV market in China. It is clear that we need to win in China to maintain and grow our global market share. The China market is opportunity-rich with the rapid adoption of NEVs and the growth of local OEMs. The high-voltage applications on NEVs offer incremental content opportunities for us compared to the traditional ICE business.

Our China team is actively driving business development with local OEMs in China to support their growth ambitions both in China and beyond. We have significantly increased our pace of new business wins in China, primarily on NEVs. Our customers are placing value on our product performance, proven field quality in the local market, cost competitiveness, and well-established production scale. More than 90% of these wins are with top local OEMs and leading NEV players. Due to shorter design cycles in the China market, we expect many of these business wins to materialize into revenue later this year and serve as the foundation for a return to more consistent market outgrowth in 2026.

The content wins we are securing include NEV-specific electrical protection, as well as powertrain-agnostic content such as tire pressure monitoring systems or TPMS. One of these recent TPMS wins featured new tire burst detection technology, and we are excited to share that we were the first to bring this technology to market for an active safety application. Tire burst detection enables the vehicle to activate its stability control features at the first sign of a tire rupture event, dramatically improving occupant safety. This is exactly the type of technological differentiation that gives us an edge in the market.

Now that we've spoken about our key pillars, I'd like to talk a little bit more about what we are seeing in our end markets today. Let's turn to slide four. I'll start with tariff and trade policy. Through a combination of reimbursement agreements with our customers and modifications to our supply chain, we have now successfully mitigated all of our tariff costs in the second quarter, compared to approximately 95% when we spoke to you in May. Since our last update, we've also seen a reduction in our exposures in connection with the DS rates between the United States and China.

Additionally, we're pleased to report that we have not seen significant impacts from recent tariff escalations on commodities or from export controls on rare earth materials. More broadly, in our end markets, we're seeing a mix of volatility, resilience, and growth. I'll share a few highlights now, and then Andrew will provide more specifics as he walks you through our results and guidance. On the performance sensing side, we are pleased with automotive production holding up stronger than initially expected with trade tensions escalated. Global production has grown in the first half as the market in China has been very strong.

HVOR markets have been soft, particularly with on-road trucks, and we're starting to see off-road production slow down as well. As a result, we're managing our costs accordingly. In our Sensing Solutions segment, we're seeing more growth, which highlights the advantages of our end market diversification. Our industrials business grew over 9% in the second quarter as markets have stabilized, and our new leak detection product is delivering meaningful outgrowth. In aerospace, we saw over 5% revenue growth in the second quarter, against a market that grew roughly 3%. Our market outlook for both industrial and aerospace in the second half is largely consistent with what we saw in the second quarter.

In summary, I'm happy with what we have achieved so far this year, and our Q2 results demonstrate the progress we are making on our transformation plan built upon three pillars. As we progress through the balance of 2025 and into the new year, we'll maintain our focus and rigor on these initiatives to drive shareholder value. With that, I'll turn the call over to Andrew to provide greater detail on Q2 financial results and our guidance for the third quarter.

Andrew Charles Lynch: Thank you, Stephan, and good afternoon, everyone. I want to begin today by extending my gratitude to Stephan and our board of directors for placing their confidence in me as Sensata's Chief Financial Officer. I would also like to thank the Sensata team and our finance organization for their support over the last several months. Let me start on slide six. We delivered another strong quarter in Q2 with results above our expectations across all of our key metrics. We reported revenue of approximately $943 million for the second quarter of 2025, as compared to revenue of $1.036 billion in the second quarter of 2024.

While revenues were lower year over year primarily due to the previously discussed divestitures, we saw $32 million of top-line growth sequentially from the first quarter of 2025 and exceeded the top end of our guidance range, reflecting our rapid recovery from the cybersecurity incident in April and general resilience in our end markets. Adjusted operating income was approximately $179 million, or a margin of 19.0%, and included approximately $12 million of zero-margin pass-through revenues related to tariff recovery, which were 20 basis points dilutive to our adjusted operating margins. Adjusted operating margins improved 70 basis points sequentially from 18.3% in the first quarter of 2025.

Adjusted operating margins were consistent with the prior year quarter at 19% and increased 20 basis points year over year, excluding the dilutive impact of tariff pass-throughs. Adjusted earnings per share of $0.87 in the second quarter of 2025 represent an increase of $0.09 sequentially from the first quarter of 2025, as we delivered on our margin expansion plans, and a decrease of $0.05 as compared to the second quarter of 2024 due to divestitures. We achieved robust free cash flow of $116 million in the second quarter, an increase of 17% year over year.

This represents a conversion rate of 91% of adjusted net income, an increase of 17 percentage points compared to the first quarter of 2025 and 20 percentage points compared to the second quarter of 2024. As Stephan mentioned, free cash flow is a key focus for us, and our improvements accelerate our ability to execute our capital allocation strategy. Now let's turn to slide seven, and I will discuss capital deployment. In the second quarter, we executed share repurchases totaling $20 million and returned $18 million to shareholders through our regular quarterly dividend. We reduced our net leverage to 3.0 times trailing twelve-month adjusted EBITDA compared to 3.1 times at the end of March.

With our capital allocation strategy, we delivered ROI of 10.1%, up 30 basis points compared to the second quarter of 2024. Looking ahead, you can expect us to continue to deploy capital in a manner designed to maximize shareholder returns, with an emphasis on deleveraging in the near term. Turning to slide eight, I'll talk through the results for our segments as well as provide more color on what we are seeing in our end markets. Let's start with the segment results. Performance Sensing revenue in the second quarter of 2025 was approximately $652 million, a decrease of approximately 10% year over year, primarily due to product divestitures and lower on-road truck production in North America and Europe.

Performance Sensing adjusted operating income was approximately $147 million, or 22.5% of Performance Sensing revenue, representing year-over-year margin expansion of 20 basis points inclusive of any dilutive impact from tariffs. Sensing Solutions revenue in the second quarter of 2025 was approximately $291 million, an increase of approximately 9% year over year. This marks our second straight quarter of year-over-year growth, driven by new content in our industrials business and market outgrowth in our aerospace business. Sensing Solutions adjusted operating income was approximately $88 million, or 30.2% of Sensing Solutions revenue, representing year-over-year margin expansion of 50 basis points, again inclusive of any dilutive impact from tariffs.

As a reminder, corporate and other costs have been recast to exclude certain costs previously referred to as megatrend spend, which are now presented within the two reporting segments. Corporate and other adjusted operating expenses were up $4 million versus the second quarter of 2024, primarily driven by higher variable compensation due to better underlying performance. Now I'll provide color on what we are seeing in our end markets. In our automotive business, production estimates have been volatile, and trade policy has evolved throughout the year. We have seen double-digit market growth in China in the first half, partially offset by market weakness in North America and Europe.

Looking ahead to Q3, we see auto production moderating to roughly flat year over year and down about one million vehicle units sequentially from the second quarter on typical seasonality. In our heavy vehicle and off-road business, we have seen softness throughout the year, with on-road truck production down more than 20% in the first half across North America and Europe. We expect this softness to persist in the second half of the year. Global off-road markets have seen modest growth in the first half, but we are now experiencing a significant slowdown in Q3. In our Sensing Solutions segment, we are seeing market strength.

Both industrials and aerospace are seeing low single-digit market growth, and we are seeing high single-digit outgrowth in industrial as our gas leak detection business has ramped nicely. The market outlook I just discussed is reflected in our guidance, which I will take you through in a moment. Looking a bit further ahead to Q4, we are monitoring third-party forecasts and customer demand signals, and we expect more clarity as trade policy develops in the days and weeks ahead. Lastly, before we get to our guidance, I'd like to give just a brief update on tariffs. Let's turn to slide nine.

When we guided the second quarter, we estimated that we would incur $20 million of tariff costs, which we expected to fully recover on a dollar basis based on reimbursement agreements we were able to secure in partnership with our customers. At this level of cost and pass-through revenue, we expected 40 basis points of adjusted operating margin dilution. Subsequent to our second quarter guide, we saw a de-escalation of tariff rates between the United States and China. Additionally, we continue to work on our supply chain to manage our exposures. The net result of this was that we incurred approximately $12 million of tariff costs in the quarter and recorded $12 million of pass-through revenues.

Accordingly, tariff pass-throughs were approximately 20 basis points dilutive to our adjusted operating margin. With that, let's turn to slide ten, and I will walk through our expectations for the third quarter of 2025. We expect third-quarter revenue of $900 million to $930 million, adjusted operating income of $171 million to $179 million, adjusted operating margins of 19.0% to 19.2%, and adjusted earnings per share of $0.81 to $0.87. At the midpoint of our guidance range, we see approximately 10 basis points of sequential margin expansion. However, we have assumed $15 million of tariff costs and associated pass-through revenues in our third-quarter guide, slightly higher than the $12 million we reported in the second quarter due to business mix.

On a pre-tariff basis, we expect approximately 20 basis points of sequential adjusted operating margin expansion compared to the second quarter, in line with the margin expansion targets we talked about last quarter. As noted in our press release and earnings materials, our guidance and tariff assumptions are based on trade policies and tariff rates in effect as of July 28. Earlier this month, we announced our third-quarter dividend of $0.12 per share, payable on August 27 to shareholders of record as of August 13. Finally, before I turn the call back to Stephan, just a brief update on the cybersecurity incident that we disclosed in April.

In connection with this incident, we experienced approximately a two-week disruption in our business. Thanks to our team's preparation and resiliency, our business has fully recovered. We are grateful to have this incident behind us without any significant disruption to our customers and without material financial impact. With that, I will now turn the call back to Stephan.

Stephan Von Schuckmann: Thank you, Andrew. I said this last quarter, but it warrants repeating. There is a significant transformation underway at Sensata Technologies Holding plc. The foundation of this transformation is the key pillars that I've discussed on each of our earnings calls since I joined Sensata at the beginning of the year. I would like to conclude today's remarks by sharing a bit more about why these are key to our vision and what you can continue to expect from us. Operational excellence is about stabilizing our core business to serve as an enabler to both our capital allocation and growth pillars.

Our capital allocation strategy is to utilize our cash flow improvements to deploy capital in a manner designed to create shareholder value in the short term and long term, with an emphasis on deleveraging. And finally, our return to growth will be supported by a focused product strategy and a clear evaluation criteria for growth opportunities. Success on our key pillars will be apparent in phases. Today, consistent execution with adjusted operating margins at or above 19% and free cash flow conversion at or above 80%. In the next several quarters, net leverage continues to improve. And in the years ahead, a return to more consistent growth.

I'm excited about what the future holds, and I look forward to continuing to update you on our progress moving forward. I will now turn the call back to James for Q&A.

James Entwistle: Thank you, Stephan and Andrew. We will now move to Q&A. Jamie, please introduce the first question.

Operator: We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star and then one on your touch-tone phones. If you are using a speakerphone, we do ask that you please pick up the handset prior to pressing the keys to ensure the best sound quality. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two. Our first question today comes from Mark Delaney from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead with your question.

Mark Delaney: Yes. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I see the free cash flow conversion pickup. And Andrew, congratulations on the expanded role. I wanted to start with EBIT margins. They expanded 20 bps year over year excluding tariffs even as organic revenue was down, I think, about 2%. And you expect sequential margin improvement again in Q3. Can you go into more detail on what's driving that margin improvement both in Q2 and Q3? And I guess as you look longer term, do you see a path to 20% plus EBIT margins?

Stephan Von Schuckmann: Look, Mark. Nice to hear. Thanks for the question. So first of all, as mentioned in the call, we're undergoing quite a significant transformation at Sensata Technologies Holding plc. And we've basically designed a number of initiatives that we're focusing on. So we didn't start a huge amount of initiatives. It's basically six initiatives that we're focusing on. And just to mention a few, some of these initiatives are focused on pure operational excellence, something I've been speaking about frequently now in the calls in the past. So that's improving plant performance. And what we're doing is we're benchmarking our plants against each other where we have so-called similar products.

So for example, in TPMS, we try to improve the plants that are weaker than the best benchmark within Sensata. As one example. Another example is we're working on commercial excellence. So we have a much stronger rigor on that. And like I said, there are other examples. So we're working, for example, on improving our procurement and gaining effect from that. And that's basically the effect that you see with other initiatives. That you could see the margin improvement. But for more details, let me pass on to Andrew.

Andrew Charles Lynch: Thanks, Stephan. Mark, I think to summarize, it's primarily operational productivity that's driving the sequential margin expansion. And we feel pretty good about our margin levels in the 19% range in the near term here. In terms of longer-term margin expansion opportunity, we've not established any targets at this time. We're really focused on short-term and margin resilience. We'll provide more clarity on what the longer-term outlook looks like as we get into the 2026 guide period. But for now, we're focused on just margin resilience at the current level and sequential margin expansion quarter on quarter.

Mark Delaney: That's helpful. My follow-up is also around EBIT margins and how mix may or may not affect that. You talked about diverging trends you're seeing in some of these end markets, industrial picking up. You said HVOR seeing signs of weakness. And if you see those sorts of divergent trends by end markets, what might that mean, if anything, for EBIT margins? Is that a potential headwind or tailwind from mix that investors should potentially expect? Thanks.

Andrew Charles Lynch: Yeah. Good question, Mark. So mix definitely matters in our business. I think as we've highlighted before, our lowest margin business is our automotive business. Our highest margin is our aerospace business. HVOR and industrial are kind of in between. As we look at what we're seeing in the current quarter and Q3, we've seen softness in the HVOR business and strength in industrial. And so we base that any mix headwind from the HVOR softness with the outgrowth that we're driving in industrial. And we feel good that the business mix kind of moving forward throughout the balance of the year will support the margin expansion that we've committed to.

Mark Delaney: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Joe Giordano from TD Cowen. Please go ahead with your question.

Joe Giordano: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Have you, Stephan, as you've kind of gone through the portfolio now for a little bit longer, where do you think you stand on more product rationalization, SKU reduction that you need to do, scrubbing of backlog that you'd won kind of a long time ago that's been pushed out? Like, where do you think you stand on those things?

Stephan Von Schuckmann: Alright. Can you just repeat the question and get it lost?

Joe Giordano: So I'm just curious on where you stand as you evaluate the portfolio now that you've been here a little while. Like, how much more SKU reduction is necessary or small divestments and things like scrubbing of the backlog to see how realistic delivery is on things that were won, you know, maybe a long time ago and when markets were different.

Stephan Von Schuckmann: Well, look, I think a lot of the SKU reduction or let's call it portfolio cleansing has been done in the last year. There's been significant work done by the team and around the interim CEO, COO Martha Sullivan. Look, it's a continuous process. So I'm looking at all types of SKUs, be it in automotive, be it in HVOR, but also industrial. And anything that we don't feel that doesn't fit our portfolio at this point in time, we will cleanse of our overall SKUs. It's a continuous process. It's not something that is finished after we've gone through all of them. It's something that we follow through month for month, actually.

Nothing significant at this point in time, but something I'll keep a focus on.

Joe Giordano: And on the backlog, like, the recoverability of stuff that you won a while ago.

Andrew Charles Lynch: Yeah. I think you're probably referring to some of the EV wins and program wins from years back. I mean, as the market shifts on that, we work with our customers to make sure that we're securing offsets, whether it's new opportunity to quote on new business, whether it's commercial recovery, pricing discussions. So we factor all that in as we negotiate with our customers moving forward. But I think the driver there is pretty clear. It's that the time horizon of certain EV programs has moved to the right. And we're just focused on supporting the market as it is today.

Joe Giordano: Thank you. And then the follow-up, I know it's still early, but just any incremental, Stephan, you can give us on the China positioning? I know this is a big priority of yours to evolve how Sensata was positioned in China, with the local OEMs. So maybe any updates there? Thank you.

Stephan Von Schuckmann: Yes. Yes. Of course, I can. So look, I think generally, we need to say there's been quite an extreme shift from multinational to local OEMs. We see that the market is roughly at 70% local now, and see that government incentives have benefited 2024. And they basically continue to drive 2025. On the other hand, it's still encouraging, obviously, to see that multinational OEMs are continuing to make meaningful investments in China. So what does that mean for Sensata? I would say it's a return to outgrowth. So 90% of all the business of the year-to-date new business wins are basically with the top five local OEMs. And with leading so-called new energy vehicle players.

And around that, if I break that down to more products, the high concentration on high voltage and powertrain agnostic content. So we basically expect modest outgrowth in the back half based on third-party forecasted production mix, and we are also pretty confident that it's going to be more consistent outgrowth in the beginning of 2026.

Operator: Our next question comes from Wamsi Mohan from Bank of America. Please go ahead with your question.

Ashley: Hi. This is Ashley on the call for Wamsi. Just one question for me. We were wondering if you saw any pull forward of demand that impacted the Q2 time period, specifically in autos, just any color you could give us here? Thanks.

Andrew Charles Lynch: Sure. Happy to answer that. So the short answer is no. I think there are a few dynamics at play here. So in the second quarter, the early part of the quarter, the supply chain was coming up the curb on USMCA compliance, particularly in April. And so I think what we saw there was the OEMs consuming inventory earlier in the quarter and then replenishing it in the back half of the quarter. But effectively, Q2 was basically normal. And then looking ahead to the third quarter, our order book's pretty solid and filled to where we would expect it to be relevant to where we guided the quarter.

And certainly, as we talk to our channel partners on the industrial business and other end markets, we're not seeing any pull ahead in our business. I mean, that may be more of a dynamic further down the supply chain, but where we sit, it's pretty much business as usual in terms of order book correlation to production.

Ashley: Alright. Thank you. I'll pass it back.

Operator: Our next question comes from Kosta Tasoulis from Please go ahead with your question.

Kosta Tasoulis: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Andrew, congratulations. My first question is for you. So, you know, you've been at Sensata, I think, for a majority of all your professional career. You've been there a while. You've probably seen a lot of the maybe archaic processes that have been in place as you've moved up the ranks. But now you're literally a chief decision maker. So I just want to see, like, what are the things you're looking to improve within Sensata?

Andrew Charles Lynch: Thanks, Kosta, and thanks for the question. You know, my primary focus here is on enabling the transformation that Stephan has outlined here in his key pillars. I think we've got the right priorities to drive performance. There's a lot of work behind the scenes that goes into enabling these key pillars. As Stephan mentioned, there's a bunch of initiatives that underpin the operational excellence pillar. And a lot of that comes down to making sure that we've got the right analytics and the right data to drive the right decision-making. So that's part of the role of the finance org from a tactical standpoint, and so certainly focused on enabling that.

And then the other piece around capital allocation and growth, ensuring that we're applying the right rigor to our growth investments and ensuring that we're allocating capital in a way that creates shareholder returns. So I think that just reiterates the pillars that Stephan has outlined, and I'm fully on board with enabling those.

Kosta Tasoulis: Great. I'll just dig in on free cash flow a little bit. How should we think about these cost optimization efforts impacting your inventories? Right? So it sounds like part of the strategy is standardization. Right? So are you bringing in a single component across your products that would reduce cost and variability? And, you know, definitely got to keep a high stock of that component, and that kind of reduces the working capital tailwind.

Andrew Charles Lynch: I think as we think about inventory, it's two levers. So certainly, focusing on productivity and working unit cost reduction to drive inventory costs down and drive product costs down ultimately frees up more working capital. The other piece is just the amount of inventory that we carry. And one of the things we talked about on past calls about a potential driver for that is better integration of our supply chain planning and demand planning. And making sure that we're using our systems and the data that's available in the end market to optimize our lead times, optimize our demand signal, and optimize our production planning. All of that culminates in an inventory reduction opportunity.

And that's a lever to continue to drive higher levels of free cash flow conversion.

Stephan Von Schuckmann: And if I may add into what we do, something I mentioned initially is that we're benchmarking our inventory levels plant for plant. On the one hand, benchmarking plants amongst each other with similar products to try and figure out who has the best inventory level and what can other plants strive for. But then on the other hand, it's also looking outside of Sensata. And looking at who's the best in class in inventory levels and measuring ourselves against them. And redefining our measures and trying to drive inventory levels down.

Kosta Tasoulis: Thanks for taking my questions, guys.

Stephan Von Schuckmann: Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Joe Spak from UBS. Please go ahead with your question.

Joe Spak: Thanks so much, everyone. Actually, I want to pick up on the free cash flow theme and how you're thinking about it for the second half. I think I heard, you know, 80% sort of a conversion. I'm not sure if that's a long-term target, mid-term target. And then also just on capex, and maybe this is obviously part of free cash flow, it looks like you're at 3% of sales in the first half. I think that's, you know, below historical, but maybe this is sort of the new normal for Sensata. So maybe just some help there on how you're thinking about that.

Stephan Von Schuckmann: Thanks for the question. Look, generally, we've set ourselves an ambition to strive for a cash conversion rate at 80% or more.

Andrew Charles Lynch: Yeah. And I would just add to that. So good point on the lower level of CapEx in the second quarter. The dynamic there was candidly just as we were looking at uncertainty in the end markets and we saw production forecasts drop dramatically early in Q2 following the trade policy or tariff rate escalations, we throttled back some of our capex to respond to potentially lower revenue levels. Obviously, that didn't materialize. We saw that demand get restored. And so we'd expect an uptick in capex in the back half of the year. That said, I expect to be able to maintain pretty high levels of free cash flow conversion going forward. And 80% really is the floor.

We have plenty of levers available to us to maintain reasonably solid cash flow conversion here moving forward. Inventory hasn't come down dramatically yet. There's still opportunity there. CapEx, while it may not be as low as it was in the second quarter, we still have the opportunity to understand or spend at a level consistent with depreciation. And so I don't see that as a meaningful headwind.

Joe Spak: Okay. So even with depreciation is a good guide. Is that and I guess, like, versus I think in the past, it's sort of been, like, a 4% level. Do you think going forward, it can be a little bit below that?

Andrew Charles Lynch: I think 4% is probably a good proxy for what sort of normalized run rate CapEx looks like. It can vary in any given quarter. And certainly, we adjusted up or down based on kind of our view on market certainty, the investment opportunities ahead of us, you know, whether those are sort of near-term automation opportunities to drive productivity or longer-term opportunities around growth investment. Try to keep that all in balance.

Joe Spak: Okay. And then just on the deleveraging comment, you know, I guess I want to confirm how you're really thinking about this because you mentioned sort of net leverage going high, which to me sort of implies like, you know, the EBIT that's really coming from higher EBITDA. Or are you also planning to say sort of gross debt down? And are there any sort of leverage targets or how should we think about minimum cash just so we know what's available for dividend, share repurchase, or debt repayment?

Andrew Charles Lynch: Yeah. In the short term, we'll look to reduce net leverage by accumulating cash on the balance sheet. That's just a function of where our debt maturities sit and what the current interest rate environment looks like. We don't have any debt maturities until 2029. That doesn't mean that we're going to wait until 2029 to address gross debt. There will be opportunities here in the coming quarters to potentially take some action there, but in the immediate term, our focus is going to be on accumulating cash on the balance sheet. And then, of course, we still have a share repurchase program.

We didn't execute in Q2 at the same level we did in Q1, but we'll still maintain the flexibility to opportunistically repurchase shares as we see fit and keep that in balance with our net leverage targets. Certainly, we'd like to be below three times levered in the near term and moving towards two and a half relatively soon.

Joe Spak: Thanks so much.

Operator: Our next question comes from Shreyas Patil from Wolfe Research. Please go ahead with your question.

Shreyas Patil: Hey. Thanks so much for taking my question. Maybe just coming back to the China auto piece. Can you just help level set how big this is for you today? And just to clarify, how much of an uplift could we see from the new launches that you mentioned, Stephan, that are starting later this year? And then just to wrap, just to put a finer point on it, how do you see the competitive landscape in China specifically on the auto business? In the past, the sense was that the mid to low end of the China market was very difficult to penetrate either given vertical integration or price competition amongst some of the local suppliers.

I'm just curious if that is still how you see it or have there been changes in the market?

Stephan Von Schuckmann: Look, it's pretty much the same. It's obviously a very competitive region, a very competitive country. As you know, there's amongst the OEMs, there's price wars going on, which obviously trickles down as an effect to the tier-one level. That leads us to obviously being extremely focused on cost. It's something that we have reinitiated. It's part of the strong history of being very cost-focused. That's something that we've been focusing on even more in China. And following through on that in a very stringent way to stay competitive within the market. So what we do is take our products, we go back into the design and take out as much cost as we can in order to be competitive.

And on the other hand, some of the products that I mentioned in my earnings script just earlier on come with a certain level of technical differentiation, like the tire burst detection system, and that allows us to enter the market first and gain market share in comparison to others that do not have these functionalities yet. So that's how we tackle the competitiveness in the market. Again, it's a very important market for us as you can imagine that some of the Chinese OEMs that are hungry for market growth are stepping outside of the country and trying to gain market share in Europe, in Southeast Asia, being in Thailand, in Malaysia, and so on.

So high dynamic there, and that makes it interesting for us as a growth opportunity because if we win with the right players like we have, mentioned that we won 90% of our year-to-date new business with the top five local OEMs, with really leading so-called new energy vehicle players. And why do I say that? Because those are the players that will most probably also show growth outside of China. That will give us a solid opportunity to benefit from that additional growth in, for example, Southeast Asia or in Europe or wherever else they're growing.

Andrew Charles Lynch: And, Shreyas, just to give you clarity on the numbers, so the China market is about a quarter of our automotive business. So about 12% or so of overall Sensata's revenue, obviously varying depending on business mix within any given quarter. The growth opportunities that we've highlighted would be sufficient to return us to kind of the low to mid-single-digit outgrowth that we've targeted in our auto business. So that'll give you a little bit of context on the size. We're not talking about specific platforms or programs yet, but that's sort of the magnitude.

Shreyas Patil: Okay. That's helpful. And then maybe pivoting to HVOR, you talked about meaningful weakness in the end market there. Curious how you're thinking about outgrowth in that business, both near term and long term. In the past, you've talked about three to six points of outgrowth as a target for auto. I'm wondering if there's a similar target for HVOR.

Stephan Von Schuckmann: Let me expand it in let me first start with the end market. With the end markets, and let me give you our perspective, and then I'll give you an outlook on how business is developing for Sensata. On the end markets, for on-road trucks, see that obviously for the entire year of 2025. Production is down. And you need to look at that from a regional perspective. So taking North America, or on-road trucks, we projected really quite a strong downturn of roughly 24% year over year for this financial year of 2025. And in Europe, on-road trucks were soft in the first half, which is roughly 6% down.

But projected to be up in the second half of this year. And looking at agricultural and construction, so it's expected to be down in a high single-digit percentage. And then the second half more positive than the first half. And then if you look at what are the actual slowdown drivers that are pushing that, so for on-roads, we're saying in North America, there's been no buy ahead on the payer twenty-seven and general macro uncertainty. And operators are not renewing their fleets, and that's what we're seeing in our numbers. Europe, we saw a soft quarter two on macro uncertainty. But we see that Q3 is pretty much normalizing on a year-over-year basis.

Now what does that mean for Sensata's business? So from a business perspective, we undergrew the market in the first half. And the reason for that is as Western production was down, our China production was up. Our content is generally higher on Western OEMs, but we actually expect this to continue in our HVOR segment through the balance of the year given the softness that we've seen in these western production forecasts.

Shreyas Patil: Okay. Great. Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Christopher Glynn from Oppenheimer. Please go ahead with your question.

Christopher Glynn: Yeah. Thanks. Just give a little orienting question. To start on the guide. Third quarter is down about $30 million sequentially at the midpoint. Is that, you know, vast majority impact that performance sensing?

Andrew Charles Lynch: Yeah. That's right. We see auto production down about a million units sequentially. And then we see some softness in the off-road space accelerating in the third quarter, so all performance sensing.

Christopher Glynn: Okay. Great. And then just a couple content and outgrowth dynamics that might be in play. Curious how you see Europe phasing with some of the relaxation of the mandates for EVs if that's, you know, a CPV mix shift that progresses well in European auto through the back half of the year. And then, you know, you've talked a lot about the gains with local OEMs in China and starting to lap somewhat the share loss from multinationals. Have you indicated a timeframe when a growth crossover might be expected for China?

Andrew Charles Lynch: Sure. Let me start with Europe. So the relaxation of the mandates may ultimately lead to a slowdown in EV production in Europe. If it does, that would be a content tailwind for us. We haven't seen that yet. We've seen EV production continue to grow in the first half of the year in Europe, but that was a dynamic that played out last year for us. And so if you see that mixed shift again, that would be a potential outgrowth driver. Just a reminder there, we're about half the content per vehicle on an EV in Europe compared to an ICE.

As we move to next gens, we get above parity there, but on the current gens, that's where the content mix shifts. And then on the China question,

Stephan Von Schuckmann: Okay. Let me add something about that. So basically what to add that, Christopher, on the content side, even if EV growth is not as strong as predicted due to, you know, softening regulations. As we know, for example, in Europe, the combustion in Japan might be softened. Then we'd have probably a shift toward hybrid and mainly plug-in hybrid in the market, and, you know, Sensata has a broad portfolio mix which we could serve as well as can also obviously serve the EV market. So it's not a down for us. It's actually beneficial for us. And then, Chris, I think your question on China is one of the win start to show up in outgrowth.

So there's really two dynamics here around outgrowth in China. The first is the rapid share shift that we saw last year where multinationals lost share to locals, largely played out in the back half of last year. So we'll start to lap those comps into the third quarter. And so that outgrowth headwind starts to go away here in the back half of 2025, and we'd expect to perform more or less in line with market in China in the back half.

And then as these new businesses launch, which have design cycles and lead times that are less than a year, that'll start to show up in revenue late in 2025 and early into 2026 and set the foundation for outgrowth in China in 2026.

Christopher Glynn: Okay. Great. Thank you for that.

Operator: Our next question comes from Samik Chatterjee from JPMorgan. Please go ahead with your question.

Samik Chatterjee: Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. And, Andrew, congrats on the new role as well. Maybe if I can sort of go back to the China renewed piece of wins that you're discussing here. And great. Thanks for all the color till now, but maybe if you can sort of discuss how you're thinking about content per vehicle, where in the as you mentioned, the content per vehicle there can sometimes be lower than the Western OEMs. But in the new sort of win activity that you're seeing on that front, what are you finding out in really to content per vehicle opportunity? And do you see a road map here as you continue to drive those wins?

Is there a sort of more compression between the difference between the content on Western OEMs versus Chinese local OEMs? On that front. And I have a quick follow-up after that. Thank you.

Stephan Von Schuckmann: So, Andrew, you are starting to the point. So, basically, as I've mentioned in one of the previous calls, we've shifted our focus in China. So it's very important. Of course, you know, we want to win with the winners in China, and want to win with the right new energy vehicle producers in China. That's what we've been doing these last couple of months, and that has enabled us to win significant new business in the Chinese market. From a content point of view,

Andrew Charles Lynch: Yeah, for content in China, what really matters for us is you can look at it whether it's EV or ICE, you can look at it from a perspective of locals versus multinationals. Either way, it's about the same, which is that our content historically on EVs or on multinationals was much lower sorry. EVs or locals was much lower than with multinationals. And that's what we're starting to change. So these new wins will bring that content imbalance up to parity such that we don't have a headwind from the shift to local players as they continue to grow in the market.

Samik Chatterjee: Okay. Helpful. And just in terms of, Stephan, your earlier comments about the how you're thinking about where the incremental R&D dollars go, particularly if we do see a shift in the automotive industry towards more hybrid of EVs. That is beneficial for your content overall? How are you thinking about where the incremental R&D dollars are being dedicated in terms of platform strategy from your end? Thank you.

Stephan Von Schuckmann: Yeah. So we've, you know, we've obviously been very selective on where we put our dollars in R&D. And, you know, one good example is to your question to your earlier question, that's basically placing the dollars into applications for China for Chinese new energy vehicles. So that's the one side of it. That's what we focus on. On the other hand is, you know, we're putting more and more of our R&D dollars in the industrial area. We've got, you know, a gas leak detection product. HUL and AHRI. Just ramping up. Some of them are still in the developed phase, and we're already thinking about certain follow-up versions, so improvements on these products.

So we put a certain level of dollars of R&D in these products. And then on the aerospace side, there's also significant growth opportunity there, and selectively, we've been putting more and more dollars in that area as well. That we can tap that growth in the market that we see. At least for the future.

Samik Chatterjee: Thank you. Thanks for taking my questions.

Operator: Our next question comes from William Stein from Truist Securities. Please go ahead with your question.

William Stein: Great. Thanks for taking my question. First, Andrew, congrats on the promotion. Stefan, I think analysts and investors have sort of been waiting for a new mantra to understand the long-term growth potential either for cash flow per share or earnings per share. And I think what you're communicating, I just it's sort of a clarifying question is that your priorities are to maintain the 19% operating margin sort of bogey, stabilize it, but not necessarily have such a hard focus on expanding it. Second is to improve free cash flow conversion, and third, to decrease leverage. Do we have that right?

And is there and maybe the connection to this is I've heard a couple of analysts refer to outgrowth, but I think those are targets that were set by prior managers of this business. Do you have an outgrowth target or mantra that you want to guide us towards for the long term?

Stephan Von Schuckmann: So thanks for the question. And, you know, let me reiterate and bring some clarity some more clarity into that. So first of all, again, we're going through an entire transformation. And by the way, this transformation is working for us. And also implemented a lot more focus and rigor in our organization. And like I've said now, we're emphasizing benchmarking. We're working on consistency. And we're working on topics like standardization. So we consistently and proactively improving our operations. Working on enhancing free cash flow, and then we're setting ourselves up like you discussion around China for growth in the future. Let me not be more specific. What does that mean in numbers?

So to be precise, what we said is and Andrew actually mentioned it's the floor of 80% cash conversion rate or more. So that is basically the bottom end of it. The floor of 19% margin or more. So as you can see, in Q3 and in Q4 of this year, we're looking at expanding margins by 20 basis points. And then we also said so there is a margin expansion included in that to get to be precise on your question.

And then we also said it's important that Sensata gets back to an organic growth rate, you know, by winning business in the market, by winning business in automotive with the right players, if we're back on track in HVOR, that we're making progress in industrial, in the aerospace area. And then overall, we said we said, okay. Let's target a growth rate organic growth rate of somewhere between 2 to 4%. And that's sort of the kind of the frame that I've given the company that we're focusing on now. And, you know, that is the path and the next 12 to 18 months, and that is that's what we're focusing on.

And we'll see where that takes us, sir. Thank you.

Operator: Our next question comes from Robert Jamieson from Vertical Research. Please go ahead with your question.

Robert Jamieson: Hey. Thanks for taking my questions. Stefan, I appreciate a call earlier that you provided over the last few conference calls. On your strategic initiatives. But I want to ask about the global sales team. Have you spent some time with them? Have you seen anything in their process that needed to be changed to enable them to more effectively, you know, target the right types of customers in the right regions that you've spoken about? I'm just curious if anything's been implemented there that's driven the year-to-date wins you mentioned in China with the locals and then also in Japan year-to-date?

Stephan Von Schuckmann: Can you just repeat the first sentence of your question? I didn't hear it. It was a bit not clear for me.

Robert Jamieson: Oh, it's just about the global sales team and just having implemented like has anything been implemented to make them more effective in terms of targeting the key regions, you know, that you mentioned, like winning with the right customer, etcetera?

Stephan Von Schuckmann: Yes, we have. Look, you know, we've entirely changed the focus. So take the electrification market and the opportunities that are emerging within this market, and they differ very much per region. So I think it's very important to be extremely selective in choosing who you want to grow with. This is really important because as we know, unfortunately, not everybody's growing in the market. And but some of them actually you could face a potential risk, especially in China. We know that there's a consolidation going on in the market. Or an accelerated consolidation amongst OEMs.

So yes, you know, the team in China is very much focused and not, you know, if I may say the more blunt way, not running after every business. But trying to choose very selectively the right customers that we believe are going to be future strong outgrowers in the Chinese market, and that's been challenging. You know, it's difficult to obviously choose these right customers, but we have a good level with built up, and that's also a change, a good level of intelligence around that. And, again, being very selective. And, obviously, let me expand a bit more on China. It's not just, you know, predicting the or trying to predict the consolidation game in China.

It's also trying to understand which of these future customers are going to grow outside of China. And as you probably know, there's a huge dynamic out there. So a lot of the big customers are entering European countries. They're entering Southeast Asia. And they're hungry for growth. And so for us, as a team, as a sales team, it's very important that we try and determine who are going to be the winners outside of China so that we can grow with them when we win business for them. So that's a different type of focus. And then again, in the mix of, you know, the applications, so around hybrid applications, around combustion engine applications.

I think we've basically broadened the scope a bit more. So we said, look. There's also very good opportunities around the combustion engine applications that we still go for. You know, we have the assets. We, you know, we have the products. And we'll also try and win in that sector. And why do we do that? Why does the sales team go after that? Because that somewhat balances off the risk that you might have on the EV side, you know, trying to predict who are going to be the winner. So yes, it's a total it's a different focus. And I feel we have a lot more clarity around that.

Robert Jamieson: That's very helpful. I appreciate that. And then just pivoting to the leak detection business, just curious if you could elaborate on the total addressable market there, what's that size, and then what's the margin profile versus the legacy? And does industrial sensors, you know, business? You know, I'm also curious, what's embedded in your guidance for this business for Q3. Is it still high single-digit outgrowth versus the market? Just given some of the things that we've heard about the resi demand environment from some of the pure play HVAC names today.

Stephan Von Schuckmann: So the on the gas leak detection, the overall market size in North America is roughly $150 million. And as I just mentioned in the call, we won a significant market share in this market. And if you then convert that to Europe, where we're now going to attack that market with our so-called A3 product range, it's overall Europe is a similar size market as what we have in North America with roughly $150 million in market size. And there are more markets beyond that are actually emerging in is the interesting thing. You know, there's soon as stronger or tighter regulations come out, in South Korea, for example, or in Japan. We'll be ready with our product.

You know, we're busy scaling up HOL and hopefully we'll be ready by then with A3. And then we'll selectively tackle those markets, and that's an additional opportunity where we can gain market share and, you know, gain additional revenues. Around the margin of the product, I'm gonna pass over to Andrew. He'll explain that to you.

Andrew Charles Lynch: Yeah. We're we've been coming up the curve on margin, but at the level that we're at today, sort of $70 million or so of annualized revenue, we're basically at or very close to normalized industrial margins. So scale has certainly helped there, but I think we're over the hump on where we need to be on margin scale. And then in terms of outgrowth in the third quarter, so you're right. The resi dynamic is changed a bit. We're still expecting outgrowth in the third quarter. We were high single digits in Q2, probably low to mid-single digits in the third quarter, and then similar kind of for the balance of the year.

Robert Jamieson: That's very helpful. Thank you.

Operator: And our final question today comes from Luke Junk from Baird. Good afternoon. First question. Maybe just one for me, Stephan, and really tapping into what you're just talking about, leak detection, but maybe broadening that out and sensing solutions. It seems like tapping into non-auto markets could be a pretty interesting opportunity here. Just hoping to get your sense of urgency, prioritizing that, I mean, including the message pretty loud and clear around China on the performance sensing side of the portfolio, but how should we think big picture about ring, big earning growth? And sensing solutions, maybe even beyond the leak detection product and potentially even offsetting some of the cyclicality and performance sensing. Thank you.

Andrew Charles Lynch: Luke, thanks for the question. Yeah. It's certainly part of our strategy is looking at opportunities to diversify our end market exposure, and we're weighing that in as we evaluate the new business opportunities for investment. Beyond A2L and industrial, certainly, we're looking thematically at things like broader demand for electrical rotation and the electrical protection opportunities that come with that. We're looking at grid hardening and grid opportunities in the protection opportunities that come with that. But I think those are all sort of longer-term secular opportunities. The clear near-term winner is the A2L product at various derivatives of that for other end markets.

And so, you know, while we'll continue to look at secular opportunities longer term, the focus in the short term is on taking the business that we've already won, expanding it, expanding margin share, and bringing it to other end markets.

Luke Junk: Understood. I'll leave it there. Thank you.

Operator: And ladies and gentlemen, with that, we'll conclude today's question and answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Andrew Charles Lynch for any closing remarks.

Andrew Charles Lynch: Thank you all for joining today's presentation. We look forward to seeing you at various investor events later this quarter. We currently expect to participate in the following events: Evercore ISI Semiconductor IT Hardware and Networking Conference in Chicago on August 26, Jeffrey's Industrial Conference in New York on September 3, and Goldman Sachs Technology Investors Conference in San Francisco on September 9. That concludes our second-quarter earnings conference call. Operator, you may now end the call.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, we do thank you for joining today's conference call and presentation has now concluded. You may now disconnect your lines.

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I'm not chasing some youthful version of myself. I'm claiming the wisdom I've earned and the freedom I nearly forgot I had.

This isn't the end of anything. It's just the first time I'm living fully as me.

• The TV business has been contracting for years, which is why media companies are trying to sell off their cable networks.
• But David and Larry Ellison think there's long-term value in Paramount and its TV business, says analyst Rich Greenfield.
• Greenfield also weighs in on new streaming launches from ESPN and Fox.

The TV business is not slowing down this summer: Any day now, David and Larry Ellison will finally buy Paramount, with its collection of once-storied TV networks like CBS and MTV. A few weeks later, ESPN and Fox — the last two big TV players that haven't launched their own streamers — will launch their own streamers.

But on the other hand, the TV business has been slowing down for a decade: Every quarter, more cable TV subscribers cut the cord, or never sign up for a cord in the first place. The people who own cable TV networks don't seem to have any plan to deal with the issue, other than trying to sell their cable TV networks.

Lightshed analyst Rich Greenfield has been chronicling the industry's massive, internet-driven change for years. I caught up with him on my Channels podcast to talk through the particular challenges — and perhaps some opportunities — facing TV right now. Here's an edited excerpt of our chat.

Peter Kafka: When the music business collapsed back in the Napster era, it happened basically overnight. But TV has hung on for much longer, even though consumer behavior changed pretty significantly over the last decade.

Is there something specific about the TV industry that's allowed these guys to move in slow motion?

Rich Greenfield: There's very few businesses where you can raise the price on a product that consumers are using less and less every day.

The brilliance of the cable TV business model was the big fat bundle. It's a pretty incredible business to put all of these channels together, even if people don't want most of them.

It had everything you wanted and no alternatives, which is very different than where we are today.

One of my soapboxes is when I hear people saying they wish we could go back to the cable days. And I keep saying, that was terrible. You guys forget. Everyone hated that.

I think consumers are pretty adept at managing their services, and I don't hear a lot of complaints. Sometimes it's like, "Where is this game?" Or "How do I find this thing?" It can be a little confusing.

But think about your cellphone. You've had one for quite a while now. Managing the apps and deleting something if you're not using it and adding something —these are all pretty easy functions.

We don't give consumers enough credit. They're pretty adept at figuring out cheaper solutions and ways to manage.

I want to ask you about a few specific companies. The Paramount deal is finally going to close. What do you think the new owners — David Ellison and his father, Larry Ellison — will do once they have control? Will it change overnight, or is this a slow-rolling thing?

It will certainly change.

The juxtaposition is sort of amazing. [Paramount, under current owner Shari Redstone, is a] financially strapped company, with challenged financial ownership.

And you're moving to an ownership team that is one of the wealthiest families on planet Earth.

David Ellison is probably going to be running this company for 30, 40 years. He obviously has a passion for entertainment. He's moving to a much bigger stage.

But this is still a financially struggling company. He can't fix the trends of what consumer behavior is changing. What he can do is invest and really build.

And you saw the "South Park" deal they just cut, where they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars to move the show [exclusively] to Paramount+. I think it's a small sign of the post-merger strategy, which is that David Ellison is not just doing this to cut costs and squeeze more juice out of this existing company. His goal is to build something significant with a very long-term perspective, which is going to require a lot of investment.

What does that look like? Is the new Paramount just a film studio and a streaming service and CBS — and Ellison sells off everything that's not those things?

I think initially they'll say they need the cash flow from cable and will use that cash flow to reinvest.

I would be shocked if you didn't see more sports on CBS. I think they will be a contender for UFC rights. You've seen David Ellison multiple times in the past year sitting in the front row, cage side with Ari Emanuel [CEO of TKO Group, which owns UFC], and with [UFC CEO] Dana White.

And Donald Trump.

I don't disagree there on politics. But I also think he likes the content. I think he's going to spend a lot of money.

He understands the tech North Star — whether we're talking about TikTok, Meta, Netflix, or Spotify — it's all about time spent. I think David gets that Paramount+ needs a heck of a lot more time spent. The only way you're gonna get there is a better product and more content.

Let's move to Disney. Sometime in the next few weeks, before college football and the NFL starts, ESPN will finally be something you can buy as a stand-alone streaming service. If they rolled this out in 2015, we would have said it's a really big deal. Is it a big deal in 2025?

At $30 a month, I don't think this is a huge deal. My guess is it gives them flexibility to start packaging this with other services. They can probably get some subscribers. Not a lot. It's probably low to mid-single-digit millions. Not millions and millions.

Remember, they're giving the new service to everybody who already subscribed to [pay TV]. So 65 million-plus ESPN subscribers are going to get this new ESPN app at no additional cost.

So who is the audience for this? You're not subscribing to the big bundle. You're a pretty passionate sports fan. You're willing to spend $30 a month for sports. My guess is it's just a small number.

It actually makes sense to do it. But I don't think, at the end of the day, it is a huge needle-mover. What's going to matter to Disney stock is their theme park business and their cruise ship business. Those being better than expected — because of the state of the economy and what's happened with tariffs not being as problematic as feared a few months ago — is far more important to Disney than what happens with the ESPN streaming rollout.

We're also close to the launch of Fox's own streamer, Fox One. The main assets there are Fox Sports — which is really the NFL — and Fox News. Do you think Fox thinks this is primarily a product for people who want to watch football, or do you think it's primarily for Fox News fans?

I think this is a pretty limited offering for a sports fan.

So does that lead you to believe that Fox thinks this is really a Fox News product?

I think you'll see more uptake from Fox News viewers.

In the old days, you would have said that Fox News has a very old audience. And the idea that its audience is going to stream it doesn't make sense. But maybe that's not true in 2025?

Streaming's become pretty normalized. When you look at how many subscribers Netflix now has, I don't think streaming is some elitist thing. I think it's pretty normalized.

I think the part you may be missing is that the Fox News audience is also widening out.

And as you make it available to people on streaming, you may pick up some younger people. Maybe it's more interesting during election years. It creates flexibility. And I don't think there's a whole lot of downside.

All the basic cable networks are in freefall. Everyone who owns them is trying to sell them — either directly to another buyer or, in the case of Comcast's Versant, trying to bundle it up as a publicly traded stock. Who is a buyer for cable networks?

I don't think there are enough people talking about this topic. So many of the investors I deal with, or even industry executives I talk to, think you're going to see Paramount do a deal with Warner Bros. Or maybe you'll see Versant merge with some of the Paramount cable networks.

But let's just step back. I think David Ellison and Larry Ellison have a much bigger plan than aggregating more linear cable networks. I would be surprised if that was the strategy. I think there's a much bigger plan that the Ellison family is probably thinking about that goes well beyond just aggregating more legacy media assets.

WarnerMedia merged with Discovery, which hasn't created value. CBS and Viacom became Paramount, and that hasn't created value. Disney bought most of Fox's cable networks, and that hasn't created value. Putting legacy assets together that are in secular decline doesn't work. Maybe it might've been worse [without those deals].

But that's not compelling for a buyer.

It's a reason to be a seller. As a buyer, there's lots of things you could buy and lots of places you could go. The idea that buying more of these assets so that you have more costs to cut doesn't seem really compelling.

Another reason you are skeptical about big media consolidation is politics. You think that either antitrust politics, or Donald Trump's personal politics, make that unlikely. The only media mogul he wasn't complaining about was Rupert Murdoch, and now he's suing Murdoch.

Is there a world where anyone sells or buys a meaningful media asset while Donald Trump is president?

I think it's going to be challenging.

Key Points

• Fintech stocks are hot, as the risk-on sentiment has swept the market.

• Upstart is thriving after updating its AI model and making some other key changes.

• Sezzle is delivering sizzling growth thanks to a differentiated approach to BNPL.

• 10 stocks we like better than Upstart ›

Fintech stocks have long been volatile. The sector surged during the pandemic before crashing in the 2022 bear market. However, as digital payments continue to take share from traditional forms of payment and AI ups the stakes in fintech, sector stocks have started to rally again, benefiting from the broader risk-on sentiment since President Trump paused the Liberation Day tariffs.

Several fintech stocks have soared since then, but there are two in particular that look poised to deliver multibagging returns if you have a little bit of cash to invest. Let's take a closer look.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

Image source: Getty Images.

1. Upstart Holdings

Upstart (NASDAQ: UPST) was a fintech darling of the pandemic era as the stock posted triple-digit growth and delivered double-digit profit margins. However, when interest rates rose, demand for loans from its platform dried up, profits disappeared, and the stock was forgotten.

Since then, Upstart has improved its technology with better models that have led to higher conversion rates. It has strengthened its capital with new funding sources and streamlined its business, and now expects to be profitable again this year.

In addition to those improvements, Upstart is starting to tap into massive loan markets in auto and home as it continues to roll out those offerings in new states. As a result, the business is stronger than ever, though that's not reflected in its stock price. While Upstart stock has gained in recent weeks, the stock is still down roughly 80% from its peak in 2021, and its market cap is just $7 billion.

For a company chasing a massive addressable market and trying to disrupt traditional FICO scores, Upstart has the potential to be much larger than a $7 billion company, especially if interest rates fall again, stimulating loan demand. Even at current interest rates, the business is thriving. In the first quarter, revenue rose 67% to $213 million as fee revenue climbed 34% to $185 million.

Transaction volume doubled to 240,706, showing the benefit of its new, more advanced Model 18. If Upstart can maintain its momentum, the upside potential from here is considerable.

2. Sezzle

Like Upstart, Buy now, pay later (BNPL) companies also had a moment during the pandemic, soaring as demand for the new kind of payment took off before interest in the sector faded in the 2022 bear market.

However, BNPL hasn't gone away, and one of the fastest-growing companies in the space is now Sezzle (NASDAQ: SEZL), a BNPL that initially went public in Australia and has grown its business with a different strategy from most of its competitors. Instead of focusing on the merchant, Sezzle has prioritized the consumer, growing its business through subscription programs, rewards, and new product features like auto-couponing, which automatically finds coupons for customers as they shop.

That strategy seems to be resonating as Sezzle's growth rate has accelerated into the triple digits.

In its first quarter, the company reported revenue growth of 123% to $104.9 million as gross merchandise volume (GMV) rose 64.1% to $808.7 million.

Sezzle's profit margins have also soared alongside that growth as the company reported an operating margin of nearly 50%, showing the business model is highly scalable. The company has also managed its credit risk successfully, and cuts customers off from the product if they miss a payment.

Investors are valuing the stock like its growth story is coming to an end, but BNPL is also a massive addressable market, competing with credit cards, so there's plenty of runway for the company to grow.

At a market cap of $4.5 billion, the stock could easily be a multibagger from here, even as it's already up more than 800% over the past year.

Should you invest $1,000 in Upstart right now?

Before you buy stock in Upstart, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Upstart wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $636,628!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,063,471!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,041% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 183% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 21, 2025

Jeremy Bowman has positions in Upstart. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Sezzle and Upstart. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Key Points

• Alphabet's AI strengths are being overlooked by the market.

• Amazon is using AI behind the scenes to become more efficient and drive growth.

• Meta Platforms and Pinterest are both using AI to drive advertising revenue growth.

• 10 stocks we like better than Alphabet ›

The artificial intelligence (AI) boom continues to drive growth and transform industries, but it's not just infrastructure players that are benefiting. Some of the best long-term opportunities are with companies deploying AI behind the scenes.

Let's look at five brilliant AI-related growth stocks to buy and hold for the long haul.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

1. Alphabet

Investors continue to underestimate Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL), as they worry about AI disrupting its search business. But that view ignores what Google, its major component, actually does. This is a company built around content discovery -- not just traditional search -- and it's integrating AI into tools billions of people already use. And no other company is better at monetizing that content discovery through advertising than Alphabet. Its search data and digital ad network just cannot be matched.

The Chrome browser and Android operating system give it unmatched distribution; Chrome is the default search engine on the majority of devices, giving it a huge built-in advantage. And a recent Oppenheimer survey revealed that users found Google Search's new AI Mode more helpful than not only traditional search but also ChatGPT.

YouTube remains the world's largest ad-supported streaming platform. Google Cloud, Alphabet's cloud computing unit, is growing fast, helping companies build, train, and run AI models.

Google is also becoming a chip leader. Its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) are helping to power AI development, while its Willow quantum computing chip may be a future growth driver. And Alphabet subsidiary Waymo is expanding its robotaxi footprint.

Taken altogether, Alphabet is one of the most innovative companies in the world, and one you want to own.

2. Amazon

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is using AI to become even more dominant. While it's best known for e-commerce and cloud computing, the company's behind-the-scenes work is where the real long-term value is being built.

On the logistics and warehouse side, Amazon is using AI to determine where to store inventory, create more efficient delivery routes, and even navigate hard-to-find drop-off points. Its robotics division just passed 1 million deployed units, and some of its AI-powered robots can detect damaged products or even repair themselves. Amazon also created a new AI model called DeepFleet that coordinates its entire robot fleet to help boost throughput.

The company's largest and fastest-growing business is Amazon Web Services (AWS). It helps customers build AI models and apps with tools like Bedrock and SageMaker, and then has them run those programs on its infrastructure. It's also developed custom AI chips that give it a cost advantage, and continues to invest in AI infrastructure to meet rising demand.

Overall, Amazon is well positioned for an increasingly AI-focused world.

3. Meta Platforms

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) owns one of the world's most valuable digital advertising businesses, and AI is making it better. Its Llama models are driving more engagement across Facebook and Instagram, boosting user time spent on the apps. That gives Meta more ad inventory to sell. It's also using AI to help advertisers create better campaigns and target potential customers, which is increasing demand and leading to higher ad prices.

But Meta's growth story is just getting started. The company is only now beginning to serve ads on WhatsApp, which has over 3 billion users. It's also rolling out ads on Threads, its new social platform, which had 350 million users at the end of the first quarter. With two massive platforms still early in their monetization cycles and AI continuing to drive performance, Meta looks like a long-term winner in the AI-powered digital economy.

But the company is not stopping there. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is spending aggressively to poach top AI talent. This is all part of an effort to -- as Zuckerberg says -- "deliver personal superintelligence to everyone in the world." If it's successful, Meta could become the top AI stock to own.

Image source: Getty Images.

4. Pinterest

Meta isn't the only social media company using AI to drive growth. Pinterest (NYSE: PINS) has been using AI to evolve into a more shoppable and advertiser-friendly platform. The company has built a multimodal model that understands both images and text, allowing for better personalization and powering new features like visual search. Users can now click on items within images and shop for similar products directly, making Pinterest far more transactional and more attractive to both users and advertisers.

It's also working to simplify advertising on its platform. Performance+, its new AI-powered ad product, automates everything from campaign creation to targeting and bidding. That makes the platform easier to use for advertisers and helps them save time and drive better outcomes.

Pinterest has a global user base that has historically been undermonetized, especially compared to those of its peers. But with AI improving engagement, search, and ad performance, the company has a big opportunity to start to close that gap. If it can continue executing on its vision of merging content discovery with commerce, Pinterest could be a breakout growth story over the long term.

5. Toast

Toast (NYSE: TOST) has become one of the leading software platforms for the restaurant industry. What started as simply a point-of-sale system is now a full-stack software platform that helps restaurants streamline operations and drive more sales. Its newest tools -- like the AI-powered intelligence engine ToastIQ and the agent and assistant Sous Chef -- are designed to help restaurants make better decisions in real time.

Meanwhile, the company said a restaurant piloting its new menu upsell tool saw average order volume increase by 6%, while another restaurant group testing its new AI-powered advertising tool saw more than a "10x return on ad spend" with Google Ads.

Toast directly benefits from its customers' success, earning a cut of sales through payment processing. That creates a strong alignment between the business and its customers, so the company continues to innovate to help drive restaurant sales. Toast added 6,000 new locations in Q1 and now serves more than 140,000 restaurants. It's also expanding into chains like Applebee's and Topgolf, as well as adjacent verticals like hotel food service and retailers. It's slowly expanding overseas as well.

Toast's pace of innovation and expanding customer base give it a long runway of growth. This makes it a growth stock you want to own for the long term.

Should you invest $1,000 in Alphabet right now?

Before you buy stock in Alphabet, consider this:

The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Alphabet wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $636,774!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,064,942!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,040% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 182% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 21, 2025

Geoffrey Seiler has positions in Alphabet, Pinterest, and Toast. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, Pinterest, and Toast. The Motley Fool recommends Topgolf Callaway Brands. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Streaming has become a tangled web of subscriptions, and now Comcast says it can help by putting all your services into one hub. Comcast is launching a new hub on its set-top boxes, called the StreamStore, where you can buy and manage subscriptions for more than 450 streaming apps and channels.

The StreamStore lives within Xfinity’s Xumo Stream Box and on X1 devices. It’s also available on the web, and features a collection of more than 200,000 movies and TV shows to rent or purchase. Xfinity will let you add or drop channels through the store, while tacking on new subscriptions to your monthly internet or TV bill, further positioning the company as a sort of streaming broker. 

Other cable / telecom companies like Verizon have tried to step in as a digital subscription service middleman, though Comcast is taking things a step further by putting this hub on your TV. But is streaming really messy enough that you need Comcast to manage it?

Some services included in the StreamStore include Netflix, Peacock, Disney Plus, Paramount Plus, Hulu, Apple TV Plus, HBO Max, and over 100 “niche” streaming subscriptions, according to LightReading. Xfinity already offers its own StreamSaver bundle, which includes a subscription to Apple TV Plus, Netflix with ads, and Peacock’s ad-supported plan for $15 per month.

The bundle is, of course, available through the StreamStore, and Xfinity says it plans on bringing new streaming bundles, apps, and “enhanced subscription management and activation capabilities” to the hub in the future.

(Disclosure: Comcast is an investor in Vox Media, The Verge’s parent company.)

• Netflix is quietly searching for an exec to lead its video podcast efforts.
• The streamer is chasing YouTube, which has cemented itself as a video podcast titan.
• Podcast listening and advertising are on the rise, and media giants are investing.

Netflix is quietly searching for a podcast leader as it looks to bring video pods onto the streaming platform, two people close to the company told Business Insider.

Netflix had previously explored potential deals with podcasters as it sought new areas of growth, as BI first reported. The hunt for an exec to lead a video podcasting effort shows how seriously Netflix is taking the space.

The streamer's interest comes as rival YouTube has cemented itself as a living-room fixture and video podcasting powerhouse.

Netflix has also shown interest in creator content more broadly.

"We're really excited about 'The Sidemen' and 'Pop the Balloon' and a wide variety of creators and video podcasters that might be a good fit for us, and particularly if they're doing great work and looking for different ways to connect with audiences," co-CEO Ted Sarandos said on the company's second-quarter earnings call this month. "The Sidemen" and "Pop the Balloon" are two Netflix shows that began in the creator realm.

Netflix has not publicized a podcast lead job opening and declined to comment for this story.

One person who had conversations with Netflix said the company wanted someone who could make video-first podcasts for a big audience.

Many of today's biggest podcasts started as audio-only endeavors and later added video as audience habits changed and YouTube gained prominence. The lines between video talk shows and podcasts have increasingly blurred, and newer podcasts often now start with video in mind.

It's not clear where the podcast role would sit inside Netflix.

A second person who had conversations with the company said they believed it would sit in Netflix's TV and film licensing arm under Lori Conkling rather than the original content side. That could signal that Netflix might look to license existing shows, as it's done with some YouTube creators like preschool entertainer Ms. Rachel, as well as make original shows with hosts. Separate content-side hires could follow.

Edison Research has charted the continued rise of podcast listening. In a new report out this week, the firm said 73% of people ages 12 and over in the US listen to or watch podcasts, up from 55% in 2020.

Video is on the rise, too, with 51% of people 12 and up saying they've watched a podcast, according to Edison.

Podcast advertising grew 26.4% to $2.4 billion in 2024, according to the IAB. EMARKETER projects it will top $2.5 billion in 2025.

Other media heavyweights have made big moves to chase the podcast-listening audience and the advertising that can come with it.

In February, Fox acquired Red Seat Ventures, which produces Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and others. Amazon paid $300 million for podcast company Wondery in 2020, The New York Times reported at the time, after snapping up audiobook company Audible in 2008.

• Home prices continue to climb, but some markets still might offer a good deal.
• For younger homebuyers, some areas of the Southeast and Midwest might be more affordable.
• These are the 10 most millennial-friendly housing markets.

Adulting could get a little easier, at least in these 10 cities.

As millennials move through their 30s and 40s and prepare to buy a house, they're faced with an increasingly expensive real estate market: the average home in the US sold for over half a million in the second quarter of 2025, at $512,800. The national median price of $435,300 in June was the highest on record.

But some areas of the country are more friendly to first-time, younger homebuyers than others, according to a recent study from SmartAsset.

Many of these areas are mid-sized metros in the Southeast and Midwest. The Midwest in particular has seen a boom in real estate activity in recent months, but remains one of the most affordable homebuying regions in the country, according to a Redfin report from earlier this year.

On the other hand, some of the most difficult places for millennials to buy homes feature the usual suspects — expensive housing markets on the coasts, such as San Francisco and New York City. Fewer than 1% of local millennials purchased a home in those areas in 2024. For those who purchased a house in the San Francisco area, the median millennial property value was a whopping $1,505,000.

Below are the top 10 metro areas where the local millennial population purchased the most homes in 2024, along with the median millennial property value and median income of millennial mortgagor.

For context, the median price of a home sold in the US was $410,800 and the average price is $513,800 in the second quarter of 2025, according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Seven out of the 10 median millennial property values on this list are below the national median. All figures are based on metropolitan statistical areas, which may include surrounding suburbs and cross state lines.

Raleigh, NC

Local millennials who bought a home: 4.50%

Median millennial property value: $455,000

Median income of millennial mortgagors: $138,000

Indianapolis, IN

Local millennials who bought a home: 4.32%

Median millennial property value: $325,000

Median income of millennial mortgagors: $103,000

Charlotte, NC

Local millennials who bought a home: 4.28%

Median millennial property value: $425,000

Median income of millennial mortgagors: $125,000

Nashville, TN

Local millennials who bought a home: 4.08%

Median millennial property value: $455,000

Median income of millennial mortgagors: $123,000

Cincinnati, OH

Local millennials who bought a home: 4.06%

Median millennial property value: $315,000

Median income of millennial mortgagors: $107,000

Louisville, KY

Local millennials who bought a home: 4.04%

Median millennial property value: $285,000

Median income of millennial mortgagors: $91,000

Virginia Beach, VA

Local millennials who bought a home: 4.02%

Median millennial property value: $365,000

Median income of millennial mortgagors: $105,000

Milwaukee, WI

Local millennials who bought a home: 3.82%

Median millennial property value: $355,000

Median income of millennial mortgagors: $119,000

Jacksonville, FL

Local millennials who bought a home: 3.81%

Median millennial property value: $375,000

Median income of millennial mortgagors: $110,000

St. Louis, MO

Local millennials who bought a home: 3.81%

Median millennial property value: $305,000

Median income of millennial mortgagors: $106,000

On Wednesday, the White House released "Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan," a 25-page document that outlines the Trump administration's strategy to "maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance" in AI through deregulation, infrastructure investment, and international partnerships. But critics are already taking aim at the plan, saying it's doing Big Tech a big favor.

Assistant to the President for Science and Technology Michael Kratsios and Special Advisor for AI and Crypto David Sacks crafted the plan, which frames AI development as a race the US must win against global competitors, particularly China.

The document describes AI as the catalyst for "an industrial revolution, an information revolution, and a renaissance—all at once." It calls for removing regulatory barriers that the administration says hamper private sector innovation. The plan explicitly reverses several Biden-era policies, including Executive Order 14110 on AI model safety measures, which President Trump rescinded on his first day in office during his second term.

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Key Points

• - Adjusted Funds from Operations (AFFO, non-GAAP) per diluted share of $0.33 for Q2 2025 significantly exceeded analyst estimates and AFFO per diluted share of $0.33 increased 3.1% year-over-year.

• - Management raised its 2025 AFFO (non-GAAP) per share guidance, net investment activity outlook, and the quarterly dividend by 2.4% for Q3 2025.

• - Portfolio occupancy stood at 99.9%, with a weighted average lease term of 9.8 years as of June 30, 2025, while new investments carried lower investment-grade tenant weight than prior periods.

• These 10 stocks could mint the next wave of millionaires ›

NetSTREIT Corp. (NYSE:NTST), a retail-focused real estate investment trust (REIT) specializing in net-leased properties, announced its second quarter 2025 results on July 23, 2025. The company reported AFFO per diluted share of $0.33, which was well above the analyst consensus estimate of $0.06 (non-GAAP). Net income per diluted share (GAAP) reached $0.04, compared to a $(0.03) loss a year earlier. Revenue was $48.3 million, reflecting a 22.1% year-over-year increase. The quarter saw strong execution on portfolio expansion and an increase in the quarterly dividend. Results exceeded most key expectations (non-GAAP), and the outlook for both AFFO (non-GAAP) and investment activity for the remainder of FY2025 was raised.

Source: Analyst estimates for the quarter provided by FactSet.

Business Overview and Key Success Factors

NetSTREIT Corp. is a REIT focused on acquiring and managing single-tenant, net-leased retail properties across the United States. In a net lease, tenants cover most property expenses such as taxes, insurance, and maintenance, leaving the landlord with stable rental income. NetSTREIT pursues a strategy centered on high tenant credit quality, long lease terms, and broad diversification across tenants, industries, and states.

Over recent quarters, NetSTREIT has zeroed in on several core areas: maintaining a high proportion of investment-grade tenants, locking in long-term leases, reducing reliance on any single tenant or sector, and keeping leverage within a defined target. These factors matter because they drive regular rental streams and limit risks related to tenant defaults or sector downturns.

Quarter Review: Portfolio Activity, Earnings, and Key Trends

This quarter, AFFO per diluted share came in at $0.33, a 3.1% year-over-year increase and materially above consensus estimates. Net income also turned positive compared to a loss in the same period last year. Total revenues (GAAP) reached $48.3 million, a 22.1% increase year-over-year, fueled mainly by rental growth from new investments and higher interest income on property loans. Funds from Operations (FFO), a key profit metric for REITs that strips out non-cash depreciation, jumped 14.8% year-over-year (non-GAAP).

Gross investment activity totaled $117.1 million, with 32 properties acquired at a blended initial yield (first-year cash return) of 7.8 %. At the same time, NetSTREIT sold 20 properties for $60.4 million at a 6.5% cash yield. Net investment activity, the difference between acquisitions and dispositions, was $49.4 million. The company also advanced its development pipeline, though at a modest scale relative to its stabilized property base.

Occupancy remained at 99.9%, signaling almost no vacancy across more than 700 properties. The weighted average lease term (WALT) across the portfolio was 9.8 years as of June 30, 2025, with new investments carrying leases averaging 15.7 years in length, meaning fresh acquisitions will deliver steady income for well over a decade on average. No tenant represented more than 5% of annualized base rent as of December 31, 2024, and the top five tenants together accounted for approximately 28.2% of ABR as of Q1 2025, helping mitigate risks from concentration. Recent dispositions were also targeted at reducing large-tenant exposures.

Tenant quality trends showed some shifts: over half (52.2%) of portfolio rent came from investment-grade tenants, but only 18.0% of new investment rent was from investment-grade tenants—a decrease from prior quarters. Management explained that high-quality tenants remain highly sought after and attract lower acquisition yields, while higher-risk tenants offer better returns.

Lease Terms, Diversification, and Financial Details

Lease structure and tenant mix are core strengths for NetSTREIT. With a portfolio-wide occupancy rate of 99.9% as of June 30, 2025, and only a small share of leases set to expire in the next several years, the company’s rental streams are well covered for the foreseeable future. This should bolster cash flow predictability for over a decade and lock in higher yields achieved from recent acquisitions. The company's measured approach to both buying and selling was evident in the continued reduction of exposure to larger tenants and sectors with higher risk, such as certain pharmacy and discount store operators.

Diversification remained a highlight. As of June 30, 2025, the portfolio comprised 705 properties in 45 states, with exposure spread across 106 tenants and 27 industries. No one property, sector, or geography accounted for an outsized proportion of overall rent, which is a key factor in providing stability through various economic cycles.

From a capital perspective, leverage increased modestly. Net debt to annualized adjusted EBITDAre, a non-GAAP REIT leverage ratio, was 5.9x—slightly above the stated target range of 4.5x to 5.5x. Adjusted net debt, which reflects the impact of forward equity sales yet to be settled, stood at 4.6 times annualized adjusted EBITDAre, within management’s target. Higher leverage reflected increased debt usage and forward equity, as well as the impact of recent acquisitions. NetSTREIT raised $46.1 million in new equity via its at-the-market (ATM) share program and maintained strong liquidity, with available capacity on its credit facility and cash totaling $594.2 million as of June 30, 2025.

Interest expense rose to $12.638 million from $7.604 million, alongside an increase in debt. General and administrative (G&A) costs also increased to $5.475 million.

Dividend, Guidance, and Outlook

The company raised its quarterly dividend by 2.4% to $0.215 per share (annualized $0.86).

Management raised its full-year AFFO (non-GAAP) guidance, now expecting $1.29 to $1.31 per share for 2025 (up from $1.28 to $1.30). Net investment activity guidance was also increased, with targeted net acquisitions of $125 million to $175 million for 2025 (previously $75 million to $125 million). This reflects the company’s confidence in its investment pipeline and ability to redeploy capital from asset sales into higher-yielding properties. No material changes were made to other operating targets such as leverage ratios or G&A expense forecasts, and management continues to emphasize the importance of external capital market access to support ongoing portfolio expansion.

Revenue and net income presented using U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) unless otherwise noted.

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On the podcast today we have Adam Silverstein.

Adam is a WordPress Core committer, and works to fix bugs and improve modern web capabilities. He’s also a Developer Relations Engineer on Chrome’s Web Platform team at Google, and there he focuses on making the open web better for everyone.

Adam is here to break down how the rapid evolution of browser technology can supercharge your WordPress sites. We’re doing this by referencing his presentation at WordCamp Europe 2025, in which he covered multiple new features of browsers, which can be used by WordPress users to bring a variety of experiences to their websites.

In many cases, these are browser APIs and features, and are quietly rdefining what’s possible on the web. From CSS-powered popovers and scroll-driven animations to speculative loading that speeds up your page transitions. Adam explains how these advancements are changing what’s possible for both developers and end-users.

The conversation sheds light on the collaboration between browser vendors, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge, through initiatives like Interop and Baseline, paving the way for more consistent and robust features across platforms.

Adam also talks about practical topics central to the WordPress community, like how the Popover API and native CSS carousels reduce JavaScript bloat, make sites more accessible, and deliver a better overall user experience.

He shares exciting new frontiers, such as browser-based image processing powered by WebAssembly, which is paving the way for universal support of modern formats like AVIF and Ultra HDR, and even running AI locally in your browser, no API key or cloud server required.

He provides concrete examples on how these technologies can be leveraged in WordPress via Core updates, canonical plugins, and Gutenberg experiments, with a special focus on how developers can get involved and offer feedback to help shape future web standards. Prepare to look at your browser in a whole new light, truly.

Whether you’re a theme designer, plugin developer, or site owner simply curious about what’s next, this episode is for you.

Useful links

Modernizing WordPress with new Web Platform Features – Adam’s presentation at WordCamp Europe 2025

Drupal

TYPO3

Descript

Popover API

Baseline

MDN docs

Interop

Scroll Animations API

Slider Revolution

Chrome Dev carousel demos

CrUX

BigQuery

Customisable Select demos

 Performance Lab plugin

Ultra HDR

GD

Imagick

WebAssembly

 Pascal Birchler’s Media Experiments plugin

 Transformers.js