Pole Position: UBS European & US Autos Daily

Research evidence excerpt

Pole Position: UBS European & US Autos Daily

Stellantis: New brand CEOs for RAM and Jeep announced

Yesterday, Stellantis announced the appointment of Matt VanDyke as RAM brand CEO

and Branden Cote as Jeep brand CEO; both will be reporting to Tim Kuniskis. VanDyke

brings experience from Shift, a digital auto marketing platform and various leadership

positions at Ford. Cole joins from AutoNation, where he served as brand president.

Previous Jeep brand CEO Bob Broderdorf is taking medical leave (and will return to

Stellantis); the RAM brand lead was previously covered by Tim Kuniskis on ad-interim

basis.

Our view: While RAM & Jeep currently face the challenge of high US inventories and

growing incentives to “push the metal”, we would not interpret the announced

changes as a signal for execution issues. For Jeep, the reason is a medical leave and for

RAM, it was a vacant position for the last 12 months. For Q2, we think the shares would

likely respond sharply to any beat or miss in NA AOI. A key debate about STLA’s NA

performance is the growth in dealer stock levels q/q (now at 94 days based on June run-

rate), which bears downside risks to wholesale volumes and/or incentives in H2. For FCF,

we expect the first positive quarter since H2/23 with €0.3bn inflows; this includes ~

€0.5bn of one-off charges so that the underlying FCF should be €0.8bn, supported by

working capital inflows.

For FY26, we expect STLA to confirm the MSD% revenue growth y/y (UBSe for H1:

7.0%) and the 1-3% AOI corridor (UBSe for H1: 2.4%). However, management

guidance about H2 AOI > H1 appears more challenging to achieve due to relatively high

US inventories (especially for trucks at 113 days) while the EE region remains under

pressure from growing Chinese competition.