Comments from Mikael Bratt, President & CEO
I am pleased to, once again, report a record breaking quarter. This quarter is the best third quarter so far, for sales, operating income and EPS. The performance was driven by better than expected sales, especially in Americas and Europe, and successful actions to reduce costs and achieve tariff compensation. I am pleased that we had a solid outperformance with the domestic Chinese OEMs. The ramp-up of certain models started slower than expected, but improved gradually during the quarter. We expect increased outperformance in China in Q4.
Driven by increased penetration of automotive safety, our high growth in India continued, accounting for around one third of our global organic growth in the third quarter.
We invest for continued success in China. We started building a second R&D Center in China to support our growing business with Chinese OEMs both in China and globally. In addition, in October we signed a strategic agreement with CATARC, the leading research institution setting standards in China’s automotive sector, to jointly advance automotive safety standards and innovation. Furthermore, we recently announced our plans to form a joint venture with HSAE, a leading Chinese automotive electronics developer, to develop and manufacture advanced safety electronics to increase vertical integration of our current product portfolio.
We recovered around 75% of tariff costs in the third quarter, and expect to recover most of what remains in Q4. We continue to closely monitor the situation, and remain adaptive and agile.
Our focus on operational efficiency, commercial excellence and our cost reduction programs continue to yield results. In the quarter, sales grew organically by 4%, gross profit by 14%, operating income by 18% and EPS by 31%. Supported by strong balance sheet control, operating cash flow increased by 46%, and with a lower capex, net, free cash flow improved substantially. As a result, we kept our leverage ratio at 1.3x, despite increasing the dividend by 21% and repurchasing shares for $100 million in the quarter.
We remain confident in achieving our full year guidance of an adjusted operating margin of around 10-10.5%, currently expecting to come in at the midpoint of the range.
Next Report
Autoliv intends to publish the quarterly earnings report for the fourth quarter of 2025 on Friday, January 30, 2026.
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Autoliv, Inc. is obliged to make this information public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation. The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the VP of Investor Relations set out above, at 12.00 CET on October 17, 2025.