Forvia forecasts stable 2023 sales as it expects a stronger impact from wage and energy costs even as raw material inflation eases.
Following more than two years of pandemic disruptions, the automotive sector has been facing continued supply chain snags due to Chinese lockdowns and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Forvia, which sells seats, dashboards and fuel systems to automakers, targets sales of 25.2 billion to 26.2 billion euros ($26.9 billion to $28.0 billion) in 2023, against 25.5 billion last year.
The supplier was created following Faurecia's takeover of Hella.
"If there is an opportunity for further growth, it will be Asian," Faurecia's CEO Patrick Koller told reporters.
Still, he did not expect a good first quarter in China where COVID-19 restrictions were only lifted in December.
Forvia sees an annual operating margin of between 5 percent and 6 percent, compared with 4.4 percent last year, and a net cash flow exceeding 1.5 percent of sales.
The outlook is based on estimated global automotive production of 82 million vehicles this year, in line with 2022.
While inflation alone generated more than 1 billion euros of additional costs last year compared to 2021, notably from raw materials, the group said it had mostly managed to pass this on to customers.
Koller said that with the inflation having likely reached its peak, bringing on a "rather encouraging" price decline in certain raw materials, Forvia expected this hit to be "significantly lower" this year.
"What will be different in 2023 is that we will also have wage inflation and energy inflation," he added, however.
With the sale of its SAS cockpit unit to Motherson Group announced on Sunday, Forvia said it had reached its 1-billion-euro asset disposal target to reduce debt after the Hella acquisition.
