Dana Holding (DAN) Risk Factors

Certain provisions of our Restated Certificate of Incorporation and Bylaws, as well as the General Corporation Law of the State of Delaware, may have the effect of delaying, deferring or preventing a change in control of Dana. Such provisions, including those governing the nomination of directors, limiting who may call special stockholders' meetings and eliminating stockholder action by written consent, may make it more difficult for other persons, without the approval of our board of directors, to make a tender offer or otherwise acquire substantial amounts of common stock or to launch other takeover attempts that a stockholder might consider to be in such stockholder's best interest.

Regulatory provisions governing the financial reporting of U.S. public companies require that we maintain effective disclosure controls and internal controls over financial reporting across our operations in 31 countries. Effective internal controls are designed to provide reasonable assurance of compliance, and, as such, they can be susceptible to human error, circumvention or override, and fraud. Failure to maintain adequate, effective internal controls could result in potential financial misstatements or other forms of noncompliance that have an adverse impact on our results of operations, financial condition or organizational reputation.

We acquired businesses in recent years, and we may complete additional acquisitions and investments in the future that complement or expand our businesses. The success of this strategy will depend on our ability to successfully complete these transactions or arrangements, to integrate the businesses acquired in these transactions and to develop satisfactory working arrangements with our strategic partners in the joint ventures. We could encounter unexpected difficulties in completing these transactions and integrating the acquisitions with our existing operations. We also may not realize the degree or timing of benefits anticipated when we entered into a transaction. Several of our joint ventures operate pursuant to established agreements and, as such, we do not unilaterally control the joint venture. There is a risk that the partners' objectives for the joint venture may not be aligned with ours, leading to potential differences over management of the joint venture that could adversely impact its financial performance and consequent contribution to our earnings. Additionally, inability on the part of our partners to satisfy their contractual obligations under the agreements could adversely impact our results of operations and financial position. Certain of our joint venture partners have the ability to put their ownership interests to Dana at fair value. If a joint venture partner were to put its ownership interest to Dana, it could cause Dana to outlay significant amounts of cash to purchase the joint venture partner's ownership interest in addition to increased future cash outlays required to fund 100% of the operations on a go-forward basis, reducing available funds for other strategic initiatives and capital investments.

Our provision for income taxes and the cash outlays required to satisfy our income tax obligations in the future could be adversely affected by numerous factors. These factors include changes in the level of earnings in the tax jurisdictions in which we operate, changes in the valuation of deferred tax assets and liabilities, changes in our plans to repatriate the earnings of our non-U.S. operations to the U.S. and changes in tax laws and regulations. Our income tax returns are subject to examination by federal, state and local tax authorities in the U.S. and tax authorities outside the U.S. The results of these examinations and the ongoing assessments of our tax exposures could also have an adverse effect on our provision for income taxes and the cash outlays required to satisfy our income tax obligations.

We have a board committee and an executive officer position with responsibility for sustainability, additional dedicated employee resources, a cross-functional/business sustainability leadership team to further develop and implement an enterprise-wide sustainability strategy, and we have published a sustainability report. Our sustainability report includes our policies and practices on a variety of ESG matters, including the value creation opportunities provided by our products; diversity, equity, and inclusion; employee health and safety; community giving; and human capital management. These efforts may result in increased investor, media, employee, and other stakeholder attention to such initiatives, and such stakeholders may not be satisfied with our ESG practices or initiatives. Additionally, organizations that inform investors on ESG matters have developed rating systems for evaluating companies on their approach to ESG. Unfavorable ratings may lead to negative investor sentiment, which could negatively impact our stock price and our ability to access capital at competitive prices. Any failure, or perceived failure, to respond to ESG concerns could harm our business and reputation.

Our business is tied to general economic and industry conditions as demand for vehicles depends largely on the strength of the economy, employment levels, consumer confidence levels, the availability and cost of credit and the cost of fuel. These factors have had and could continue to have a substantial impact on our business. Adverse global economic conditions could also cause our customers and suppliers to experience severe economic constraints in the future, including bankruptcy, which could have a material adverse impact on our financial position and results of operations.

There is global scientific consensus that emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) continue to alter the composition of Earth's atmosphere in ways that are affecting and are expected to continue to affect the global climate. These considerations may lead to new international, national, regional, or local legislative or regulatory responses. Various stakeholders, including legislators and regulators, shareholders, and non-governmental organizations, as well as companies in many business sectors, including Dana, are continuing to look for ways to reduce GHG emissions. The regulation of GHG emissions from certain stationary or mobile sources or the imposition of carbon pricing mechanisms could result in additional costs to Dana in the form of taxes or emission allowances, facilities improvements, and energy costs, which would increase Dana's operating costs through higher utility, transportation, and materials costs. Because the impact of any future climate change-related legislative, regulatory, or product standard requirements on Dana's global businesses and products is dependent on the timing and design of mandates or standards, Dana is unable to predict their potential impact at this time. The potential physical impacts of climate change on Dana's facilities, suppliers, and customers and therefore on Dana's operations are highly uncertain and will be particular to the circumstances developing in various geographic regions. These may include extreme weather events and long-term changes in temperature levels and water availability. These potential physical effects may adversely affect the demand for Dana's products and the cost, production, sales, and financial performance of Dana's operations. A natural disaster could disrupt our operations, or our customers' or suppliers' operations and could adversely affect our results of operations and financial condition. Although we have continuity plans designed to mitigate the impact of natural disasters on our operations, those plans may be insufficient, and any catastrophe may disrupt our ability to manufacture and deliver products to our customers, resulting in an adverse impact on our business and results of operations. In addition, our global operations expose us to risks associated with public health crises, such as epidemics and pandemics, which could harm our business and cause our operating results to suffer. Pandemics, such as the novel coronavirus disease (COVID) pandemic, may have an adverse effect on our business, results of operations, cash flows and financial condition. Efforts to combat a pandemic can be complicated by viral variants and uneven access to, and acceptance and effectiveness of, vaccines globally. Pandemics may negatively impact the global economy, disrupt our operations as well as those of our customers, suppliers, and the global supply chains in which we participate, and create significant volatility and disruption of financial markets. The extent of the impact of a pandemic on our business and financial performance, including our ability to execute our near-term and long-term operational, strategic, and capital structure initiatives, will depend on the duration and severity of the pandemic, which are uncertain and cannot be predicted. We may face facility closure requirements and other operational restrictions with respect to some or all of our locations for prolonged periods of time due to, among other factors, evolving and increasingly stringent governmental restrictions including public health directives, quarantine policies or social distancing measures. We operate as part of the complex integrated global supply chains of our largest customers. As a pandemic dissipates at varying times and rates in different regions around the world, there could be a prolonged negative impact on these global supply chains. Our ability to continue operations at specific facilities will be impacted by the interdependencies of the various participants of these global supply chains, which are largely beyond our direct control. A prolonged shut down of these global supply chains would have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations, cash flows and financial condition.

The launch of new business is a complex process, the success of which depends on a wide range of factors, including the production readiness of our manufacturing facilities and manufacturing processes and those of our suppliers, as well as factors related to tooling, equipment, employees, initial product quality and other factors. Our failure to successfully launch material new or takeover business could have an adverse effect on our profitability and results of operations.

We own important intellectual property, including patents, trademarks, copyrights and trade secrets, and are involved in numerous licensing arrangements. Our intellectual property plays an important role in maintaining our competitive position in a number of the markets that we serve. Our competitors may develop technologies that are similar or superior to our proprietary technologies or design around the patents we own or license. Further, as we expand our operations in jurisdictions where the protection of intellectual property rights is less robust, the risk of others duplicating our proprietary technologies increases, despite efforts we undertake to protect them. Developments or assertions by or against us relating to intellectual property rights, and any inability to protect these rights, could have a material adverse impact on our business and our competitive position.

We recognize the increasing volume of cyber attacks and employ commercially practical efforts to provide reasonable assurance that the risks of such attacks are appropriately mitigated. Each year, we evaluate the threat profile of our industry to stay abreast of trends and to provide reasonable assurance our existing countermeasures will address any new threats identified. Despite our implementation of security measures, our IT systems and those of our service providers are vulnerable to circumstances beyond our reasonable control including acts of terror, acts of government, natural disasters, civil unrest and denial of service attacks which may lead to the theft of our intellectual property, trade secrets or business disruption. To the extent that any disruption or security breach results in a loss or damage to our data or an inappropriate disclosure of confidential information, it could cause significant damage to our reputation, affect our relationships with our customers, suppliers and employees, lead to claims against the company and ultimately harm our business. Additionally, we may be required to incur significant costs to protect against damage caused by these disruptions or security breaches in the future.

The mobility industry is beginning to shift away from petroleum fuel vehicles ("ICE" vehicles) and migrate to alternate fuel vehicles (as a group "EV-based vehicles"). As the market transitions from ICE vehicles to EV-based vehicles, the Company anticipates its content per vehicle opportunity will increase up to three-fold on a dollar basis. The Company's primary driveline content on ICE vehicles includes axles and driveshafts. As the market transitions to EV-based vehicles we anticipate losing driveshaft content but adding additional driveline content in the form of gearboxes, e-motors, e-axles, power electronics, and software controls. We anticipate a similar three-fold opportunity in thermal and sealing products, as current ICE-vehicle content is replaced with EV-based vehicle content including metallic bipolar plates, battery cold plates and power electronic cooling modules. With the increased content opportunity presented by EV-based vehicles, we are beginning to see increased competition when it comes to bidding on new customer programs. The number of competitors bidding on EV-based vehicle programs is higher than what we historically experienced on ICE vehicle programs. In addition, our OEM customers continue to assess which EV-based components they will vertically integrate and for which programs. A significant increase in competition for EV-based vehicle programs from existing and new market entrants could negatively impact our sales and profitability. A significant increase in vertical integration of EV-based vehicle components by our OEM customers could negatively impact our sales and profitability.

We are reliant upon sales to several significant customers. Sales to our ten largest customers accounted for 55% of our overall sales in 2023. Changes in our business relationships with any of our large customers or in the timing, size and continuation of their various programs could have a material adverse impact on us. The loss of any of these customers, the loss of business with respect to one or more of their vehicle models on which we have high component content, or a significant decline in the production levels of such vehicles would negatively impact our business, results of operations and financial condition. Pricing pressure from our customers also poses certain risks. Inability on our part to offset pricing concessions with cost reductions would adversely affect our profitability. We are continually bidding on new business with these customers, as well as seeking to diversify our customer base, but there is no assurance that our efforts will be successful. Further, to the extent that the financial condition of our largest customers deteriorates, including possible bankruptcies, mergers or liquidations, or their sales otherwise decline, our financial position and results of operations could be adversely affected.

The vehicular markets in which we operate are undergoing significant technological change, with increasing focus on electrified and autonomous vehicles. These and other technological advances could render certain of our products obsolete. Maintaining our competitive position is dependent on our ability to develop commercially-viable products and services that support the future technologies embraced by our customers.