Overview
L.E.K. helps leading companies across the global automotive value chain develop and activate customized strategies for growth and success. Our deep sector expertise is built on broad project-based experience working with companies and investors across key market segments, including:
- Light vehicle component manufacturers
- Heavy and commercial vehicle component manufacturers
- Parts and vehicle distributors
- OEMs
- Aftermarket parts and brands
- Aftermarket retailers and service providers
Meet L.E.K.’s Automotive and Mobility Team
From vehicle electrification to autonomous driving, advancing technology is affecting the industry and changing how consumers engage in mobility. Discover how we help automotive and mobility companies navigate these shifts and turn them to their advantage.
Key questions and challenges
We help clients tackle the most critical issues facing the automotive industry today, including:
- How are consumer and regulatory changes affecting the future requirements for success across the automotive industry, and what strategies are operators using to grow/remain relevant?
- How should suppliers and OEMs respond to regional shifts in manufacturing supply and demand driven by growth in developing markets as well as recovery in North America and Europe?
- How is M&A reshaping the automotive full value chain, and what are the likely implications for suppliers of OEM and aftermarket parts?
- Where should parts and components suppliers look for growth in core versus adjacent markets, and what are the most viable growth pathways to consider?
- How can aftermarket parts and service providers take advantage of the ongoing shift from DIY to DIFM?
- How are changing needs in industrial end markets likely to impact demand for heavy vehicles, including trucks, construction equipment, agricultural machinery and numerous other specialty vehicle segments?
Examples of our work
L.E.K. is committed to providing our clients with insightful, meaningful and actionable results. We back up our recommendations with rigorous analysis and have a highly collaborative work style. The examples below provide more insights into how we’ve helped some of our automotive clients meet key objectives and achieve their goals:
- We helped a leading distributor of parts and supplies to the aftermarket service provider landscape create a strategy to overcome channel convergence in the industry and protect EBITDA margins. Industry research and analysis as well as workshops with the client’s management team helped build consensus around the facts and the best path forward.
- A major U.S. aftermarket service retailer engaged L.E.K. to create a “turnaround playbook” after recent margin erosion and stagnant sales. We identified the key strategic imperatives for the business and developed a set of core strategic initiatives and returned EBITDA to historical levels, thereby providing a foundation for growth.
- We worked with a provider of light repair services to the dealer channel to identify, prioritize and develop plans for growth into market adjacencies such as new service lines, a D2C model and an insurance product.
- A leading supplier of cast and forged parts to various heavy vehicle and industrial equipment end markets engaged L.E.K. to help develop a robust assessment of the company’s future growth opportunities in advance of a capital-raising transaction.
- We assisted a private equity-owned producer of branded automotive appearance and performance chemicals in reinvigorating growth across its portfolio. Our recommendations enabled the client to focus its efforts on the most critical areas, which included protecting the core, driving growth domestically and expanding internationally, thereby positioning the company well for a subsequent sale.
- A leading private equity firm engaged L.E.K. to help assess an online auto sales lead generator. Extensive primary research in the space indicated limited growth prospects for the target, and the client did not execute the investment opportunity.
