DELPHI 2014 Annual Report Download - page 32

10
Our Global Operations
Information concerning principal geographic areas is set forth below. Net sales data reflects the manufacturing location
for the years ended December 31, 2014, 2013 and 2012. Net property data is as of December 31, 2014, 2013 and 2012.
Year Ended
December 31, 2014 Year Ended December 31, 2013 Year Ended December 31, 2012
(in millions)
Net Sales Net
Property (1) Net Sales Net Property (1) Net Sales Net Property (1)
United States (2) ................................... $ 5,658 $ 772 $ 5,300 $ 668 $ 5,193 $ 592
Other North America............................ 208 145 213 145 151 139
Europe, Middle East & Africa (3)......... 6,452 1,487 6,444 1,592 6,364 1,455
Asia Pacific (4) ..................................... 3,958 817 3,541 674 2,827 524
South America ...................................... 747 122 965 137 984 150
Total.................................................... $ 17,023 $ 3,343 $ 16,463 $ 3,216 $ 15,519 $ 2,860
(1) Net property data represents property, plant and equipment, net of accumulated depreciation.
(2) Includes net sales and machinery, equipment and tooling that relate to the Company's maquiladora operations located in Mexico. These assets are
utilized to produce products sold to customers located in the United States.
(3) Includes our country of domicile, Jersey, and the country of our principal executive offices, the United Kingdom. We had no sales in Jersey in any
period. We had net sales of $892 million, $727 million and $726 million in the United Kingdom for the years ended December 31, 2014, 2013 and
2012, respectively. We had net property in the United Kingdom of $231 million, $229 million and $191 million as of December 31, 2014, 2013 and
2012, respectively. The largest portion of net sales in the Europe, Middle East & Africa region was $892 million in the United Kingdom, $1,076 million
in Germany and $1,145 million in France for the years ended December 31, 2014, 2013 and 2012, respectively.
(4) Net sales and net property in Asia Pacific are primarily attributable to China.
Research, Development and Intellectual Property
We maintain technical engineering centers in major regions of the world to develop and provide advanced products,
processes and manufacturing support for all of our manufacturing sites, and to provide our customers with local engineering
capabilities and design development on a global basis. As of December 31, 2014, we employed over 20,000 scientists,
engineers and technicians around the world. Total expenditures for research and development activities, which include
engineering, were approximately $1.3 billion, $1.3 billion and $1.2 billion for the years ended December 31, 2014, 2013 and
2012, respectively. Each year we share some engineering expenses with OEMs and government agencies. While this amount
varies from year-to-year, it is generally in the range of 20% to 30% of engineering expenses.
We have formed a Technology Advisory Council, a panel of prominent global technology thought leaders, which guides
our product strategies and investments in technology with a focus on developing advanced technologies to drive growth. We
believe that our engineering and technical expertise, together with our emphasis on continuing research and development, allow
us to use the latest technologies, materials and processes to solve problems for our customers and to bring new, innovative
products to market. We believe that continued engineering activities are critical to maintaining our pipeline of technologically
advanced products. Given our strong financial discipline, we seek to effectively manage fixed costs and efficiently rationalize
capital spending by critically evaluating the profit potential of new and existing customer programs, including investment in
innovation and technology. We maintain our engineering activities around our focused product portfolio and allocate our capital
and resources to those products with distinctive technologies. We expect expenditures for engineering activities to be
approximately $1.3 billion for the year ended December 31, 2015.
We maintain a large portfolio of patents in the operation of our business. While no individual patent or group of patents,
taken alone, is considered material to our business, taken in the aggregate, these patents provide meaningful protection for our
products and technical innovations. Similarly, while our trademarks (particularly those protecting the Delphi brand) are
important to identify our position in the industry, we do not believe that any of these are individually material to our business.
We are actively pursuing marketing opportunities to commercialize and license our technology to both automotive and non-
automotive industries and we have selectively taken licenses from others to support our business interests. These activities
foster optimization of intellectual property rights.
Materials
We procure our raw materials from a variety of suppliers around the world. Generally, we seek to obtain materials in the
region in which our products are manufactured in order to minimize transportation and other costs. The most significant raw
materials we use to manufacture our products include aluminum, copper and resins. As of December 31, 2014, we have not