Nordson Corporation

operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Nordstrom Corporation First Quarter Fiscal Year 2025 conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press the star button followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press the pound key or star 2. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Laura Mahoney. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning. This is Laura Mahoney, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. I'm here with Sundaram Nagarajan, our President and CEO, and Dan Hopgood, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We welcome you to our conference call today, Thursday, February 20th, to report Nordstrom's Fiscal 2025 First Quarter results. You can find both our press release as well as our webcast live presentation that we will refer to during today's call on our website at .nordstrom.com and .nordstrom.com. This conference call is being broadcast live on our investor website and will be available there for 30 days. There will be a telephone replay of the conference call available until Thursday, February 27th, 2025. During this conference call, we will make references to non-GAAP financial metrics. We've provided a reconciliation of these metrics to the most comparable GAAP metrics in the press release issued yesterday. Before we begin, please refer to slide two of our presentation where we note that certain statements regarding our future performance that are made during this call may be forward-looking based upon Nordstrom's current expectations. These statements may involve a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors as discussed in the company's filings with the Security and Exchange Commission that could cause actual results to materially differ. I also want to take a moment to highlight that effective November 1st, 2024, which is the beginning of our fiscal year, the Measurement and Control Solutions Division formally reported as of the Industrial Precision Solutions segment, has been realigned to the Advanced Technology Solutions segment based on a reassessment of our portfolio. Our segment reporting reflects this change and prior year financial information has been revised to be comparable. Please refer to the appendix in our earnings press release for comparative segment data by quarter for fiscal 2024. Now moving to today's agenda on slide three, NACA will discuss first quarter highlights. She will then turn the call over to Dan to review sales and earnings performance for the total company and the three business segments. Dan will also discuss the balance sheet and cash flow. NACA will then share a high-level commentary about our enterprise performance and provide an update on the fiscal 2025 second quarter guidance. We will then be happy to take your questions. With that, I'll turn the call over to NACA.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining Northsend's fiscal 2025 first quarter conference call. We're starting the year with the sales of $615 million, which is at the low end of our guidance range due to stock demand in key end markets, particularly electronics and industrial and foreign exchange headwinds that were slightly worse than expectations. This more than offset the solid performance of our atrium acquisition as well as organic growth within our consumer non-durable product lines. Positively, order entry rates accelerated throughout the quarter, growing double digits above the prior year order entry run rate. You can see this growth in our backlog, which increased sequentially from fiscal year end by approximately $85 million, ending at approximately $670 million as we exit the first quarter. The improvement in order entry rates and backlog is particularly encouraging to see in our electronics businesses. Our continued focus on top customers and products, coupled with leveraging NBS Next to drive factory efficiencies and manage costs, led to another strong quarter of operational performance. The team delivered 56% growth margin, 26% operating profit margin, 31% EBITDA margin, and converted free cash flow at nearly 150% of net income. We achieved adjusted earnings per share of $2.06, slightly above the midpoint of our guidance despite weaker sales. As a growth compounder, we remain steadfast with our balanced capital deployment strategy, repurchasing approximately $60 million in shares during the quarter. In addition, we paid $45 million in dividends and decreased our net leverage ratio to 2.4 times, exceeding the first quarter comfortably within our targeted range. Our consistently strong operating performance, quarter over quarter, positions as well to capitalize profitably on growth as demand improves throughout fiscal 2025. I'll speak more about the enterprise performance in a few moments, but first, I'll turn the call over to Dan to provide detailed perspective on our financial results

for

the quarter.

Thank you, Naga, and good morning to everyone. On slide number five, you'll see a summary of our overall operating company results. First quarter 2025 sales were $615 million, down 3% from the prior year first quarter sales of $633 million. This was driven by an 8% increase from the Atrium acquisition offset by an overall organic sales decrease of 9% and unfavorable currency translation of about 2%. Demand was choppy to start the year, and we experienced headwinds in several end markets as we exited the calendar year, particularly in selected systems and medical businesses. Coupled with a 2% FX headwind, this drove sales at the bottom end of our guidance range. As Naga mentioned, we were encouraged to see order entry rates accelerate throughout the quarter, which is reflected in our backlog growth since the start of the quarter. In addition, organic growth in packaging, nonwovens, optical sensors, and measurement and controls businesses helped soften the revenue decline. Growth profit remained strong in the first quarter at 56% of sales, and EBITDA adjusted for special items in both periods, totaled $188 million, or 31% of sales. While overall EBITDA was down 4% from the prior year, driven by lower sales volume, EBITDA margins were flat year over year, inclusive of the newly acquired Atreon business. Looking at non-operating expenses, net interest expense was $26 million, an increase of $5 million versus the prior year, driven by higher debt levels tied to the Atreon acquisition. This was partially offset by a $2 million improvement in other income and expense, primarily reflecting foreign exchange transactional variations compared to the prior year. Tax expense for the quarter was $22 million, or an effective tax rate of 19%. This is in line with our guidance range for fiscal year 2025, and 200 basis points lower than the prior year. Net income in the quarter totaled $95 million, or $1.65 per share, excluding $10 million of non-recurring costs related to the Atreon acquisition and selected restructuring actions, as well as $19 million in amortization of acquisition-related intangibles. Adjusted earnings per share totaled $2.06 per share, slightly above the midpoint of our quarterly guidance, but a 7% decrease from the prior year adjusted earnings per share of $2.21. The decrease in -over-year earnings reflects the impact of lower organic sales volume and higher acquisition-related interest expense I referenced just a moment ago. Now it's turn to slide 6-8 to review the first quarter 2025 segment performance. Starting with Industrial Precision Solutions, they had sales of $300 million, a decrease of 11% compared to the prior year first quarter, down 8% organically and 3% due to unfavorable currency impacts. Weaker system sales in our industrial coatings and polymer processing product lines were partially offset by growth in packaging and non-wovens product lines. Both our industrial coatings and polymer product lines are coming off as strong system delivery years in 2024. And you may also recall that we're in the midst of transitioning selected industrial coating manufacturing to our new South Carolina plant, which should be substantially completed in the second fiscal quarter. EBITDA for the segment was $113 million in the quarter, or 38% of sales. This is a decrease of 10% compared to the prior year EBITDA of $126 million, driven by lower sales volumes in the quarter. EBITDA margin improved 1% despite lower sales -over-year due to a higher mix of parts and consumables versus the prior year. Turning to slide 7, you'll see medical and fluid solution sales of $194 million increased 21% compared to the prior year's first quarter. Growth was driven by the acquired Atreon business, which delivered $53 million in revenue during the quarter. This was offset by double digit declines in our medical interventional product lines, where de-stocking trends continue to impact demand, and we completed some strategic program rationalization to reposition the business for profitable growth. It's important to note that de-stocking trends began in our second quarter of fiscal 2024, impacting the -over-year decline on a comparative basis. We expect our interventional product lines to return to sequential growth heading into the second quarter of this year. EBITDA for medical and fluid solutions was $64 million, or 33% of sales, which was an 8% increase from prior year EBITDA of $60 million. The increase was driven by higher sales from the Atreon acquisition. EBITDA margins were down 400 basis points, reflecting the lower contribution from Atreon. But as a reminder, we expect our EBITDA margins to improve sequentially for the Atreon business as we continue to integrate and implement NBS Next to improve manufacturing efficiencies and overall profitability. Importantly, Atreon's first quarter performance was actually well ahead of our initial targets for this business. Turning to slide 8, you'll see advanced technology solutions sales were $121 million, an 11% decrease compared to the prior year first quarter. The decrease included a 10% organic volume decline, as well as an unfavorable currency translation of 1%. The decrease in sales was driven by double digit declines in electronics processing and X-ray product lines, partially offset by growth in our optical sensors and measurement and control businesses. Despite weaker Q1 performance, we continue to see improvement in order intake as the semiconductor and electronic applications we serve continue to show signs of improvement. Orders were of double digits in the quarter versus the prior year, and backlog grew double digits sequentially from the end of the year for this segment. In short, we continue to see encouraging signs in ATS for the balance of 2025, despite a slow start to the year. First quarter EBITDA was $23 million for the segment, or 19% of sales, in line with the prior year first quarter EBITDA of $23 million, or 17% of sales. The improvement in EBITDA margin was driven by continued emphasis on cost management and improved manufacturing efficiency. The margin enhancements we've implemented position the ATS segment well as demand continues to improve. Finally, let's turn to the balance sheet and cash flows on slide 9. At the end of the first quarter, we had cash on hand of $130 million, and net debt was $2.1 billion, resulting in a leverage ratio of 2.4 times based on trail of 12 months EBITDA. This is a slight improvement from year end and within our long-term target leverage range of 2 to 2.5 times. Our free cash flow generation continues to be a compounding strength at $138 million during the quarter, resulting in a 146% conversion rate on net income. And we continue to strategically deploy the strong cash flow. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately $60 million in shares, in addition to our quarterly dividend of $45 million, which as a reminder, we increased by 15% at the end of last year. We also reduced net debt by $20 million during the quarter, while continuing to invest in our base businesses, spending $21 million on capital investment during the quarter. All in all, we had a solid operational quarter, despite a slower sales start, and were well positioned to capitalize on profitable growth as demand normalizes in the market. With that, let's turn to slide 10 and I'll turn the call back to Naga.

Thanks, Dan. I also want to thank the Norton team for delivering strong operating performance in a challenging demand environment. While first quarter was a slow start to the year from a revenue perspective, I'm encouraged by our ability to deliver -in-class profitability in varying market scenarios, while remaining invested in our best growth opportunities. Among our bright spots is the ongoing integration of the Atreon acquisition. During the quarter, I had the opportunity to visit our three new Atreon manufacturing sites. I'm excited about the strong product portfolio that we acquired, as well as the energetic colleagues for quickly embracing and starting to deploy the NBS Next growth framework. We're also seeing growing acceptance of Atreon's newest generation myocardial protection system, which is used during open heart procedures. Positive market acceptance is accelerating sales for this product, including an attractive opportunity to recapitalize its install base. Also during the quarter, several of our product lines were celebrated with notable industry achievements. Norton's spin-sam acoustic inspection system won three awards for its industry-leading, wafer inspection throughput, and -in-class image quality, defect capture, and footprint. Our QuadraPro manual X-ray system received the ProductSronica Innovation Award for its exceptional image clarity and defect detection capabilities within back-end semiconductor and SMT applications. And our Precision Agriculture Division's new ORIENT-PRO product was recognized for technical innovation at the EIMA 2024 International Agriculture Machinery Exhibition. The ORIENT-PRO is an integrated system for regulating and measuring the actual amount of product sprayed by liquid fertilizer distribution systems. Two notable electronics customers also recognized our market-leading collaboration. In December, we received supplier awards, both from TSMC and JBL, recognizing our product performance and support of critical underfill applications, as well as our dedicated, responsive, and talented local Norton teams. We remain committed to product innovation, packing strong vitality metrics in our packaging assembly and nonwoven product lines. This is reflected in the strong performance of those product lines in the quarter. We also have new products currently being launched in our medical fluid components and polymer processing product lines. In all cases, these new products are designed to solve the unique needs of our customers. Regardless of dynamic environment, OTSYN remains steadfast in our commitment to innovation through differentiated products, our customer-intimate sales model, and protecting the diversified niche end markets we operate. These competitive advantages secure our position as a high-quality growth compounder, even in challenging macro environments. Our division-led organization provides our teams with a clear view of our end markets, and they know where we need to focus and where we're doing well. We will continue to manage costs in weaker sales environments while balancing investments that support the increasing order entry trends that we experience throughout the quarter. Turn now to our outlook on slide 11. We are entering the second quarter of fiscal 2025 with approximately 670 million in backlog and order entry that continue to improve throughout the quarter across all three segments. Based on these factors, as well as current foreign exchange rates and end market expectations, we anticipate delivering second quarter sales in the range of $650 million to $690 million, and adjusted earnings in the range of $2.30 to $2.50 per diluted share. At this point in time, we're not updating our full year guidance range, although we would now expect our sales for the year to be on the lower end of our full year expectations given the slower start to the year and broader geopolitical macro environment dynamics. As always, I want to thank our customers, shareholders, and the Norton team for your continued support. With that, we will pause and take your questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. At this time, I would like to remind everyone that in order to ask a question, press the star button, then the number one on the telephone keypad. One moment please for your first question. Your first question comes from the line of Matt Somerville of the DA Davidson. Please go ahead.

Thanks. A couple questions. Help me understand a little bit more about what played out in your electronics related business in the quarter. I guess I was under the impression that you had seen order inflection supporting a returned and sustained pathway to organic growth in that business. Help me understand how the quarter played out and then how incoming orders inform the go-forward view on semi slash electronics, and then I will follow up. Thank you.

Thanks, Matt. The midst of our ATS business really was largely timing of orders, particularly in our X-ray and electronic processing product lines. In short, we expected more of our backlog to ship in the quarter at the beginning of the quarter, which is what happened. But that said, order entry throughout the quarter progressed very positively, and we expect the sales or shipments of ATS to continue to be strong through the year. In this segment, order entry is up double digit, backlog is up double digit, probably the strongest we have seen in this part of the cycle.

And then as a follow up, just getting over to the interventional side of your medical related business. Starting the anniversary that D-stock, you mentioned you expect to see quarter on quarter growth. When do we start to see year on year growth more aligned to the long-term trajectory you lay out for that business?

Yeah, I think the inflection of that, as we said, the D-stocking really started in earnest in the second quarter of last year. And so from a year over year comp, I think we'll continue to see tough comps through the first half of the year, and then we would see that inflection point starting in really Q3 and heading into Q4.

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Buscalli of BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning guys. Good morning. In the ATS segment, if you were to exclude that the movement of that measurement control solutions, what would organic growth have been? And then what's the rationale behind moving that out of IPS and into ATS?

Yeah, let me take that question first. Look, there is a significant overlap in customers for MCS with the IPS customers. But if you look at it from a product perspective and the technology perspective, it is more a test and measurement kind of division. And so it belongs better with our further analysis. We have decided to have that in the ATS business. And can you answer the part of that without and with?

Yeah, and if you, it's not, to be honest, it's not a huge impact. Certainly organically, they were a positive contributor to the segment. But when you look at the materiality of the MCS business versus the total segment, it's not a big needle mover on the overall growth or organic impact to your year on year. Certainly MCS grew year over year and it mitigated a little bit of the decline we saw in some of the electronics processing and x-ray that we mentioned. But it's not a big needle mover. It's either segment, I would say. Okay. Yeah, and obviously, as slow as starts of the year than you expected and you're trending towards the low end of that guidance range for the top line for the full year, are there things you're working on to still achieve at least the midpoint of whether it's further restructuring or some sort of market enhancement? Yeah, it's a great question. Let me take that one. And look, I would say as we think about the full year and the reason we're not changing our guidance ranges, it's frankly a little soon to call exactly how the year is going to play out. We're in a very dynamic environment, depending on the headlines you read changing day to day. What I would say is just based on soft start to the year, we see our sales toward the lower end of our range. But as we've demonstrated in Q1, we're still quite confident that we can deliver on our earnings commitment even with sales toward the lower end of that range. So for those reasons, we're not going to tighten things up. I think as we get into, as we finish out the second quarter and we reassess where our backlogs and rates, which as Naga mentioned, have been quite strong, we'll reassess what that looks like for the full year and tighten things up. What I would say is we're comfortable in our sales range and pretty comfortable with our earnings commitments despite the slow start to the sales year. And that's really demonstrated in our first quarter profit delivery.

Let me maybe add to that. So if you think, if you zoom up and say, look, let me look at it broadly and think about the market and where the company's at and what we're thinking about for the full year, I'll tell you on the positive side, order entries up in all three segments, backlog building in all three segments, ATS being a significant contributor to the backlog increases. Operational performance is strong in a environment like Dan mentioned, we had a very strong operating income performance, very well positioned to grow. Third thing I would tell you is our innovations in many of our businesses are starting to deliver on growth. If you think about our adhesive business, our Harmony applicator that is in the market is contributing nicely to our growth. If you think about Spin Sam and new emission, it is not contributing to growth yet, but it positions us really well to continue to grow. If you look in the medical side in our fluid components business, a new product line called PharmaLog starting to launch. So innovation, operational performance, order entry, all three positives for the outlook that we're thinking about. Clearly one negative is this we live in. If you ignore the environment and we look at our order entry and backlog, you'd be very confident. But one negative is there is a broader happiness in geopolitical as well as macroeconomic environment. So hopefully that helps you.

Okay, thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Hammond of KeyBank Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning. Good morning. Morning. So just real quick on the guide. It sounds like you think right now lower end of the sales guide, but you're still kind of closer to the midpoint. One, is that correct? And two, what are kind of the drivers that are kind of offsetting the weaker sales?

Yeah, so appreciate the question, Mike. And I think that's the right way to think about it. And, you know, I would say the best indicator is look at our performance for the first quarter. We were at the very low end of our sales guidance and still delivered the midpoint or slightly above the midpoint of our earnings guidance. That's not a fluke. We think that's replicatable for the balance of the year. Again, the sales outlook, I think it's too soon to call, you know, typically, I'll remind you guys, we typically see a much stronger second half in general. You look at our history across the company. In a market where we see accelerating orders, that trend could be even exacerbated. And so it's a bit of a wait and see and continue to monitor how demand continues to play out for the year. Indicators today are very good. If that continues, you know, we'll see how the second half plays out. But what I would say is in general is even if we don't see any continued acceleration, we're comfortable with our sales on the lower end that we can still deliver on our profit commitments by simply managing our operations and our cost structure to ensure that we can deliver on those commitments.

You know, maybe add a little bit color to it if you take segment by segment, right? So if you think about ATS, we've got this business position from a cost perspective through the last down cycle. And if you look at the decremental performance of this segment in the first quarter, it is very strong. I mean, they had a tough organic revenue growth, but their decrementals were, you know, they were pretty much flat in terms of dollar income they generated when compared to last year, right? So from an ATS perspective, a nice performance. And if you think about decrementals for IPS, again, a very strong performance. This is a solid business. This is a business where we have implemented MVS Next and has delivered great. So if you think about those two, we're in very good shape. And if you look at MFS, if you look at MFS with the ATRION together, there is a mixed issue. And you could think that our operating performance or operating margin performance was not that good. But I would remind you that you have ATRION, which is at a lower margin when compared to our core MFS businesses. And if you account for that, our core MFS businesses again had strong decremental performance. So that is the confidence we have as we think about it. And in businesses where we have weaker sales, we are taking action to reduce cost. It is not broad-based. It's not across all of our businesses. But in places where our sales is weak, you know, we are adjusting costs. So that's maybe adding a little bit more color to what Dennis is telling you about what our expectations are.

Now, that's very helpful. I wanted to follow up on that medical margin dynamic. Can you give us a sense of how much of the margin dilution was just ATRION coming in and what the decrementals were on the base? And then how it looks from a dilution perspective as we go forward. And then just on the medical destocking, I mean, I understand that the comps get easier, but just any update on kind of where we're at in that process, is it still the view that that carries through the first half and then abates? Thanks.

Yeah. So the simple way to think of it, I would say that our core medical business were basically in line with what we would expect here on the line. The majority of the overall, and I'm speaking to EBITDA margins, the majority of the EBITDA margin is tied to, you know, growth in MFS came from ATRION, which is a lower EBITDA margin from our base business. I would say to Nagat's point, our decrementals and our base business are right in line with what we expect. And if you're on top of that, adding $53 million, let's say, you know, mid-20s EBITDA, that's the majority of the dilution that you're margining over here.

Let me, I'm not sure, you know, at least the line was cutting out a little bit. Let me make sure we, you know, I repeat what some of what Dan mentioned here. Let's start with our core MFS business. Clearly, our core MFS business EBITDA margins are, you know, better than ATRION. ATRION margins are sort of in the mid-20s, and we certainly have a very good line of sight for that business to continue to improve and get to our valuation model expectations around, you know, high 20s to low 30s, right? So that is, that pathway is there. So long term, ATRION continues to improve and continue to add to MFS, right? In terms of MFS core decrementals, the core decrementals were in line with what we have for the company. So that is, you know, for us, the MFS performance was mainly due to mixed issues with ATRION contributing while core business is organically being down.

And then just the destocking?

Yeah, from the destocking perspective, you know, if you remember, destocking started some time last year. There are two things going on here, and this is probably something that we have not talked about. You have, you know, we were organically down 11% in MFS, and half of that is from destocking, but half of it is also, for the first time, you're seeing a reset in our strategic repositioning of some programs that we have in our finished devices. And so that restocking is, that repositioning of programs is substantially complete. And so you will start to see from second quarter a sequential growth in that, and destocking should abate sometime in third to fourth quarter. And we are starting to see order rates. So I think what is important to know is that order rates in our medical interventional component business are picking up, or order rates in our medical fluid components have been very strong. So this is the business that had undergone a lot of destocking from a biopharma and surgical perspective. That is coming back very nicely. And we're beginning to see sequential improvement on MIS.

Yeah, I think that's an important point, Naga. Our medical business is contributing to both the order growth and the backlog growth, as you said, all three of our segments are. And so we're, we see very good line of sight that's sequential improvement. The year over year count will be tough until the second half.

Okay, thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Michael Lauren of Baird. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Good morning. So, not to overly harp on the guide, I just want to make sure I understand what's embedded on the revenue side of things. I would say the first quarter, as you said, was a little bit more your expectations, FX a little worse. Is that a majority of the move, excuse me, for the revenue to be at the low end? And maybe I suppose what is the assumption then for end market recovery curves, normal seasonality, backlog conversion that's embedded in that lower assumption? Is it pretty normal sequentials from here, pretty normal backlog outlay, any kind of color around those things would be super helpful.

Yeah, I appreciate the question. So I'll start with a couple of things. As you look at our backlog, I can't say 100% because there's some one offs in there, but the vast majority of our backlog will be in 2025. These aren't, we're not taking multi-year orders. We're not, this isn't a replay of COVID where we're taking three orders three years out. This is, these are current year deliveries. And so I think as you look at ongoing, you know, book to bill and or backlog, I think that's the way to think about it is that these are normal recurring orders that we're taking and not any type of long-term, long-term pre-orders like we've had coming out of COVID in some of our businesses. As I think about the full year, again, if you just play out the first quarter myths or the first quarter shortfall of sales, I mean, that's naturally, if you flow that through for the year, it's going to put us toward the lower end of our sales guidance. We are expecting some level of recovery in the second half that is supported by number one, I would say our normal cyclical, cyclicality of the business. We typically have a stronger second half to begin with, but it's also supported by the acceleration that we're seeing in order intake throughout the first quarter and frankly, even into the early days of the second quarter. And so I think if you think about that outlook, I'll maybe talk about what underlies our revenue assumptions for the year. If you think of the low end of our guidance, you know, that basically says we're going to see low single digit growth for the year in APS. We're going to see basically flattish to slightly down sales within our IPS and our medical business. And then we're going to see the contribution come through from the atrium acquisition. If you think of the higher end of our guidance, that anticipates, I would say, a more accelerated, more historical recovery in our APS segments, which we're not banking on. So let's call that a bigger ramp in APS, as well as recovery in some of the capital investment cycles and industrial and a bigger rebound from the de-stocking in medical. So we're not counting on new significant recovery. That doesn't mean it couldn't happen. And so as we look at it today, we're simply following it based on what we see today. And that would say, you know, the first quarter miss is going to kind of flow through, but the rest of the year seems to be playing out in line.

Good. Super helpful there. And then just kind of a question on what's that recovery in these markets. I know earlier Naga was talking about the positive decremental margin performance, particularly in the ETS side, and I suppose as well in the MFS side. What does the torque look like to the upside? You know, obviously the IPS margins are already really healthy levels, and I know AID if I mix, but still really strong levels. What kind of torque would you expect to see in those margins or incremental margins as the volume recovers and normalizes to a more historically normal pattern?

So let me make sure I understand your question. You're asking from an incremental margin performance, what we would expect going forward? Is that the question? Correct. Yeah. Yeah, I think my best guidance to that would be in line with what we've said historically, which is, you know, look, overall we've said about a 35% incremental mixed between acquisition and organic. And as you think about that, obviously the organic growth comes with a higher incremental acquisition, as we talked about with Atreons margins comes with a lower incremental. So I would think of that blended rate at 35% is still a good long-term planning target. Obviously the organic above that, the inorganic below that, but the 35% mix is kind of a good blended range to use still.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Yeah. Next question comes from the line of Suri Boroditsky of Jeffreys. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking the question. So maybe building on the last question, as we think specifically on ATS, you know, that business has seen margins decrease substantially over the last few years. So how should we think about incrementals in this segment once demand influx and what would it take to get back to that, you know, 23% plus margins you saw in 2022 or is that sort of a one-time event? Thanks.

Yeah. You know, in general, we expect that as the sales recovers, we get back to where the margins are. We were in 2022. You know, there may be some upside, but you know, it is, you know, remember this is a business where our R&D investments are critical to our growth. And so you're always going to see this business have higher R&D investments, but as the sales recover, I have, you know, every confidence that we get back to the margins we were at in 2022.

That's helpful. And maybe just on the weaker growth in IPS, you know, how much of this is related to underlying demand versus challenging comparables that you had from the

IPS? I think the IPS, let me, I'll give you a broader view and then Dan can help you with a little bit more detail. On IPS, the biggest comparable issues are in our system businesses, our two large system businesses of PPS and ICS, where we had shipments from, you know, prior huge backlogs. But if you think about our consumer non-durable business, our adhesive business, they're growing nicely in line with our expectations already.

Yeah. And I think maybe just to add some additional color on the industrial coatings and polymer businesses. To your point, if you go back to last year, large backlogs, large multi-year backlogs that we were working off, that has normalized. And so from a year over year comparability standpoint, that does create some comps this year. But importantly, when we talk about order strengthening and backlog growth, we are seeing it in those businesses as well. And so we see a clear path to that starting to rebuild and inflect. And I think, you know, you'll see that play out in the form of sequential growth in those businesses going forward, but we'll have this year over year comparability to work through because of the large system backlog that we had coming out of last couple of years.

You know, one additional point to make here is we're also beginning to see modest sequential improvement in our air ag business. And I know the general agriculture market is still down, but we're beginning to see some modest improvement in order entry and backlog in that business.

Thank you.

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, press the star button followed by the number one on the telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Chris Dankert of Loop Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hey, morning, guys. Morning.

Maybe just

a conceptual question. I guess, if we go back to the medical segment, Atreons been doing really well on an organic basis. Is there anything to learn from Atreons operations in terms of they didn't seem to get destocked the same way that legacy interventional did? So I mean, is there a difference in customer set? Is there a difference in how they stocked? Maybe just conceptually, what's how do we think about that?

Yeah, I think it's a great question, Chris. In terms of there are two things going on, which you need to recognize. Atreons serves the fluid components and that, you know, Atreon has two parts to it. One is the consumable component part. Another is the system part. So in their system, this is the myocardial protection system that they're launching their new generation product, which is the third generation. And that market acceptance, as I mentioned in my comments, is going really well. So you have the benefit of a new product launch and a recap of existing business existing systems, which is different and has got no resemblance to our MIS business, right? A medical interventional business. That's one. On the component side of the business, which is their hockey Roberts business, in that business, they went through destocking long before we started seeing it in our medical interventional business. So there is a timing difference there. And then the third thing I would tell you is our fluid component business resembles more the Atreon component business than our medical interventional business, right? So there are different products, different end markets. We are seeing the same patterns we are seeing in hockey Roberts business, in Atreon's component business, as we are seeing in our medical fluid component business, right? Hopefully that helps you.

That's extremely helpful. Thank you, Naga. And then maybe just to circle back, I mean, back in October, and I could be interpreting this wrong, but you sounded fairly optimistic about just the deals that were out there from an acquisition perspective. What was kind of coming across your desk, I guess, would you echo that same level of optimism today?

Yes.

You know,

we continue to be active. We continue to look at deals, but we're going to be pretty strategically and financially disciplined, you know? And so we continue to work the pipeline. Our pipeline continues to build. The number of inbound may be lesser, but we still have a pretty good pipeline. So what you read in the papers around inbound is lesser, but the activity level continues to be pretty good for us. But we're going to be thoughtful in what we choose to do.

Makes sense. Well, thanks so much for the call, Er.

Yep.

Your next question comes from the line of Walter Litak of Seaport Global. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, guys. Good morning. I wanted to go back to the 2025 guidance and sales questions again. And just, I think, Dan, when you were going through, you gave some good delineation around the segments. And so just to repeat it back, so I heard him right, you're thinking that MFS could be mid to high end, high end of the revenue guide, ATS at the low end and IPS at the low end. Is that kind of what you guys are thinking on a segment basis?

No. So what I was referring to is if you think of the upper and lower bounds of our guidance, what I would say is if you think of the lower end of our guide, that would say our IPS or the industrial businesses are down low single digits for the year. And MFS is down low single digits or near flat year over year, excluding atrium, right, set aside atrium. And then the low end of our guidance would contemplate what I would say a very modest recovery in ATS. So think of ATS being up low single digits. That's kind of our, that's our low end thinking, right. Converse that with the upper end of our guidance would be a more traditional ramp in ATS of higher growth. Again, which we're not counting on, but what happened. And it would also contemplate a faster recovery from some of the de-stocking that we're seeing in the medical business. So think, you know, low single digit growth in medical as well as the general recovery in the industrial markets. And so I would say the upper end is more stronger recovery in ATS, low single digit growth in other business, in medical and industrial versus the low end of our guidance would say there's very little recovery in medical, very little recovery in industrial and just modest recovery in ATS. If that helps with some color. Okay.

Yeah, I appreciate that. That's, that's very helpful. And just kind of drilling into the industrial precision part of it a little bit. The, you know, happy to hear that, AirAg, that there's a potential plus there. I wonder if you could go into maybe a little bit more detail about is it a new product? Is it Europe? Is it rest of the world where you're seeing some green shoots? And then maybe, you know, talk about some of those other sectors beyond polymers and coatings, like, you know, now I know, you know, the auto sector very well, you know, what's going on there, you know, what's happening with other things.

Great question. Maybe I'll start and let Naga add some comments. I'll start with you responding maybe to the AirAg question. So, as Naga mentioned, so A, on the product side, we are continuing to, you know, evolve and bring new products to market. In fact, I think we mentioned one that we received some awards for recently. Um, more generally, as far as demand in that business, we've certainly seen that business stabilized. We're seeing good, what I'll say, you know, ongoing recovery and order rates. We would expect that business to return to year over year growth in the second quarter as they're continuing to, um, to show strength in order rates. I will tell you, really, Q1, I think we've mentioned this before, Q1 is really the last tough comparison for them. If you recall last year at this time or in the first quarter, they were working off a large backlog. And so, first quarter last year was kind of the last tough comp for them. We've seen that business stabilized, I would say, even going back to Q4. We're now starting to move back into this growth mode as they're, or past the year over year comparisons, tough comparisons. So, good stability, good ongoing demand improvement, and a good path to returning to growth in that business in the next quarter.

So, let me follow up with that. You know, one other additional data point on AirRag is that during last year, you know, this business performed really well on the they used the short work week program that is available in Italy for industrial businesses. Now, what is interesting is that in the first quarter, given their order dynamics, they have brought back their workforce completely. So, essentially getting ready and being able to make products so that they can start to, you know, start to meet the commitments they've made with customers. So, that is kind of another data point that gives us confidence that our AirRag business will start to return to growth. So, now let's take the broader industrial businesses. And, you know, we've already talked about, you know, our plastic business, we've talked about our ICS business. Interestingly, even in both those businesses, we have two new introductions. On the ICS side, we have a new manual powder coating product that has been launched, which is doing really well. And you also have a prodigy dye that is in the plastics business that is getting very good market acceptance. So, we have some new products, but it's very difficult to overcome the system declines that they have. But interesting comments to sort of share with you. In terms of our other adhesive businesses, our non-woven business is doing extremely well. We have new products there. We have a Harmony applicator that I mentioned that is doing very well, adding to the work that they're doing on parts growth. That is also doing well. Their system business through product tiering has been very successful for them. So, that business after a couple of years of down years, it is coming back nicely. Our packaging business, adhesive packaging business, is holding its own. And they have some pretty exciting new products that they're working on that, you know, we expect towards the end of the year that we'll be in market with. So, you know, pretty good movement across our industrial businesses. You know, one thing to note, and I'm not sure how it came across in our conversations, our parts mix in the adhesive businesses are pretty strong, and they've done well, and they have mitigated some of the system weaknesses. But having said all of that, the order entry is up in this segment. It is up in plastics. It is up in ICS, and it's also up in our businesses that have grown in the quarter. So, hopefully that gives you a little bit more data points.

Okay, yeah. Thanks. Yeah,

thanks for that detail. Appreciate it.

There are no further questions at this time. With that, I will now turn the call back over to Naga for final closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you for your time and attention on today's call. Have a great day.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes your conference call. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.