Ingersoll Rand Inc.

then the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now turn the call over to Matthew Fort, Vice President of Investor Relations. You may begin your conference.

Thank you, and welcome to the Ingersoll Rand 2024 Second Quarter Earnings Call. I'm Matthew Fort, Vice President of Investor Relations. And joining me this morning are Vicente Rinal, Chairman and CEO, and Vic Kinney, Chief Financial Officer. We issued our earnings release and presentation yesterday, and we will release these during the call. Both are available on the investor relations section of our website. In addition, a replay of this conference call will be available later today. Before we start, I want to remind everyone that certain statements on this call are forward looking in nature and are subject to the risks and uncertainties discussed in our previous SEC filings. Please review the forward looking statements on slide two for more details. In addition, in today's remarks, will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. You can find a reconciliation of these measures to the most comparable measure calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP on our slide presentation and in our earnings release, both of which are available on the investor relations section of our website. On today's call, we will review our company and segment financial highlights and provide an update to our 2024 guidance. For today's Q&A session, We ask that each caller keep to one question and one follow-up to allow time for other participants. At this time, I will turn the call over to Vicente.

Thanks, Matthew, and good morning to all. I would like to begin by thanking and acknowledging our employees for their hard work, dedication, and continuing to think and act like owners, helping us to deliver another record quarter in Q2. Starting on slide three, despite the challenging macroeconomic environment, Our team delivered another record quarter results, demonstrating the continuous strength of our execution engine, IRX. We remain nimble and are prepared to pivot as market conditions change. And based on our solid performance, we are once again raising our 2024 full year guidance. Turning to slide four, our economic growth engine describes how we deliver durable compounding results. We remain committed to our strategy. And over the cycle, delivering our long-term investor day targets as outlined on this page. RRX is our competitive differentiator. And combined with our unique ownership mindset, we expect to continue to deliver long-term value creation. With that in mind, I would like to provide a brief update on our growth initiative. On slide five, let me start with our inorganic growth initiative. We're pleased to highlight three recently closed transactions. which together are expected to achieve an average of mid-teens ROIC by year three. Let me quickly walk you through these deals. First, CAPS, which is a leading provider of compressed air and power generation services. This is a great example of strategic channel expansion, giving us access to a large install base, strong end-user relationships, and robust technician network. Next is Fruitland. which expands our technology with low-flow applications. And lastly, we have Dell Pumps, emission-critical high-margin pumping solution across high-growth sustainable end markets in India. On the bottom of the page, I'd like to highlight that with the closure of these transactions, along with the closure of ILC Dover within the quarter, we have already far exceeded our analyzed inorganic revenue target of 400 to 500 business points setting us up well for a good start in 2025. In addition, the funnel continues to grow and stay very active, with deals mostly bolt-on in size. On a prior earnings call, we mentioned that we had also a couple of $1 billion purchase price deals in the funnel. During the second quarter, we decided to walk away from one of these larger transactions, and this has proved that we continue to remain very disciplined in our approach to M&A and committed to long-term shareholder value creation through effective capital allocation. We expect more bolt-on deals to be announced later in the year, further exceeding our annualized inorganic revenue targets. Turning to slide six, on this slide, I want to take a minute to walk you through why we're so excited about the ILC Dover acquisition and deep dive into the biopharma business, which accounts for approximately half of the total business. With exposure to high-growth therapies like GLP-1 and ADCs, this business is well-positioned to deliver double-digit growth in 2024 and beyond. The performance in biopharma is much better than the current market and speaks to the niche and unique nature of the products, solutions, and offerings we have. Let's start with GLP-1, or glucagon-like peptide 1 therapies. which are used in the treatment of type 2 diabetics and weight management. With a projected annual market growth rate of 20 to 30% over the next five years, GLP-1 manufacturers are rapidly expanding their capacity to meet both the current and growing market demand. We have deep and long-lasting relationships with our customers, where our proprietary single-use technology is already qualified into their production process becoming an integral part of the validated bill of materials for GLP-1 production. As our customers expand capacity, either within their own facilities or as CMOs, our products are required inputs for these new production lines to minimize validation timelines, startup costs, and risk. As illustrated on the right-hand side of the page, ILC Dover provides proprietary best-in-class technology in terms of single-use containment bags, liners, and other consumables that are used across a variety of steps in the GLP-1 drug manufacturing process, giving our customers the assurances they require to deliver compliant product to the market and reducing their cross-contamination risk. Moving on to ADC, or antibody drug conjugates, which are used primarily in cancer treatment therapies, this market is expected to grow double digits annually over the next five years, driven by the efficacy of the technology. There have been several new ADCs approved in recent years with a robust drug development pipeline for this type of therapy. The patented containment technology is proven to perform better than both clean-in-place and single-use alternatives. And we believe our technology is 80% to 90% more cost-effective than a clean-in-place technology. We continue to see customers convert their existing production lines and install new capacity, leveraging our single-use containment technology. I will now turn the presentation to Vic to provide an update on the Q2 financial performance.

Thanks, Jacente. Starting on slide seven, despite the increasingly challenged macroeconomic environment, we delivered solid results in Q2 through a balance of commercial and operational execution fueled by IRX. Total company organic orders declined 1%, finishing largely in line with expectations. We saw strong sequential orders growth of 5% for the total company, with the book to bill of 1.0 times. Consistent with our guidance, book to bill finished above one in the first half at 1.01 times. This provides us with a healthy backlog to execute in the back half of the year and gives us conviction in delivering our full year 2024 revenue guidance. Organic revenue was up 1% for the quarter and up 13% on a two-year stack. The company delivered second quarter adjusted EBITDA of $495 million, a 16% year-over-year improvement, and adjusted EBITDA margins of 27.4%, a 220 basis point year-over-year improvement, driven predominantly through gross margin expansion, partially offset by investments for growth in SG&A. Adjusted earnings per share was $0.83 for the quarter, which is up 22% as compared to the prior year. This marks six consecutive quarters of double-digit EPS growth and 12 out of the last 14 quarters of double-digit EPS growth, beginning with Q1 of 2021. Free cash flow for the quarter was $283 million, and total liquidity was $3.7 billion, with $1.1 billion of cash on hand at quarter end. Our net leverage was 2.0 turns, which is up one turn versus the prior year. This increase is primarily driven by the $2.325 billion acquisition of ILC Dover. For the full year, we do anticipate net leverage finishing at approximately 1.5 turns. Turning to slide 8, for the total company on an FX adjusted basis, Q2 orders were up 5% and revenue increased 8%. Total company adjusted EBITDA increased 16% from the prior year. The ITS segment margin increased 230 basis points, while the PST segment margin increased 110 basis points year-over-year. Overall, Ingersoll Rand expanded adjusted EBITDA margins by 220 basis points. Corporate costs came in at $44 million for the quarter, largely in line with expectations. And finally, adjusted EPS for the quarter was up 22% year-over-year to $0.83 per share, including an adjusted tax rate for the quarter of 21.3%. On the next slide, free cash flow for the quarter was $283 million, including CapEx, which totaled $22 million. Total company liquidity now stands at $3.7 billion based on approximately $1.1 billion of cash and $2.6 billion of availability on our revolving credit facility. Leverage for the quarter was 2.0 turns, which is a one-turn increase year over year. As noted earlier, this increase was driven primarily by the purchase of ILC Dover, which was funded through $2 billion in bonds and $325 million in cash. Specifically within the quarter, cash outflows included $2.6 billion overall deployed to M&A, as well as $71 million returned to shareholders through $63 million in share repurchases and $8 million for our dividend payment. Our capital allocation strategy remains unchanged with M&A being our top priority, and we continue to expect M&A to be our primary use of cash as we look ahead. On slide 10, I'd like to take a minute to highlight the transformation of our debt portfolio. This transformation has been underway for several years, and I'm pleased to say that we now have a fully investment grade structure. Also important to note that within the quarter, we received a one notch upgrade from each of the three rating agencies, which you can see highlighted on the right side of the page, further solidifying our investment grade status. terms of the overall capital structure in may we issued 3.3 billion dollars of unsecured investment grade bonds the proceeds of the bond issuance were used to repay 1.23 billion dollars of our legacy secured term loans and 2 billion dollars was used to partially fund the acquisition of ilc dover with the remainder retained for general purposes in addition we took the opportunity to increase the size of our revolver from 2 billion to 2.6 billion which further provides flexibility to execute on our strategic initiatives. As a result of this debt portfolio transformation, we now have a fixed to floating ratio of 84% fixed and 16% floating, and extended our weighted average maturity on our overall debt from six years to 10 years. Our new capital structure is designed to facilitate our long-term capital allocation strategy, and we remain committed to maintaining our investment grade status. Finally, Our 2024 gross interest expense outlook is now approximately $215 million. On an annualized basis, we expect gross interest to be approximately $260 million as we move into 2025. I will now turn the call back to Vicente to discuss our segment results.

Thanks, Vic. Moving to slide 11, our industrial technologies and service segment deliver solid year-over-year revenue growth of 6% on top of approximately 20% growth in Q2 of last year. Adjusted EBITDA margins were 29.7%, up 230 basis points from the prior year, which was driven primarily by gross margin expansion. Book-to-bill was one time, with organic orders down 2.6%, which was largely in line with expectations. Important to note that we saw sequential orders growth of 5%, which were primarily driven by compressors. Moving to the program highlights, compressor orders were up low single digits, was still comping a low double-digit growth in Q2 of 2023. It's good to know that we saw positive order growth across America, MEA, and Asia Pacific, excluding China. Compressor revenue was up mid-single digits in the quarter, which we view still healthy after mid-teens growth in Q2 of 2023. Industrial vacuum and blow orders were up low single digits, and revenue was up mid-teens. For innovation in action, we're highlighting Elmore Ridgely new high-speed blower technology, which was recently launched in Europe. This patented oil-free technology offers a 60% reduction in energy consumption compared to a traditional blower technology, enabling productivity for the customer and reducing total cost of ownership by up to 50%. Turn to slide 12. The PST segment achieved 6% organic order growth and deliver adjusted EBITDA of approximately $103 million with a margin of 30.3%. It is encouraging to see that the legacy Ingersoll-run life science business saw organic order growth of 8%. In addition, short cycle orders in the PST segment remain positive, with book and ship orders up mid-single digits year over year. We see organic order growth stabilizing. and we remain positive about the underlying health of the PST business, and it remains on track to meet our long-term investor day growth commitments. For our PST innovation in action, we're highlighting an extremely innovative technology within the legacy Ingersoll Rand life science business. Combining multiple technologies across different brands, we have developed a product offering in microfluidics to create a customized liquid handling automated system for biotech R&D labs, as well as the production of personalized therapeutics. This innovative technology drives up to 50% productivity versus existing processes in a market that is expected to grow approximately 20% through 2027. On the next slide, I would like to spend a minute discussing the current market trends as we always get a lot of questions about our leading indicators. A key leading indicator of our short to medium cycle business is marketing qualified leads, or MQLs. As illustrated on the top chart, our MQL continues to grow. In Q2, we saw organic MQLs up 13% year over year. As for the longer cycle component of our portfolio, one key indicator we look at is the funnel activity for engineers to order compressor systems. We remain encouraged as the funnel activities up 27% in the first half year over year. While the leading indicators have been encouraging, we have seen an elongation in the decision-making process, with a prolonging of the time to convert an MQL to an order. The feedback we hear contains multiple reasons, but some of the most often cited are customer site readiness and too many projects happening at the same time, which is impacting EPC engineering capacity. Having said this, This situation is encouraging as we look to 2025. Switching back to 2024 expectations, from a regional perspective, Americas is on pace to deliver mid-single-digit organic revenue growth. EMEA remains stable, and we see very good pockets of growth primarily in the emerging markets of India and the Middle East. Asia Pacific, and specifically China, is a key driver of the reduction in our organic growth guidance. Moving next to inorganic growth, we're anticipating approximately $270 million of incremental revenue from our recently acquired M&A. ILC Dover is the largest driver, contributing approximately $220 million of revenue in 2024. The biopharma business, as highlighted earlier in the deck, remains strong and on track to deliver double-digit growth. However, we do anticipate that the aerospace and defense revenue to be down approximately $30 million versus our initial expectations. And this is driven by lower-than-expected activity levels in our space business, predominantly related to the next-generation spacesuit, which is often referred to as XEVAS. As we move to slide 14, given the solid performance in the first half, our recently acquired M&A, and our expectation of continual operational execution fueled by IRX, we are once again raising our 2024 guidance. The company revenue is expected to grow overall between 6% to 8%. which is up 200 basis points versus our initial guidance. As discussed in the previous slide, we anticipate positive organic growth in the range of 0 to 2%. The reduction in the range versus our prior guidance is largely attributable to lower organic growth expectations, specifically in China. FX is now expected to be a 1% headwind for the full year, which is down approximately 100 basis points as compared to our previous guide. M&A is projected to contribute approximately $440 million, which reflects all completed and closed M&A transactions as of July 31, 2024. Corporate costs are planned at $170 million and will be incurred relatively evenly per quarter for the balance of the year. Total adjusted EBITDA for the company is expected to be in the range of $2.01 billion and $2.06 billion which is up approximately 14% year-to-year at the midpoint. Adjusted EPS is projected to be within the range of $3.27 and $3.37, which is up 2% versus prior guidance and approximately 12% year-to-year at the midpoint. On the bottom right-hand side of the page, we have included a 2024 four-year guidance bridge showing the changes in our latest guidance as compared to our previous guidance provided in May. As you can see, the primary driver of adjusted EPS growth is associated with operational execution partially offset by increases in the net impact from interest and effects. We're also seeing a $0.02 improvement in our adjusted EPS as compared to our previous guidance from an improvement in our full-year adjusted tax rate. Gross interest expense is now expected to be approximately $250 million, and net interest expense will be approximately $170 million, and will be incurred relatively evenly per quarter for the balance of the year. The adjusted tax rate is expected to finish in the year between 22% and 23%. No changes have been made to our guidance on cap expense as a percentage of revenue, free cash flow to adjusted net income provision, or share count. all remain in line with our previous guidance. Finally, as we turn to slide 15, I am very pleased with how our teams continue to execute despite overall market conditions. We continue to deliver record results, and our updated guidance is reflective of our first half performance and ongoing momentum. With our most recent guidance, we continue to expect to deliver results above of our long-term investor day targets. Based on the midpoint of our 2024 full-year guidance, the four-year CAGR for organic revenue growth will be approximately 10%. We think this continues to show durable outperformance over the cycle. That in combination with our inorganic growth, robust margin expansion, and execution of IRX, we expect to deliver a four-year CAGR in excess of 25% for adjusted EPS. To our employees, I want to thank you for the strong results thus far, showing the impact each of you have as owners of the company. Thank you for your resiliency, hard work, and focused attention. We believe the power of IRX, combined with our ownership mindset and leading portfolios, strengthens the durability of our company while delivering long-term value to shareholders. With that, I will turn the call back to the operator to open the call for Q&A.

Thank you. We will now take your questions. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star 1 again. Our first question comes from the line of Mike Halloran with Baird. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Good morning. Hey, Mike. So let's start with the change in the second half organic assumptions. If I look at how the second quarter progressed, it feels generally consistent with what you were talking to on the top line coming into the quarter. You know, the book-to-bill orders down a little bit. Revenue levels came in at a reasonable level, all else equal. I certainly understand the commentary about... you know, a little longer to close on some of these transactions and push-outs of the orders as well as the China piece. So two-fold question. One, was there something about July that you saw that maybe changed that trajectory? And two, could you parse out some of the underlying things you're seeing from a demand environment excluding some of the project push-outs and if there's any changes elsewhere beyond just the China comments?

Yeah. No, thank you, Mike. I mean, I think you frame it up actually quite well. So the answer to your first question is definitely no. I mean, nothing that we saw in July that gives us the concern and the change in kind of how we think about it. I think also, as you said, I mean, I think things kind of are operating in the first half exactly as we expected. You saw that even we saw some very good sequential improvement Q1 to Q2 orders improving 5% and actually improving on both segments, not only the IPS but also the PST. and but kind of when we think about the guidance and also you know you can see that in the second half we do anticipate still organic revenue growth to be positive uh with a very good phase scene between revenue and ebitda similar to prior years which obviously implies that we'll continue to see some kind of you know good good improvement here sequentially but in terms of the guidance i think the reduction is really predominantly driven by china again although we also were fairly encouraged with what we saw improvements Q1 to Q2 in China, which was positive. And we're also encouraged by kind of what we hear from our teams in terms of level of activity in the month of July, driven by these new programs in place of replacing equipment that the government is putting out together in the market. We feel that, you know, we're taking the approach to be prudent and not necessarily see that the market materially changes in the second half in China and kind of keep it more I would say, stable from here onwards. I will also say kind of in terms of what, I mean, any other changes in terms of market dynamics, I mean, not necessarily. We were very transparent here in terms of leading indicators that we always talk about, which is MQLs and funnel acceleration, just to show that market activity continues to be actually pretty good. I think it's this elongation in what we call the velocity of converting data some of those either formal or MQLs through the process, it seems to be kind of a little bit more elongated. Could that be driven by elections or could that be driven by geopolitical? And obviously what we hear about EPC capacity constraints and site readiness, there's a little bit of a few different points. I think in our view, what we wanted to do is just kind of be more prudent as we go here into the second half. And again, based on these good visibility that we see on leading indicators, feeling good about how this could play out as we kind of head into 2025.

Well, that makes sense. And does that change how you guys were articulating the book-to-bill and order cadence from last quarter? If I remember correctly, it was orders slightly negative front half with positive back half and then the inverse on the book-to-bill. Is that still the way to think about it, or do these push-outs shift some of that?

No, that's exactly the way to think about it, Mike. Spot on.

Great.

Yes. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you, Mike.

Our next question comes from the line of Julian Mitchell with Darkplace. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Maybe, good morning. Maybe Vicente, it seems like China was the sort of the pivot point on the organic guide. So maybe a little bit more color there. You mentioned the teams on the ground sound more optimistic, but maybe just put some numbers around it, sort of Remind us, I guess, you know, total China revenue exposure of Ingersoll Rand. And then, you know, what were organic sales in China down in the first half of the year? And what does the midpoint of the guide embed for second half revenue trends year on year in China, please?

Yeah, Julian, this is big. Maybe I'll start. I'll let Vicente add some color as well. In terms of the first part of your question, I think fairly consistent with how we've described it historically, and it's important to note that this is a consistent statement across both segments, both ITS and PST. Total APAC is roughly about 20% of the revenue base, and China is the lion's share of that, probably somewhere in the high teens percent. So the preponderance of that revenue base in APAC is China. to kind of give rough numbers in terms of the growth expectations, and I'll focus my commentary on the revenue side. In the first half, you know, total APEC, which of course China is the biggest driver, you know, is effectively down what's called low double digits on the revenue base. It's important to note, obviously, the comps still pretty meaningful in the first half of the year. And as we move to the back half of the year, as Vicente just indicated, We do continue to see stability and, you know, some sequential, you know, I'd say, you know, progress from first half to second half. And then, you know, year over year, we actually expect, you know, probably to be closer to flattish year over year, both that stability moving from first half to second half, but also important to note that the comps do get a little bit more, you know, easier, comparatively speaking, in the back half from a revenue perspective, specifically in China.

Yeah. And the other thing to add there, Nigel, in terms of kind of some of the color that we see is that if you were to even exclude some of these kind of large project, long cycle projects, China order is kind of that core business which excludes these long cycle. It's actually fairly good momentum there, Julian. So I'll say that even though in this challenging environment, they're still performing actually quite well.

Thanks very much. And then just my quick follow-up, just within the sort of second half guidance, as we think about kind of seasonality, I realize there's some distortions sequentially into Q3 because of the acquisitions that closed in early June. But when we're thinking about sort of third versus fourth quarter in your guide, are we thinking kind of Q3 is I don't know, you know, 25, 26% of the year's EPS. And then revenue-wise, you kind of have just under $1.9 billion in Q3 and maybe just over $1.9 billion in Q4. Is that the way to think about it?

Yeah, I think you're close enough around it. I think that's probably the right way to think about it. So interestingly enough, I'd say the seasonal phasing, whether it be on the revenue side or on the earning side, not dramatically different than what you've seen in prior years slightly more weighted towards the back half than the front half that is correct great thank you thank you our next question comes from the line of jeff sprague with vertical research partners please go ahead hey thank you good morning everyone um hey hey vicente can you drill in a little bit more on uh you know

kind of PST in general, but kind of biopharma markets in particular. You know, it does sound like you're seeing and feeling kind of the turn in those markets, but just kind of speak to what's going on in the channel or the channel's cleared, what the outlook for maybe the remainder of the year is there.

Yeah, absolutely. Jeff, so let me kind of break it into a couple things. I mean, first of all, let's talk about the legacy in this around life science business, that medical business that As you saw, very, very good momentum in the quarter in Q2 with very nice growth at 8%. So that's actually very encouraging to see. And, you know, some, let's say, good wins as we continue to, you saw the product in action, the innovation in action that we put there. And so I'm getting, you know, that team is getting some very good exposure to personalized medicine, particularly around cancer treatment, which is very, very encouraging to see that. And I think on top of that, I mean, I think we're now two months into the ownership of ILC Dover with the biopharma. And I think the team continues to stay pretty encouraged on what they're seeing out there. And as we go out and meet with the teams, we see some continued good momentum there. And you saw the preparer, Max, that we still expect that business to be able to generate that kind of double-digit growth for ILC. for this year. So again, speaks to the good kind of product innovation and nichiness of our technology and how we're particularly trying to be very focused on specific end markets that are seen outside the world.

And then maybe just shifting, maybe this is total IR, maybe biases a little bit more towards industrial tech. But what's going on with kind of service, service attachment? You know, is it growing here? How does it look into the back half?

Yeah, great. Great, Jeff. Thank you for asking that question. I think we continue to be very excited about all the actions that we're doing around the care packages and the service attachment. As a matter of fact, I mean, even this week right now here, we have a team kind of getting together to talk about the continuation of taking service activities to the next level. So we continue to be very encouraged of what we're seeing. and whether it is with just regular kind of service attachment, but also Ecoplant, as Ecoplant continues to see some progression. And you saw that even also we acquired a company called CAPS in Australia, and that's really to give us more better channel, better access with a larger footprint on service. So service continues to be a very high priority for us as we move forward.

Great. Thanks.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Rob Wertheimer with Melius Research. Please go ahead. Rob Wertheimer, your line is now live.

I am so sorry. Good morning. Hey, good morning, Rob. So my question is on gross margin. It was great in the quarter. I wonder if you could touch on price cost a little bit, price and competitive dynamic and how you're kind of winning or not share in the market. And then just out of curiosity, when you have that higher gross margin, you can lean a bit more into spend. Curious how you manage that and what that kind of increased. It wasn't, but increased spending might be. Thank you.

Yep, Rob, great question. The gross margin expansion, very, very pleased to see a lot of that and driven through the execution of initiatives like FRIES, yes, as you mentioned, but I2V as well as the higher recurrent revenue streams that we were just even talking about on the last question. So all of that is really inflicting some very good expansion into our gross margin that helped us deliver that expansion into our EBITDA margin And absolutely, we're definitely investing. I mean, we continue to invest in areas like demand generation, R&D, and many other areas as needed, whether it's sales force, activity, and service technician to continue to grow the recurring revenue. Coming from a price cost, Vic, do you want to comment on that?

Yeah, on the price cost side of the equation, so specifically in the quarter, price was just approximately 2.5% across the entire enterprise, fairly comparable between the two segments. And then from an inflationary perspective, I'd say the commentary is very similar to what we saw in Q1. I'd say the direct material side, it kind of continues to move sideways. So not a lot of what I would say headwinds on a year-over-year basis, but kind of sideways. And then I'd say on the labor side, relatively normal course. So again, continue to see good pricing momentum from the organization, good translation of the bottom line, and you see that reflected in the gross margin profile along with some of the other initiatives that Vicente spoke to.

Got it. Thank you. And then just a minor follow-up, just pricing looking forward, roughly the same. And what does the new normal in price feel like now? Is it going forward as far as you can see, or two or three, or any comment there? And I'll stop. Thanks.

Yeah, just to keep it relatively simple, I think we've said that pricing will kind of return to, I'd say, a little bit more of the norm that you've seen historically, which is probably around that 1% to 2%. gross pricing levels or net pricing levels, I should say. And if you think about where we're headed in the back half, I think that's kind of where we should be. We were still benefiting from a little bit of some of the carryover pricing actions from last year here to the first half, but we would expect between 1% to 2% is probably a good indicative range for the back half of 2024 as well as expectation for 2025 onwards. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Joe Ritchie with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, guys. Morning, Joe. Hey, Vicente, can we double-click on that commentary around the NQLs and the blaze that you're seeing? I'm just curious. Obviously, there's a lot of activity, particularly happening in the U.S. with megaproject activity, and I'm just wondering if if that's just a function of, look, these projects have started, but you guys aren't really seeing the orders as quickly at this point, but they're on the come because projects have broken ground. Just any other color you can give us around that would be helpful.

Yeah, Joe, I think a great question. And I would say, you know, on that slide, we tried to separate two things, you know, the kind of short to medium cycle and then the long cycle. And I would say that, you know, that the mega projects perhaps view more on that kind of more on the loan cycle where we continue to see funnel increases, but there is that continued elongation driven by, you know, in some cases we have seen some of EPCs having, you know, two to three years of backlog and kind of creating a delay in how they continue to release those basically large projects into order. So I think it's just a, you know, that's why, When we made the commentary, we said, hey, I think it's good news as we think about ahead, and particularly maybe as we think even around 2025, that there is this perhaps glut of projects that as they get released, we will see some better momentum on that. And from an MQL perspective, which is kind of a short-term meeting cycle, I think we made some commentary around PST. I mean, PST on that short cycle business continues to be actually quite good at mid-single-digit growth, even in the second quarter. We just wanted to show that MQL, it is double-digit kind of growth in a year-to-year. Clearly, all of that doesn't translate into the orders, as we're not seeing that double-digit orders. But it's a great indicator as to the market activity on how we're instigating demand and how we're getting really penetrated into new accounts and new customer base And I think that's just for us a good leading indicator on an ongoing performance for us.

Got it. That's super helpful, Vicente. And then my other question, like, look, I could take this a variety of different ways, but congrats on shorting up the balance sheet from a leverage standpoint and from a debt standpoint. I know how important M&A is for you guys going forward and how it has been a great value creator for you. It is interesting to see you take down, though, the aerospace and defense number for the year by $30 million. I know that's a small number. And I think that that's part of the piece that came out of the ILC Dover acquisition that you just completed. So I guess the question is, as you're kind of thinking through these acquisitions, that there might be pieces of these acquired companies that you buy that you'll have inherent volatility. How are you thinking about like managing that going forward as you look through your evaluation process?

Yeah, great question, Joe. You know, I think particularly if you think about ILC Dover, we're very excited about the business. And if you remember when we talk about the company, very excited about that exposure into the life sciences, which is basically 75% of, approximately 75% of the total business for ILC Dover's life sciences with a good blend between biopharma and medical device component. And we always spoke about, in this case, aerospace being a bit of an optionality. Good exposure, good things to learn, but also good to better understand. So as we continue to go forward and learn more about the business, what we can do with it, you know that historically we have always been pleased with – with doing whether it is carve-outs and then selecting businesses that we like or emphasizing more one versus another. But I think it's the purpose and the strategic view that we had with Elsie Dover is that higher penetration onto the lifetime side of the business.

That makes sense. Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Andy Kaplowitz with Citi. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Andy. Andy. The center of it, you start out essentially flat in terms of organic revenue growth of the first half of 24. So I think in order to hit the midpoint of your guide, now you need to grow, you know, the high end of that zero to two for the second half. So we know you have easier costs, but do you need to see any incremental acceleration in your short cycle businesses to achieve that midpoint? Are you basically just assuming more status quo in terms of short cycle markets now remaining somewhat constrained and long cycle markets contributing more growth?

Yeah, Andy, this is Beck. I think the way you've described it is correct. So just to calibrate on the numbers, I think you're right. You know, 1% to 2% organic growth in the back half of the year is probably the right way to think about it system-wide. I think in terms of the components and the moving pieces, yeah, I think what we would say here is, you know, relative stability, no dramatic, let's just call it hockey stick improvement or anything of that nature in the back half implied. Obviously, you know, we've taken down the China... expectations, which is effectively the preponderance of what changed the organic growth guide. So I think now it's execution of the backlog. You know that we typically do have a little bit of seasonality in the business where second half is stronger than first half. That's no different this year. And I think the other factors you mentioned here are largely accurate. So I think we feel comfortable with the guidance as provided.

Burt Lazarin- tell for them and maybe can you talk about what happened to PS PS T adjusted even down margin and key to. Burt Lazarin- move down sequentially despite significantly higher revenue, I think we recognize there's a fair amount of acquisition related revenue in there, but I thought I'll see dover was coming in and the creative margin to the segment didn't any other acquisition to the margins and something else happened in the quarter.

Yeah, Andy, so just to address the second part of your question first, you know, we did have one month of ILC Dover results in Q2, and I'd say largely in line with expectations, both from a top line and bottom line and profitability perspective. I think, you know, generally speaking here, you know, about 30.8% EBITDA margins to about 30.3%. I wouldn't attribute that to anything more than just some of the normal course revenue mix and things of that nature from the balance of the business. Nothing that I think you should read into any further than that. As we think, frankly, going forward here into the back half of the year, you know, those numbers closer, you know, trending, you know, sequentially better from Q2 into Q3 and then Q3 to Q4. Absolutely. So, you know, I don't think anything has changed in our context as far as that getting to a mid-30s EBITDA margin profile over the next few years in line with our investor day targets for PST. So nothing's really changed in that respect.

Appreciate the color, Vic.

Yep.

Our next question comes from the line of Steve Volkman with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning, guys. Most of my questions are answered, but I'm curious to go back to your kind of indicators, the MQL and the funnel activity. You must track kind of win rates or conversion or something over time as well. Any changes to note there?

Yeah. Yes, we do. And no changes on that. I think the change has been basically more because we also track the velocity of those kind of projects or orders through the funnel. And that is basically what I would say has maybe changed. And then the reason why we call it that elongation. But in terms of wind rates and all that, no change in that.

Okay, thanks. And then I'm curious about this CAPS acquisition. I'm not sure if I'm reading this right, but this sounds like you're actually providing power and air to customers, which is kind of a different kind of service, I think, than most of the rest of what you do. Does this open up sort of a new area where you can be more of a, you know, power by the hour type supplier across a bigger addressable market?

Yeah. Yes, I would say that. I mean, they're mainly primarily a compressor distributor. They do have some power side of the business that is small in nature. But interestingly enough, I mean, they actually have provided power for some even including data centers, I mean, amongst all things. So I think it's just an interesting area that we're learning. And, you know, we have some chiller technology with Friolair that we're seeing how can we interact. So, I mean, we're definitely learning a lot on that side. In terms of air, you know, air by the hour or things like that, we do have some of those programs already in place in Australia, even with our legacy Ingersoll-run side of the business. And we call it air over the fence in many cases. But, you know, I think we're very excited about CAPS. I mean, it gives us a tremendous amount of footprint in Australia and great connectivity to a very good level of customer base in addition to the great strong base of revenue that we already have with Ingersoll Run.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Nigel Coe with Wolf Research. Please go ahead.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Hope all's well. Yeah, we've got a lot of ground already. So thanks for the details. I just want to make sure that we've got the second half book to bill sort of lined up here. I think in response to Mike's question, I think you talked about the inverse of the first half. So are we talking about sort of like a high 0.9, maybe like close to 1x book to bill in the back half ITS? And obviously that would suggest orders up mid to high single digits. So I just want to make sure that's the message. And what do we see getting better here? Do we see China improving? Are we expecting some of these larger projects to start breaking free? Because it sounds like the EPC project funnel is not really breaking free until 2025. So just want to just try and dial into that comment. Thanks.

Yeah, sure, sure. Sure, Nigel. So book the bill, yes, definitely less than one in the second half, which is kind of back to our normal way of we always said you know at one greater than one is the first half and then it's basically less than one in the second half and that would imply you know kind of since I would say maybe to the numbers I mean think about it Q3 and Q4 slightly different but low single digit year over year in Q3 and Q4 that's kind of what we imply there although keep in mind that we don't tend to guide on orders but you can do the back of the envelope calculation there And on the second question, I mean, the EPC and the large project continues to still be at play here in the second half. I think what we're saying is that, you know, this elongation of decision-making is taking much longer. And, you know, for a better way of saying it, we're discounting that even further. But these are projects that are active. And whether they might happen in the second half or they may happen as we go into 2025, We view that as great visibility as to what's out there in the market that will be eventually coming back to us.

Okay, so low signature growth in the second half of the year. Okay, that's helpful. And, you know, obviously China is the issue here. I had battery needy as maybe 15% or so of the China business. I want to make sure that's still the right zone there. And just think about your verticals across the globe. I mean, we are seeing some noisy trends in food and beverage. So I'm just curious if you're seeing stable trends in food and beverage or whether there's some noise there as well.

Yeah, Nigel, on the first part, we don't typically talk about kind of like end market, let's just call it, designations within our business regions. But I think it's fair to say that EV batteries, solar were too meaningful in markets in terms of the order and revenue contribution in 2023. I'd still say they are active markets, but just frankly, obviously not at the same levels as what you've seen in prior year. And Santel, I'll let you comment on the food and beverage.

Yeah, for the beverage, I mean, nothing of note, to be honest there, Nigel. I mean, I think food and beverage will continue to sell based on just as we always do in terms of sustainability, whether it is you know, return on investment based on energy savings, the ability to be able to provide, you know, service agreements. So, I mean, it's a good combination of all, and it's about prioritizing, you know, the spend in those facilities, and as long as we show great return on investment, which we are with our technologies and our solutions, we can get that into us.

And just to clarify, Senti, the low signal is that's organic, not reported, right?

That's right. That's exactly right. Yes.

Yeah. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Joe O'Day with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good morning.

So I also wanted to ask on some of the site readiness and EPC dynamics you're talking about and just your evaluation on why that's emerging now. It doesn't seem like the demand environment has changed all that much. I'm not sure if this is more of a reflection of kind of mega project funnel, but just what you've seen over the course of the past two or three quarters such that this would be emerging as a challenge now. And then, you know, as it relates to the guide and expectations in the back half of the year, you know, does that embed kind of any expectation that some of these, you know, sort of projects move forward or that, you know, the EPC capacity eases? Or if any of that happens, should we think about that as more kind of upside?

Yeah, I'll take the first one and let Vic kind of talk about the second one. You know, as you know, and I think you said it and someone said it as well, I mean, there's been a lot of mega projects approved over the past few years, but not all those orders and revenue have been seen from those projects. And so there's definitely bottlenecks throughout the process. And what we hear is basically that customer site readiness due to labor, but also that EPC capacity. I made an example about an EPC in Europe that currently has, something like two and a half years of backlog in order that they get a kind of push through the process. And all we're saying here is that it seems to bring to light the potential of having Google 2025 as some of those projects get released. And, you know, perhaps here some as well here in the second half. Any second question, Vic?

Yeah, I think, Joe, in terms of the second half, is there anything directly embedded? No, I think this is a simple answer. Obviously, our second half includes execution on existing backlogs. Obviously, there's a component of longer cycle projects like you've seen in prior years. To the degree, as I said, some of this loosens up or things like that, great. I would view that as potential, you know, maybe some orders. But remember, most of these are six to 18-month type lead time type projects. So reality is those will not convert to revenue until 2025 or later. Got it.

Yeah, no, lead time comments helpful. Okay. And then also just in terms of China, is it right that China kind of played out as expected more or less in the first half of the year? And so the guidance adjustment would be more reflective of the second half of the year, a little softer than anticipated. And if so, it seems like it's more kind of stable in China first half to second half. And so what did you think might get a little bit better that at this point in time doesn't seem like it's going to play out that way?

I'll say that China definitely played out very well in terms of what we saw in the first half. I will say that even in some regards, slightly better because we saw that Q1 to Q2 sequential improvement in orders in China, which we were surprised to see and the team building some backlog. We just decided that based on everything that we see coming out of China and whether geopolitical actions and all of that put together, we decided to be more prudent and kind of put China more as being stable here in the second half versus seeing any material improvement from here onwards.

Got it. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Nicole DeBlaze with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. Good morning, guys. Hi. Good morning, Nicole. We've had a lot of discussion around the large project activity in ITS. I guess, can you talk a little bit about what you guys saw on the short cycle part of the business from an order perspective throughout the quarter?

Yeah, Nicole, I will say that one data point that we talked a lot about is that kind of short cycle on the PST side, mid-single digit kind of growth in Q2, which is actually very good to see. And when you think about all the other in the ITS side, I mean, all the regions, except obviously China, they saw actually some very good momentum, too, as well, as indicated, as you can see, in terms of some of the product line aspects that we talked about compressors and compressors being up from an orders perspective in the second quarter, which obviously a lot of the compressor that's driving through as well. The majority for us is on that kind of short cycle side, short to medium cycle.

Got it. Thanks, Vicente. And then on the ITS margins, is the expectation that margins kind of remain in this slightly below 30 zone in the second half?

Yeah, Nicolai, that's a fair conclusion. Yes, around 30% is a pretty good number. Thanks, Vic. I'll pass it on. Thank you.

Our final question comes from David Rasso with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you. Two quick things. Maybe I missed it. I apologize. A lot of earnings this morning. But you made a comment about deciding to walk away from one of the larger transactions. Can you provide a little color? Was that strictly a price-related decision to walk away? or something about the markets or anything you could enlighten us on why you'd walk away to maybe, you know, to learn more how you think about other larger deals that could be coming.

Yeah, no, great, great, great, good question there, David. You know, you know, I think that the reason for that is that it, first of all, say this is a transaction that we cultivated for, you know, past kind of three years. So we've been kind of watching them on the sidelines and learning a lot about them. And, and, and these, this transaction, I will say, fell really more into the adjacent category as compared to our core offering of compressor, blower, and vacuum. But yeah, I mean, I think ultimately it was all about valuation. I mean, we continue to be highly disciplined. And we, as you very well know, we tend to do a lot of our ROI analysis along the lines of things that we can control and how do we view that business on areas that we can control versus extrapolating on revenue activity that we tend to discount heavily. So I will say that ultimately that led to a performance that we decided that it was just not right timing for us.

And one follow-up, maybe I should know this, but I don't. The new, with ILC, right, PST is going to be, call it a run rate, a billion seven business. I think 700 or so will now be a life science piece. and then the other billion is the precision tech. Within the total segment margin of, call it 31% this year, something like that, what's the difference between the margins of precision tech and life sciences?

Yeah, David, interesting enough, yeah, quite comparable to each other. I wouldn't tell you there's a meaningful mixed differential between the two. Both are playing in and around that, I'd say, segment average profile, so actually quite comparable.

Helpful. Okay, thank you. Thank you.

This will conclude our question and answer session. I will now turn the call back over to Vicente for closing remarks.

Thank you, Brianna. I'll just say thank you for your level of interest, and I appreciate all the questions and all the participants that I know many of our employees are actually listening to the call. And to those that are listening to the call, I'll just say thank you again for another great quarter performance, and let's get out of here now to execute again here in the second half of the year. With that, thank you very much, and have a good day.

This will conclude today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.